7 min read · 12 sources

The House Financial Services Committee just voted to make the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve a matter of law, not executive order. That is the biggest regulatory story in crypto today, and it lands alongside an SEC exemption that quietly hands Uniswap a compliant lane to trade tokenized equities. Both moved on the same day, and both change what US institutions can actually do onchain.

The SEC’s move is the one engineers should care about most. It draws a line between permissioned and permissionless protocols that has been murky since the first DeFi summer.

Stablecoin payments hit at least $401B through August, up 42% year-over-year while supply grew just 6%.

Bitcoin Reserve Bill Clears House Committee, Senate Awaits

Source: theblock.co ↗

The House Financial Services Committee advanced the American Reserve Modernization Act, which would direct Treasury to maintain a “secure Bitcoin storage facility” and codify Trump’s 2025 executive order creating a strategic bitcoin reserve. Reps. Nick Begich and Sen. Cynthia Lummis introduced the bill over a year ago as the BITCOIN Act. It includes language for acquiring more bitcoin over five years using “budget-neutral strategies” plus a separate digital asset stockpile.

Rep. Bill Foster opposed it, arguing bitcoin’s riskiness and volatility make it a poor reserve asset and that “no one believes bitcoin is critical to the US economy.” The companion bill has not yet passed in the Senate, so this is committee momentum, not law. Still, the fact that a reserve asset bill cleared a financial services committee in 2026 tells you how far the Overton window has shifted since the 2025 executive order.

SEC Exemption Opens Permissioned Uniswap v4 Pools for Tokenized Equity

Source: threadreaderapp.com ↗

The SEC granted a 5-year Innovation Exemption for Tokenized Securities Venues (TSVs), opening a compliant pathway for blockchain platforms to list and trade tokenized equities in the US. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce’s accompanying comment letter clarified that permissionless, autonomous protocols like standard Uniswap fall outside securities regulatory scope and need no exemption.

The exemption covers Uniswap v4’s permissioned pools, providing a framework for compliant on-chain tokenized equity trading for regulated assets and users. Uniswap founder Hayden Adams flagged the Peirce letter as the more consequential development and announced Uniswap will submit a comment letter with proposed improvements to help shape the final rule.

What this means operationally: if you run a permissioned pool with KYC’d counterparties, you now have a five-year runway to trade tokenized equities without tripping securities law. Permissionless pools stay outside scope entirely. That is a cleaner regulatory split than anyone expected, and it gives the onchain equity market a concrete compliance path.

Column Launches Stablecoin, Card, and Banking Products to Challenge Erebor

Source: threadreaderapp.com ↗

Column announced stablecoins, full-stack card issuing, and global banking products aimed squarely at Erebor, with Column valued around $6 billion and reportedly raising capital. Erebor is closing a raise at roughly $8 billion, nearly 30% higher than Column despite launching far more recently, and has grown deposits to $4.6 billion in under a year from $1 billion early on.

Column holds about $1.5 billion in deposits after five years but already has a card business Erebor lacks. The race is now about distribution: Column has the card rails and five years of banking licenses; Erebor has the deposit growth and a valuation premium. Whoever converts their advantage into sustained payment volume wins the B2B settlement lane that Allium’s report below says is worth $137-153 billion annually.

Kraken Brings HIP-3 Perps to US via Hyperliquid

Source: threadreaderapp.com ↗

Payward, Kraken’s parent company, will deploy as a regulated HIP-3 operator on Hyperliquid’s L1, giving US retail customers their first access to Hyperliquid perp markets through a supervised, compliant entity. HIP-3 lets regulated third parties run perp markets on Hyperliquid’s chain, and Payward’s recently secured US derivatives approvals qualified it to operate under this framework.

The arrangement opens Hyperliquid’s high-performance L1 to US retail order flow and establishes a template for other offshore DeFi venues to enter the US market through regulated operator layers. For US traders, this is the first compliant onramp to Hyperliquid’s perp liquidity. For the industry, it is a blueprint: offshore DeFi protocols can keep their permissionless core while a regulated subsidiary handles US retail. Expect copycats within quarters.

