Stablecoin Issuers & Distribution

The US economy added just 29,000 jobs in September, well below expectations of 89,000, while the unemployment rate rose to 4.2% against an expected 4.1%, a miss that host Scott Melker said weakens the case for further Fed rate hikes and points toward cuts. Prior months were revised sharply lower, with July cut by 31,000 to 10,000 and August by 29,000 to 133,000, leaving combined employment 60,000 lower than previously reported, and wage growth slowed to 0.1% monthly and 3% annually. Separately, the SEC proposed dedicated custody rules that would let registered investment advisors, investment funds and business development companies hold crypto assets directly under federal securities law, with state-chartered trust companies able to serve as permitted crypto custodians and client assets segregated from the trust company's own assets. In other news, Fiserv launched the Roughrider stablecoin, a bank-to-bank settlement token on Solana serving a North Dakota network of more than 90 banks and credit unions, and the Ethereum Foundation launched zero-knowledge APIs, built with the Open Anonymity Project, that let users pay for AI models without revealing identity. Near Intents was hit by a 3.8 million dollar exploit, with no customer funds lost, and another Trump meme coin dinner was advertised for top token investors.

The crypto market entered Friday evening, October 2, 2026, in a phase of powerful strategic accumulation, with the industry's total market capitalization standing in the $2.94–$3.03 trillion range. U.S. labor market data came in weak, as Non-Farm Payrolls rose by just 29,000 against expectations of $84,000–$90,000, while the unemployment rate climbed to 4.2%. The headline also points to the biggest USD stablecoin returning to Bitcoin after 12 years.

SBI Digital Trust, a subsidiary of SBI Holdings, announced on October 1 that it will jointly conduct verification with two Korean companies, payment provider NICE Information & Telecommunication and blockchain infrastructure firm DSRV Labs, on cross-border remittance and payments between Japan and Korea using stablecoins. The three companies signed a basic agreement on September 30 aimed at future commercialization, and will examine fund flows from users to merchants, methods for connecting each company's systems, expected transaction volumes, and costs, with the goal of completing the work by the end of December 2026. In the verification, a Japanese user will scan a QR code at a NICE Information & Telecommunication merchant, and stablecoins will be used to settle with the Korean-side merchant, while the companies also check instruction methods for remittance and payment and operational issues. NICE Information & Telecommunication supports a network of about 1.2 million merchants in Korea, and the companies will consider payment and settlement operations at physical stores and methods for connecting with existing systems to confirm whether the business can work in an actual merchant environment, while DSRV will verify the blockchain technology and system architecture needed to transfer stablecoins. SBI Digital Trust will consider a Japan-Korea payment scheme in light of Japanese regulations and payment systems, working with companies across the SBI Group. In Korea, work is underway to develop rules for stablecoins, but the details are still under discussion, and the three companies will focus on the technical and operational aspects that can be verified at this point, deciding whether to commercialize based on regulatory developments. The SBI Group also signed a basic agreement with a Korean company in August to build a blockchain-based Japan-Korea payment network for financial institutions, and while the previous effort targeted a payment network intermediated by financial institutions, this time the focus is on payments by Japanese travelers at physical stores in Korea.

U.S. payments giant Stripe held its annual conference, Stripe Tour Tokyo 2026, in Tokyo on September 30, with co-founder John Collison taking the stage. Collison said stablecoin usage has reached an "inflection point" this year, and predicted that adoption in Japan will advance first in cross-border transactions such as international remittances. The company processes more than 1.9 trillion dollars in payments annually, equivalent to roughly 1.6% of global GDP. In its annual report published in February 2026, it disclosed that total payment volume in 2025 rose about 34% year on year to roughly 1.9 trillion dollars, that global stablecoin payment volume doubled to about 400 billion dollars, and that roughly 60% of that is estimated to be business-to-business usage. Volume on Bridge, the stablecoin payments platform it acquired, increased more than fourfold. The company is working to enable AI agent transactions without human involvement, using its payments protocol Machine Payments Protocol and its digital wallet Link, which has more than 300 million users.

