Onigiri Weekend Digest: Institutional Lens #4

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This month has been nothing short of transformative. With the series of headlines we’ve seen over the past few weeks, it’s clear that a wave of structural shifts in the payments industry — led by stablecoin developments — is redefining how global commerce operates.

On September 29, Stripe and OpenAI announced that ChatGPT users can now make purchases directly inside the chat window — no website redirects, no payment pages. The next day, Visa unveiled a stablecoin pre-funding pilot, allowing financial institutions to settle cross-border payments using USDC and EURC. Just 24 hours later, Stripe struck again with Open Issuance, a platform that allows any company to issue its own branded stablecoin. Then October 9, reports surfaced that Mastercard and Coinbase were jointly bidding for BVNK — a core stablecoin infrastructure provider — at a valuation between $1.5–2.5 billion, up from just $750 million in December last year.

These moves are not coincidental. In the span of four weeks, Visa, Mastercard, Google, and Stripe all executed major strategic plays in AI payments and stablecoin infrastructure — a degree of synchronization rarely seen in the financial industry. More importantly, these aren’t isolated product announcements; they represent the convergence of AI, stablecoins, and programmable finance into a unified competitive landscape.

The pace of change is accelerating — and this week offered two perfect case studies of how these structural shifts are unfolding in real time. 

Recap this Week's Headliners

SS #39 — Ethena USDe Survives Market Stress, Binance Oracle Failure to Blame
SS #40 — S&P Global Stablecoin Ratings Go Live On-Chain via Chainlink

Both stories capture the same underlying theme: the migration of financial trust and settlement infrastructure from centralized systems to transparent, programmable, on-chain networks.

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🍙Onigiri Take

Stablecoin transaction volume has already surpassed that of Visa and Mastercard combined — a clear signal that stablecoins are no longer niche financial experiments, but are becoming the monetary backbone of the digital economy. With AI agents now capable of initiating payments autonomously, this convergence is accelerating even faster than expected.

The two stories of the week — Ethena’s real-time stress test and S&P’s on-chain debut — represent the two ends of stablecoin evolution: one in operational resilience, the other in institutional trust.

Ethena’s ability to maintain its peg during unprecedented market volatility shows that synthetic, market-neutral dollar systems can perform under real stress. S&P’s integration with Chainlink, meanwhile, introduces an institutional-grade risk framework directly into DeFi, transforming stablecoins from opaque digital tokens into rated financial instruments.

Together, these developments signal the dawn of institutional-grade stablecoin infrastructure — where transparency, liquidity, and verifiability converge to build trust at scale.

The revaluation of BVNK — tripling its worth within a year — further confirms what the market already knows: the stablecoin economy is being repriced. Regulatory clarity has arrived, technological maturity is here, and the demand for programmable dollars is unmistakable. What comes next is pure execution — and a battle for distribution and scale.

🍙Winners & Losers: Institutional Outlook

🍙Under the Hood: When Oracles Break and Ratings Go On-Chain

The Ethena event revealed a simple but vital truth: the future of stablecoin reliability lies in distributed price discovery. Binance’s internal oracle and API dependencies created a bottleneck — a single point of failure — that amplified local volatility.

By contrast, decentralized markets like Curve functioned as designed, maintaining stability through open liquidity and permissionless arbitrage. The episode illustrates that a stablecoin’s “peg” is not a static price, but an equilibrium maintained across multiple venues and mechanisms.

Meanwhile, S&P’s integration with Chainlink reflects the inverse: when oracles are structured correctly, they don’t cause market disruption — they become the foundation for trust. For the first time, on-chain systems can access and automate institutional risk intelligence, transforming static ratings into dynamic governance primitives.

This is the beginning of algorithmic credit governance — an ecosystem where oracles, ratings, and smart contracts operate in concert to manage real-time financial risk.

🍙Stablecoin ≠ Crypto — The Foundation of AI Commerce

Stablecoins have transcended their crypto origins. They are rapidly becoming the currency of the AI economy — the settlement layer for machine-to-machine transactions.

At the protocol layer, Stripe’s ACP, Google’s AP2, and Mastercard’s Agent Pay are each competing to define the rules governing how AI agents initiate, authorize, and complete payments. Whoever sets these standards will control the governance language of AI-native commerce.

At the infrastructure layer, Visa’s stablecoin pilot, Stripe’s Open Issuance, and the BVNK acquisition race reveal a deeper competition: who will own the pipes of programmable money. With stablecoin transaction volumes already exceeding those of Visa and Mastercard combined, the race for control over settlement rails is effectively a race for the monetary sovereignty of the internet.

At the application layer, ChatGPT’s integrated checkout and Google’s AI Mode are reshaping user behavior. As consumers begin purchasing directly within AI environments, traditional merchant websites risk obsolescence. The interface shift means the next era of commerce will be defined not by websites, but by intelligent agents — and whoever powers their payment rails.

🍙Institutional Risks & Unknowns

1. Oracle Fragility: CEXs must adopt multi-source oracles to prevent localized failures.

2. Data Governance: DAOs need frameworks for handling and disputing external ratings like S&P’s.

3. Regulatory Fragmentation: Divergent frameworks (MiCA, MAS, US) could fragment global liquidity.

4. AI Payment Protocol Wars: Competing agent-pay standards risk early fragmentation before interoperability.

5. Liquidity Concentration: The gap between CEX and DEX liquidity could resurface as a systemic risk.

6. Governance Lag: New oversight and data attestation mechanisms will be required for institutional-grade stability.

Onigiri Capital, a blockchain-focused investment fund with an initial target size of US$50 million, is launched by Saison Capital, the venture arm of Japan’s Credit Saison. Onigiri Capital is on a mission to chart the next chapter of finance and invest in seed and Series A blockchain startups in stablecoins, payments, RWAs, DeFi and financial infrastructure. The fund’s strategy emphasizes connecting startups in the US with Asia’s growing digital asset markets.

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