Where Local Stablecoins Actually Live

Source: x.com ↗

An analysis of 34 non-USD stablecoins across 189 chain deployments reveals three different rankings depending on the metric. By contract count, Ethereum leads with 25% of deployments, followed by Base (27), Polygon (24), BSC (14), and Celo (13). By supply, Ethereum dominates with 48% of the total, while Polygon drops to 1.3% and BSC/Avalanche hold only ~$6M combined.

By transfer volume, the picture shifts again: EURC moves 85% of its volume on Base despite holding 73% of supply on Ethereum, while JPYC trades mostly on Polygon despite holding supply on Klaytn. Deployment, liquidity, and activity are distinct maps. If you are choosing a chain for a stablecoin integration, contract counts alone overstate how “multi-chain” a token really is. Match the chain to your actual counterparties, not to the deployment dashboard.

State of Stablecoins and Payments: September 2026

Source: allium.so ↗

Allium’s September 2026 stablecoin report, timed to the CLARITY Act Senate vote, puts total supply at $303 billion while payment volumes reached $401-527 billion through August, up 42-63% year-over-year against supply’s 6% gain. B2B settlement leads all payment lanes at $137-153 billion, with payroll ($43B) and supplier payments ($28B) indicating real-economy use beyond trading, which accounts for 69% of adjusted transfer volume.

Reserve backing now drives an estimated $170 billion in new US Treasury demand, a figure poised to surface in Senate floor debate. Cross-border stablecoin transfers grew 64% versus 9% for fiat rails, with Thailand ($10.8B), Turkey ($7.8B), and Indonesia ($6.3B) as the top recipient markets. The payment-to-supply ratio is the number to watch: 42% volume growth on 6% supply growth means the same stablecoins are turning over far more frequently. That is velocity, and it is what makes stablecoins a payments rail rather than a store of value.

CEX Cards vs Independent Crypto Cards: Nexo vs Tria

Source: threadreaderapp.com ↗

Nexo’s custodial card offers Credit Mode spending against crypto without selling it and Debit Mode spending from a Savings Wallet with up to 2% cashback in NEXO or BTC. Tria’s self-custodial card supports 1,000-plus assets with cashback scaling from 1.5% on Virtual to 6% on Premium tiers.

Nexo keeps funds on a custodial platform with credit lines from 1.9% interest and tiered free ATM withdrawals. Tria retains user custody, charges 0% of its own FX fee (Visa’s 1% still applies), and offers up to $100,000 in daily spending limits plus purchase and price protection on higher tiers. The tradeoff is custody versus yield: Nexo lends your collateral, Tria never touches it. For self-custody purists, Tria’s 6% premium cashback is the headline; for credit users, Nexo’s 1.9% borrow rate beats most fiat cards.

Circle's Arc Chain: Stuck Between Meme Chain and Corporate Stablecoin

Source: threadreaderapp.com ↗

Circle’s Arc blockchain, originally conceived as a stablecoin-native chain, drew criticism from crypto commentator Abbas Khan after pivoting toward meme culture in an apparent attempt to replicate Robinhood Chain’s retail positioning. Khan argues the shift created a brand identity void, leaving Arc without a clear audience in an already competitive layer-1 market.

The strategy appears to have been driven top-down without understanding why meme-chain positioning works for Robinhood, whose retail trading brand equity is distinct from Circle’s corporate stablecoin identity. As a public company, Circle faces traction pressure, and Khan gives Arc less than a year before a potential shutdown if it cannot establish product-market fit. The lesson for anyone building a chain: you cannot bolt on a meme culture. It either comes from your user base or it does not come at all.

Quick Links

Source: threadreaderapp.com ↗

EtherFi Cash users in markets where the new cashback system launched last Friday can now claim their ETHFI rewards.

Henley & Partners’ Crypto Wealth Report 2026 estimates that 290 people globally hold at least $100 million in crypto, alongside 135,694 crypto millionaires, of whom 92,272 hold at least $1 million in bitcoin.

Coinbase lowered the Advanced tier entry threshold from $25K to $10K in monthly volume and now counts both spot and derivatives volume together toward tier qualification.

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan has hired Jacob Horne, former CEO of Zora, to lead DeFi product development as the platform publicly acknowledges its onchain experience degraded during scaling.