Stablecoin Business Accounts

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Introduction

Welcome to the Tokenized newsletter, brought to you by the creators of the Tokenized Podcast; Simon Taylor of Fintech Brainfood and Pet Berisha of Sporting Crypto, written by Jeremy Batchelder.

We are the newsletter for institutions that need help preparing for a Tokenized future.

We run through the headlines every week, what it means for you and a market readout. Always with an institutional, business-focused perspective. 

Join us every week as we meet your Tokenization needs.

Stories You Can't Miss 📰 

🚀 Squads Protocol Launches Altitude and Secures Haun Ventures Investment

Squads Protocol has announced the launch of Altitude, a stablecoin-native USD business account, and a strategic investment from Haun Ventures.

Key Points:

• Altitude offers global businesses USD accounts without requiring a U.S. entity or traditional bank – just an email to get started

• The platform supports ACH, Wire, SEPA, and stablecoin transfers across 100+ countries

• Users can earn competitive yields through stablecoin rewards and DeFi integrations while maintaining instant liquidity

• Squads Protocol has already secured over $10 billion in value and processed more than $3 billion in stablecoin transfers

The Tokenized Take:

• Banking alternative for global businesses: Altitude removes significant friction for businesses seeking USD banking services without traditional borders and limitations

• Building on proven technology: With $10B already secured on their protocol, Squads brings a reliable foundation to business banking

• Strategic industry backing: Haun Ventures' investment provides both capital and expertise to accelerate adoption

• Stablecoin utility evolution: This represents an important step in making stablecoins practical for everyday business operations rather than just trading

🚀 Robinhood's RWA Framework Proposal Could Bridge Traditional and Digital Finance

Robinhood has submitted a significant letter to the SEC outlining a federal framework for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), potentially creating a path to bring Wall Street onchain.

Key Points:

• Robinhood proposes that tokens representing assets like equities or government bonds should be legally equivalent to the underlying asset, not classified as derivatives

• The letter calls for a unified national framework to replace the fragmented, state-by-state compliance approach currently governing securities

• The proposal integrates KYC/AML tools via Jumio and Chainalysis to meet global compliance requirements

• This framework could enable broker-dealers to custody and trade tokenized assets using existing regulatory guardrails rather than uncertain new structures

• The RWA tokenization market is projected to reach $30 trillion by 2030, according to research from The Trading View

The Tokenized Take:

• Legal infrastructure over technical innovation: Rather than creating new technology, Robinhood is focused on anchoring existing capabilities to firm legal ground - the missing piece in RWA adoption

• Strategic market positioning: This moves Robinhood beyond its meme stock origins toward becoming a serious infrastructure player in digital finance

• Institutional acceptance catalyst: A clear regulatory framework could accelerate institutional adoption of tokenized assets that has been stalled by compliance uncertainty

• Hurdles remain: SEC approval isn't guaranteed, and their historically cautious approach to digital assets could limit implementation

• First-mover advantage: If approved, Robinhood would help define what "compliant tokenization" means in the U.S., creating the legal scaffolding for others to follow

Stablecorner ⚖️ → The Pragmatic Evolution of Stablecoin Adoption

The stablecoin ecosystem is experiencing a profound shift from idealistic use cases to highly pragmatic applications focused on solving real business problems. As Brandon Arvanaghi, CEO of Meow, explained in the latest episode of the Tokenized Podcast:

"If you ask a lot of the institutional VCs, you might hear that you're going to be paying for coffee with stablecoins on Ethereum or something. I tend not to believe that. I think that's like lot of hammers looking for nails and ways to deploy mega funds. The use cases we're seeing are very practical."

This shift toward pragmatism is reshaping how businesses are integrating stablecoins into their operations, with two key trends emerging:

1. Cross-Border Payments Driving Real Adoption

The single most compelling use case for stablecoins today isn't retail transactions but rather cross-border payments for businesses. Arvanaghi's experience at Meow, one of the first business banking fintechs to natively support USDC, has revealed that companies primarily use stablecoins for:

• Paying international contractors: "They may have contractors overseas where it's much easier for them to receive USDC as a payment method as opposed to going through Swift or another rail"

• Creator platform distributions: Companies managing payouts to large numbers of creators or contractors can streamline operations through a single dashboard

• Treasury management: Rather than maintaining multiple banking relationships across jurisdictions, businesses can operate through a single interface

What's driving this adoption isn't ideology but efficiency. As Arvanaghi noted about high-throughput chains capturing stablecoin volume: "That's just simply because it's cheaper on those chains." This practicality is why we're seeing significant growth on chains like Tron in the Asia-Pacific region, where speed and accessibility matter more than technical ideals.

