Why we invested in Bastion, the enterprise platform for issuing regulated stablecoins
Stablecoins have quietly become one of the most important pieces of financial infrastructure. In 2024, supply grew more than 50% and settlement volumes reached the trillions. For consumers in markets like Argentina, Brazil, and Indonesia, stablecoins provide reliable access to dollars. For businesses, they offer faster and cheaper cross-border payments. And for issuers, they generate billions in revenue from the reserves that back them.
Despite this momentum, enterprises that want to issue or integrate stablecoins face barriers. Building secure custody systems is complex, licensing and compliance is fragmented, and navigating the regulatory landscape takes years. That’s the challenge Bastion was founded to solve.
Bastion provides a full-stack enterprise platform for custody, stablecoin issuance, and orchestration. With its New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) Trust Charter (one of only a handful granted in the U.S.) the company can offer enterprises everything needed to embed blockchain-based services. Its custody architecture is built to scale to tens of millions of users, drawing on the team’s experience at Anchorage and Facebook’s Libra/Diem project. Its regulatory approvals will allow any enterprise to issue branded stablecoins and retain the majority of the economic upside. And its orchestration layer bundles together on/off ramps, conversions, compliance, and licenses so customers don’t need to obtain their own.
Bastion is led by CEO and co-founder Nassim (Nass) Eddequiouaq, whose background includes Apple, Facebook, Anchorage, and a16z crypto, where he advised many leading crypto companies on security. With Bastion, Nass is building the complete solution he wished they had at Facebook. He is joined by senior executives with deep expertise in legal, compliance, and product, including veterans of a16z, Kraken, and the U.S. Department of Justice. The result is a team uniquely equipped to deliver both technical and regulatory-grade solutions for the world's largest enterprises.
We believe Bastion is positioned to become the leading independent stablecoin platform as fintechs and enterprises—from banks to consumer technology companies—look for compliant, scalable ways to utilize stablecoins. For Samsung, the relevance is immediate. Stablecoins align with our global footprint in payments, remittance, and digital wallets, offering utility to hundreds of millions of users through dollar-based savings, faster payments, and cross-border transfers. Bastion is one of the few companies able to deliver this at regulatory grade.
The opportunity is enormous. The stablecoin market has surpassed $250 billion in circulation, and Tether is seeking funding at a $500 billion valuation, underscoring just how central stablecoins have become to global finance. Bastion enables companies to issue their own stablecoins and capture the majority of the economics that has made Tether one of the most valuable private companies. For platforms with large user bases, this could translate into substantial, recurring income streams.
Stablecoins are at an inflection point, and Bastion gives enterprises the keys to participate directly. That’s why we invested.
Sam Campbell is an investor at Samsung Next. Samsung Next’s investment strategy is limited to its own views and does not reflect the vision or strategy of any other Samsung business unit, including, but not limited to, Samsung Electronics.