Sony applies for US stablecoin license for potential PlayStation and Crunchyroll use

So Sony apparently woke up one day and said, “Hey, what if we didn’t hand Visa and Mastercard a casual 2% of every PlayStation skin, Crunchyroll subscription, and anime gacha purchase?” And boom—according to Nikkei, they’re rolling out their very own USD-backed stablecoin.

Here’s the rundown:

It’s a fully regulated US stablecoin (yeah, with actual dollar reserves: cash + treasuries).

Issued by Sony Bank through its US sub, Connectia Trust, which is applying for a US stablecoin license.

Runs on Soneium, Sony’s shiny new Ethereum L2—allegedly fast and cheap enough to not make you cry at checkout.

They’ve teamed up with Bastion for the mint/burn/liquidity/compliance grind. Sony even tossed money into Bastion’s $15M round alongside Coinbase Ventures, a16z crypto, Samsung Next, etc.

Bastion is already doing $410M/month in stablecoin volume across ETH, Base, and Solana.

The catch:

You’ll probably need to KYC to make a wallet (lmao, imagine verifying your identity to buy anime merch). After that, swipe your card, get SonyCoins™ (not the official name, but it should be), and spend across PlayStation, Sony Music, Crunchyroll, or whatever other Sony empire outpost you live in.

Bonus: Under the US Genius Act, stablecoins can earn native interest—so theoretically, Sony’s coin could sit in DeFi generating yield while you’re AFK grinding trophies.

But the real alpha?

Sony pays 1.5–2% on card fees right now. With PlayStation players spending $15B/year, that’s roughly $200M in fees they could avoid. That’s $200M of “Why give Visa money when we can just build a blockchain?” energy.

Honestly, if every mega-corp follows this playbook, the next bull run might just be powered by “We’re tired of paying Mastercard” innovation.

Source: https://www.blockchaingamer.biz/news/41003/sony-us-stablecoin-license-playstation-crunchyroll-use/