It’s been a tough week for the crypto market, folks. We saw both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) take a tumble, and the CoinDesk 20 – which gives you a snapshot of 80% of the market – dropped by 7% since Monday. Ouch.

But here’s a twist: while speculative crypto assets were feeling the chill, less volatile options were buzzing with activity. Stablecoins, in particular, really stole the show this week.

On the regulatory front, things are heating up. The U.S. House just introduced their version of a stablecoin bill, following the Senate’s lead from last week when their version passed committee – Jesse Hamilton has the details. And get this, Wyoming, aka “The Blockchain State,” wants to get in on the stablecoin action too! They’re exploring launching their own and are currently testing it out on Avalanche, Solana, and Ethereum, as Kris Sandor reported.

In other stablecoin news, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), you know, the financial project backed by Donald Trump and his family, officially announced the arrival of their stablecoin, USD1, this week. Don Trump Jr. himself even touted the launch at the DC Blockchain Summit.

And speaking of big players, Fidelity Investments, an early adopter of crypto in the traditional finance world, is reportedly in the final stages of launching its own stablecoin. This move is said to be part of their bigger strategy to dive into the emerging market for tokenized bonds, according to Jamie Crawley’s reporting.

Meanwhile, Circle, the company behind the second-largest stablecoin, USDC, has finally gotten the green light to operate in Japan! They’re teaming up with Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings for this venture, as Sam Reynolds reported.

Switching gears to Europe, Ian Allison from our team there snagged an interesting scoop: Sam Altman’s World Network is in talks with Visa about connecting on-chain card features to a self-custody crypto wallet. Definitely one to watch.

In personnel moves, Will Canny learned from a source that Sam Hill, the COO of Zodia Custody, has stepped down and is heading back to the traditional finance world. Will managed to confirm the move with the Standard Chartered-backed company and got the story out before anyone else – a win for the team!

And Will wasn’t done there. The very next day, he broke another exclusive story, this time about a wave of senior staff departures at crypto prime broker FalconX – something no one else had reported. On the flip side, BlackRock seems to be going in the opposite direction, expanding their digital assets team in the U.S.

We also kept our eye on MicroStrategy, the company that really pioneered the idea of corporate Bitcoin treasuries. Christine Lee sat down for a lengthy two-hour interview with their executive chairman, Michael Saylor. In the interview, Saylor shared his vision of Bitcoin becoming a $200 trillion asset and even jokingly (we think?) promised to burn Bitcoin in pursuit of immortality.

MicroStrategy has poured around $33 billion into Bitcoin so far, using a mix of stock offerings. James Van Straten broke down the nuances of their different fundraising methods for buying Bitcoin. And Tom Carreras followed up with a really insightful piece exploring the potential risks for MSTR stockholders from Saylor’s all-in Bitcoin strategy.

Elsewhere in the regulatory world, the SEC continued to drop enforcement actions against crypto companies, with Immutable being the latest example, as Cheyenne Ligon reported. However, in a bit of an odd situation, the case involving Unicoin is still ongoing, much to the apparent frustration of their CEO.

All in all, it felt like a relatively typical week in crypto – more steady progress than earth-shattering events. But then, out of left field, the former president’s media company announced they’re launching their own ETFs and ETPs with Crypto.com! Just goes to show, crypto still knows how to keep us on our toes.