- Frontera by Bando
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- 🌎 Visa Just Validated Our Thesis
Real problems. Real solutions. Real data. This is Frontera.
Your weekly dose of data-driven crypto insights from the edges of the world. Trusted by leaders at Stripe, Paradigm, Binance, the Ethereum Foundation, and more.
This is where you start if you’re building, investing, or scaling in frontier markets.
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🇲🇽 More On Bando Soon…
Last week’s post, about what we're cooking over at Bando got decent traction on LinkedIn and a lot of interest from you guys.
So if you haven't read it, I'd recommend this week you start there.
Building upon what I wrote there, the team is now in the lab scheming up our newest feature, and it's a good one. A good two, or maybe even three.
We are possibly even more locked in than ever before. So prepare for an update on that soon.
Now we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming here at Frontera. It's good to be back.
🌎 Visa Just Validated Our Thesis
On March 25, Dune Analytics and Visa released “Beyond Dollarization,” the most comprehensive institutional report on non-USD stablecoins to date.
It goes in depth into local stablecoins across payments, FX, treasury (đź‘€), and DeFi with deep onchain data because, well, it was written by Dune.
Diving headfirst into the data:
Non-USD stablecoin supply tripled to $1.2B since January 2023, growing at 300% vs. 130% for USD stablecoins over the same window.
Holder addresses went from 40,000 to 1.2M, a 30x jump.
Monthly transfer volume hit $10B, up 1,600% from $600M.
On the first read three key points caught our attention.
Excluding EURC, which represents 80% of the total non-USD stablecoin supply, activity consists of payments, remittances, payroll, and treasury flows. I know I'm taking a good chunk out for this insight, but it basically means that they are indeed being used as functional money.
The velocity of these tokens is dramatically outpacing supply, with transfer volume increasing 16x, so people are spending them.
The second point is that the strongest growth is happening in countries with mature financial systems and clear regulation. The euro area clearly leads, accelerated by MiCA compliance. Brazil is booming alongside PIX integration and new Central Bank resolutions. Japan is growing post-PSA reform.
Regulatory clarity is a growth hack.
And the third and most important point, is we were right again. As stated above this is a collaboration between Duna and Visa. Dune wrote the report, and Visa commissioned it.
Which means that Visa, widely considered the world's largest payment network by volume ($16.7T) and market capitalization ($582B), is bullish on local stablecoins.
Almost exactly a year ago, we made this case in an article called The Local Stablecoin Thesis, where we argued that local stablecoins are an overlooked, inevitable market with nowhere to go but up.
From the Stablecoin Sandwich to the Finchain essay, we’ve documented the infrastructure being built to make local currencies work onchain. And we'll continue to do so because we ain't seen nothin yet.
It could go unnoticed if I say, but Visa, this is big.
🪙 Stablecoins
The latest Clarity Act draft proposed restricting stablecoin yields by prohibiting interest on held balances and allowing only activity-based rewards, which made Circle (CRCL) crash 17%.
Mastercard agreed to buy stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK for up to $1.8B, the largest stablecoin acquisition ever, connecting onchain rails to its global payments network across 130+ countries.
XFX, founded by three ex-Bitso employees, raised a $17M Series A led by Castle Island Ventures (with Haun and Coinbase Ventures) to build high-speed fiat-to-stablecoin FX settlement for USD, MXN, and COP. Local stablecoins, baby.
🇦🇷 Argentina
🇦🇷 Argentina bans Polymarket nationwide
A Buenos Aires court ordered ISPs to block Polymarket and instructed Apple and Google to remove the app, calling it a “concealed online betting system” after $91K in suspicious trades appeared before Argentina’s inflation data release.
🇰🇷 South Korea
South Korea’s FSC reported $60B (₩90T) in crypto left local exchanges for overseas platforms and private wallets in H2 2025, up 14% from H1, as exchange profits dropped 38% despite user accounts growing to 11.1M.
🇧🇹 Bhutan
Bhutan’s sovereign wallet transferred 519.7 BTC ($36.7M) to QCP Capital-linked wallets, its third major March move, bringing holdings down 66% from peak to 4,453 BTC ($315M) as the country monetizes its hydropower-mined reserves.