Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team. Welcome back to your weekly briefing.

The US stablecoin regulation is maturing. The OCC just proposed new rules to put guardrails around stablecoins (digital money tied to the U.S. dollar), following the GENIUS Act that passed last year. The rules cover everything from who can issue them to how they must be backed and managed. [RELEASE]

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Other things we watched this week…

* Digital asset treasury companies bought the dip: BitMine bought 51,162 ETH (~$100M), while Strategy added 592 BTC ($39.8M), and American Bitcoin (Eric Trump’s company) added 392 BTC ($25M).

* Adoption: Meta is reportedly exploring stablecoin integration for its 3B+ users. BNP Paribas (largest bank in Europe) launches a tokenized MMF on Ethereum.

* Circle reported strong Q4 results, with revenue up 77% year over year and USDC circulation reaching $75.3B, a 72% increase. On the news, its stock jumped over 20%, indicating that institutions are bullish, even as the broader crypto markets remain fearful.

* The UK has been slow on stablecoin innovation, but the FCA is taking its first steps — it selected four firms, Monee Finance, ReStabilise, Revolut, and VVTX, to pilot stablecoin development in its Regulatory Sandbox.

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Our highlights this week:

* Stripe weighs PayPal acquisition

* Meta is exploring stablecoin payments integration

* Circle posts strong Q4 revenue growth

* BNP Paribas launches a tokenised MMF on Ethereum

* Ethereum team outlines 2026 roadmap

Let’s jump in 👇

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Top Boardroom Reads

* 2025 Outlook: The End of Crypto Ambiguity (51 Insights)

* Stablecoins in payments: What the raw transaction numbers miss (McKinsey )

* McKinsey’s State of Organizations (McKinsey)

* Stablecoin Utility Report 2026 (BVNK)

* Building Permissionless Neobanks (Pantera Capital)

* Stablecoin Compliance and the GENIUS Act (Oliver Wyman)

* ESMA: AI adoption in securities markets (ESMA)

* Tokenized Gold & RWAs (Research paper)

Top Signals This Week

Stripe weighs PayPal acquisition

Stripe is reportedly weighing an acquisition of PayPal or some of its key assets, in talks that remain preliminary and may never result in a deal. The leak landed just as Stripe’s own valuation jumped to about $159B in a secondary sale. PayPal, by contrast, lost roughly a third of its value in 2025, currently being valued around $43B. Operationally, PayPal has been missing earnings expectations and losing market share to Apple Pay and Google Pay. According to the reports, possibilities range from a full takeover of PayPal Holdings to a more surgical deal for assets such as Braintree, its merchant acquiring and gateway unit, or Venmo, its consumer P2P wallet. [NEWS]

Why this matters: Stripe already dominates online payment processing for businesses, while PayPal brings more than 430M active accounts and availability in over 200 markets worldwide, along with PYUSD, its own dollar-backed stablecoin that has grown to a $4.1B market cap, making it already the 6th largest stablecoin globally. Folding that consumer network and native stablecoin into Stripe’s stack, and pairing it with Tempo, a payments-focused L1 blockchain incubated by Stripe, and Bridge (Stripe’s stablecoin platform that recently secured a conditional OCC national trust charter) would dramatically accelerate Stripe’s push into consumer finance and stablecoin payments. This positions Stripe to become a dominant stablecoin issuer and puts it on more equal footing with today’s leaders, Circle and Tether.

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Meta exploring stablecoin payments integration

Meta is reportedly testing stablecoin payments integration into WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, instead of launching its own token like Libra/Diem. It is pla...