Stablecoin Cartel: Inside Visa, Mastercard & Stripe's New Alliance & More

Welcome back!

This is J264G and this week I’ve got these titbits for you:

• Stablecoin Platform: Visa & Mastercard to form new stablecoin consortium. 

• Legacy Fightback: JPMorgan & BofA to launch tokenised deposit network.

• Solana Acquisition: Andrew Yang's Noble Mobile acquires Helium Mobile. 

Just a reminder before we get into it: as shared in our previous newsletter, The Sleuth will rebrand to blockpulse from next week onwards. Same team, wider coverage, and a name built for the frontier of finance as we grow our community toward 100,000 executives and beyond. So look out for blockpulse landing in your inbox next week, and if you haven't already, please add our new domain (blockpulse.global) to your safe sender list to ensure our newsletter keeps reaching you as usual.

Now, let’s jump right into this week’s newsletter!

Click on any underlined heading/hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Stablecoin Summer

When fans from Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, and other high-inflation economies land in American host cities for the FIFA World Cup this summer, the most valuable thing they carry will not be cash. It will not be a lucky scarf either, though no one should rule that out.

Fans arriving from Buenos Aires know, with the weary fluency of people who check the exchange rate the way others check the weather, exactly what happens to pesos held a fortnight too long. They also know what a typical travel card extracts in conversion fees and markups. The smarter option they will carry, therefore, is a Visa or Mastercard tied to a stablecoin balance.

The logic behind that choice is gloriously unglamorous. In countries where the local currency behaves like a melting ice cube, ordinary people have taken to holding dollars in digital form because it is the most reliable thing within reach. The FIFA World Cup turns that quiet habit into real-world spending power, somewhere between the turnstile and the beer queue. Millions will arrive across three host nations needing to spend, and the card networks have spent two years building the plumbing to let them do exactly that, drawing straight from their stablecoin balances.

There is an irony worth savouring. The instrument that lets a fan in Dallas buy an overpriced stadium lager without a punishing foreign-exchange haircut is, in the end, simply a dollar. American monetary reach is expanding through the savings habits of people the country's banks never served and its regulators never courted, and Washington's recent move to give stablecoins a legal footing only pours fuel on that fire.

That is the part worth cheering. A technology born of frustration, shaped in places where money cannot be trusted to sit still, is quietly becoming a tool of dignity: it lets a supporter from São Paulo or Istanbul cross an ocean and spend like anyone else. The revolution, as ever, arrives disguised as convenience, wearing a replica jersey and queuing for the good seats.

Chart Of The Week

Pre-IPO perpetual futures are currently pricing SpaceX at ~$155 a share. Friday's IPO arrives with a target already painted on it. Grab the popcorn.

News Bites

Legacy Fightback: JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and other leading US banks intend to launch a tokenised deposit network next year to counter the rising competitive threat from stablecoins. This is a deliberate design choice aimed at stemming the risk of deposit flight to crypto wallets. That the country's largest banks have chosen to answer crypto by building an onchain version of themselves is, perhaps, the most telling indicator yet of where the industry believes the threat now lies.

Stablecoin Platform: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and Coinbase are in talks to form a consortium to issue a new stablecoin in a challenge to the market dominance of Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC). The precise mechanics of the venture and the respective roles of each participant remain undisclosed. 

Stablecoin Capabilities: Mastercard shared plans to broaden its settlement capabilities, adding intraday, weekend, and holiday card settlement across both fiat currencies and onchain rails. The expansion will support regulated stablecoins, including USDC and PYUSD, across the Ethereum, Solana, Base, and Arbitrum networks.

Bitcoin Mortgage: The first federally backed US home loan secured against Bitcoin received formal approval last week. Joe and Amy, a Michigan couple, purchased a new home by pledging the holdings in their Bitcoin wallet as collateral for a Fannie Mae mortgage.

Solana Acquisition: Andrew Yang's Noble Mobile has acquired Helium Mobile, a Solana-based wireless provider, in a deal that pairs Noble's consumer telecoms operation with Helium's blockchain-powered network. The companies say they are united by a conviction that connectivity should be affordable and accessible to all Americans.

Caught In 4K

Weekly Take

Keks & Giggles

And that's a wrap!

You can reach me anytime over on 𝕏 or drop me a line. 

Talk soon!

J264G

_{DISCLAIMER
None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research. Lastly, please be advised that we discuss products and services from our partners from which our team members may hold tokens/equity.}