🌐** Website | **💼
Happy weekend!
Our team will be at Futuremode Taiwan this weekend, please reach out if you are in town too! With the two headlines this week, stablecoins moved further away from being simply a faster way to move dollars.
Recap on the two headliners this week:
SS #131 - Bullish Provides USD.AI $100M Facility
SS #132 - Banks Launch Joint Stablecoin Venture
On one side, Bullish is providing USD.AI with a $100M stablecoin-based debt facility, using GPU infrastructure as collateral and connecting onchain liquidity directly with the financing needs of the AI economy.
On the other, 21 major financial institutions — including Bank of America, Citi and Goldman Sachs — are preparing a joint stablecoin venture, with a US dollar token targeted for the first half of 2027 and a euro token expected to follow.
These developments sit at opposite ends of the financial stack, but point in the same direction: stablecoins are becoming balance-sheet infrastructure.
The next phase is no longer only about who issues the token. It is about who controls the liquidity, collateral, distribution and settlement infrastructure around it.
Enjoy the read!
You read and share. We listen and improve. Send us feedback at marco@launchy.app.
Stablecoins initially won by making money easier to move. The next battle is about making capital easier to deploy.
The ** USD.AI–Bullish transaction** is particularly interesting because stablecoin liquidity is being connected directly to productive physical infrastructure. GPUs become collateral, stablecoins provide financing, and tokenised credit instruments such as sUSDai create the potential for that exposure to circulate in secondary markets.
That pushes stablecoins beyond payments and into credit creation and capital formation.
Meanwhile, the proposed 21-bank stablecoin venture represents the institutionalisation of the other side of the market. Banks are no longer deciding whether stablecoins matter; they are deciding how much of the issuance and settlement layer they are prepared to concede to crypto-native companies.
Together, the two stories show the market developing in two directions:
TradFi is moving onchain, while onchain capital is moving into real-world financing.
The convergence point is a new financial stack where stablecoins increasingly sit between deposits, payments, credit, collateral and capital markets.
Major Stablecoin Issuers
Negative
A 21-bank consortium introduces credible competition in institutional distribution. Scale alone becomes less defensible as banks bring existing customers, compliance infrastructure and balance sheets.
Banks & Financial Institutions
Strong winner
Banks are positioning themselves to retain control over deposits, settlement and client relationships while gaining access to programmable money infrastructure.
Regulators
Winner
GENIUS Act and MiCA-aligned issuance could bring a larger share of stablecoin activity into supervised institutional frameworks.
Corporates & Enterprises
Winner
More regulated issuers and deeper stablecoin liquidity expand credible options for treasury, settlement and eventually financing.
Retail Users & Crypto Natives
Neutral
Institutional adoption strengthens liquidity and legitimacy, although bank-issued products may offer less openness and composability than crypto-native stablecoins.
Developers & Protocol Founders
Winner
More stablecoin types and tokenised credit products create demand for interoperability, liquidity routing, risk management and orchestration.
Institutional Investors & VCs
Winner
Opportunity increasingly shifts from backing another issuer toward the infrastructure connecting stablecoins with credit, payments and capital markets.
Infrastructure & Service Providers
Strong winner
Custody, compliance, market-making, interoperability, collateral management and settlement infrastructure become increasingly critical.
DAOs & Governance Communities
Mixed
Institutional liquidity can deepen onchain markets, but greater bank involvement may increase permissioning and reduce governance influence over key monetary assets.
Exchanges
Winner
Stablecoins and tokenised credit create new collateral, trading and settlement opportunities, particularly as institutional secondary markets develop.
The most important development this week may not actually be the stablecoins themselves. It is what is beginning to sit around them.
USD.AI demonstrates how onchain liquidity can finance assets that traditional credit markets may struggle to underwrite efficiently.
Its GPU-backed lending model has already included a $98.1M loan secured by 2,304 Nvidia B300 GPUs and a fully funded $34M facility backed by 768 Nvidia B200 GPUs. Bullish’s additional $100M facility takes the model further.
The interesting innovation is not simply tokenising a loan.
