Tech giant Sony’s online banking unit said it received conditional approval to establish a US national trust bank subsidiary to support the issuance and management of dollar-denominated stablecoins.
The planned entity, Connectia Trust, National Association, will be based in New York and capitalized with $40 million, according to a Sony Financial Group announcement. Sony Bank will own 100% of the subsidiary.
The move comes as stablecoin usage is on the rise. Transaction volume hit a record $1.79 trillion last month, up 63% from May and more than double the year-ago level, according to Visa’s onchain dashboard.
With dollar-pegged tokens accounting for more than 99% of the total market cap of $311 billion, it could be a tough market to crack, according to DeFiLlama data.
Not only do market leaders USDT and USDC alone account for about $250 billion of the total, competition is increasing. A wave of potential rivals have also won conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for federal trust-bank structures linked to stablecoin companies, including Stripe-owned Bridge, Paxos and Circle Internet.
