Last week, it was the central banks. This week, everyone else handed in their wish list for MiCA 2.0.
On Wednesday, the European Commission’s consultation on the MiCA review closed, and most of the remaining responses arrived at the last minute. ESMA, AFME, the Hyperliquid Policy Center and Circle all filed on the final day. Deutsche Börse a day earlier.
AFME could have used a few more hours: its published response still contains an internal note to “check font size used throughout for consistency.”
Naturally, their interests differ, but a few demands came up again and again:
Stablecoin reserves: The rule that 30% of stablecoin reserves must sit in bank deposits has few friends left. Where the money should go instead depends on who you ask: liquid assets for the central banks and Circle, market infrastructure for Deutsche Börse, and a mix for AFME, with a good share still at banks, naturally.
Global stablecoins: Circle and AFME want multi-issuance preserved. The EBA warns of the risks if holders rush to redeem in the EU. Most who addressed it also support an equivalence regime that would recognise foreign stablecoin rules.
Yield: The central banks want the stablecoin interest ban extended to lending and staking, while the EBA and AFME want to keep it as it is. Deutsche Börse wants interest allowed under conditions.
DeFi: The question is what regulated crypto firms may do when they route clients into DeFi protocols. ESMA wants a dedicated licence for this, and AFME wants firms free to connect to any protocol, with risk warnings.
Perimeter: On one point there was rare consensus: anything that qualifies as a financial instrument, including perpetual futures, should stay under MiFID rather than move into MiCA.
For now, MiCA 2.0 is still some way off, if it arrives at all. The Commission will assess the responses together with the EBA and ESMA, and has to report to Parliament and Council by 30 June 2027, adding a legislative proposal if it sees the need. Any proposal would then go through the usual legislative process, so new rules are unlikely before 2028.
That’s good news for AFME, though. There’s still time to fix the font.
IN TODAY’S BRIEFING:
SEC proposes framework allowing investment advisers to self-custody
Coinbase and Citi link stablecoin rails and bank accounts
HIGH SIGNAL NEWS
Coinbase expands its U.S. derivatives infrastructure. The company received CFTC approval for Coinbase Clearing to operate as a derivatives clearing organization. Combined with its existing brokerage and exchange infrastructure, the approval allows Coinbase to directly create and settle fully collateralized contracts, potentially enabling it to bring more of the infrastructure behind products such as prediction markets in-house rather than relying on third-party venues. 🔵
Robinhood announces perpetual futures offering for the U.S. The broker plans to offer eligible customers perpetual futures on eight crypto assets through Bitstamp, with up to 10x leverage on BTC and ETH and 3x on the remaining assets. The products are expected to roll out over the coming months. 🇺🇸
Open USD (OUSD) goes live. Issued by the Open Standard consortium, whose founding members include Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa, the stablecoin has launched on the Tempo network with $400 million in initial liquidity. 🟢
SEC updates crypto asset classification guidance and proposes new custody rules. New staff FAQs clarify when activity around a crypto asset can create or sustain an investment contract, including that continued development of a functional network and buybacks by a functional system with no central party generally do not meet the managerial-efforts test under Howey. Separately, the SEC proposed rules that would let registered advisers and regulated funds self-custody crypto assets in certain cases and formally allow state trust companies to serve as crypto custodians. 🪙
MetaMask discloses security incident affecting staking infrastructure. The company said part of its validator infrastructure was compromised and is exiting affected Ethereum validators as a precaution. MetaMask says there is currently no indication that its wallet product, user funds or withdrawal keys were compromised, while the investigation into the incident remains ongoing. 🦊
TOP STORY
Coinbase and Citi Link Bank Accounts and Stablecoin Rails
Connecting the stacks: On Monday, Coinbase and Citi expanded the partnership they announced in October 2025 with two products. Citi will provide the banking layer behind Coinbase’s new Virtual Accounts, allowing fintechs and other businesses building on Coinbase to offer users virtual USD accounts that automatically convert incoming dollars into stablecoins. In the other direction, Coinbase will power stablecoin acceptance through Spring by Citi, the bank’s merchant payments platform, converting incoming stablecoins into fiat before Citi settles the funds.
Why it matters: Each company gets a capability it does not have in-house. Coinbase gains access to Citi’s banking infrastructure, creating a new route for dollars into USDC. Citi, meanwhile, can offer stablecoin acceptance to its merchant clients without building the conversion infrastructure itself or requiring merchants to hold digital assets.