Tether, the issuer of the US dollar-pegged stablecoin, announced on September 28 that it helped freeze approximately 550 million dollars' worth of USDT in 2026 in wallets that US authorities identified as linked to Iran's central bank and a sanctions-evasion network. The announcement came as the Trump administration intensifies economic sanctions on Iran. Behind it is "Operation Economic Outcast," launched by the US Treasury Department on August 24, an effort ordered by President Trump to cut off international funding networks supporting the Iranian government and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Treasury Department said it will focus monitoring on five new sanctions targets: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping. In April, based on information provided by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control and US law enforcement agencies, Tether helped freeze more than 344 million dollars' worth of USDT at two addresses, and the next day OFAC added the same addresses to its sanctions list as digital currency identifiers of Iran's central bank. In July, after the Treasury expanded its designation of Iran's central bank, more than 130 million dollars' worth of USDT in four wallets was frozen, all of them addresses on TRON. On September 14, the US Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit seeking the forfeiture of about 61 million dollars in crypto assets, saying they represented proceeds from trading Iranian crude oil. Tether currently works with more than 340 law enforcement agencies in 67 countries, and the assets it has helped freeze to date total more than 4.9 billion dollars, of which more than 2.4 billion dollars is related to US authorities.

An economist is warning that AI agents taking over the management of deposits could lead to a new form of bank run. Torsten Slok, an economist at Apollo, flagged this risk in the context of Agentic AI and Agentic Finance, which are expanding within the financial system. The issue is tied to stablecoins and infrastructure such as x402, as well as the role of players like Coinbase, which could accelerate the movement of bank deposits when trades are executed automatically.

Goldman Sachs's roughly $100 billion money market fund, the Goldman Sachs Financial Square Treasury Instruments Fund, will have its institutional share class, FTIXX, offered through Lynq, a payments network for digital asset companies. FTIXX will be offered through tZERO Securities, a broker-dealer registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This marks the first time Lynq has carried a fund offered by an external asset manager, and it is the second investment product available on the network. The initiative does not tokenize the fund itself; unlike blockchain-based funds such as BlackRock's BUIDL and Franklin Templeton's BENJI, FTIXX keeps the form of a traditional fund while using Lynq as a new access channel. According to Lynq CEO Jerald David, client companies had asked for a product that lets them put idle cash to work between trades, and using FTIXX allows companies to earn yield on funds not being used for transactions while withdrawing money as needed. Access to FTIXX is limited to U.S. customers, and using it requires establishing a trading relationship with tZERO Securities and meeting the necessary screening and eligibility requirements.

South Korea's Financial Services Commission, or FSC, is considering introducing a market-making system for digital assets after JPYC, a stablecoin pegged to the Japanese yen, traded at more than four times its pegged value on major South Korean crypto exchanges earlier this month. The exchange Upbit opened JPYC trading on September 17 with an opening price of 12 South Korean won per JPYC before it surged to a peak of 37.6 South Korean won within just one hour, a value more than four times its normal market value. The sudden spike was driven by limited liquidity on Upbit. Yoo Young-joon, director of the digital finance policy division at the FSC, said at a conference in Seoul on Monday that the agency will review the need to introduce systems such as liquidity provision activities to improve the efficiency and stability of the digital asset landscape. There has also been criticism that users suffered losses from the sharp price surge after JPYC was listed, widening calls for discipline in this area. Currently, South Korea's Virtual Asset User Protection Act has no exemption for liquidity provision from its market manipulation provisions, which prevents market makers from providing liquidity in the crypto market. The review comes as South Korea pushes for a broader regulatory framework for the crypto industry, with the FSC stating in July that it plans to propose a comprehensive basic digital asset bill covering stablecoins and the wider crypto market, including regulations for digital asset businesses, exchanges, disclosure and internal controls. But legislators have yet to reach agreement on several key issues in the bill, including rules governing issuers of stablecoins pegged to the won.

