Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team. Welcome back to your weekly briefing.
The US stablecoin regulation is maturing. The OCC just proposed new rules to put guardrails around stablecoins (digital money tied to the U.S. dollar), following the GENIUS Act that passed last year. The rules cover everything from who can issue them to how they must be backed and managed. [RELEASE]
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Other things we watched this week…
Digital asset treasury companies bought the dip: BitMine bought 51,162 ETH (~$100M), while Strategy added 592 BTC ($39.8M), and American Bitcoin (Eric Trump’s company) added 392 BTC ($25M).
Adoption: Meta is reportedly exploring stablecoin integration for its 3B+ users. BNP Paribas (largest bank in Europe) launches a tokenized MMF on Ethereum.
Circle reported strong Q4 results, with revenue up 77% year over year and USDC circulation reaching $75.3B, a 72% increase. On the news, its stock jumped over 20%, indicating that institutions are bullish, even as the broader crypto markets remain fearful.
The UK has been slow on stablecoin innovation, but the FCA is taking its first steps — it selected four firms, Monee Finance, ReStabilise, Revolut, and VVTX, to pilot stablecoin development in its Regulatory Sandbox.
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Our highlights this week:
Stripe weighs PayPal acquisition
Meta is exploring stablecoin payments integration
Circle posts strong Q4 revenue growth
BNP Paribas launches a tokenised MMF on Ethereum
Ethereum team outlines 2026 roadmap
Let’s jump in 👇
🚀 A lot more is going on that we’ll tell you in our PRO briefings.
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Top Boardroom Reads
2025 Outlook: The End of Crypto Ambiguity (51 Insights)
Stablecoins in payments: What the raw transaction numbers miss (McKinsey )
McKinsey’s State of Organizations (McKinsey)
Building Permissionless Neobanks (Pantera Capital)
Stablecoin Compliance and the GENIUS Act (Oliver Wyman)
Tokenized Gold & RWAs (Research paper)
Top Signals This Week
Stripe weighs PayPal acquisition
Stripe is reportedly weighing an acquisition of PayPal or some of its key assets, in talks that remain preliminary and may never result in a deal. The leak landed just as Stripe’s own valuation jumped to about $159B in a secondary sale. PayPal, by contrast, lost roughly a third of its value in 2025, currently being valued around $43B. Operationally, PayPal has been missing earnings expectations and losing market share to Apple Pay and Google Pay. According to the reports, possibilities range from a full takeover of PayPal Holdings to a more surgical deal for assets such as Braintree, its merchant acquiring and gateway unit, or Venmo, its consumer P2P wallet. [NEWS]
Why this matters: Stripe already dominates online payment processing for businesses, while PayPal brings more than 430M active accounts and availability in over 200 markets worldwide, along with PYUSD, its own dollar-backed stablecoin that has grown to a $4.1B market cap, making it already the 6th largest stablecoin globally. Folding that consumer network and native stablecoin into Stripe’s stack, and pairing it with Tempo, a payments-focused L1 blockchain incubated by Stripe, and Bridge (Stripe’s stablecoin platform that recently secured a conditional OCC national trust charter) would dramatically accelerate Stripe’s push into consumer finance and stablecoin payments. This positions Stripe to become a dominant stablecoin issuer and puts it on more equal footing with today’s leaders, Circle and Tether.
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Meta exploring stablecoin payments integration
Meta is reportedly testing stablecoin payments integration into WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, instead of launching its own token like Libra/Diem. It is planning to plug into existing stablecoins under the new U.S. GENIUS Act framework. Stripe is widely seen as the frontrunner for infrastructure, a natural fit given that CEO Patrick Collison already sits on Meta’s board. [NEWS]
What they are saying: Meta spokesman Andy Stone in a post on X. “This is about enabling people and businesses to make payments on our platforms using their preferred method”. (embed tweet on substack)
Why this matters: Social platforms are quietly becoming the next payments infrastructure. Elon Musk has been talking about integrating payments into X (Twitter), and Telegram has already integrated in‑app crypto payments. But Meta is a different scale entirely. With over 3B users across its apps individually, and already testing business payments in markets like Brazil and India via WhatsApp, Meta has both the distribution and the on‑ramp. If it integrates stablecoins at scale, it can move billions in payment volume off legacy card networks that charge 2–3% fees to near zero — and bring billions of people onto blockchain rails without them ever knowing it.
