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Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is planning stablecoin comeback in the second half amid U.S. regulatory shift

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Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is planning stablecoin comeback in the second half amid U.S. regulatory shift

Meta, the U.S. tech giant helmed by Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, is aiming to enter the stablecoin space later this year, pending successful integration with a third-party firm to facilitate payments using the dollar-pegged token technology, according to three people familiar with the plans.

The tech giant, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram and has more than 3 billion users, wants to begin its stablecoin integration early in the second half of this year, said one of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans are not public. Meta is planning to integrate a vendor to help administer stablecoin-backed payments and implement a new wallet, the person said.

A second person said that Meta has sent out a request for product (RFP) to third-party firms and mentioned Stripe as a likely candidate for piloting Meta’s stablecoin.

Stripe, which acquired stablecoin specialist Bridge last year, is a long-time partner of Meta, and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison joined Meta’s board of directors in April 2025.

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Meta, Stripe, and Bridge were approached for comment, but none responded by the time of publication.

Meta introducing stablecoins would let it open payment rails to its massive user base while bypassing expensive traditional banking fees, and potentially position it as a global leader in “social commerce” and cross-border remittances.

The move would also put the tech giant in direct competition with the likes of Elon Musk’s social media platform X as well as messaging platform Telegram, both of which are aiming to bring payments in-house by becoming “super apps.” This was one of the original goals for the planned Libra project — allowing the social media company to tap its vast networks, including WhatsApp’s peer-to-peer messaging service and Facebook and Instagram’s network and commerce tools, for payments.

Regulatory shift

Meta famously tried to introduce the Libra stablecoin, later renamed Diem, in 2019, only to face strong headwinds due to a less favorable regulatory climate than today’s and a lingering reputational hit from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

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In the face of a pushback against the project by U.S. lawmakers, the Libra Association, as it was then called, scaled back its ambitions in 2020, pivoting to the development of a number of stablecoins pegged to different currencies, as opposed to the original plan of a global digital currency backed by a basket of national currencies.

In the end, Meta’s stablecoin never formally launched, and the project was shut down and its assets sold off in early 2022.

The regulatory climate in the U.S. today is quite different. There are several crypto regulatory regimes underway, including President Donald Trump’s GENIUS Act, which, for the first time, established a legal foundation for U.S. stablecoin issuers and opened the floodgates for market entrants with new tokens. However, U.S. regulators are still only in the early stages of drafting the regulations governing issuers.

That said, the whole Libra/Diem experience has led Meta to prefer relying on a third-party stablecoin payments provider this time around, according to one of the sources.

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“They want to do this, but at arm’s length,” said the source.

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Crypto World

Arizona AG Files Charges against Kalshi over ‘Illegal Gambling‘

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Law, Arizona, Court, Crimes, Kalshi, Prediction Markets

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced that her office filed gambling and related criminal charges against the companies behind prediction markets platform Kalshi.

In a Tuesday notice, Mayes said that the charges alleged that Kalshi operated an “illegal gambling business in Arizona without a license” and offered election wagering, in violation of state laws. Arizona authorities alleged that Kalshi’s prediction markets platform allowed state residents to bet on event contracts related to sports and state and federal elections. 

“Kalshi may brand itself as a ‘prediction market,’ but what it’s actually doing is running an illegal gambling operation and taking bets on Arizona elections, both of which violate Arizona law,” said Mayes. “No company gets to decide for itself which laws to follow.”

Law, Arizona, Court, Crimes, Kalshi, Prediction Markets
Source: Arizona Attorney General’s Office

According to the AG’s office, the charges followed Kalshi filing its own lawsuit against Arizona “preemptively in an attempt to avoid accountability under Arizona law.” State authorities have filed similar lawsuits against the companies of prediction market platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi.

Related: Kalshi suffers court loss in Ohio over sports betting lawsuit

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“Sadly, a state can file criminal charges on paper-thin arguments,” a Kalshi spokesperson told Cointelegraph. “States like Arizona want to individually regulate a nationwide financial exchange, and are trying every trick in the book to do it. As other courts have recognized and the CFTC affirms, Kalshi is subject to federal jurisdiction. It’s different from what sportsbooks and casinos offer their customers, and it should not be overseen by a patchwork of inconsistent state laws.”

Last week, an Ohio judge denied Kalshi’s request for a preliminary injunction in a similar case against state authorities, saying that the company had failed to show that the sports event contracts available on the platform were subject to the “exclusive jurisdiction” of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). However, in February, a federal judge in Tennessee blocked state authorities from enforcing gambling laws against Kalshi.

CFTC chair backs “exclusive authority” over prediction markets

Now the sole commissioner on the CFTC since acting chair Caroline Pham stepped down in December, Chair Michael Selig has publicly said that the federal regulator would defend prediction market platforms from state-level lawsuits.

Last week, Selig opened a proposed rule up to public comment on how the Commodity Exchange Act would apply to prediction markets, potentially changing how the agency approaches regulation and enforcement in the future.

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