Stablecoin

Hong Kong has not issued its first stablecoin licences by the previously expected end-of-March target, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said the licensing work is still progressing and announcements will come in due course. The HKMA's public register continued to show no licensed stablecoin issuers at the time of writing.

On April 1, 2026, Standard Chartered reiterated its forecast that the stablecoin market cap could reach $2 trillion by end-2028, even as average velocity has risen to six turnovers per month. The bank argues the pickup is being led by USDC-driven activity tied to TradFi payment-rail displacement and early AI-agent payment experiments, while JPMorgan estimates $500B–$600B by 2028.

OpenFX said on March 31, 2026, that it raised $94 million in a Series A round to broaden its real-time stablecoin settlement infrastructure for cross-border payments. The New York-based firm said it supports institutional liquidity across more than 40 trading pairs and has increased annualized payment volume from $4 billion to over $45 billion. The company plans to use the new funding to enter Southeast Asian markets and further develop Latin American corridors.

PeckShield said crypto hacks and exploits led to $52 million in losses across 20 major incidents in March. The firm noted the total was up 96% from $26.5 million in February, with the largest share tied to a Resolv Labs exploit that drained over $25 million in USR stablecoins. It also warned that knock-on effects can spread to connected DeFi venues when a compromised asset sharply devalues.

Mercado Libre will end Mercado Coin, a Brazil-launched crypto loyalty token used for cashback rewards, with the program set to stop on April 17, 2026. From that date, users will no longer be able to buy, sell, or earn the token, and any unspent balance will be automatically converted into local fiat and credited to Mercado Pago accounts.

Ripple reduced RLUSD supply by about 128 million tokens in a short window at the end of March 2026, via multiple treasury burn transactions. The largest single burn was 79 million RLUSD, and the drop coincided with Q1 closing activity. RLUSD's market cap later slipped below $1.4 billion, ranking it ninth among dollar-pegged stablecoins by market value.

OpenFX raised $94 million in a Series A round to grow its stablecoin-powered foreign-exchange and remittance payments network. The company said it will deploy the capital to add liquidity, expand into new markets and scale operations across Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Standard Chartered said stablecoin velocity has doubled over the past two years, allowing higher transaction volumes without requiring supply to expand at the same pace. In a Tuesday report, the bank said it still expects the stablecoin market to reach $2 trillion by late 2028 despite faster turnover. The report added that USDC has driven much of the velocity increase, while USDT remains more associated with lower-velocity savings use.

Metals.io said xU3O8 holders can now pledge the tokenized uranium asset as collateral to borrow stablecoins through an integration with Morpho, with the feature live as of March 30, 2026. The setup runs on the Oku interface and currently enables access to USDC liquidity without selling the underlying physical uranium exposure.

Cardano’s ADA traded at $0.2407 on March 31, down 3.6% on the day and more than 8% over the week, after losing the $0.245 level on the 4H chart. The breakdown keeps $0.22 as the next downside target while $0.245 turns into resistance, with higher resistance zones marked at $0.273 and $0.304. Over the same week, large holders increased positions by 220M ADA, lifting whale balances from about 13.44B on March 24 to 13.84B on March 30.