Morning minute: Western Union chooses Solana for Stablecoin

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analyzes and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s most important news:

• Crypto Majors Down 1-2% Today Ahead of FOMC; BTC at $113,200
• Bitwise SOL ETF breaks 2025 record for launch day volume
• Western Union announced stablecoin on Solana
• MetaMask introduces a reward-packed season 1 with $30 million up for grabs
• Monad begins a three-day airdrop reveal campaign

💸 Western Union chooses Solana for Stablecoin

The largest money transfer company in the world is going on-chain.

And it didn’t work Ethereum or Bitcoin.

📌What happened

Western Union, the 173-year-old global money transfer giant, just announced it is launching a stablecoin on Solana.

Western Union will issue a US dollar stable currency called USDPT, built on Solanawith custodial provided by Anchorage Digital.

The rollout will begin in 2026 and will target hundreds of millions of users in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, regions where stablecoins already dominate real economic use.

The stablecoin will connect directly to Western Union’s existing licensed fiat rails and more than 4,500 corridors, allowing people to move dollars across borders without banks, ACH delays, or predatory FX fees.

And here’s the problem: Western Union says it plans to continue supporting cash-in and cash-out locations, essentially making it a global on/off ramp for Solana.

🗣️ What they say

“We’ve been connecting people for 175 years and moving $150 billion a year. Digital assets are the next evolution. We looked at alternatives and decided Solana was the right choice.” – Devin McGranahan, CEO of Western Union

🧠Why it matters

The world’s largest money transfer company is getting straight into stablecoins.

This is huge for both Solana and stablecoins.

Solana just received validation from a major payments player on a global scale.

Payments are the largest use case for cryptocurrencies today, and Solana is now the anchor for the largest money transfer migration project in history.

As for stablecoins, they are clearly eating the world, and Western Union is capitulating.

Global remittances are an $860 billion market. If even 10% of these flows go to stablecoins over the next two years, that’s an annual on-chain volume of $86 billion.

Largely on Solana.

Stablecoins are the future – and Solana is part of that future.

A very nice narrative victory, on the same day that Bitwise’s Solana ETF set the record for the highest volume for any new ETF launch in 2025.

I wonder if BlackRock is watching…

🌎 Macrocrypto and memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my attention:

• Crypto majors are in the red ahead of the current FOMC; BTC -1% at $113,100, ETH -3% at $4,000, BNB -2% at $1,115, SOL even at $199
• TRUMP (+19%), Pi (+14%) and AERO (+6%) were the leaders
• Trumpmedia introduced a new prediction market called Truth Predict
• Visa will start collecting payments into four different stablecoins distributed across four blockchains, with the option to convert them back into fiat,
• Circle’s Arc blockchain went live in testnet
• BlackRock’s tokenization platform Securitize shared plans to go public via a $1.25 billion SPAC
• Ethereum The “Fusaka” upgrade has completed the final test billed as the key to L2 scaling; main net next
• TeraWulf stock prices rose as Google-backed AI expansion miner focused on AI infrastructure; shares pop
• Indiana police In an unusual bust, 1,000 stolen BTC miners and $75,000 worth of frozen turkeys were recovered

In corporate bonds/ETFs

In Memes

💰 Token, airdrop and protocol tracker

Here’s an overview of the top token, protocol and airdrop news of the day:

• Metamask introduced their Season 1 rewards with $30 million up for grabs over the next 90 days; users must update to the latest MM version on iOS to participate
• MegaETHs the public ICO has already raised over $700 million with just over 1 day to go (15x oversubscribed)
• Polymarkt teased its US launch will be coming within a few weeks with a focus on sports
• Monad’s airdrop claim is revealed went live for day 1 of a three-day event, where recipients could see how many tokens they can claim from TGE
• Myriad launched on BNB with new BNB focused markets + automated markets that resolve every 5 minutes based on price action

🚚 What’s happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines of the day in NFTs:

• NFT Leaders were flat in the day; Punks even at 39 ETH, Pudgy +1% at 6.95, BAYC -1% at 6.5 ETH; Hypurr’s -1% at 1,190 HYPE
• Kite (+17%) were a notable mover
• The NFT strategies were red and PNKSTR fell 15%
• Doodles announced a creepy Telegram drop featuring Universal Monsters