📍 If you only catch up on crypto once this week, start here.
Remember when banks said crypto was a fad? Twenty-one of the biggest just announced they're building a digital dollar together. The London Stock Exchange is tokenising its top 100. A SHEIN stock token is trading on PancakeSwap. Everyone's showing up at once, in the one month of the year Bitcoin usually has a bad time.
Let's get into it! 🚀
Zoom in and it was a quiet week; zoom out and August did some heavy lifting.
Cryptocurrency prices by market cap via CoinMarketCap
Twenty-one of the world's biggest banks are building one digital dollar — and not one of them is Australian.
So, what happened?
On 1 September, 21 financial institutions announced they'll form a single new company to issue a US dollar stablecoin — Citi, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Capital One, PNC, Scotiabank, TD, Fidelity and WisdomTree in North America; Deutsche Bank, UBS, Santander, BBVA, Commerzbank, Crédit Agricole, Lloyds and Rabobank in Europe; plus MUFG, Standard Bank and Sirius International Holding. Company by the end of 2026, token in the first half of 2027, euro version to follow. No name, no chosen blockchain, no published ownership structure yet.
Why does it matter?
Stablecoins are how dollars actually move around crypto, and right now that job belongs almost entirely to two companies, Tether's USDT ($183.3b in circulation) and Circle's USDC ($73.6b). This is the first time the incumbent banks have turned up to that market together rather than complaining about it, and they're aiming it at cross-border payments, not trading.
The bigger picture
Crypto spent a decade building a payment rail the banks said they didn't need and the banks have now announced they're building their own version of it.
🟢 The London Stock Exchange is putting its top 100 companies onchain with Kraken's parent — Payward will issue tokenized versions of the 100 largest London-listed companies within weeks, though UK investors cannot buy them and the exchange's own leg of the deal still needs regulatory sign-off. Read more →
🟢 Strategy is buying Bitcoin again — $370 million, after a two-month pause — The purchase was funded entirely by common stock sales, with none of Strategy's four preferred series issuing a single share last week. Saylor's announcement was two words: "We're back." Read more →
🟢 You can buy memecoins on a credit card — because they're being coded as "digital artwork" — The Block found memecoin purchases through Robinhood Wallet and Fomo (both powered by Crossmint) being processed under merchant code 5815 — books, movies, digital art — rather than the crypto codes Visa and Mastercard require, meaning no ID check and full credit card rewards. Chase has opened a case with Visa and the New York Attorney General's office is reviewing. Read more →
🟢 PancakeSwap lists SHEIN's tokenized stock $SHEINx for trading — The fast-fashion giant's Hong Kong IPO now has a DeFi mirror, letting crypto-native traders get equity exposure without a brokerage account. Read more →
🟢 Anthropic's September 1 Triple Release Is a $2 Trillion IPO Playbook — Three simultaneous announcements — pricing cuts, restricted model access, and enterprise privacy safeguards — reveal a coordinated strategy to lock in regulated industries before the largest IPO in history. Read more →
🟢 Kraken Is Building Wall Street's Crypto Gateway While Delaying Its Own IPO — Three of the world's biggest exchange groups are moving their shares onto blockchains through Kraken. Kraken's parent, Payward, is not ready to list itself. It now targets the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest. Read more →
🟢 FBI Seizes $560K in Crypto Bound for Hamas, Takes Over Fundraising Sites — Agents seized digital assets, domains, and servers allegedly used by Hamas' military wing to collect donations and recruit supporters. Read more →
🟢 Thailand adopts crypto Travel Rule with self-custodial wallet checks — Thailand adopted a crypto Travel Rule requiring digital asset operators to verify control of self-custodial wallets and retain transaction data for five years. Read more →
🟢 Kalshi seeks CFTC approval for WTI perpetual — Kalshi plans to seek U.S. regulatory approval as early as next week for a perpetual futures contract linked to West Texas Intermediate crude oil, Bloomberg reported on Sept. 2. Read more →
🟢 G20 members tout 'clear pathways' for digital asset innovation — Officials in the G20, under the US' presidency, recognized that digital assets could support "broad-based economic growth" and called for improvements in cross-border transactions. Read more →
🟢 Is Bitcoin About to Flash Crash? What a 'Bart Simpson' Pattern Would Actually Take — Bitcoin traders are calling August's spike-and-fade a Bart Simpson hairline. Here's what separates an actual flash crash from an ordinary correction. Read more →
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This week's term: Stablecoin
A stablecoin is a digital coin built to always be worth exactly one dollar. It's not meant to go up — it's a way to move dollars around the internet instantly, at any hour. The catch is that it's only worth a dollar if whoever issued it really holds the dollars behind it. Which is exactly why banks turning up matters.
Episode 247 - From Bitcoin to Goat Insurance With Peter Stanhope of Nexo
TIMESTAMPS:
1:28 Nexo's story
10:48 California bans memecoins from politicians
14:00 Goat herders make a stand on Kalshi
18:20 Short, sharp news bites
What Is 'Red September'? Bitcoin's Curse, and Why Wall Street Has the Same One
Bitcoin has lost ground in eight of the last 13 Septembers. The stock market's had the same problem since 1928. Here's the case for the curse, what broke it last year, and what's coming in the next round.
Bitcoin has closed September in the red eight of the last thirteen years, so the real question isn't whether the banks are coming. It's whether they picked the right month to arrive.
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