Mastercard Expands Stablecoin Settlement Infrastructure

Block Scholes is an FCA-regulated institutional crypto derivatives analytics platform. Live data, IV surfaces, and backtesting available via blockscholes.com.

Recent Research from Block Scholes

• Tokenised Markets on Bitget UEX: How Traders Are Utilising 24/7 Real-World Assets For Real Time Macro Hedging
• Block Scholes x Panoptic: Bridging The Onchain Convexity Gap
• Volatility Report: February 2026
• 2026 – the year of RWA perps
  

In Today's Note

• BTC and ETH sold off sharply, with BTC falling to $65K and ETH trading below $1,900 as ETF outflows and Strategy’s recent BTC sale continued to weigh on sentiment.
• The selloff triggered $1.8B in liquidations, while short-dated BTC and ETH implied volatility rose sharply and put skew moved further in favour of downside protection.
• Coinbase Ventures backed Ethena, while Mastercard expanded stablecoin settlement options and Galaxy launched an institutional OTC prediction markets desk.

Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves

‍

Macro & Markets

• After falling below $70K at the start of the week, Bitcoin has continued its selloff over the past 24 hours, falling to a low of $65K. It now trades almost 50% below its October 2025 $126K all-time high.  
• Sentiment has weakened against the backdrop of Strategy Inc, the largest Bitcoin DAT, selling a small portion of its crypto holdings as well as the longest spot ETF outflow streak since launch. 
• ETH equally plunged lower, down 5.5% over the past 24 hours and currently trading below $1,900. 

• The sharp selloff in BTC and ETH has only widened their divergence from US equities, which continue to record new highs. 
• Renewed optimism around artificial intelligence has continued to drive momentum on Wall Street, with large-tech shares leading the way. The S&P 500 hit 7,609 and closed 0.13% higher yesterday — that marks the index’s ninth consecutive day of closing higher, its longest run since May 2025. 
• The Nasdaq-100 also closed up 0.48%, bringing its YTD performance to 21%. That stands in stark contrast to BTC and ETH which are down 23% and 37% respectively, over the same period. 

• The spot price selloff has certainly left its mark on derivative markets. 
• According to Coinglass, $1.8B of positions have been liquidated over the past 24 hours, across major exchanges, with long positions accounting for  just under $1.6B of that total. 
• The last time we saw the forced deleveraging of this many positions was on Feb 5, 2026 ($2B in liquidations) when BTC had its largest single-day selloff since the collapse of the FTX exchange in 2022. 

• Short-dated implied volatility, which only a week ago had lingered around year-to-date lows, has jumped up significantly in both BTC and ETH, as traders now expect large moves in spot price in the near term. 
• 7-day BTC IV shot higher from a low of 28% last Monday to 48% earlier this morning, resulting in a now inverted term structure of volatility (when near-dated options price in higher vol expectations than tenors further out the curve). 
• That marks the highest implied vol we’ve seen 7-day BTC options trade with since early April.

• Similarly, ETH’s term structure of volatility has also inverted with short-dated IV jumping from a YTD low of 36% to as high as 58%. 
• Volatility smiles are now aggressively in favour of OTM put options too — put-call skew for 7-day BTC and ETH options is currently -7.2% and -8.1% as traders show a willingness to pay higher premiums for downside protection. 

• President Trump continued to maintain his optimistic stance for a peace deal with Iran yesterday, disputing reports from Iranian state media that said talks with Washington had been suspended due to the fighting in Lebanon. 
• Yesterday Trump said the two sides have been “continuously” having conversations, including “today.”
• Speaking to ABC News late Monday, he also said that a memorandum of understanding to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could be finalised as soon as “next week.”

• Further supporting sentiment in US equities, the BLS’ JOLTS report for April showed that job openings in the US increased to the highest level since May 2024. 
• Available positions, a measure for labour demand, rose by 731,000 ⁠to 7.618M by the last day of April, exceeding market forecasts of 6.88M. 
• The report did however show some signs of weakness — the quits rate, which measures the percentage of people voluntarily leaving their jobs each month, therefore acting as a proxy for labour market confidence, fell to 1.9%, matching the lowest since 2020.

DeFi / Web3 / Altcoins / Crypto3

• Coinbase Ventures has backed Ethena through an open-market purchase of ENA, signalling deeper ties between the two firms, according to their post on X.
• The partnership is expected to focus on onchain finance and savings products, including USDC-linked integrations.
• Ethena’s products could soon become available to Coinbase’s 100m+ user base for the first time, giving its synthetic dollar ecosystem a major distribution boost.
• ENA rallied after the announcement, as markets reacted to the prospect of broader adoption through one of crypto’s largest exchanges.

• Mastercard, the global payments network, said it will expand its settlement infrastructure to allow issuers, acquirers and payment partners to settle transactions intraday, on weekends and holidays, with the option to use regulated stablecoins alongside traditional fiat rails.
• The update will enable settlement using USDC, PYUSD, USDG, USDP, RLUSD and SoFiUSD across supported blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, Base, Polygon, Arbitrum, Canton and XRPL, with ARQ, CBW Bank, Cross River, Lead Bank and Nuvei among the first participants.

• Galaxy Digital, has launched an institutional OTC prediction markets trading desk, expanding its trading business into event-contract markets and enabling large investors to execute prediction market positions off-exchange.
• The offering initially supports contracts listed on Kalshi and Polymarket, with Galaxy acting as principal counterparty and allowing clients to pair prediction market exposure with hedges across equities, commodities and other asset classes.
• Galaxy said it has already facilitated a $10M trade with crypto hedge fund Arca tied to the outcome of the CLARITY Act, providing institutional-scale liquidity for a market that has historically been dominated by retail traders.

This Week's Calendar

Charts of the Day