Anchorage Digital Steps Back From $3B USDG Stablecoin Consortium, Shifts to Neutral Stance

JUST News

Anchorage Digital, the only federally chartered crypto bank in the United States, is dialing back its visible role in the Global Dollar (USDG) stablecoin consortium that includes Robinhood, Kraken, Galaxy Digital, OKX, Visa, Worldpay and Bullish. Co-founder and CEO Nathan McCauley said the firm will adopt a more neutral posture across stablecoins rather than championing any single issuer. USDG, issued by Paxos Digital Singapore under Monetary Authority of Singapore oversight, currently carries a circulating supply near $3 billion. With roughly 20 banks and tech firms exploring stablecoin issuance through Anchorage's white-label rails, McCauley said incentive alignment now favors neutrality across competing dollar tokens.

Macro investor and former hedge fund manager Jordi Visser disclosed a recent Ether purchase tied to his thesis that tokenization and agentic AI commerce will converge sharply through 2026. Speaking on a weekend podcast, Visser argued that autonomous AI agents cannot access traditional banking and will rely on programmable assets like Ether and stablecoins for online transactions. Coinbase's x402 standard has logged more than $24 million in agent-driven transaction volume over the past month, while Ethereum commands above 60% of tokenized real-world asset market share. Visser, head of AI macro at 22V Research, also flagged gold, silver and Bitcoin as inflation hedges.

The launch of more than 20 prediction-market ETFs has been pushed back a second time, with the Securities and Exchange Commission requesting additional review of disclosures before greenlighting the products. The delay affects issuers including Bitwise, Roundhill and GraniteShares, whose offerings would let investors take exposure to outcomes around U.S. elections and macroeconomic events through publicly traded vehicles. Roundhill has filed for distinct funds tracking presidential, Senate and House outcomes by party. While Polymarket and Kalshi continue to post record on-platform volume, regulators are taking extra time given the precedent these instruments would set across regulated markets.

Circle is positioning its forthcoming Arc blockchain as a $3 billion infrastructure bet aimed at Wall Street, with a $222 million token presale backed by a16z crypto, Apollo, BlackRock and ARK Invest. CRCL shares jumped more than 15% on Monday after the disclosure landed alongside mixed quarterly earnings. CEO Jeremy Allaire described Arc as an institutionally ready network designed to serve payments firms, asset issuers and capital-markets participants. The chain has been in test mode since October and is targeted for a summer mainnet launch, arriving as Congress advances stablecoin legislation that could broaden eligible issuers to banks and fintechs.

OpenAI has spun up the OpenAI Deployment Company, a majority-owned subsidiary launching with over $4 billion in committed capital and a $10 billion valuation across 19 backers including TPG, Goldman Sachs, SoftBank, Capgemini and McKinsey. The unit will embed forward-deployed engineers inside enterprise clients, modeled on Palantir's playbook, and is acquiring U.K. consultancy Tomoro to onboard roughly 150 specialists from day one. The move follows Anthropic's parallel $1.5 billion enterprise venture with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Goldman Sachs. Enterprise already accounts for over 40% of OpenAI's reported $25 billion annualized revenue, framing implementation services as the next battleground.

Solana's largest proposed consensus mechanism overhaul, Alpenglow, is now running on a community test cluster, marking a significant step toward eventual mainnet deployment. Core developer Anza confirmed validator operators can begin trialing software that replaces the current Proof-of-History plus TowerBFT stack with a redesigned framework targeting near real-time finality. The update directly addresses outage incidents observed during peak demand periods. Co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko indicated at Consensus Miami 2026 that mainnet rollout could arrive as soon as next quarter if testing proceeds smoothly, while validators continue rehearsing the so-called Alpenswitch transition between architectures.

JST is trading near $0.0875 with a 2.87% daily gain and a market capitalization of $750 million, holding inside a confirmed uptrend structure. Immediate resistance sits at $0.0879, with extension targets at $0.0908 and $0.105, while support stacks at $0.0849, $0.0785 and $0.073. RSI at 62.19 signals firm momentum without yet reaching overbought territory, but the bearish MACD crossover warns that upside follow-through is unconfirmed. A daily close above $0.0879 would validate continuation toward $0.0908; failure to hold $0.0849 would shift bias toward the $0.0785 demand zone and invalidate the near-term bullish thesis. Thin 24-hour volume near $6.68 million remains the principal risk to a clean breakout.