It is creating a financial loop: Stablecoin liquidity → GPU financing → tokenised credit → secondary liquidity → new capital
If this model scales, specialised real-world assets could increasingly be financed through onchain capital markets rather than relying exclusively on conventional bank lending.
AI infrastructure is an obvious starting point because GPU demand is high, assets are identifiable and financing requirements are substantial. But the architecture could eventually extend to compute infrastructure, energy equipment, logistics assets and other productive collateral.
The 21-bank initiative represents a very different strategy. Rather than building new credit markets, banks are protecting their existing monetary franchises.
The consortium reportedly spans institutions across North America, Europe, East Asia, the Middle East and Africa, with the first dollar token expected in H1 2027, followed by a euro-denominated product.
This changes the competitive question.
The stablecoin market has historically been dominated by issuers competing on liquidity, distribution and reserve credibility.
Bank-issued stablecoins could compete differently: customer relationships + regulated balance sheets + payment infrastructure + institutional distribution.
That may prove particularly powerful in corporate treasury and institutional settlement, where regulatory certainty and counterparty relationships often matter more than crypto-native network effects.
The result is unlikely to be one winner.
Instead, we expect a multi-rail monetary system: crypto-native stablecoins for open global liquidity, regulated institutional stablecoins for financial-market settlement, tokenised deposits within banking ecosystems, and specialised stablecoins connecting capital with specific economic activities.
The real opportunity will increasingly sit in the infrastructure capable of connecting them.
The distinction between stablecoins and the broader crypto market is becoming increasingly important.
A $100M credit facility financing GPUs is fundamentally a credit-market transaction.
A consortium of 21 global banks issuing tokenised dollars is fundamentally a payments and banking infrastructure strategy.
Blockchain is the settlement technology underneath both.
That changes how institutions should evaluate the sector. The relevant comparison is increasingly not whether stablecoins can replace cryptocurrencies, but whether stablecoin infrastructure can improve existing financial processes.
The institutional opportunity therefore sits across several layers:
Money— stablecoins and tokenised deposits.Payments— programmable and cross-border settlement.Credit— stablecoin-funded lending against real-world collateral.Collateral— tokenised assets that can be financed and mobilised.Markets— secondary liquidity around tokenised financial instruments.
The long-term winner may therefore not be whichever stablecoin has the highest market capitalisation.
It may be whoever builds the distribution, interoperability and liquidity layer connecting these different forms of digital money and assets.
**1. Bank Fragmentation: **Twenty-one banks collaborating is significant, but coordinating governance, reserves, economics and distribution across jurisdictions will be difficult. Institutional credibility does not automatically create network effects.
**2. Collateral Risk: **GPU-backed lending introduces depreciation and technology-cycle risk. If AI infrastructure demand weakens or newer chips rapidly reduce secondary values, collateral coverage could deteriorate quickly.
**3. Secondary Liquidity: **Bullish plans to support sUSDai with listings and dedicated market-making. The bigger test is whether liquidity remains resilient during stressed markets rather than only during periods of strong AI demand.
**4. Stablecoin Fragmentation: **Bank coins, crypto-native stablecoins, tokenised deposits and specialised stablecoins could create increasingly fragmented liquidity. Interoperability and routing may therefore become as important as issuance itself.
**5. Deposit Cannibalisation: **Banks entering stablecoins still need to determine how tokenised money interacts with traditional deposits and funding structures. Stablecoins can improve settlement while simultaneously changing the economics of deposit gathering.
**6. Regulatory Convergence: **The proposed bank venture aims to operate within frameworks including the GENIUS Act and MiCA, but globally interoperable stablecoins still face different rules around reserves, redemption, custody and distribution.
Onigiri Capital (onigiri.vc), a US$50 million blockchain-focused investment fund, launched by Saison Capital, the venture arm of Japan’s Credit Saison. Onigiri Capital is on a mission to chart the next chapter of finance and invest in seed and Series A blockchain startups in stablecoins, payments, RWAs, DeFi and financial infrastructure. The fund’s strategy emphasizes connecting startups to Asia’s growing digital asset markets.
If you’d like to discuss or contribute to the next Institutional Lens, contact us at hi@onigiri.vc
Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.
