Goldman, Citi lead $270M bet on a new bank stablecoin

Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and 19 other banks just put real money behind a new dollar stablecoin. On Nov. 10, Bloomberg reported the group's name: Project Faro. It has committed about $270 million. The plan is to launch its own coin by early 2027. The banks want to compete directly with Tether and Circle, the two companies that currently dominate the stablecoin business.

None of this is live yet. Project Faro doesn't have a chief executive yet. It has no finalized name and no issued token. What it has is committed capital, meant to cover five years of running costs. The bet is that bank-backed trust beats crypto-native speed. Lots of people already use Tether and Circle's coins. But regulators have been pushing banks to build their own rails. A new U.S. law called the GENIUS Act created a federal framework for dollar-pegged tokens in 2025.

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Can 21 banks agree fast enough to actually launch by 2027? Bank consortiums have a long history of moving slowly. A committee has to argue over governance, branding, and who gets how much control. Tether and Circle already have millions of users and years of running infrastructure. Project Faro's advantage is trust and regulation, not speed — whether that's enough to catch up is the real question.