AltX Research, a blockchain infrastructure developer, announced on September 28 that it is renaming its 'Japan Smart Chain (JSC)' project to 'MIZUHIKI: The Japan Chain' and pivoting strategically into the stablecoin payment infrastructure business. Under the new brand, the company says it will go beyond merely providing a blockchain to also handle regulation-compliant stablecoin issuance and payment infrastructure as well as payment processing (PSP). According to the company, transaction finality completes in under one second, on par with card payment terminals, and gas fees can be paid in stablecoins, eliminating the need for a separate token, while compliance functions such as identity verification are built into the foundation. In its PSP offering, customers pay in stablecoins while merchants receive Japanese yen, with supported currencies limited to a set of established tokens such as USDC, USDT, and JPYC, a design that lets merchants avoid holding crypto assets. JSC's origins date back to November 2024, when Joi Ito, co-founder of Digital Garage, and Russell Cummer, founder of the buy-now-pay-later service Paidy, jointly established AltX Research and unveiled development of an Ethereum-compatible, Japan-origin Layer 1. The company subsequently signed a series of vision partnership agreements with telecom giant KDDI, payment and collection agency leader Densan System, and US-based GMO Trust, fleshing out its vision with regulatory compliance at its core. The MIZUHIKI name derives from the 'Mizuhiki Suite,' a modular tool with identity verification and compliance functions unveiled on the first testnet 'Kaigan,' released in August 2025, and the company explains that it has elevated MIZUHIKI, previously a product name, to the name of the foundation itself. The mainnet is already live, and the company says it will proceed with implementing payment infrastructure together with multiple vision partners.

The Blockchain Association, the lobbying group for the U.S. crypto industry, announced on September 25 that CEO Summer Mersinger will step down effective October 16. Starting the following day, Kristin Smith, the association's former CEO who currently serves as board chair, will lead the organization as interim CEO while continuing as head of the Solana Policy Institute. Mersinger left her post as a commissioner at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission mid-term and took over as the association's CEO in June 2025. Her achievements were cited as including the passage of the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin regulation law, and clearer regulation at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, but no mention was made of the Clarity Act, the crypto market structure bill. The Clarity Act was put to a cloture vote on a motion to proceed in the Senate on September 15 and was defeated 49 to 50, falling short of the 60 votes needed to advance. With the November midterm elections approaching, many expect deliberations to slip to 2027 or later.

Circle Internet Group disclosed on September 25 that chief financial officer Jeremy Fox-Geen is stepping down after more than five years in the role, and a separate filing the same day revealed that co-founder and long-serving director P. Sean Neville had resigned from the board with immediate effect, taking it from eight members to seven. The shares fell 4.30% to close at $89.00 and slipped further after hours. Circle said neither departure arose from any disagreement over the company's operations, policies, or accounting practices, and Fox-Geen will stay in the job through December 2026 while a successor is found, with severance of about $1.05 million in cash over twelve months plus accelerated vesting on equity he already holds. Neville's resignation was described as part of an ongoing board refreshment process. Circle's revenue comes almost entirely from interest earned on reserves backing USDC, which ended the second quarter at more than $73 billion in circulation, leaving its income statement tied to Federal Reserve policy while the company digests an acquisition.

Federal prosecutors in the US state of California have seized a total of about $84.2 million from the bank accounts and cryptocurrency wallets of US payments company Capstone, which has been reported to have ties to Tether. Reuters reported the move on September 25. According to court documents, authorities seized about $81 million from an account Capstone held at Wells Fargo and about $2 million from an account at JPMorgan Chase, and also seized about $1.2 million worth of the US dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether. Capstone is a payments company operating a money transmission service registered in the US state of Montana, and in a filing seeking civil forfeiture, prosecutors argued that the company's executives described its business as information technology-related when opening the bank accounts. According to prosecutors, Capstone processed numerous payments for two cryptocurrency-related firms through a contract with a bank based in the Caribbean nation of Dominica. The seizure is not a penalty against Tether itself; at issue is the banking relationship of the bank where Tether placed some of its assets and Capstone's dealings, which are said to have processed payments at the bank's direction.