Author: TSE Staff
Key takeaways: Timon, a stablecoin-powered travel payments startup, has expanded into Kenya after crossing 100,000 users across Africa, a milestone the company says reflects growing demand for cross-border financial products built for Africans who live, work and travel internationally. The expansion follows a fresh investment from Alliance, a leading startup accelerator for crypto companies. The backing gives Timon additional capital and access to a global network of investors and operators as it scales across the continent. Founded in September 2024 by Tomi Ayorinde and Chizaram Ucheaga, Timon lets users fund digital wallets with local currencies, U.S. dollar accounts or stablecoins…
For years the pitch for stablecoins in Africa went something like this: currencies wobble, banks are slow, and a token pegged to the dollar solves both problems at once. It was a good pitch, and millions of Africans acted on it anyway, trading dollar-tokens on peer-to-peer apps that regulators mostly tolerated and rarely understood. What has been missing is the second half of the story — the moment stablecoins stop being something people do around the banking system and start being something built into it. This week’s investment by Circle Ventures, the venture arm of the American stablecoin issuer, in…
Key takeaways: Kenyan fintech leader, M-Pesa Africa, has begun piloting stablecoin-powered cross-border payments in partnership with Visa and Onafriq, aiming to speed up and cut the cost of international mobile money transfers. The three companies launched the pilot in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the first market chosen for the trial. The project will test how blockchain-based stablecoins can settle cross-border mobile money transactions faster and more cheaply than conventional banking channels. Through the partnership, M-Pesa wallet top-ups are settled using stablecoins behind the scenes via Visa Pay, allowing money to move across borders more quickly while customers continue using…
Key takeaways Kenya is approaching a moment that will shape more than its own crypto market. After years of central bank warnings, a hastily introduced digital asset tax, and an industry that kept growing regardless of what regulators said, the country is finally being forced to decide how cryptocurrencies and stablecoins fit into its financial system. The question isn’t whether crypto should exist in Kenya anymore. Nobody serious is arguing that. What’s actually being fought over is who gets to regulate it, how it should be taxed, and whether the country can protect consumers without strangling the innovation that got…
Stablecoin adoption in Venezuela is set to accelerate as the country’s economic crisis deepens and the bolívar continues to lose value, according to a new report by blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs. The report says worsening macroeconomic conditions, persistent inflation, banking challenges and regulatory uncertainty are pushing more Venezuelans to rely on stablecoins such as USDT for everyday financial transactions rather than speculation. Key takeaways Economic crisis fuels stablecoin adoption in TRM Labs said Venezuelans have spent nearly a decade dealing with hyperinflation, economic sanctions and limited access to reliable banking services. These conditions have increased demand for stablecoins, which…
As Tether loses regulated access to the EU, USDT’s center of gravity is shifting further toward Argentina, Brazil and Mexico — deepening a two-speed global stablecoin market Key takeaways The European Union’s final implementation of the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) on July 1, 2026, is doing more than reshaping Europe’s crypto market. It is also accelerating a shift in where the world’s largest stablecoin, USDT, is most actively used. As major crypto exchanges across the European Economic Area (EEA) remove USDT trading pairs to comply with MiCA, the stablecoin’s centre of gravity is increasingly moving toward Latin America,…
How Q2 2026 data reveals two very different stablecoin economies — one shrinking in DeFi, one expanding across Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia The stablecoin market just gave analysts a clean natural experiment. According to CEX.IO’s Q2 2026 stablecoin report, the broader market went through a contraction — but the pain was not spread evenly. Yield-bearing, DeFi-native tokens got crushed, while stablecoin supply on the chains most associated with remittances, small-dollar payments and frontier-market dollar access kept climbing. That split matters far more than the headline number, and it says a lot about where stablecoins are actually being used…
Europe’s landmark crypto regulation has officially entered a new phase. On July 1, the European Union ended the transitional period for its Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation, requiring crypto asset service providers (CASPs) operating in the bloc to obtain full authorization or cease operations. But even before the ink has dried, Brussels is already asking whether MiCA needs another rewrite. The European Commission has opened consultations to determine whether the framework remains fit for purpose as crypto markets evolve, particularly around sectors such as derivatives that were largely left outside the original legislation. The review reflects how quickly digital…