March 13, 2026
This week:
The Big Story: KAST raises $80 million at a $600 million valuation, led by QED Investors. We brought QED on Thursday's Stabledash Live to break it down.
Stabledash Live: QED Investors, Canton Network Co-founder, LayerZero CBO, ex-Shift4 Head of Crypto, Cryptio, Omnia, Mega Matrix, Polygon Labs
Stableminded: Season 7 dropped its final two episodes back to back. New season coming soon.
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KAST Raises $80 Million
KAST closed an $80 million round at a $600 million valuation, co-led by QED Investors. QED was founded by Capital One co-founder Nigel Morris, now on their eighth generation fund with 31 unicorns across the portfolio. Not a crypto-native fund placing a bet. One of the most established fintech investors in the world saying stablecoin banking is ready.
We first covered KAST over a year ago on Stableminded Season 2. Raagulan Pathy has been on twice since, and we sat down with him again at Solana Breakpoint 2025 for a full episode on the roadmap: 150 engineers, KAST for Business, yield-bearing stablecoins through USDK, and global payroll to 100+ countries.
On Thursday's Stabledash Live, Adams Conrad and Sandeep Patil from QED walked through why they led the round, how KAST fits into QED's broader fintech thesis, and where stablecoin-native banking sits against Ramp, Brex, and the incumbents.
Stabledash Live This Week
Thursday (Mar 12)
QED Investors (Adams Conrad, Sandeep Patil) on the KAST $80M raise and where stablecoin banking fits in a portfolio with 31 fintech unicorns.
Digital Asset / Canton Network (Yuval Rooz, Co-Founder) on institutional blockchain infrastructure. The network behind Goldman Sachs, DTCC, and HSBC. We've now had both co-founders on. Watch the segment
LayerZero (Simonas Baksys, CBO) on powering 71% of the world's stablecoin cross-chain transfers. $1 billion of PYUSD moved in the last 30 days. Watch the segment
Cryptio (Antoine, CEO) announced their $45M Series B on the day of the show. Eight years building crypto accounting infrastructure for issuers like Circle, Agora, and auditors like Deloitte and EY. Watch the segment
Tuesday (Mar 10)
Cyclops (Alex Wilson, ex-Head of Crypto at Shift4) just launched with an $8M raise from Castle Island, F-Prime, and Shift4 to build stablecoin middleware for payments companies. Watch the segment
Omnia (Davis Hart, CEO) is bringing stablecoin capabilities to community and regional banks. Incubated at Solana Labs, recently partnered with Infinant. Watch the segment
Mega Matrix (Colin Butler, Head of Global Financing) on building a digital asset treasury strategy focused on stablecoins. Watch the segment
Polygon Labs on the $250 million Coinme and Sequence acquisitions and the Open Money Stack for global stablecoin payments. Watch the segment
Catch Up on Stableminded
The Blockchain Institutions Will Actually Use
Eric co-founded Digital Asset and spent 11 years architecting the Canton Network. The blockchain behind Goldman Sachs, DTCC, and HSBC. Canton's "inside out" approach, privacy as a threshold issue, and why composability is the singular innovation of blockchain. Pair this with Yuval's appearance on Thursday's live show for the full picture from both co-founders.
Making Stablecoins Work at Internet Scale
Robert helped design USDC at Circle, spent four years at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston building Project Hamilton with MIT engineers, and launched Radius backed by Lightspeed. Mainnet went live March 5 at A Very Stable Conference. Stablecoin infrastructure built for machine-to-machine payments at internet scale.
New season coming soon. Stay tuned.
News Picks of the Week
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Wrap Up
You can dive deeper into all of these stories and more on Stabledash, your single place to navigate the stablecoin industry online.
We'll be here every step of the way to help you understand the shifts, the risks, and the opportunities ahead.
Until next time,
Stay stable
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