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Fiserv, Mastercard jump on stablecoin partnership

Mastercard announced it is partnering with payments provider and financial services technology company Frank's International “to integrate the stablecoin FIUSD token across a range of Mastercard products and services, expanding stablecoin adoption and utility for their shared customers around the world.”

This partnership follows Fiserv’s announcement yesterday that it would launch a digital asset platform and a stablecoin by the end of 2025.

Fiserv shares were up more than 4% in premarket trading, top among S&P 500 constituents, while Mastercard shares were 3% higher.

“By offering FIUSD across Mastercard’s global payments network, people and businesses can use the new, programmable, blockchain-based token across more than 150 million merchants,” according to a press release.

The Senate passed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act last week, which aims to provide a regulatory framework for stablecoins.

Patrick Gerhart, president of banking operations at Telcoin, told Sherwood News that the passage of this legislation represents a monumental moment not just for the digital asset space but also consumers in the United States and beyond. 

“Stablecoins can be a faster, fairer, and cheaper way for people and businesses to conduct many kinds of transactions. Moreover, the use of stablecoins will almost certainly accelerate the tokenization of real-world assets, including bonds, stocks, and regulated funds,” he added. 

Stablecoins have a $251 billion market cap, DefiLlama data shows.

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Crypto market snaps back as sentiment lifts, with altcoins from ethereum to XRP soaring

The market capitalization of the crypto industry has jumped around $83.2 billion in the last 24 hours, with privacy-focused token Zcash and worldcoin, the native cryptocurrency of the network backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, leading market gains, jumping over 22%.

But the last 24 hours have been good across the board:

Investors have been eager to see some positive signs around the Iranian conflict ending, coupled with hopeful outlooks around the CLARITY act, both breathing some life into assets, Kairos Research cofounder Ian Unsworth told Sherwood News.

Simon Shockey, a crypto strategist at crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, said the upswing stems from several things converging. He pointed to how alt markets broadly were very oversold following the bug found in Zcash that shook confidence.

Friday, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said Anthropic didn’t find any more serious bugs with the Zcash protocol after Shielded Labs requested the AI firm run a security audit of the network with Mythos.

Shockey added that the pool of willing sellers has dwindled. Even if structurally, AI is a much more compelling and asymmetric bet in the eyes of allocators, many of these crypto assets have simply run out of marginal sellers despite some shorter-term narrative-driven pumps. The only people left to sell at this point are the teams themselves and VCs.

Net-net: oversold conditions plus exhausted seller bases plus a macro backdrop thats stabilized equals a snapback, especially in names that have real usage or community conviction behind them,” Shockey told Sherwood.

$389M

US Attorney David Metcalf announced Thursday the arrests of Ruslan Igorevich Tkachuk and Alexander Vladimirovich Ledenev, alleged senior members of AudiA6, a cryptocurrency money-laundering service believed to be responsible for laundering over $389 million.

The arrests coincided with a coordinated international takedown of AudiA6 and its infrastructure, involving the search of three properties, the seizure of servers and domains connected to the organization, as well as freezing cryptocurrency assets, according to a Department of Justice press release.

Tkachuk and Ledenev were “charged by criminal complaint with one count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments and one count of sting money laundering,” the DOJ said. If convicted, they face a maximum possible sentence of 20 years of incarceration.

Per the criminal complaint, AudiA6 offered services to conceal the origin of cryptocurrency linked to criminal activity, charging fees of up to 5% of the amount laundered.

The two defendants are in custody of Republic of Georgia authorities, and the US Attorney’s Office aims to seek their extradition to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

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