"Lloyds and Visa complete USDC pilot" Oct 01, 2026

Lloyds Banking Group and Visa completed a seven-day live pilot that settled $750,000 in payment obligations using USDC. Lloyds called it the first stablecoin settlement trial between Visa and a major UK banking group. The bank bought USDC through UK-regulated exchange RCAX, booked the transactions through its corporate markets branch in Jersey, and transferred the funds to Visa in the United States. Settlement took less than an hour, including over the weekend, compared with a day or more for traditional cross-border settlement outside banking hours. The pilot tested settlement between financial institutions, not customer payments.

The trial also tested whether the institutions could settle across different blockchains. Lloyds ran a node on Canton, while Visa settled on a separate public blockchain that was not named. Visa’s stablecoin settlement activity exceeded a $20 billion annualized run rate in September, following an expansion of its pilot to nine blockchains earlier in the year. Lloyds is also participating in a separate UK banking pilot focused on tokenized sterling deposits.

Base launched Cobalt, its third mainnet upgrade, introducing validity transactions and new features for its B20 token standard. Validity transactions can be time-bound or conditional, and submissions can remain private until they are included. B20 composite policies add allow-list and block-list rules using AND/OR logic, scheduled multiplier updates, and the ability for administrators to reassign balances.

Standard Chartered argued that Athena’s yields could broaden beyond compressed returns from crypto basis trades, drawing on real-world assets, DeFi, institutional lending, and basis trades linked to equities and commodities. The bank forecast Athena at $2 by the end of 2028, about 669% above its $0.26 price, and projected USD supply rising from $4.9 billion to about $40 billion. It also identified Athena’s fee switch as a potential driver for E&A. These projections depend on new sources of yield and adoption; the bank cited slower growth in yield-bearing stablecoins and weaker-than-expected adoption of tokenized real-world assets as risks.

Standard Chartered separately projected that tokenized assets, including stablecoins and other real-world assets, would grow from about $350 billion to $4 trillion by the end of 2028. The forecast puts stablecoins within a much larger expected tokenized-asset market, but the bank’s identified adoption risks could limit that expansion.

A Florida federal court entered a default judgment imposing more than $30 million in penalties against Brian Early and Alicia Ann Kingry over a funds fraud scheme involving digital assets and precious metals. The court found that they misrepresented expected returns, past performance, risks, and how investor funds would be traded and withdrawn. After learning of the CFTC investigation, they walked back profitability claims and tried to erase the fund’s social-media presence. In separate consent orders, Rachel Leralda was ordered to surrender the Leralda residence, while Juan Pablo Valkarse was permanently barred from having crypto or precious metals traded on his behalf and from further CFTC-rule violations.