SS #69 - The $100B Rise and Stall of A7A5

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Good morning. While much of the world's focus remains on traditional finance, a major shift is happening on-chain. In just twelve months, the ruble-backed stablecoin A7A5 has facilitated more than $100B in volume, acting as a critical corridor for Russian capital to evade Western sanctions. But the "wild west" era for this asset may be ending; new, coordinated regulatory crackdowns are finally starting to choke the liquidity that once made A7A5 a primary tool for sanctions evasion.

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In Today's Edition:

• Headline: The $100B Rise and Stall of A7A5

• Quick Bites: Revolut Abandons Us Merger Plans to Pursue Own de Novo Banking Licence

• Yield of the Week: 15.10% APY on Trevee

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HEADLINE

State of play: The ruble-pegged stablecoin A7A5 has facilitated over $100B in transactions within its first year, acting as a critical "safe harbor" for Russian entities to bypass Western sanctions before recent regulatory pressure caused activity to stall.

• A7A5 serves primarily as a liquidity bridge, allowing users to move from rubles into USDT without long-term exposure to easily freezable dollar-backed wallets.

• Issued on Ethereum and Tron, the asset saw adoption jump from 14,000 to over 35,500 holders in six months, peaking at $1.5B in daily volume.

• Since July 2025, coordinated U.S., U.K., and EU sanctions have successfully throttled growth, with daily volumes dropping 66% and new issuances effectively ceasing.

What’s Next: Russian entities will likely pivot from public blockchains to private or permissioned ledgers to avoid the prying eyes of blockchain analytics, while Western regulators will escalate pressure on the specific jurisdictions hosting A7A5's issuers.

Why it Matters: This case confirms that non-USD stablecoins are now the primary frontline of financial warfare, proving that while public chains provide transparency for investigators, they also offer the infrastructure for state-level sanctions evasion.

Our Take: A7A5's rise and fall demonstrate that "on-chain" doesn't mean "untouchable." While this confirms stablecoins as superior cross-border tools, their use in geopolitics invites aggressive regulation that threatens the neutrality of decentralized finance.

QUICK BITES

• Circle CEO pegs 40% stablecoin growth as base case.

• USD.AI approves $500M loan for Australian AI startup.

• World Liberty Financial partners with Spacecoin on USD1 satellite DeFi.

• Coinbase lets users borrow up to $1M against staked ether without selling.

• Sui Group charts new course for crypto treasuries with stablecoins and DeFi.

• Revolut abandons US merger plans to pursue own de novo banking licence.

• Bitwise debuts onchain vault via Morpho, targeting up to 6% yield on USDC.

• Stablecoins moved $35T last year but only 1% of it was for 'real world' payments.

YIELD OF THE WEEK

Trevee splUSD: 15.10% APY

• Assets deposited into Trevee Earn Plasma are automatically routed to Midas Vaults, a battle-tested infrastructure currently securing approximately $1.5 billion in assets.

• Upon minting plUSD tokens, the protocol deploys stablecoin collateral into audited farming strategies across established DeFi platforms like Aave and Fluid.

• Profits from these strategies are auto-compounded within the vaults and converted back into stablecoins to mint new plUSD, which is then distributed as rewards to staked plUSD (splUSD) holders.

Noon sUSN: 9.34% APY

• Users can convert USN into sUSN via the Noon dApp or secondary markets, allowing them to participate in the protocol's staking ecosystem while maintaining the option to exit through a cooldown-based unstaking process.

• sUSN holders are entitled to 80% of Noon’s generated protocol returns and receive additional distributions of the $NOON governance token.

• Each sUSN token is fully backed by USN held in a dedicated smart contract; its value appreciates daily as the protocol mints and deposits new USN rewards directly into the staking pool.

GAIB sAID: 13.58% APY

• GAIB’s sAID serves as a yield-bearing liquid staking token that represents a proportional share in a tokenized portfolio of AI infrastructure, such as GPUs and robotics.

• Unlike the AID stablecoin, sAID is not pegged to $1.00; instead, its value fluctuates based on the portfolio's Net Asset Value (NAV), which is updated monthly to reflect income from financing deals and liquidity reserves.

• Built on the ERC-4626 standard, sAID automatically accrues value through an appreciating exchange rate while maintaining the transferability and composability of a standard ERC-20 token for use across decentralized applications.

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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.