Financial giants like Mastercard, Visa, and Blackrock are deepening their involvement in cryptocurrency, particularly stablecoins and asset tokenization. These moves highlight growing institutional interest amid a busy news cycle in late 2025. Investors are urged to watch these under-the-radar headlines for their potential market impact.
As 2025 draws to a close, institutional adoption in crypto continues apace, even as headlines focus on bitcoin prices, stablecoin issuances, and security breaches like the Bybit hack. Three notable developments underscore this trend.
First, Mastercard is in late-stage talks to acquire Zerohash, a stablecoin infrastructure platform, for nearly $2 billion, though the deal remains unfinalized. This reflects payment processors' prioritization of stablecoins and on-chain payments, with the sector boasting an adjusted annual volume of about $9 trillion, excluding bot-driven activity.
Second, Visa is expanding stablecoin services across four blockchains, supporting four stablecoins convertible into 25 fiat currencies. CEO Ryan McInerney has reaffirmed the company's commitment. Visa already backs USDC, Euro Coin (EURC), and PayPal USD (PYUSD) on multiple chains and has processed $140 billion in stablecoin flows since 2020. These efforts aim to integrate traditional finance with crypto, enabling banks to mint and burn stablecoins on Visa's platform.
Third, Blackrock-backed Securitize is set to go public via a $1.25 billion SPAC merger with a Cantor Fitzgerald affiliate, a firm that services Tether and USDT. Blackrock's spot bitcoin ETF has drawn over $100 billion in assets, and CEO Larry Fink predicts real-world asset (RWA) tokenization could reach $10 trillion. This move bolsters the tokenized ecosystem, vital for DeFi and enterprise blockchain applications.
These advancements suggest stablecoins and tokenization are bridging crypto with mainstream finance, potentially opening new markets despite ongoing cybersecurity concerns.