Circle Wins Final OCC Bank Approval

Robinhood Chain Surges on Memecoins | Stablecoin Supply Shrinks $10B

Marco Manoppo & Karon Pangestu
July 13, 2026

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Good Morning,

Circle's final OCC approval for a national trust bank sent shares up 14%, but the charter that just made headlines still can't touch USDC reserves or take deposits, leaving the real prize for later while rivals BitGo, Ripple, and Paxos chase the same federal stamp.

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In Today's Email:

What Matters: Circle Wins Final OCC Bank Approval 👀
Product of the Week: Robinhood Chain Surges on Memecoins 🏹
Charts: Stablecoin Supply Shrinks $10B, Crypto Selloff 📊

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Narratives: Stablecoin Issuers Go Federal

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WHAT MATTERS

Circle Wins Final OCC Bank Approval

State of play: Circle secured final OCC approval to establish Circle National Trust, sending shares up 14% in pre-market trading as the USDC issuer becomes the latest crypto firm to lock in federal banking oversight.

Circle National Trust will provide fiduciary custody for Circle and its affiliates, later extending to institutional clients including banks.
The charter allows Circle to eventually manage USDC reserves under OCC supervision, though the company called this a future capability.
Circle applied for the charter in June 2025 and received conditional approval in December before Friday's final sign-off.
BitGo, Ripple, Paxos, and Fidelity Digital Assets received similar conditional approvals in December, with BitGo's already upgraded to unconditional.
USDC circulation stands at $73.2B, trailing Tether's USDT at $184.1B.

Why it matters: Federal trust bank status pulls Circle's infrastructure under direct OCC oversight, a credibility marker as stablecoin issuers compete for bank partnerships under GENIUS.

Our take: The 14% pop looks like sentiment, not substance, the charter doesn't yet cover USDC reserves or deposits, and BitGo, Ripple, and Paxos are running the same playbook. Federal charters are becoming table stakes, not a Circle-specific moat.

For builders and investors: Watch for Circle to seek approval to bring USDC reserve management in-house, reducing reliance on custodians like BNY Mellon.

PRODUCT OF THE WEEK

Robinhood Chain Surges on Memecoins

Robinhood's Arbitrum-based Layer 2, launched July 1 with a focus on tokenized stocks and DeFi, has become the second-largest network by DEX volume after a memecoin rally led by $CASHCAT pushed daily volume to $877M.

Robinhood Chain is a permissionless, EVM-compatible Layer 2 built with Arbitrum Nitro technology, using ETH for gas with no native network token.
The chain processed $877M in DEX volume over the past day, driven by memecoins with a combined $244M market cap.
$CASHCAT alone accounts for $186M of that volume, with one early buyer reportedly turning $316 into over $2M.
Total value locked stands at $131M, with Uniswap among the chain's launch partners.
Transaction ordering uses first-come, first-served sequencing rather than priority-fee auctions, with roughly 100-millisecond block times.

Other cool products:

Turtle launches Huma PST Vault.
Rysk V12 goes live on Ethereum.
StableEarn launches on StableHub.
Exponent launches srONyc on Solana.
Goblin Finance launches Goblin Private Credit I.

Take a peek at our referral reward at the bottom of this issue. Share this newsletter and receive our list of 500 crypto VC individuals 👇

CHARTS OF THE WEEK

Stablecoin Supply Shrinks $10B

State of play: Stablecoin market cap has fallen roughly $10B since its May peak, including a record $7.7B drop in June, though an analyst calls it a modest pullback rather than a repeat of 2022's crypto winter.

USDT fell to about $184B from $190B in May, while USDC dropped to $73B from its March peak near $80B.
June's $7.7B decline is the largest dollar drop since the Terra-Luna collapse in May 2022.
The market has stalled around $300B since October despite bank forecasts projecting $2T-plus by 2028-2030.
Smaller competitors are gaining share, with Paxos's USDG surpassing $3.2B and Anchorage's USDGO nearly doubling to $900M.
The 2022 bear market saw a 26% stablecoin supply collapse versus the current 3% decline.

Our Take: That's not just cyclical liquidity rotation, it's the start of real competitive erosion at the top of the stablecoin stack. Whether that's healthy diversification or a warning sign depends entirely on whether aggregate supply reaccelerates once new issuers scale.

Iran-US Tensions Trigger Crypto Selloff

State of play: Bitcoin slipped 1% and altcoins fell harder as reignited Iran-US fighting over the Strait of Hormuz combined with weekend profit-taking to drag crypto and Asian equities lower, with South Korea's Kospi losing 9.2%.

Lighter (LIT) slid 8% in its first major pullback after rallying more than 200% over the past two months.
Coinglass recorded $253M in 24-hour liquidations, split 76-24 between longs and shorts, with BTC and ETH leading notional losses.
Bitcoin derivatives positioning held steady, with open interest flat at $17B and options skewing bullish at a 64/36 put/call ratio.
SK Hynix shares dropped 15% on their first trading day post-IPO as Japan's Nikkei and China's SSE both fell more than 2%.
Jupiter (JUP) lost over 15% in a week as daily volume dwindled to $17M, down from over $500M in 2025.

Our take: The options market is telling a different story than spot price action, calls still outnumber puts and the delta skew is narrowing, not widening, which reads as traders treating this as a dip rather than a regime change.

QUICK BITES

Stablecoin FX priced below interbank rates in Q2.
Housing bill that includes a CBDC ban passed into law.
Robinhood Chain draws over $3B in weekly DEX volume.
Japan's SBI Group to launch JPYSC stablecoin lending service this month.
Bank of Thailand audits high-volume stablecoin trades to track illicit finance.
Bitcoin, ether ETFs snap 8-week outflow streaks with $282M combined inflow.

NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME

Vitalik’s read on The Extremely Lean Chain.
septiembre_eth’s read on Ethereum’s most ambitious plan ever.
Bmoney’s read on The Biggest Moat in Crypto Cards Isn't Cashback.

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