For Alex Treece, co-founder of Stablecore, the future of digital assets inside the U.S. banking system is already unfolding, and it’s being driven not by the largest Wall Street institutions, but by the thousands of regional banks, community banks, and credit unions that sit at the center of Americans’ financial lives.
The company, based in Dallas, just finished a $20-million fundraising round, although it was founded only this year. That speed is indicative of the pace of the market.
Why community banks and credit unions suddenly have an edge
Community banks and credit unions’ competitive edge comes down to something simple: they already hold the primary accounts everyone uses.
“Every single client that sends funds to a crypto fintech company, like a Coinbase or anywhere else, is sending it from their bank account,” Treece shared with DisruptionBanking on a video call. “Banks and credit unions have the trust, the consolidated financial accounts, and access to all the other payment rails.”
The problem, until very recently, was that banks were effectively locked out of digital asset markets. Their technology stacks, cores, digital banking platforms, and compliance systems were never built to support blockchain custody, stablecoins or digital asset accounts. Meanwhile, crypto infrastructure has never integrated itself into the banking world. That left an enormous gap.
“That gap is really where Stablecore sits,” Treece explained. “We think of ourselves as this digital asset core. The problem we solve is that banks rely on platforms that cannot support digital assets at all. And on the other side, digital asset infrastructure is a world banks are largely unfamiliar with.”
Tokenized deposits as core banking modernization
Tokenized deposits illustrate the shift underway. They require far more than plugging into a stablecoin API. Banks need custody integrations, wallet management, orchestration of transactions between on-chain and off-chain rails, and exacting ledgering on top of that. They also need the entire experience embedded directly into their digital banking platforms, not spun off into a separate app.
“To actually run a digital asset product inside a bank of any size takes a tremendous amount,” Treece said. “You have to integrate directly into digital banking, integrate directly into the core, orchestrate the transaction flows, handle the custody and wallets. There’s a lot of ledgering you have to do on top of that custody.”
Stablecore functions as the connective tissue between these systems, pre-integrating digital asset rails into major digital banking platforms. That allows institutions, from super-regionals to three-billion-dollar community banks, to launch stablecoin payments, tokenized deposits, digital asset accounts and digital-asset-based lending without internal engineering teams.
Roadmap: crawl, walk, run
“Our largest client is a 200-billion-plus super regional,” Treece said. “But we also have clients much smaller than that. Ultimately, all banks and credit unions will have some type of digital asset product.”
The roadmap, he believes, follows a natural progression: crawl, walk, run. Over the next five years, he expects the majority of U.S. depository institutions to offer core stablecoin capabilities, send, receive, and deposit. The alternative is to watch activity migrate to more agile competitors.
He added, “If they don’t do that, they’re going to lose deposits and transaction flows. Banks don’t want to be left behind.”
That motivation exists on both the retail and commercial sides. Consumers already interact with digital asset accounts at Coinbase and Robinhood, and banks are no longer prohibited from entering the same business. For corporate clients, stablecoins represent a faster, programmable settlement rail for cross-border treasury and merchant operations. Banks that offer them gain a defensive tool for deposit retention and an offensive tool for non-interest income.
Interoperability, costs, and settlement efficiency
Treece rejects the idea that this shift introduces new fragility. Traditional institutions, he argues, already excel at security and are increasingly partnering rather than rebuilding. He noted, “Very few banks are going to build their own custody. They’re working with providers like Coinbase, Anchorage, and Fireblocks. You’re not seeing banks recreate the wheel.”
The Bank of Utah announced its participation in Stablecore’s latest funding round in a press release on the “news” page which read, in part: “Led by Norwest and with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Curql, BankTech Ventures, Bank of Utah, EJF Ventures, Bankers Helping Bankers Fund and the backing of more than 200 limited partner financial institutions and others, this news comes at a crucial time following the passage of the GENIUS Act in July 2025.”
With regulatory barriers lowered and market demand accelerating, Treece expects the next phase of digital asset adoption to be driven not by exchanges, but by the same local institutions Americans have trusted for generations. The difference is that this time, they’ll be running on rails that settle across blockchains, quietly, invisibly, but fundamentally transforming the banking core underneath them.
Author: Tim Tolka, Senior Reporter
#Crypto #Blockchain #DigitalAssets #DeFi
The editorial team at #DisruptionBanking has taken all precautions to ensure that no persons or organizations have been adversely affected or offered any sort of financial advice in this article. This article is most definitely not financial advice.
See Also:
From Fireblocks to Stablecoins | Disruption Banking
What is the GENIUS Act? Banks and Fintechs Rush Towards Stablecoins | Disruption Banking
