JPYC Supply Drops 611 Million Yen in a Week as Unifi Yield Promo Ends

Unifi Yield Cut Triggers Kaia Outflows

The circulating supply of JPYC, the Japanese yen-backed stablecoin, has now contracted for a second consecutive week, and the pace of decline is accelerating sharply. Aggregated on-chain data from the JPYC Info supply dashboard shows circulation falling from roughly 2.708 billion JPYC on August 30 to about 2.097 billion JPYC as of September 6 — a decline of approximately 611 million JPYC in seven days. That is about 3.7 times the contraction recorded the week before, when roughly 166 million JPYC left circulation between August 23 and 30, a drop that had itself been the largest weekly reduction in roughly three and a half months. The drawdown is concentrated almost entirely on Kaia, the layer-1 network where most JPYC had been circulating: Kaia-based supply fell from about 1.78 billion JPYC to approximately 1.158 billion over the week, a reduction of roughly 622 million JPYC — more than the net change across the entire float. Balances on Polygon and other supported chains actually rose during the same window, but nowhere near enough to offset the Kaia outflow. The timing is decisive. Kaia wallet service Unifi had been running a limited-time program paying a 5% annualized yield on deposited JPYC, and its official Japanese X account announced the rate change on August 25, stating the promotional 5% would step down to a base 2% APY from 9:00 a.m. Japan time on September 1. This week's measurement window straddles that switch, and the scale of the outflow strongly suggests a meaningful share of deposits that arrived for the boosted rate has now been withdrawn. The episode is a clean demonstration of what actually moves stablecoin floats: unlike the spot-market sentiment tracked by the Crypto Fear and Greed Index, circulating supply responds most directly to yield differentials, and yield-seeking capital in crypto is fast, mobile and unsentimental.

announced the rate change on August 25https://x.com/unifi_x_jp/status/2092069454624784434

Fed Weighs Stablecoins for M1 and M2

As one stablecoin's float contracts on-chain, the world's largest central bank is asking how such assets should appear in official money statistics. The Federal Reserve Board published a staff note on September 4, 2026 examining how three categories of new digital assets — tokenized deposits, tokenized money market funds (MMFs) and payment stablecoins — should be incorporated into US monetary aggregates. Under current definitions, M1 covers money immediately available for payments, such as currency and demand deposits, while M2 adds short-term savings vehicles like time deposits and MMFs. The note's framework judges tokenized deposits to be already captured in M1, since banks report them without separating them from conventional deposits — no new compilation machinery is required, and there is no double-counting risk. Tokenized MMFs currently sit inside M2, though the staff suggest a shift toward payment and transfer use could justify reclassification into M1. Payment stablecoins are the open case: they are excluded from the aggregates today. The analysis holds that their present use — parking trading funds and short-term value storage in crypto markets — makes M2 the appropriate starting point, while broader adoption for everyday purchases and business settlement, enabled by instant settlement, could support M1 treatment instead. Two obstacles are flagged. The reserve assets behind stablecoins, mainly bank deposits and MMFs, are already counted in the aggregates, so direct inclusion risks double counting; and isolating the US-circulating share of globally distributed tokens is difficult. The monthly reserve reports issuers must file under the GENIUS Act, the federal stablecoin statute enacted in July 2025, are identified as the data foundation — provided standardized reporting guidance and a settled submission route, direct to the Fed or via regulators such as the OCC, are put in place. Rulemaking is advancing: the OCC issued its proposal in March 2026, the FDIC followed in April, and the Treasury published proposed rules on stablecoin issuance and sale on August 17, 2026, ahead of a planned effective date of January 18, 2027. All remain proposals; final rules will set the actual reporting requirements. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Bybit.

M1 or M2: The Open Question

Read together, the two developments describe a stablecoin market now large enough to concern official statisticians and volatile enough to shed hundreds of millions of yen in a single week on one yield change. The load-bearing primary document here is the Fed note itself: it states that monetary aggregate definitions must be continuously re-examined as blockchain-based monetary assets spread, and that reporting standards should converge across agencies. Our desk's reading is that transparent, reserve-backed stablecoins — more cash-like than a store of value like gold — are exactly what statisticians can measure, unlike privacy coins such as Monero, and on-chain supply dashboards that read balances directly rather than through a blockchain oracle will supply the granular verification. Which side of the M1/M2 line stablecoins land on will follow usage, not lobbying.