Solana Ventures leads $18M round for Squads' stablecoin treasury platform

By TheStreet Roundtable

20 days ago

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SOL

COO

The move toward "money as software"

For years, businesses were forced to build on top of legacy banks to access payment rails. However, the rise of stablecoins — digital tokens pegged to currencies like the U.S. dollar — has turned money into software.

The numbers tell the story. The global stablecoin market cap hit $315 billion in Q1 2026, with total transaction volume surpassing $28 trillion in the same quarter — a 51% jump from the prior period. In 2025 alone, stablecoins processed $33 trillion in global transactions. Business-to-business stablecoin payments surged from under $100 million per month in early 2023 to over $6 billion per month by mid-2025.

This allows companies to separate their treasury and payments from traditional banks for the first time. The market has responded quickly to this change.

Significant industry moves, such as the $1.1 billion purchase of Bridge by Stripe and the $1.8 billion acquisition of BVNK by Mastercard — nearly $3 billion in stablecoin infrastructure M&A in under a year — highlight how rapidly this infrastructure is becoming mainstream. A Citi GPS report projects stablecoins could handle 5% to 10% of all cross-border payments by 2030, equivalent to $2.1 to $4.2 trillion annually.

Altitude leverages this shift by holding business treasuries in stablecoins, allowing funds to settle instantly and at a low cost 24/7.

Growth and performance in a new market

Since launching in December 2025, Altitude has processed more than $200 million in payments for a variety of users, including exporters, global agencies, crypto-native companies, and cross-border remote teams.

These customers utilize the platform for its instant settlement, multi-currency support, and programmable controls.

"As we scaled, treasury and payments turned into an operational headache. Complexity and fees kept compounding. Altitude removed both," said Kash Dhanda, COO of Jupiter.

"This raise backs a simple idea: businesses are better off running on stablecoins than on legacy banking infrastructure," said Stepan Simkin, CEO of Squads.

He noted that Solana is now mature enough to handle global business finance and that regulators have finally provided the necessary frameworks to support it.

Why Solana

Squads' decision to build on Solana is backed by the network's growing dominance in stablecoin activity.

Solana processed $650 billion in stablecoin transactions in February 2026 alone — more than doubling its previous record and leading all blockchains for the month. Stablecoin supply on the network reached $17 billion in March 2026, while Solana's DeFi total value locked hit an all-time high of approximately $10 billion in the same period.

Solving security and compliance hurdles

To win over traditional businesses, Altitude has focused on two primary concerns: safety and rules. The platform uses a proprietary engine to handle continuous sanctions screening, anti-money laundering (AML) checks, and verification.

This ensures that every account can safely connect to licensed providers like MoonPay and Bridge.

On the security side, the company relies on the Squads Protocol — which also powers Squads Multisig, the smart account standard securing more than $10 billion in assets across the Solana ecosystem.

Every transaction is recorded and settled on the Solana blockchain, providing a transparent record.

"The Squads team spent the last four years building the security infrastructure that most of the Solana ecosystem runs on. Stablecoins and programmable blockchains are changing how global finance works," said Matthew Beck, Head of Solana Ventures. "This is the team with the technical depth and the vision to build the financial platform that sits on top of that shift. We believe Altitude will be how the next generation of global businesses runs their financial operations."