Stablecoins stopped being a settlement story today and became a product story. One app put a dollar balance and a card in front of users in 48 countries, and 21 of the largest names in finance set out to build a company that issues stablecoins of their own.
- Ethena Pay opened in beta across 48 countries, running on Avalanche, with savings paying up to 6 percent.
- Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Santander, MUFG and Fidelity are among 21 institutions forming a stablecoin issuer, dollar first, targeted at the first half of 2027.
- A 421-page SEC proposal drags transfer agent rules out of the 1970s and names tokenized securities, distributed ledgers and smart contracts by name.
- 600 milliseconds: the new block time MultiversX switches on after a scheduled 24-minute pause on September 10.
Issuance, spending and recordkeeping usually move at different speeds. Today all three moved toward the same assumption, that digital money is something people hold and use rather than settle with once a quarter.
Ethena Pay opens in 48 countries
Source: The Block
Ethena Labs launched a self-custodial money app built around its USDe stablecoin in beta across 48 countries, including Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Kenya, the Philippines, Singapore, Japan and the UAE. It runs on Avalanche.
Savings balances pay 5 percent for standard members and 6 percent on the paid tiers, capped between $5,000 and $50,000 depending on level. The card pays 4 to 5 percent back, rising to 10 percent at selected brands for top-tier members.
The United States and the European Union sit outside the beta for now, though both are planned during it.
Zypto take: The yield numbers will get the attention and they’re the least interesting part. A self-custodial app opening in Brazil, Kenya and the Philippines before the US and the EU says plainly where dollar demand already lives.
Holding a dollar balance and spending from the same self-custodial app is what Zypto App does today, across stablecoins on 20+ blockchains. Download Zypto App.
Twenty-one banks plan a stablecoin of their own
Source: Cointelegraph
Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Santander, MUFG and Fidelity Investments are among 21 institutions planning to form a new company to develop and issue stablecoins. Thirteen more sit across North America, Europe, East Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
A dollar stablecoin comes first, targeted at the first half of 2027, with a euro version next and other G7 currencies after that. The venture is being designed to fit the US GENIUS Act and the EU’s MiCA rules, aimed at wholesale, institutional and retail use for cross-border payments and settlement.
Zypto take: Twenty-one of the biggest names in finance agreeing that dollars should move on a blockchain settles an argument that ran for a decade.
It’s worth knowing exactly what you’d be holding. A bank-issued stablecoin sitting in your own wallet is yours to move, and the issuer keeps the ability to freeze it. A base asset with no company behind it has no such switch, and Zypto App holds both on your own device, so the difference stays visible.
The SEC opens up rules written for a filing cabinet
Source: The Block
The SEC proposed a 421-page rewrite of its transfer agent rules, the first significant update since the late 1970s. Transfer agents keep the record of who owns a security and handle dividends, mergers and other corporate actions.
Chair Paul Atkins said the changes reflect how transfer agents work now, including electronic communications and blockchain technology. The proposal notes that agents dealing with tokenized securities, distributed ledger technologies and smart contracts have to manage risks around blockchain data integrity and the security of tokenized securities.
Comments are open for 60 days.
Zypto take: Tokenized stocks have been shipping for a year while the rulebook still assumed a filing cabinet and a phone call. Rewriting the record-keeping layer is the unglamorous work that decides whether owning a share onchain carries the same weight as owning it on paper.
For anyone already holding tokenized treasuries or equities, the question is whether the record follows the token. Real world assets sit in Zypto App alongside everything else, on the same 20+ blockchains.
A chain pauses for 24 minutes to reach 600 millisecond blocks
Source: CryptoSlate
MultiversX will stop accepting new pool transactions for roughly 24 minutes on September 10 to switch on an upgrade called Supernova. Block times drop from six seconds to 600 milliseconds.
Finality within a shard falls below 250 milliseconds, and cross-shard settlement goes from around 18 seconds to 2.4. Addresses, keys and balances carry over unchanged.
More than 5,000 nodes need the new software. As of September 1, 4.65 percent had made the move.
Zypto take: Six seconds is fine for settling a trade and too slow for a payment someone is standing there waiting for. Networks are being rebuilt around the second number, because that’s the one that decides whether ordinary spending can happen on a chain at all.
Speed on any single network is only half of it. Getting value between chains is the other half, and the multichain wallet in Zypto App runs over 1,000,000 crosschain routes across 24,000+ assets.
Key Takeaways
- Stablecoin demand is being answered at both ends on the same day: a consumer app live in 48 countries, and a 21-institution issuer aimed at 2027.
- As more stablecoins arrive from banks, the useful question stops being which one and becomes who issues it and on what terms.
- Ownership records are being rewritten for tokenized assets, and that’s what makes an onchain share behave like the paper version rather than a claim about one.
- Sub-second finality is the new target because networks are increasingly measured against payments rather than trades.
- The gap between holding digital money and using it keeps narrowing, and almost all of today’s work landed on the using half.
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