A payments push: For Coinbase, Citi's banking layer is the latest addition to a payments stack it has been assembling since mid-2025. Over that period, the exchange has added merchant checkout, business accounts, identity checks for platforms' end users, and integrations with payment providers such as Checkout.com and Moov. The buildout reflects how high payments now rank on the company's agenda: in February, Coinbase named scaling stablecoins and payments the second of its three goals for 2026, behind its “everything exchange.”
“We see payments as the next big use case in crypto and believe that the majority of all payments in the economy will eventually run on stablecoin rails,” Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, said on the company’s July 2025 earnings call.
A timeline of Coinbase's stablecoin payments build-out
Following the money: USDC already accounts for a large share of Coinbase's revenue. Under its revenue-sharing agreement with Circle, Coinbase keeps the interest earned on reserves backing USDC held in its products, minus a cut Circle retains as issuer. It also receives half of the remaining reserve income. In the first half of 2026, the arrangement brought in $598 million in revenue, or 23% of Coinbase's total revenue.
Growing the balances: Virtual Accounts give Coinbase a new way to grow that revenue. Coinbase's business clients can now offer branded fiat accounts to their own users, with Citi providing the banking infrastructure underneath. Because incoming dollars are automatically converted into stablecoins, every deposit can add to the balances held in Coinbase products and to the reserve income they generate.
Catching up: The offering also puts Coinbase in direct competition with providers such as Stripe's Bridge and BVNK, which Coinbase tried to buy for about $2 billion before Mastercard acquired it this year. Both already offer similar accounts in several currencies, including euros. Coinbase's current offering, by contrast, supports only dollar deposits from U.S. individuals for now and remains in private beta.
What Citi gains: For Citi, adding stablecoin acceptance through Coinbase expands its offering in a segment the bank wants to grow further. At its May Investor Day, Citi named e-commerce among the verticals where it wants to capture market share, building on an already strong position: according to the bank, it serves 90% of the world’s top e-commerce companies.
Outlook: Both products are still early. Coinbase has not said when Virtual Accounts will leave private beta, or whether they will open to business customers and other currencies. Citi, for its part, has yet to give a launch date for stablecoin acceptance through Spring. The companies' fourth-quarter earnings calls in early 2027 will be the first chance to see whether the partnership shows up in the numbers.
Federico Javin is Global Head of Stablecoins at Jeeves, a stablecoin-powered financial platform for global companies, combining corporate cards, payments, treasury and spend management.
What are businesses actually trying to solve with stablecoin payments?
When a CFO calls us about stablecoins, they rarely ask for another checkout button. They want to fix one of three problems.
First, they want payments that settle in minutes instead of days, including on weekends.
Second, they want to cut FX costs, because every correspondent bank a payment passes through takes a spread and a stablecoin payment skips those hops.
Third, companies in countries with a volatile currency or limited access to dollars need a reliable way to hold dollar value.
How much demand are you seeing today, and where is it emerging most strongly?
We see more businesses ask for stablecoin payments every month. Most of them want to pay with stablecoins, but for a specific group, receiving them is becoming a real requirement: businesses that sell across borders, have customers who already hold USDC or USDT, or operate in markets where getting dollars is difficult.
We see this most clearly in Latin American markets such as Argentina, Colombia and Bolivia, where businesses use stablecoins to access dollar value more quickly and to reduce the friction and FX costs of moving between local currencies and dollars.
By company type, the strongest adopters are cross-border service exporters, software and digital businesses with international clients, marketplaces that pay distributed sellers, and companies with global contractor payrolls. Their transactions are typically mid-sized B2B payments, big enough that wire fees and FX spreads hurt and frequent enough that waiting two days for settlement becomes a real constraint.
AllUnity: Risk Manager, Frankfurt 🇩🇪
BVNK: Financial Crime Intelligence Analyst - Crypto, Remote 🇪🇺
Bybit: Head of Marketing, EU, Vienna 🇦🇹
Coinbase: Operations Senior Associate, Luxembourg 🇱🇺
Ethena: Deputy General Counsel - Ethena Pay, Remote 🌍
Fasanara Capital: Head of Quantitative Research, London 🇬🇧
Flowdesk: Finance | Senior Financial Controller | EMEA, London 🇬🇧
Revolut: Growth Marketing Manager (Crypto), Remote 🇪🇺
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