stable coins
By Bruce Buterin
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What This Means for Institutional USDC Access. Before this, institutions wanting to mint or redeem USDC pretty much had to go through Circle…
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Standard Chartered's Broader Stablecoin Push. The DIFC launch didn't come out of nowhere. Earlier this year, Standard Chartered was among the…
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Standard Chartered just did something no global systemically important bank has done before.
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The service launched first through Standard Chartered's operations at the Dubai International Financial Centre, better known as DIFC.
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Roberto Hoornweg, head of corporate and investment banking at Standard Chartered, put it plainly: "Digital assets are becoming a crucial part of the global financial…
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Before this, institutions wanting to mint or redeem USDC pretty much had to go through Circle directly, or route things through exchanges and OTC desks. That created friction.
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Spot On Chain analyst Hupzy weighed in on the move, saying that pulling a G-SIB — that's a global systemically important bank, the category of institutions regulators watch most…
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The on-chain settlement and treasury management use cases are probably the most immediate draw.
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The DIFC launch didn't come out of nowhere. Earlier this year, Standard Chartered was among the first banks to receive a Hong Kong stablecoin issuer license.
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More context: Open USD Backed by Visa, Mastercard, and Google Targets USDC and USDT
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It's a smart play, and the timing isn't random. The stablecoin market is getting crowded fast.
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The Visa and Mastercard involvement in OpenUSD is worth noting separately. Those aren't crypto-native companies hedging bets — they're the core of global payments infrastructure.
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Standard Chartered's compliance angle is probably its biggest differentiator here. The bank isn't just offering access to USDC — it's offering access wrapped in the kind of risk…
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There's also the simplicity argument. Onboarding is genuinely painful in crypto for institutions.
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Related: MetaMask Launches 4% Yield Money Account Tied to Spendable Stablecoin Card
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