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Wells Fargo Files Trademark for ‘WFUSD,’ Signaling Stablecoin Ambitions

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Wells Fargo Files Trademark for 'WFUSD,' Signaling Stablecoin Ambitions

While the bank has yet to confirm its plans, the move could mark a first step toward launching its own USD stablecoin.

Wells Fargo has quietly filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the ticker “WFUSD,” per a filing dated March 10.

The trademark covers cryptocurrency exchange services, blockchain-based payment verification, crypto hardware wallets, and software for accessing NFTs on-chain, among a slew of other goods and services.

While Wells Fargo has yet to publicly confirm its plans for the trademark, the ticker closely mirrors established naming conventions for stablecoins tickers, strongly suggesting the $1.9 trillion-asset bank is laying the groundwork for its own dollar-pegged digital currency.

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The WFUSD filing arrives in the wake of broader Wall Street stablecoin ambitions. As The Defiant reported, last May, companies co-owned by Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and other large banks — including Zelle operator Early Warning Services and real-time payment network The Clearing House — were considering launching a joint stablecoin, reportedly “intended to fend off escalating competition from the cryptocurrency industry.”

As far back as 2022, Wells Fargo was also part of a group of big U.S. banks exploring integrating blockchain tech for connecting deposits, as The Defiant reported at the time.

Since then, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser publicly confirmed the bank is evaluating its own proprietary token, telling analysts on a Q2 2025 earnings call that “we are looking at the issuance of a Citi stablecoin,” per The Defiant.

The pressure to act is only mounting. In December, U.S. neobank SoFi unveiled SoFiUSD, making SoFi the first U.S. national bank to release an “open access” stablecoin on a public blockchain — Ethereum — backed 1:1 by cash reserves held in its Federal bank account.

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SoFi has since inked a partnership with Mastercard to use SoFiUSD across its global payments network.

Whether WFUSD represents Wells Fargo going it alone or hedging its bets ahead of the consortium effort remains unclear.

The stablecoin sector grew by over $100 billion in 2025 alone. Acording to data from DefiLlama, total stablecoin circulating supply currently stands at $314.7 billion. As The Defiant reported, that figure was near $310 billion as of just mid-December 2025 — up more than 50% from roughly $205 billion at the start of the year.

This article was generated with the assistance of AI workflows.

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Stablecoins Moved More Money Than the US Financial System’s Backbone

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Stablecoin monthly transaction volume reached $7.2 trillion in February 2026, overtaking the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network’s $6.8 trillion for the first time.

The ACH is an electronic payment network in the United States that enables transfers directly between bank accounts. It has become the most widely used infrastructure for handling electronic money movement across the country.

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It’s a symbolically significant milestone showing how massive crypto payment rails have become. The February crossover did not happen in isolation.

Artemis data shows that stablecoin volume climbed further in March, reaching $7.5 trillion. That figure matched ACH over the same period.

Meanwhile, the stablecoin market has continued to grow. DefiLlama data showed that the market capitalization surpassed $316.7 billion, setting a new all-time high. 

Notably, a recent report revealed that stablecoins dominated crypto markets in Q1 2026. They made up 75% of total trading volume, the largest share on record. 

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Overall transaction volume exceeded $28 trillion during the quarter, marking another all-time high. However, according to CEX.IO, automated trading played a major role, with bots responsible for 76% of the volume, the highest proportion seen in the past two years.

“Q1 2026 made the 2022 comparison hard to ignore. Stablecoin dominance rising sharply, capital rotating defensively, USDT and USDC diverging, automation surging, and retail pulling back — these patterns appeared together in mid-2022, and they are reappearing now. If broader bearish conditions persist through the year, stablecoins could see further demand and dominance gains in the coming quarters,” the report read.

The rising volumes reflect more than speculative activity. It also highlights the expanding use of these assets in real-world applications, including business-to-business (B2B) payments, cross-border transactions, and other financial activities.

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The post Stablecoins Moved More Money Than the US Financial System’s Backbone appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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IMF Says Tokenization Is a ‘Structural Shift’ in Finance, Not Just a Tech Upgrade

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IMF Says Tokenization Is a 'Structural Shift' in Finance, Not Just a Tech Upgrade

The International Monetary Fund also warns that the distribution and speed of on-chain transactions bring new challenges and risks that require international coordination.

In a new staff research note published on Thursday, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) argues that tokenization represents a “structural shift in financial architecture,” not just an incremental efficiency gain.

Authored by Tobias Adrian — the IMF’s Financial Counsellor and Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department — the report focuses on the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) within the regulated financial system, namely banks, finance infrastructure, and asset managers, arguing that’s where “the most consequential transformation occurs.”

