Stablecoin-focused agentic AI Avengers assemble!
Homepage>News>Business>Stablecoin-focused agentic AI Avengers assemble!Stablecoinshave assembled their very ownagentic AIAvengers,Circle(NASDAQ: CRCL) can’t shake its OUSD hangover, andTethercan’t. . .
Homepage>News>Business>Stablecoin-focused agentic AI Avengers assemble!Stablecoinshave assembled their very ownagentic AIAvengers,Circle(NASDAQ: CRCL) can’t shake its OUSD hangover, andTethercan’t stop buying things. PayPal ignores Stripe takeover bid, bringing native PYUSD to Polygonx402 Foundation launches to further agentic AI paymentsCircle can’t shake shadow of new rival Open USDTether buying anything not nailed downThailand eyes dodgy USDT transactions, U. S. freezes more Iranian USDTIs ruble-backed A7A5 stablecoin really as popular as it claims?The digital payments world got a jolt early Wednesday asReutersbroke the story that payment processorStripehad teamed up with private equity group Advent International on a $53. 4 billion bid to acquire rivalPayPal(NASDAQ: PYPL). While that sum represents a more-than-one-quarter premium to PayPal’s Tuesday closing price, it’s also a significant discount to the company’s previous valuations. PayPal has given up ground to a growing number of competitors in recent years, as more and more payments move online. But there’s as yet no sign that PayPal is even open to the offer, although the company’s board will reportedly discuss it later this month. Advent has a history of taking stakes in payment firms, includingWorldpay, Vantiv, andNexi, and both Stripe and PayPal are stablecoin-friendly outfits. In March, Stripe officiallylaunched its Layer-1 stablecoin payment network(Tempo) following its $1. 1 billion acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure firmBridgein 2024, while PayPal’s dollar-backedPYUSDtoken (issued byPaxos) has been around since 2023. But PYUSD’s market cap has fallen from its all-time high of $4. 2 billion in April to just $2. 85 billion as of Wednesday. PYUSD accounted for just $2. 4 billion of the total$1. 78 trillion in stablecoin transaction volumereported last month. PayPal has been trying to reverse PYUSD’s downward trend,making the token available to customers in 70 markets, roughly one-third of the markets in which PayPal operates. And last week saw theannouncementthat PYUSD was now being issued natively on thePolygonnetwork, which settles over $2. 5 billion in daily stablecoin volume. Polygon says PYUSD is being made available via its Open Money Stack (OMS), which allows merchants to incorporate stablecoin payments “through a single integration, with regulated payins, payouts, and compliance built in. ”Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron didn’t mince words, saying any stablecoin “is only as useful as the places it can go and what it can do when it gets there … When a federally regulated stablecoin is available on infrastructure that already moves money at scale, businesses stop asking whether stablecoin payments are ready and start asking what they can build with them. ”Paxos chief revenue officer Peter Jonas celebrated PYUSD’s arrival on “one of the most active networks for stablecoin payments,” adding that businesses using OMS can now settle transactions in PYUSD “with confidence in the compliance and regulatory oversight that serious money requires. ”Agentic AI-focused x402 Foundation launchesSerious money includes stablecoin-basedagentic AI payments, which got a major boost this week via the launch of thex402 Foundation, an organization comprised of 40 major blockchain/tradfi firms that support thex402 internet-native payment protocol. The Foundation, operating under the neutral governance of theLinux Foundation, “will allow developers, financial institutions, cloud providers and other community members to collaboratively shape the protocol’s development. ” x402 “embeds secure payment capabilities directly into web interactions, allowing AI agents, APIs, and applications to process financial transactions as easily as they exchange data. ”The Foundation says the protocol has handled 75. 4 million transactions worth $24. 2 million in the past 30 days, reflecting themicropayment nature of many agentic AI transactionsthat would be unprofitable for traditional payment firms. While x402 was developed by theCoinbase(NASDAQ: COIN) digital asset exchange, the protocol supports “multiple payment types, from traditional cards to stablecoins, without vendor lock-in. ”Accordingly, the Foundation’s initial members are a who’s who of both tradfi and blockchain stars, divided into three membership tiers. Some of the ‘premier members’ include American Express (NASDAQ: APX), USDC-issuer Circle,Google(NASDAQ: GOOGL),Mastercard(NASDAQ: MA), RLUSD-issuerRipple, Shopify (NASDAQ: SHOP), Stripe, andVisa(NASDAQ: V). ‘General members’ includeFireblocks,LayerZero Labs, Polygon Labs, the Trump-linked USD1-issuerWorld Liberty Financial, andzerohash. ‘Associate