SS #57 - Tether Targets $500B Valuation and Tokenized Equity

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Good morning!

Apologies for the slight delay in this week's update, but we are back to ensure you receive the latest stablecoin news, led by two major developments: Stablecoin giant Tether is exploring the tokenization of its own equity to provide liquidity for investors, a plan that follows a massive $20B capital raise targeting a staggering $500B valuation; concurrently, credit rating agency Moody's has proposed a new framework for stablecoin ratings that would allow two U.S. dollar-pegged tokens claiming 1:1 backing to receive different ratings based specifically on the quality, type, and maturity of the underlying reserve assets.

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In Today's Edition:

• Headline: Tether Targets $500B Valuation and Tokenized Equity

• Quick Bites: Moody’s Proposes Stablecoin Ratings Framework Focused on Reserve Quality

• Yield of the Week: 25.73 on Contango

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HEADLINE

Tether Targets $500B Valuation and Tokenized Equity

State of play: Tether is exploring the tokenization of its own equity to provide liquidity for investors following a massive planned $20B capital raise that targets a staggering $500B valuation.

• Tether is aiming for a $500B valuation, which would make it one of the most valuable private companies globally, far outstripping its crypto-native peers.

• With no IPO timeline and existing shareholders blocked from selling in the upcoming round, Tether is considering tokenizing shares (possibly via its Hadron unit) to create a secondary exit path.

• The company recently intervened to block a shareholder from selling stock at a "discounted" $280B valuation, signaling an aggressive stance on maintaining its premium pricing power.

What’s Next: Expect Tether to launch a restricted, permissioned on-chain market for its shares. This allows them to control the investor cap table and secondary pricing without the disclosures required by a public listing.

Why it Matters: This is the ultimate RWA case study. If the industry's most profitable company tokenizes its own equity, it moves RWA technology from experimental pilots to high-stakes corporate finance.

Our Take: Tether is engineering a "private IPO" on its own terms. By tokenizing equity, they solve the liquidity problem for early investors while validating their own infrastructure product (Hadron). It is a power move to bypass Wall Street's traditional listing machinery, provided regulators don't intervene.

QUICK BITES

• YO Labs raises $10M.

• RedotPay raises $107M Series B.

• Circle acquires Interop Labs team.

• PayPal applies for Utah industrial bank license.

• Ripple taps Wormhole to expand RLUSD to Layer 2 chains.

• Do Kwon sentenced to 15 years over $40B Terra-Luna collapse.

• StraitsX to debut Singapore and U.S. Dollar stablecoins on Solana.

• Japan's SBI Holdings to launch yen-pegged stablecoin with Startale.

• Visa launches stablecoin settlement in US via Circle's USDC on Solana.

• Gold-backed stablecoins near $4B as safe-haven demand grows onchain.

• Klarna furthers Stripe links, tapping Privy to explore potential crypto wallet.

• Moody’s proposes stablecoin ratings framework focused on reserve quality.

• Exor unanimously rejects Tether's $1.3B bid to acquire Juventus football club.

• Ripple, Circle and BitGo secure conditional approval for US banking charters.

• YouTube now allows US creators to receive payouts in PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin.

• Visa launches 'stablecoins advisory practice' to help banks and businesses build strategies.

• PayPal launches PYUSD Savings Vault on Spark amid push to grow stablecoin deposits to $1B.

• Anchorage snags another stablecoin issuance as it trumpets regulated status as market advantage.

YIELD OF THE WEEK

SMARDEX USDN: 15.4% APY

• The USDN token is designed as a synthetic U.S. dollar, with its value maintained not by a centralized reserve, but through a purely mathematical financial process employing a delta-neutral strategy.

• The protocol operates through a balancing mechanism involving two distinct user groups: the Vault side, which deposits an underlying asset to mint USDN for dollar exposure; and the Long side, which uses collateral and leverage to gain amplified exposure to the underlying asset.

• On the Vault side, the circulating supply of USDN is equivalent in value to the underlying asset deposited into the vault, while the Long side's leveraged positions are comprised of both deposited collateral and additional trading exposure.

Euler Earn USDT: 8.16% APY

• The USDT Earn Vault is under the governance and oversight of the Euler DAO.

• The vault's capital is allocated across two main strategies, Euler Prime and Yield for USDT, with the Prime strategy receiving an allocation that exceeds 60% of the total funds.

• The structure of this specific vault does not include a performance fee.

Contango PT-sUSDE-5FEB2026/USDe on Aave V3: 5.54%-25.73%

• The Contango platform allows users to leverage assets, including USDe, sUSDe, and PT-sUSDE-5FEB2026, to construct the PT-sUSDE-5FEB2026/USDe position on Aave V3, with maximum leverage reaching up to 10.84x for yield optimization.

• Users engaging with the platform can accumulate Contango points.

• The use of the Contango platform for executing this looping position is subject to a service fee.

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Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.