Fed Drafts Stablecoin Issuer Rules

Zac Walsh of HIFI | HIFI Raises $37M Series A

Marco Manoppo & Karon Pangestu
September 25, 2026

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Good Morning,

Crypto quietly becoming infrastructure for someone else, the Fed is writing stablecoins into the Treasury market's plumbing, bitcoin miners are selling their megawatts to AI buyers, and venture money is flowing to payment rails rather than protocols. The open question is whether the industry is maturing or simply being absorbed.

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In Today's Email:

What Matters: Fed Drafts Stablecoin Issuer Rules 👀
Founders Highlight: Zac Walsh of HIFI 👨
Deal Flows: HIFI Raises $37M Series A 💰️

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Narratives: Hashrate to Compute

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WHAT MATTERS

Fed Drafts Stablecoin Issuer Rules

State of play: The Fed is finally turning the GENIUS Act into concrete balance sheet rules for stablecoin issuers, but the proposal lands after regulators missed the July deadline, leaving a tight runway before the law takes effect in January 2027.

Issuers would have to fully back payment stablecoins with short-term Treasury bills or other highly liquid assets.
The Fed also wants standardized capital requirements and risk management standards applied across issuers.
Board-supervised banks would get a dedicated application process to issue their own stablecoins.
Governor Michael Barr, a past critic of the law, backed the proposal but pushed for stronger bank anti-money laundering oversight.
He warned that limiting AML enforcement to "significant or systemic" issues could weaken the Board's ability to verify compliant programs.

Why it matters: Reserve and capital rules decide who can profitably issue a US stablecoin, and a Treasury-only backing mandate effectively ties the sector's growth to short-term government debt demand.

Our take: A "significant or systemic" bar for AML action quietly shifts compliance risk from regulators to issuers, and the first major illicit finance incident on a bank-issued stablecoin will test whether the Fed can still act.

For builders and investors: Expect bank-issued stablecoins to compete directly with Circle and Tether's US operations, so issuers with thin capital buffers or non-Treasury reserves should plan for consolidation before January 2027.

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Zac Walsh of HIFI

Intro: Zach Walsh is the Co-Founder and CEO of HIFI, a stablecoin payments and financial infrastructure platform.

Previous background: Zach studied Economics at The City Universities of New York.

The big idea: Zach wants to build the atomic infrastructure layer that completely bridges traditional bank accounts and stablecoins via a single developer API.

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INSIGHTS

Bitcoin Reclaims Miner Production Cost

Bitcoin briefly cleared JPMorgan's estimated $85,000 production cost after a record 280 days below it, but with price already slipping back to about $84,100, miner relief hinges on a level the market has yet to hold.

JPMorgan treats production cost as a soft floor, since prolonged trading below it pushes higher-cost miners to sell BTC or shut down.
The last comparable stretch came in 2018, when bitcoin traded below cost for about 224 days.
Miners weathered the downturn by relocating to cheaper power, selling or scrapping older rigs, and placing equipment on standby.
Hash rate is down about 19% from its October peak and difficulty roughly 15% as miners pivot capacity to higher-paying AI contracts.
Public miners are ceding share to private and sovereign operators, while flatter hash rate growth should slow production cost increases outside halvings.

DEAL FLOWS

HIFI Raises $37M Series A

Deal flows slowed down this week - we saw $90M+ in deals 💼

HIFI's $37M Series A led by Left Lane Capital bets that the next stablecoin moat is plumbing rather than issuance, with the New York firm pitching a single API that stitches money movement, compliance, and settlement across bank rails and digital assets.

HIFI says it processes over $7B in annualized volume across 87 countries.
The raise follows its role in DTCC's July production trades of tokenized securities alongside BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and Nasdaq.
A September Visa partnership extends HIFI's platform to stablecoin-funded payouts to more than 4B Visa cards.
Visa's own stablecoin settlement recently topped a $20B annualized run rate, more than 15x the level a year earlier.
A Visa survey found 56% of US adults would use stablecoins with bank-level protections, dropping to 36% without them.

Deal flows in the past week:

InfiniFi, $3M Seed Round
Infini, $6M Seed Round
CatchBack, $8M Seed Round
Travix, Undisclosed $ Seed Round
HIFI, $37M Series A Round
NG.CASH, $15M Strategic Round
MeshWallet, $10M Private Round
Atum, $13.5M Unknown Round
XStable, Undisclosed $ Unknown Round

QUICK BITES

New York moves to block Polymarket from the state.
Fed proposes reserve limits, capital standards for stablecoin issuers.
+$170M in crypto moves from Bitget wallets to unidentified address.
JPMorgan says BTC production cost could ease miner selling pressure.
HIFI raises $37M Series A to expand tokenized capital markets infrastructure.
Solana Foundation taps Binance, Polygon vets to drive institutional adoption.
Someone was trying to sell Ondo Finance after founder Nathan Allman's death.
EU's financial regulator to make AI & tokenization a supervisory priority in 2027.

NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME

Alloc Init’s read on Shielded Bitcoin.
a16z’s read on What financial markets need from blockchains.
MetaLex’s read on Programmable Companies, Open Economies.

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Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.