Circle posts strong Q4 revenue growth
Circle reported strong Q4 2025 numbers: USDC circulation rose 72% year‑on‑year to $75.3B, with quarterly on‑chain volume up 247% to $11.9T. Full‑year revenue and reserve income grew 64% to $2.7B. Circle generated $582M of cash‑style operating profit for the full year, but still reported a $70M accounting loss because it had to book $424M of stock‑based pay linked to its IPO. Meanwhile, EURC circulation grew 284% year‑on‑year to €310M, making it the leading euro‑denominated pledged stablecoin. [REPORT]
Key trends: USDC’s market share grew about 3% to ~25% while Tether fell 6% to ~62%, and USDC now accounts for roughly 47% of stablecoin transaction volume, signaling higher real usage than USDT. Other revenue grew 625% to $110M (from a near‑zero base), with management projected $150–170M for FY2026.
Why this matters: USDC’s market share is growing while Tether is losing ground, and Circle’s business is diversifying beyond being a pure interest-rate proxy. With Arc mainnet on track for 2026 — backed by strong testnet usage of 166M+ transactions — Circle is positioning USDC as the native payment layer for AI agent transactions. Circle’s early-mover advantage in agentic payments could be the most underappreciated part of this story.
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BNP Paribas launches a tokenized MMF on Ethereum
On February 19, 2026, BNP Paribas Asset Management issued a tokenized share class of an existing French-domiciled MMF on Ethereum. This made it the first major European bank to launch a regulated MMF on a public blockchain. The entire fund lifecycle; issuance, custody, dealing, and settlement is controlled in-house. No major competitor has demonstrated this level of vertical integration on a public chain. [RELEASE]
Why this matters: BNP Paribas timed this carefully. MiCA is now fully in place across the EU, with its Title V securities rules launching in mid-2026. This is when banks need the infrastructure to shift from pilots to large-scale production. BNP Paribas Asset Management, Securities Services, and CIB’s AssetFoundry are designed to meet the complete needs of European institutions. This setup allows them to plug in and scale quickly to compete with US $10.84B tokenized funds globally.
Ethereum team outlines 2026 roadmap
On February 18, 2026, the Ethereum Foundation published its 2026 protocol priorities: three big themes — Scale (increase transaction throughput), UX (make wallets behave like normal bank apps), and Harden the L1 (security and censorship resistance as Ethereum carries more real assets), with two major upgrades, Glamsterdam and Hegotá, planned across the year. Vitalik also published a quantum resistance roadmap this week. Noting that Quantum computers’ risk of breaking cryptography aren’t here yet — but Ethereum is engineering for that future now, while the window is still open. [RELEASE]
Why this matters: Over the past year, activity has moved away from Ethereum, with speed and low fees driving the shift. Retail users in particular moved to Solana, Base, and BNB Chain. But with the roadmap now focused on making L1 itself faster and cheaper, both retail and institutional activity have a reason to migrate back. For institutions, Ethereum still commands the deepest liquidity in crypto —$164B stablecoins,$55B TVL, and the broadest custody infrastructure.
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News Flash
MetaMask and Mastercard launch crypto cards in the United States. Link
ETHZilla rebranded to Forum in strategic evolution toward RWA tokenization. Link
IMF endorses US crypto regulatory framework in 2026 Article IV. Link
Progmat migrates $2B+ of its tokenized securities to Avalanche. Link
Japan’s SBI launches ¥10B ($64.5M) tokenized bond on ibet for retail investors. Link
Bitwise acquires Chorus One in a $2.2B staking expansion. Link
World Bank’s IFC invests $40M in Zetrix AI to expand blockchain infrastructure. Link
Crypto exchange HashKey launches RWA issuance for institutions. Link
BitGo secured a pivotal role to issue FYUSD stablecoin. Link
Tether assists the US DOJ in seizing $61M USDT linked to fraud. Link
That’s all for now, folks.
This quarter we've been deep in competitive intelligence for two top-10 asset managers. If your team needs similar support, please contact me at marc@fiftyone.xyz.
– Marc & Team
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