Mastercard Adds Stablecoin Settlement Support

Andrew Kang of RoboStrategy | SignalPlus Raises $50M at $500M Valuation

Marco Manoppo & Karon Pangestu
June 05, 2026

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Good Morning

Mastercard is embedding stablecoin settlement directly into its global payments network, and the inclusion list tells you everything about which tokens are winning: USDC, RLUSD, PYUSD are in.

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In Today's Email:

What Matters: Mastercard Adds Stablecoin Settlement Support 👀
Founders Highlight: Andrew Kang of RoboStrategy 👨
Deal Flows: SignalPlus Raises $50M at $500M Valuation 💰️

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Narratives: Rails Go Stable

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TOGETHER WITH

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Final season. Highest multipliers.

WHAT MATTERS

Mastercard Adds Stablecoin Settlement Support

State of play: Mastercard is opening its global payments network to stablecoin-based card settlement with USDC, PYUSD, RLUSD, and others across 8 blockchains, with ARQ, Cross River, and Nuvei among the first institutions going live in the US and Latin America.

The expansion enables intraday, weekend, and holiday settlement, allowing transactions to process outside standard banking schedules.
Supported stablecoins include Circle's USDC, Paxos-issued PYUSD and USDP, Ripple's RLUSD, USDG, and SoFiUSD, with further rollout planned through 2026.
The move follows Mastercard's NY BitLicense in May and its $1.8B deal to acquire stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK in March.
Visa is running parallel stablecoin settlement pilots across multiple blockchains, and MoneyGram recently launched MGUSD on Stellar.
Total stablecoin supply is approaching $300B, with USDT at $188B and USDC at $76B.

Why it matters: Mastercard embedding stablecoin settlement across eight blockchains moves crypto rails from pilot to default infrastructure inside legacy payments.

Our take: The BVNK acquisition, BitLicense, and this rollout are a coordinated land-grab for stablecoin infrastructure while competitors are still experimenting.

For builders and investors: The inclusion list (USDC, RLUSD, PYUSD) signals which stablecoins are winning the institutional race. Anything not on it has a distribution problem.

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Andrew Kang of RoboStrategy

Intro: Andrew Kang is the Chief Executive Officer of RoboStrategy, the first dedicated investment company providing public market investors with direct access to leading private and public companies in robotics.

Previous background: Previously, Andrew was the Founding Partner of Mechanism Capital, the family office he launched in 2020 to invest in frontier technologies.

Through Mechanism, Andrew was an early major investor in the robotics sector, with substantial investments in companies such as Figure AI and Apptronik.

The big idea: Andrew through RoboStrategy aims to give public market investors venture-style access to the robotics and embodied AI boom, wrapped in a liquid, transparent structure.

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 👇

INSIGHTS

Hyperliquid Records Highest Perps Market Share

Hyperliquid hit a record 6.63% share of global perps volume in May, with HIP-3 posting $62B in monthly volume, even as Binance enters tokenized equity perps with $280M in its first five days.

HIP-3's lead remains wide, but the HYPE bull case now hinges on tokenized equity flow rather than crypto market structure.
Pure crypto volumes are down significantly year over year, in line with broader exchange trends.
Binance's equity perps plus spot tokenized shares via Nest Trading and Alpaca pose a real compression risk given its user base.
Post-SEC innovation exemption, the key question is whether Trade.xyz holds its 90%+ builder share as new entrants spin up.

DEAL FLOWS

SignalPlus Raises $50M at $500M Valuation

Deal flows soared this week - we saw $400M+ in deals 💼

SignalPlus closed a $50M Series B1 led by HashKey Capital at a $500M valuation, with Goldman Sachs advising, as the institutional crypto derivatives infrastructure provider pushes into multi-asset trading and agentic AI tooling.

The platform hit $160B in volume in Q4 2025, including $70B in Block-RFQ via Deribit, with terminal volumes growing at 74% quarterly CAGR since 2023.
Clients include Cumberland, FalconX, and Galaxy Digital, positioning SignalPlus as the dominant options infrastructure layer for top-tier market makers and CEXs.
Proceeds will fund geographic expansion, structured commodity products, and a platform upgrade integrating agentic AI via its proprietary QuantLab engine.

Deal flows in the past week:

Xeffy, $20M Angel & Private Round
Hypernova, $3M Pre-Seed Round
Speed Labs, $6.5M Seed Round
WasabiCard, $10M Pre-Series A Round
AIVIVE, $8M Series A & B Round
SignalPlus, $50M Series B Round
Pheasant Network, Undisclosed $ Strategic Round
Coinone, $106M Unknown Round
Dunamu, $204M Unknown Round
Axis, Undisclosed $ Unknown Round

QUICK BITES

Coinbase launches pre-IPO perpetual futures.
Crypto VC deal count slumps to five-year low.
Arthur Hayes sells entire HYPE and NEAR positions.
Coinbase, SpaceX, Meta join DOJ anti-scam operation.
HYPE overtakes SOL in price as SOL falls to lowest levels since 2023.
Immunefi says DeFi is 'getting safer' as exploit losses fall 74% from 2022 peak.
Hyperliquid hits record share of perps market as it tops $62B monthly volume.

NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME

Arrakis’s read on where crypto price discovery happens.
Diego’s read on Tokenization: The Next Financial Revolution.
a16z’s read on Genius Act principles for state implementation.

— (@)

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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.