members’ include theBSV Association,Cardano Foundation, and OMA3. Circletweetedits pride at being a ‘premier’ Foundation member out of the gate and hailing the advancement of the “agentic economy. ” Given Circle’s close ties to x402 developer Coinbase, USDC has to date been the primary token for agentic AI transactions. Circle has launched several products to take advantage of this head start, includingAgent Walletsand anagent marketplacefor both agents and their human overseers. Back to the top ↑Circle faces downgrades on increased competitionBut all is not well in Circleville, particularly since the recent announcement of a new dollar-backed competitor,Open Standard’s OUSD token, and its lengthy list of corporate partners. It bears noting that some of the corporate partners cited in OUSD’s announcement, including Korean giantsSamsung(NASDAQ: SSNLF) andDunamu(parent of theUpbitexchange), subsequently claimed to be “perplexed” by their inclusion in this list. One unidentified Korean corporate official toldChosun Bizthat they only learned of their presence on the list from local media, adding that “we only gave a light reply to Open Standard’s inquiry that ‘we will review it if it goes well. ’” Another official said, “There were no official consultations, and we do not even know what role we would take” in this alliance of (allegedly) stablecoin-ready firms. Regardless, some analysts have begun to downgrade Circle’s future prospects based on its new competition. Mizuho Securities slapped an ‘underperform’ tag on Circle and lowered its price target from $85 to $50. Mizuho believes OUSD’s “pass-through model to distributors … could fundamentally alter CRCL’s business model, which relies on retaining a large portion of the treasury yield to drive revenues. ”Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire previouslydismissed such concerns, saying his company shares “the majority of its income with its distribution partners. ” Allaire also claimed that OUSD’s profit-sharing obligations could starve the new token of funds needed to build out its infrastructure. JPMorgan Chase (NASDAQ: JPM) analysts took a similarly dim view of Circle’s fortunes based on the ongoing land rush to establish this or that stablecoin as the primary token of this or that platform, which could force issuers like Circle to strike less favorable distribution deals. The currentUSDC partnershipbetween Coinbase and Circle is due to expire in August, and Coinbase’s support of OUSD could give the exchange additional leverage in renewal negotiations with Circle. Circle is also holding an“invitation-only gathering”with senior execs from South Korean exchanges, banks, and payment firms to discuss ways to strengthen existing relationships and establish new ones. The ‘Current Seoul’ event will take place on July 23 and looks to build onAllaire’s last trip to Seoulin April. Back to the top ↑Tether eyeing little kid’s lemonade stand for possible acquisitionUSDC’s primary stablecoin rival, the market-leading USDT issued by Tether, also isn’t resting on its laurels. In fact, Tether has been a dealmaking machine, ranking fourth onCryptoRank’s list of investorsin the first half of 2026. Tether booked 16 deals in H1, only two behind theAndreessen Horowitz(a16z) (NASDAQ: ZADIHX) venture capital group. (Coinbase Ventures led the chart with 32 deals, although Tether was the lead investor in four deals versus just one for Coinbase. )Some of Tether’s investments include:A $20 million stake in Argentine digital bank Ualá, which also has a presence in Mexico and Colombia. The deal was struck in March but only reported this week (viaBloomberg). A $20 million stake in Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin platform, which Tetherannouncedlast week. An investment of unknown size inLemFi, a cross-border remittance firm with over one million customers in Africa and Asia. An 8. 2% stake in Antalpha, aBitmain-linked group that offersBTC-backed loans and equipment financing toblock reward miners. An unquantified role in the $134 million private placement byStablecoin Development Corporation(NYSE AMERICAN: SDEV), a digital asset treasury focused on the Sky Protocol’s governance token SKY. A strategic investment inArk Labs, an infrastructure firm for programmable financial applications on BTC. A $200 million investment inWhop, the online marketplace that facilitates $3 billion in annual ‘creator’ payments to its over 18 million users. A strategic investment in Supreme Liquid Labs, operator ofDreamcash, a mobile interface for Hyperliquid that’s trying to bring real-world asset (RWA) perpetual markets to a larger audience. And this week saw Tether lead a $7 million funding round in infrastructure providerPact Labs, which Tether hopes will help boost adoption of its newU. S. -focused stablecoin USATfor payroll and payments. Tether also acquired SoftBank Group’s (NASDAQ: SFTBF) stake in Twenty One Capital (NASDAQ: XXI), the BTC treasury firm that launched earlier this year under Tether’s majority control but has seen its share price fall by over 38%. Tether’s announcement didn’t specify what it paid to acquire SoftBank’s share, which wasworth $891 millionat the time of XXI’s debut. Tether now controls over 70% of XXI shares and has voicedplans to three-way merge XXIwith minority partner Strike (whose CEO, Jack Mallers, is also XXI’s CEO) and the Tether-linked mining outfitElektron Energy. Tether’s investments aren’t limited to its traditional crypto roots, as the company made an undisclosed investment in German tech startupNEURA Roboticsand another inEight Sleep, a firm that uses “advanced artificial intelligence and embedded sensors to deliver personalized sleep insights. ”Back to the top ↑USDT can’t shake Iran connection, Thailand scrutinyTether is clearly keen to diversify its operations and hopefully diminish USDT’s reputation asthe discerning criminals’ digital tool of choice. Trouble is, Thailand is complicating these efforts with a renewed focus on USDT’s use in unauthorized activity within the kingdom. On July 9, theThansettakijmedia outlet reported that the Bank of Thailand and the country’s securities regulator are looking to crack down on “high-risk transactions such as gold trading, large-volume banknote exchanges, and unusual digital asset trading. ”The latter involves the authorities using data analytics to investigate USDT transactions with “unusually high trading volumes. ” Some of these transactions “were found to be potentially evading disclosure of information or transferring funds through normal systems. ”Stateside, this week saw U. S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessenttweetthat the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) had “sanctioned multiple [digital] wallets tied to the Central Bank of Iran, resulting in the freeze of over $130 million. ”While Bessent didn’t get into specifics, his tweet followed atweetby blockchain analyst Specter detailing how USDT stablecoin issuer Tether “has just frozen fourTRONwallets holding a total of $131M USDT. ” Specter subsequently tweeted that at least one of the wallets was linked to the OFAC-sanctioned Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran’s central bank. OFAC has been aggressively targeting Iran’s USDT holdings since the U. S. launched its military action against the country this spring. These actions included$344 million in USDT frozenin April, and Bessent later claimed that the U. S. hadseized ~$1 billion worth of Iran-linked digital assets. TRM Labs recently estimated that Iran had relied on two bogus U. K. -based exchanges tofunnel $1 billion worth of USDT on TRONpast the authorities trying to enforce U. S. economic sanctions. Back to the top ↑Is Russia’s A7A5 inflating its numbers?Earlier this month, theWall Street Journalreported that Iran, Russia, North Korea, and other sanctioned nations had conducted $100 billion worth of crypto transactions last year alone. Much of Russia’s sanctions-dodging effort centers onA7A5, a ruble-based stablecoin controlled by the Russian government that launched in January 2025 and reportedly accounted for half of all crypto-based sanctions evasion that year. However, A7A5 execs’ self-reported claims of massive token turnover—$34. 4 billion in the first half of 2026, averaging $205 million per day—are now facing greater scrutiny. TRM Labs analyst Chris Keegan toldCoinDeskthat A7A5’s daily volume is more like $75 million, and that sum has been shrinking as the year progresses. Keegan believes one-third of A7A5’s observed transaction volume is artificial ‘circular fund movements. ’Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson said A7A5’s monthly volume was down 90% since January and 96% below its 2025 peak. The decline came courtesy of more aggressive monitoring by Western authorities and April’s still-unattributed hacking of the Kyrgyzstan-basedGrinexexchange, where much of A7A5-based token trading occurred. Grinex wassanctioned by European Union authoritieslast October. In May, U. K. authoritiessanctioned the TRON-linked HTX (formerly Huobi) exchangefor facilitating A7A5-related activity that “channeled over $1. 5 billion back into the Kremlin’s hands. ”Oleg Ogienko, an exec with theA7 networkbehind A7A5, told CoinDesk that the analysts’ dramatically lower estimates of the token’s volume don’t take into account its use ondecentralized finance(DeFi) platforms. A7A5 claims a market cap of nearly RUB45. 3 billion (US$589 million), of which RUB44. 7 million resides on TRON (the rest exists as a ‘wrapped’ version onEthereum). Robinson said A7A5’s “cherry-picked trading and transaction figures … conceal the obvious trend: that A7A5 is failing in its goal of enabling Russian sanctions evasion. ”Back to the top ↑Watch: Blockchain Revolution in Big Bankstitle="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen>Tagged: