January 9, 2025
Happy New Year!
We're kicking off 2026 with news that hits close to home. The team we featured throughout Season 6 just closed a $250M raise at a $1.95B valuation.
The thesis we spent a whole season unpacking is playing out faster than expected.
More on that below.
This week we also cover:
Rain's $250M Series C and what it signals for stablecoin card infrastructure
Contributor articles from Ash at Axal and Bryce from Turnkey
Plus: Jupiter launches JupUSD, Barclays makes its first stablecoin investment, NASDAQ joins Canton Network as a super validator and Wyoming’s FRNT stable token goes live on Solana.
Have a story we should cover or have a project to share? Reply to this email. We're building our editorial calendar with input from builders, investors, and operators like you.
Rain Secures $250M Series C at $1.95B Valuation
The investment, led by ICONIQ with participation from Sapphire Ventures, Dragonfly, Bessemer, Galaxy Ventures, and Lightspeed, marks one of the largest funding rounds in stablecoin infrastructure to date, just months after their $58m fundraise announced in August of 2025.
Rain has grown 30x in active cards and 38x in payment volume over the past year. They're now processing over $3B annually and operating in over 150 countries as a Visa principal member. We've had two conversations with the Rain team over the past several months.
Farooq (Rain CEO) and Cuy Sheffield from Visa walked through how Rain authorizes stablecoin transactions in 200 milliseconds while settling with Visa 7 days a week.
Charles (Rain’s CTO) broke down their LATAM expansion in Mexico City and explained why "dollar cards" are becoming top-of-wallet in emerging markets.
News of the Week
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Top Stories
Digging into our past episodes to surface insights from founders that that are packed with value and too good to miss.
Authored by Bryce Ferugson, CEO and Co-Founder of Turnkey
From audits and assurances to mathematical certainty: why stablecoin infrastructure must be verifiable, not just compliant
Audits and compliance frameworks give assurance, not proof. In stablecoin infrastructure, that distinction is now fatal.
Most providers still operate as black boxes. SOC 2 reports and security diagrams describe controls on paper, but offer no way to independently verify that a specific policy was enforced on a specific transaction in real time. At stablecoin scale, point-in-time audits collapse under the weight of instant, irreversible value transfer.
Authored by Ash Ahmed, Founder of Axal
Tokenization turns savings from a bank-controlled liability into a personalized, programmable yield engine where interest flows to the depositor, not the institution.
Deposits become bank assets, not yours. Banks buy T-bills, capture the yield, and return the minimum. Fintechs improved the interface, not the rails. Tokenization changes the architecture.
Onchain savings turn deposits into user-owned, programmable capital. Yield flows directly to the depositor, across T-bills, gold, and DeFi, in one place. Stablecoins make it simple: digital money with transparent yield.
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