2. The Infrastructure Gap Between Traditional and Digital Finance

The second major trend is the development of specialized infrastructure bridging traditional banking and digital assets. Cuy Sheffield highlighted a key challenge in the current landscape:

"It's hard to try and imagine. I feel like when we thought about the value of tokenized real world assets as like this ledger, this universal ledger that you could have both cash and a representation of an asset sitting on the same ledger and then do delivery versus payment, it seems like the way at least in the very early days it's playing out is there's still a lot of fragmentation."

This fragmentation is driving the development of new interoperability solutions. JP Morgan's recent use of their Kinexis digital payment solution to settle Ondo's public chain transactions demonstrates how traditional banking infrastructure is connecting to blockchain systems.

Rather than waiting for a single perfect solution, pragmatic businesses and financial institutions are building bridges between different systems to enable:

• 24/7 settlement: Eliminating weekend delays in financial transactions

• Collateral mobility: Allowing assets to be put to work immediately after settlement

• Backward compatibility: Maintaining connections to traditional banking infrastructure while adding blockchain capabilities

As Simon Taylor noted in the discussion, "Functionally, this would appear to be exactly the same to a customer as if it was all running on the same chain. Cause if it's instant and it's 24-7, that's what I care about."

This pragmatic approach to solving real business problems, rather than pursuing ideological visions, is what's truly driving stablecoin adoption in 2025.

📰 Some More News:

🏦 Tokenization, Stablecoins & Finance

• BlackRock’s sBUIDL launches 'first direct DeFi protocol integration' with Euler on Avalanche (Read more here)

• Fireblocks launch the State of Stablecoins Report (Read more here)

• World Liberty's Stablecoin Now Available on Multiple Networks Via Chainlink (Read more here)

• Bybit Becomes First Major Crypto Exchange to Offer USDT Stock Trading on MT5 With CFD Model (Read more here)

• Franklin Templeton unveils Singapore tokenized money market fund (Read more here)

• Standard Chartered inks another crypto banking partnership with FalconX (Read more here)

• Robinhood Seeks SEC Approval for RWA Exchange on Blockchain (Read more here)

• VISA Launch Stablecoin Strategy Report (Read more here)

• VanEck Prepares to Launch PurposeBuilt Fund to Invest in Real-World Applications on Avalanche (Read more here)

🤑 Funding and M&A

• Circle In Talks to Sell as Coinbase & Ripple Emerge as Top Buyers (Read more here)

• Circle co-founder to create ‘AI-native’ bank after $18M raise (Read more here)

💼 Government & Policy

• Senate advances a major crypto regulation bill on a bipartisan vote (Read more here)

• Thailand plans to offer an investment-grade crypto token to the public (Read more here)

• Ripple Builds on Dubai Regulatory License to Announce Zand Bank and Mamo As First Blockchain-Enabled Payments Clients in the UAE (Read more here)

Simon’s Market Readout 💬 

This week, I've seen so many agentic commerce companies. Some are working with cards. Some are working with stablecoins. Even Google is trying to reinvent the checkout as an ads and search product.

But one thing keeps coming up.

Stablecoins. Whether it's x402 from Coinbase making Stablecoins work with HTTP, or skyfire making agent-to-agent payments a thing.

Or perhaps most excitingly. Catena Labs.

This company combines:

• Open standards for identity between humans, agents and merchants (w3c's verifiable credentials)

• The ability to pay on multiple rails, cards, banks, Stablecoins

• The ability to monitor, manage and measure the security of the AI agents.

The key? The stablecoin is the infrastructure that is the glue. Between payment rails, identity, and metrics. It's the platform.

Oh and it's built by one of the founders of USDC at Circle.

Oh, and also, they released an open-source Agentic Commerce Kit (ACK) that describes all of this.

All of the pieces were there. They've put them together.

Who knows if this company or this model succeeds? My point is not Catena Labs.

My point is that stablecoins, verifiable credentials, and agentic commerce are colliding.

Everywhere I look.

Tweet of the Week 🐤 

From our very own Simon Taylor:

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