Settlement Speed Is a Double-Edged Sword

The IMF’s core thesis is that tokenization doesn’t just make existing finance faster, but represents a shift in how trust, settlement, and risk management work. In TradFi, trust is embedded in regulated intermediaries and time-delayed processes (end-of-day settlement, batch reconciliation). Those frictions, the report notes, actually serve a purpose: they give regulators and institutions time to intervene before a crisis cascades.

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Tokenization, which the note defines broadly as “the representation of financial assets and liabilities on programmable digital ledgers,” collapses those frictions, bringing what is generally referred to as the primary benefits of blockchain: near instant settlement, 24/7 liquidity, etc. But, the report notes, that this reduction of barriers introduces new challenges and risks.

“Liquidity demands materialize instantaneously,” the note warns, creating conditions where a smart contract bug or oracle failure could trigger a chain reaction before anyone can respond. The IMF argues:

“When trading, settlement, custody, and compliance are embedded in code, supervision must extend beyond market participants to the design, governance, and resilience of market infrastructures themselves. Failures can
originate in smart contracts, data feeds, or consensus mechanisms, rather than firm balance sheets.”

Who Controls the Money?

A major focus of the report is on the quetion of settlement assets. The IMF identifies three competing models: tokenized commercial bank deposits, regulated stablecoins, and what the report refers to as wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDCs), with each carrying different risk profiles.

Cross-Border Gaps and the Fragmentation Risk

The report highlights that a major concern around the tokenization of RWAs in regulated financial markets is jurisdictional: tokenized transactions execute across borders at machine speed, while resolution and crisis management frameworks are still built around nationally domiciled institutions.

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“Tokenization challenges crisis management and resolution frameworks that are built around nationally domiciled institutions, territorially bounded infrastructures, and jurisdiction-specific legal authority.“

In its research note, the IMF calls for international coordination and legal frameworks that can govern code itself, not just the institutions that deploy it.

“The key levers of control may lie in governance keys, consensus mechanisms, or smart contract logic operating across borders,” the note reads — a setup where no single regulator has a clear handle.

The report lands as the value of tokenized RWAs continue to surge, driven in part by tokenized funds from TradFi giants like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Janus Henderson.

In 2025, tokenized RWA value tripled over the course of the year as a wave of financial institutions began tokenizing U.S. treasuries, private credit, and other RWAs.

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Industry forecasts project the sector could hit $100 billion by end of 2026, with more than half of the world’s 20 largest asset managers expected to have launched RWA tokens by year-end.

Meanwhile, stablecoins have already begun functioning as mainstream financial infrastructure, with the GENIUS Act providing U.S. regulatory clarity in mid-2025.

This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.

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Solo Bitcoin Miner Wins $210K Block Reward

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Bitcoin Price, Bitcoin Mining

A solo Bitcoin miner secured a roughly $210,000 block reward on Thursday, proving that the so-called “mining lottery” is still paying out even if industrial operators dominate the network.

The miner, connected to CKPool’s solo service, found block 943,411 and earned 3.139 BTC in subsidy and transaction fees, according to data from block explorer mempool.space.

Solo mining remains rare. Statistics compiled by Bennet’s tracker show that solo mining pools have found just 20 Bitcoin (BTC) blocks over the last 12 months, paying out a total of 62.96 BTC, roughly one win every 18.7 days on average. The longest “drought” between blocks was 58 days, and the previous solo win came on Feb. 28.

The win comes as Bitcoin mining grows increasingly competitive. Network difficulty, the measure of how hard it is to find a block, recently recorded its steepest adjustment since February, falling about 7.7% before rebounding 3.87% in the past 24 hours, reflecting weaker hashrate and briefly improving miners’ odds.

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Bitcoin difficulty relief is fleeting

Even so, current difficulty levels remain near historic highs, meaning the probability of any single solo miner discovering a block is still vanishingly small.

Related: Solo Bitcoin miner bags over $200K block reward using rented hashrate

Public trackers like CoinWarz show Bitcoin’s difficulty has climbed orders of magnitude over the past decade, with only brief downward adjustments when miners switch off unprofitable rigs or redirect machines to other workloads such as artificial intelligence.

Bitcoin Price, Bitcoin Mining
Bitcoin difficulty over time. Source: CoinWarz

As difficulty grinds higher and input costs rise, the economics of mining increasingly favor large, well-capitalized operators over hobbyists.

Major listed Bitcoin miners are responding by reshaping their balance sheets and fleet strategies rather than betting on luck. Riot Platforms sold 3,778 BTC during the first quarter of 2026, according to a Thursday release, adding to a number of crypto miners and firms that have sold Bitcoin recently, including MARA Holdings, Genius Group and Nakamoto Holdings.

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Against that institutional backdrop, the CKPool win stands out as a reminder that individuals can still, on rare occasions, beat the odds.

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