Hey everyone,
Luca Prosperi is CEO and co-founder of M0. I caught up with him to discuss the state of stablecoin infrastructure in 2026, from bank pushback on yield to the shift toward wallet-centric finance.
I first spoke with Luca about two years ago, before there was much regulatory clarity around stablecoins or serious talk of things like agentic payments.
Since then M0 has raised $100 million across three funding rounds and built out infrastructure partnerships with PayPal, MoneyGram, and MetaMask.
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Bits & Borders is Presented by Sumsub
Sumsub recently released its fourth annual State of the Crypto Industry report. The new research reveals how digital asset companies are balancing fraud prevention, regulatory pressure, and user experience as they scale in 2026. This report draws on Sumsub’s internal data from 2024–2025 and insights from 300 crypto companies surveyed outside Sumsub’s customer base.
Some of the key global highlights include:
Crypto firms are moving away from ‘growth at all costs’, with 74% now prioritizing verification accuracy over user onboarding speed (39%).
Despite fraud rates remaining flat at 2.2% from 2024 to 2025, crypto firms operate in a structurally riskier environment where targeted, automated and AI-driven attacks are the new normal.
Over half (55%) of surveyed companies confirmed they experienced fraud at least once in 2025, with 15% unsure if it happened or not–emphasizing the lag between detection capabilities and growing fraud sophistication.
Key Takeaways:
M0 has raised $100 million across three funding rounds since launching in 2022, and now employs roughly 50 people, mostly smart contract engineers.
Prosperi expects stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits to eventually converge, with tokenized deposits potentially serving as collateral for payment stablecoins.
He agrees with banks that stablecoins are a structurally superior technology, but rejects their push for regulatory protection, calling it a losing strategy that ignores a Darwinian shift already underway.
Despite heavy investment and a wave of partnership announcements, Prosperi describes 2026 as a “lateral moving year” for stablecoins, with institutional use cases still stuck in proof-of-concept and crypto market liquidity down since October 2025.
M0’s partnerships with PayPal, MoneyGram, and MetaMask reflect a shared pattern: brands want granular control over their own tokenized money rather than relying on USDC, USDT, or white-label providers.
Prosperi expects local-currency stablecoins, not on-chain FX, to be the biggest trend of the next two years, with M0 already fielding requests from euro and yen clients.
I enjoyed this conversation with Luca and I hope you do as well. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
Have a great weekend everybody.
-AWS
