Circle has unveiled two partnerships to embed stablecoins settlement into mainstream finance. New deals with Mastercard and Finastra aim to expand USD Coin’s role to merchants and banks worldwide. Mastercard said on Wednesday that it will enable acquirers and merchants in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EEMEA) to settle transactions in USDC and Euro…

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a US financial regulator, is integrating a financial surveillance tool developed by stock exchange company Nasdaq in a bid to overhaul its 1990s infrastructure. Nasdaq’s software is focused on detecting market abuse, including insider trading activity and market manipulation in equities and crypto markets, Tony Sio, head of regulatory strategy and innovation at…

Google Cloud’s head of Web3 strategy used a LinkedIn post to share new details on the company’s in-development layer-1 blockchain, the Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL). Rich Widmann described the blockchain as the result of “years of R&D at Google,” designed to be credibly neutral and compatible with Python-based smart contracts. According to Widmann, GCUL is meant…