Banks Edge Into Stablecoins: Visa Expands Pilot, FDIC Outlines Path; Bitcoin Holds Near $87K

The price tape wasn’t the story. The rails were. Visa pushed its stablecoin pilot deeper into U.S. banking and onto Solana, and the FDIC advanced a proposal under the GENIUS Act that would let FDIC‑supervised banks issue payment stablecoins via subsidiaries. If banks can mint compliant dollars on-chain and card networks settle them at scale, stablecoins shift from crypto sidecar to core payments plumbing.

Here’s why that pivot matters - Cost and speed: Card networks trialing on-chain settlement, particularly on a high-throughput L1 like Solana, can compress settlement latency and interchange. If even a slice of merchant flow migrates to crypto rails, stablecoin velocity rises and the “cash-equivalent” use case hardens. - Bank-grade wrappers: An FDIC-blessed subsidiary model could narrow risk premia versus offshore tokens, invite balance-sheet support, and create bank-branded stablecoins that coexist with USDC/USDT. The fee stack changes: think account-level KYC, predictable reserves, and clearer disclosure obligations. - Policy optics: Lawmakers worried about DeFi laundering will point to supervised issuance as the “responsible” path while still letting programmable money proliferate. That tension—permissioned access riding on public chains—will define the next phase. - Execution risk: Solana’s throughput is an advantage, but operational resilience and incident response will be judged by bank and network standards. Outages or validator miscoordination won’t be graded on a crypto curve. Integration choices (custody, key management, compliance oracles) will decide who wins distribution.

Market snapshot - Majors were mostly flat in one session: BTC -0.3% at $87,000; ETH -1% at $2,930; BNB -1% at $858; SOL unchanged at $128. Top movers: NIGHT +11%, MORPHO +10%, MYX +5%. - Another day opened risk-off: BTC -3% at $87,200; ETH -6% at $2,950; BNB -2% at $868; SOL -3% at $128. Gainers: XDC +4%, CC +3%, SKY +2%. - Bitwise sees new Bitcoin all-time highs in 2026, arguing institutional inflows, clearer rules, and adoption could outweigh typical late-cycle drag.

Regulation and policy - The SEC closed a four-year inquiry into Aave without recommending enforcement. That won’t rewrite DeFi policy, but it dampens a long tail risk. - The Senate punted the market-structure markup to next year, keeping the near-term framework muddied. Trump signaled he could nominate Democrats to the SEC and CFTC, a stance that may help break Senate logjams. - Senator Warren spotlighted DEX risks—calling out PancakeSwap—and alleged ties between certain flows and both Trump-connected activity and North Korea-related laundering. Expect that narrative to anchor upcoming controls around interfaces and analytics. - The FTC said Nomad must return recovered funds tied to the 2022 bridge exploit ($186 million). - Hong Kong charged influencers over promoting the collapsed JPEX exchange; estimated investor losses sit near $206 million. - South Korea approved roughly $15 million in debt relief for crypto traders, a rare policy nod to household balance sheets.

Builders and infra - Visa’s stablecoin pilot now includes more U.S. banks and Solana-based settlement—an incremental but meaningful bridge between card rails and on-chain money. - JPMorgan launched a tokenized money-market fund on Ethereum, settling fund shares on-chain—further proof that tokenized cash and cash-equivalents are the on-ramp enterprises actually use. - MetaMask added native Bitcoin support, letting users buy, send, and receive BTC directly—wallet UX is converging across chains. - PayPal applied for a Utah bank charter, a logical step if it wants to compete on deposits and stable-value products inside the perimeter. - Coinbase and Robinhood joined a U.S. “tech force” to recruit engineers for government AI infrastructure—political capital and technical capacity often move in tandem. - Grayscale argued quantum computing is unlikely to drive crypto valuations in 2026, while urging long-term post-quantum planning at the protocol layer. - Bittensor (TAO) executed its first halving, cutting issuance from 7,200 to 3,600 tokens per day.

What to watch next If banks begin issuing on-chain dollars under FDIC oversight while Visa standardizes stablecoin settlement, the center of gravity shifts from offshore liquidity to regulated distribution. The psychological unlock—“my bank does this”—can be as powerful as the technical one. The open question is how much of that distribution remains composable on public chains versus drifting toward permissioned enclaves. That design choice will ripple through DEX liquidity, MEV dynamics, and the stablecoin competitive set.

Programming note: recent interviews in this series have run roughly 1h05m to 1h07m.