It was a tough week for cryptocurrency prices, as both BTC and ETH experienced declines. The CoinDesk 20 index, which covers 80% of the market, dropped 7% since the beginning of the week.

Despite the bearish trend in speculative assets, stablecoins saw significant volume this week. The U.S. House introduced a stablecoin bill, following a Senate version that was approved by committee the previous week. Wyoming, also known as “The Blockchain State,” is exploring the creation of its own stablecoin and is currently testing the concept on Avalanche, Solana, and Ethereum.

In other news, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a financial protocol backed by Donald Trump and his family, announced the launch of its stablecoin (USD1) this week. Additionally, Fidelity Investments, a pioneer in traditional finance innovation in the crypto space, is in the final stages of launching its own stablecoin as part of a strategy to enter the tokenized bond market.

Circle, the issuer of the second-largest stablecoin (USDC), obtained a license to operate in Japan in partnership with local heavyweight SBI Holdings.

In Europe, Sam Altman’s World Network is in talks with Visa to link on-chain card features to a self-custody crypto wallet.

A senior staff member, Sam Hill, at Zodia Custody, has left the company and is returning to a role in traditional finance. Additionally, there has been a wave of senior staff departures at crypto prime broker FalconX.

The SEC continued its enforcement actions against crypto companies, with Immutable being the latest target. Meanwhile, the investigation involving Unicoin remains open, much to the CEO’s frustration.

The week also saw updates on MicroStrategy’s investment in bitcoin, with the company muscling up about $33 billion in bitcoin through various stock offerings. The SEC’s continued scrutiny of the industry was highlighted, and the surprise announcement of Trump Media launching its ETFs and ETPs with Crypto.com added an element of unpredictability to the week.