The Federal Reserve, as expected, just cut rates by 25 basis points. Felix will have more on the impact of that decision and Jerome Powell’s comments tomorrow.

For now, stablecoins’ market capitalization hit $280 billion and the onchain RWA market has eclipsed $30 billion. Circle continues to collab with exchanges and fintechs as part of a massive distribution push. Let’s dig in.

New milestones for onchain assets

I’m headed to South Korea in a few days for the Origin Summit and other Korea Blockchain Week happenings.

The topic of a panel I’m moderating is not exactly surprising: How Stablecoins are Powering the Next Generation of Payments.  

Stablecoin market cap recently eclipsed $280 billion, RWA.xyz data shows — up more than 5% over the last month and up ~38% since the start of 2025. Tether’s USDT ($171 billion) and Circle’s USDC ($71 billion) are the top two: 

These digital assets tied to fiat currencies are, as Kraken consumer business head Mark Greenberg put it, “the financial layer most aligned with crypto’s original architecture — permissionless, programmable and global by default.” 

This statement came as Kraken revealed a partnership with Circle that allows the exchange’s clients to access “increased liquidity, reduced conversion fees and new opportunities to deploy USDC across our applications.” The exchange also plans to introduce access to Circle’s euro stablecoin, EURC.

A company spokesperson urged patience on specifics, which will come out in the coming weeks. 

Kraken in July noted its Q2 spot volume market share growth driven in part by stablecoins, where its share of stable-fiat spot volumes grew from 43% to 68%. Here’s a monthly look at stablecoin spot volume on centralized exchanges, per Blockworks Research data. 

Leading up to, and after President Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law two months ago, Circle has seemed to put its partnership efforts into another gear. 

Circle’s collaborations with exchanges are well-documented — from its arrangement with Coinbase to more recently linking up with OKX and enabling Binance institutional clients to use USYC as off-exchange collateral.

The stablecoin issuer has also partnered with Fiserv, FIS, Finastra and Fireblocks in a bid to boost stablecoin adoption for financial institutions in particular. 

Compass Point analysts reduced their price target for CRCL shares earlier this month (from $130 to $96) in response to Hyperliquid’s plan to launch its own stablecoin. CRCL shares were trading around $133 at 1 pm ET.

But then Circle, just yesterday, launched Native USDC and CCTP V2 on HyperEVM.

“The upgrade strengthens Hyperliquid’s ecosystem and cements USDC’s role as a go-to settlement layer for multichain DeFi,” said Wintermute OTC trading head Jake Ostrovskis.

I haven’t even yet mentioned Tether’s plan to enter the US market with a new USAT stablecoin. Also noteworthy was Fortune’s report of a new Google payments protocol designed to let AI applications transfer money between one another, including via stablecoins.

Beyond stablecoins, though, tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) hit the $30 billion mark — up nearly 11% from a month ago, according to RWA.xyz. The two biggest categories there are private credit and US Treasury debt, at $17 billion and $7 billion, respectively.  

A reminder of the stablecoin and RWA levels Bitwise predicted by the end of 2025:

The agenda for next month’s Digital Asset Summit in London just dropped by the way (and there’s a fairly easy way to score a free ticket if you scroll down a bit more). 

Two discussions I’ll be facilitating at the event relate to the latest RWA growth: Driving Utility and Adoption through Tokenization and What Will Bringing Wall Street Onchain Look Like.

So we’ll see where these $280 billion and $30 billion figures go over the next month and what executives, at that point, have to say about the next drivers. 

The convergence of AI, crypto, and capital is turning IP into the next real-world asset class, and the race to unlock it has already begun.

Join Story and Blockworks at Origin Summit, where this new market takes shape.

Use promo code: BWNL50 for 50% off your ticket.