Stable Sea, a stablecoin liquidity and orchestration company founded by former Block staffers, has emerged from stealth with $3.5 million in funding.

   Kindred Ventures led the round, with participation from Ludlow Ventures, DFS Lab, The Venture Dept, and The Fintech Fund.

   In 2024, the annualised transaction value for the stablecoin industry reached $15.6 trillion, and, with a friendly administration in the White House, there is an expectation that the sector is set for significant growth.

   However, Stable Sea says that the complexity, opaqueness and cost of converting stablecoins to local fiat currency still remains a challenge for companies and a necessity for end users.

   The startup is addressing this with technology that gives companies a seamless way to programmatically convert stablecoins into local fiat across global markets, promising deep liquidity, last-mile payout efficiency, and regulatory certainty.

   Tanner Taddeo, CEO, StableSea, says: "Stablecoins speed up global treasury movements for institutions and improve cross-border payment experiences for fintechs.

   "Yet folks still need local fiat for day-to-day business, product, or operational needs. While the technology exists piecemeal, the infrastructure linking digital and traditional financial systems is still evolving and access to liquidity remains a challenge.

   "At Stable Sea, we equip Fortune 500 companies, fintechs, and startups building in stablecoins with the tools to off-ramp programmatically worldwide — bridging both financial systems and unlocking access to deep, compliant liquidity."

Finextra spoke to CEO of Chetwood Bank, Paul Noble, about the organisation’s new developments, and how market volatility is impacting savings and mortgage products. Noble has a background in private equity and asset management, previously working in big banks, including a role in the acquisition of Tandem Bank.

   Towards the end of 2024, Chetwood Financial rebranded as Chetwood Bank, marking a significant milestone for the organisation. Noble explained how the rebrand was intended to highlight the values of the bank, as well as the launch of their new Easy Access Account for savers.

   “Chetwood has gone through a transition in terms of its proposition and where it sits in the marketplace. It was important, as were implementing a range of new systems and launching new products, that we refreshed the brand to reflect where we are today as an organisation. I think the new branding captures that. ‘No-nonsense banking’ says very clearly what we're about,” Noble stated.

   Advice for savers in the current market

   Noble noted that interest rates on savings have dropped from 6% to around 4.6% in the last 18 months, emphasising the instability of the market. Customers need to be taking advantage of the current rates as the market continues to shift, and as banks adjust prices accordingly. Noble detailed that the current volatility of the market makes savings and retail deposits essential for consumers, and this need is what Chetwood Bank is catering to.

   “We've seen the early announcements in terms of where the trade tariffs may be heading. Whilst not directly impacting the UK, they still will hurt British growth. The further we fragment the world economy, it is going to hurt the UK’s growth capabilities, and in turn impact GDP growth, inflation rates, and ultimately what that means potentially for interest rates and inflation for customers. There's definitely a sense across the economy right now where firms are nervous about growth capability or growth opportunity.”

   Offering advice to savers in these troubling times, Noble commented that consumers should be focusing on resilience and building a nest egg of funds to prepare for the future, ensuring their money is placed in interest-bearing accounts to maximise returns.

   “There's been lots of change in UK governments, US governments, leadership, and how that all fits together. I think we are getting more used to the point that volatility is becoming the norm. To a large extent, it's about how Chetwood can start to look forward and attempt to provide some consistency during that process, during that volatility.”

   Readying for uncertainty

   Noble highlighted that over the past six months, Chetwood has consistently offered some of the highest interest rates on deposits, reinforcing their commitment to stability and reliability.

   Noble stressed that customers need a variety of financial solutions, which is why Chetwood offers a diverse range of savings accounts and mortgage products tailored to different financial needs. He pointed to Moda Mortgages, a borrowing offering released in October last year.

   He pointed out that Chetwood is determined to offer consumers consistency and reliability in a time ripe with fiscal instability, and that their accounts are designed to be easily accessed by those who are digitally savvy, and those who are less so.

   “It's up to the banks to help build the right products to help customers as the environment around them changes. Chetwood has really stepped up in terms of our Easy Access product offering. We've looked at what customers want today, we've listened, and we've designed a product around those needs and we will continue to do so. Banks will need to continue to do that to help consumers reflect what market activities or market conditions are looking like. We want all of our customers to be ready for uncertainty.”

   Chetwood recently appointed Ben Mitchell as their new director of savings, an industry veteran with experience working for SilverRock Bank and Tandem Bank, with the intention of growing and enhancing their savings proposition.

   Shortly after our interview, Chetwood Bank announced a new line of short-, medium- and long-term fixed rate savings products, promising to continue to update its savings and mortgages ranges throughout the coming year as it aims to establish itself as a leading digital challenger bank in the UK.

A US appeals court has overruled the sentence given to the hacker behind the huge 2019 Capital One data breach, saying it was too lenient.

In 2022, Paige Thompson was sentenced to five years’ probation plus time served for wire fraud violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Thompson, a former Amazon employee, accessed information relating to about 100 million American and six million Canadian customers that was sitting on Amazon Web Services servers.

According to her indictment at the time, Thomson created scanning software that allowed her to identify customers of AWS who had misconfigured their firewalls, allowing outside commands to penetrate and access their servers. She then used the access to steal data.

Overruling her sentence two-to-one, the panel of appeal court judges say this was the second largest data breach in the US at the time, and caused "tens of millions of dollars in damage and emotional and reputational harm to numerous individuals and entities".

The hack was costly for Capital One, which was fined $80 million by regulators and paid out another $190 million in customer lawsuits.

The judges held that it was a "clear error for the district court to conclude that Thompson’s actions were not “malicious,” that Thompson did not do anything “bad” before she was caught, and that Thompson was “tortured and tormented about what she did,” given that these findings were not supported by the record."

While the district court was right to take into account the fact that Thompson is transgender and autistic during sentencing, the appeal court says this may not be the sole basis for sentencing.

The case is now being sent back to the district court level for resentencing.