Immy Dorse 
Well, it seems the money is flowing back into stablecoins. After a pretty quiet period, venture investors have just put nearly a hundred million dollars into two separate infrastructure startups. That’s a significant vote of confidence, I think, especially considering the market’s recent volatility.
Major Funding for Programmable Money Platforms
First up is M0, a Swiss company. They announced a $40 million Series B round on Thursday, led by Polychain and Ribbit Capital. They only started up last year, but they’re already working with some big names like MetaMask. Their whole thing is giving developers the tools to create their own custom stablecoins with specific rules baked right in.
Then there’s Rain, a U.S.-based firm. They pulled in even more—$58 million from backers like Sapphire Ventures and Samsung Next. Their focus is a bit different; they’re building tools for banks to issue their own regulated stablecoins. It’s a different approach to the same basic idea.
This all happened on the same day the total stablecoin market cap hit a new record: $280 billion. That’s a staggering amount of money sitting in these digital assets.
What Makes This “Programmable” Anyway?
Okay, so all stablecoins are technically programmable because they’re on blockchains. But usually, they just act like simple digital cash. What makes M0 and Rain different is that they’re building the programmability to be a core feature, not just an afterthought.
Think of it like this: instead of a government handing out cash subsidies that can be spent anywhere, you could have digital money that can only be used for groceries. Or for paying employees in specific locations. The rules are enforced by the code itself.
M0 provides the rails for apps to issue their own branded stablecoins with these embedded rules. One of their clients, a gaming company called Playtron, is already using an “M0-powered Game dollar” in its handheld system.
Rain is more about the movement of money. They’ve partnered with another company to enable real-time, compliant payroll across over 100 different jurisdictions. They’re also expanding to work on multiple blockchain networks.
Governments Are Experimenting, Too
This isn’t just a private sector frenzy. Governments are deep into testing this stuff. Kazakhstan has been running pilots with its digital currency, the digital tenge. They used it to fund a rail link to China, programming the money to only release payments when certain construction milestones were met. They say it adds transparency.
India’s central bank is also expanding its digital rupee pilot to include programmable features. The goal there seems to be improving accessibility and tailoring how payments flow.
Of course, this makes some people nervous. There are concerns, voiced by some financial analysts, that this could lead to a kind of “weaponization of money,” where spending is controlled and surveilled.
But the experimentation continues. Circle recently added programmable features for its USDC stablecoin on the Solana network. And another startup, TradeOS, just debuted a platform for global trade that ties stablecoin payments to real-world outcomes verified by proofs.
It feels like we’re watching a new layer of financial infrastructure get built, piece by piece. And a lot of people are betting big money that it’s the future.