A regulated stablecoin,
built for Cardano.

USDM is a stablecoin — a cryptocurrency designed to hold a stable value against a traditional currency. In USDM’s case, that value is one US dollar. Every USDM in circulation is backed 1:1 by reserves held by Moneta Digital, a regulated issuer, with NBX (the Norwegian Block Exchange) acting as co-issuer.

You can mint new USDM by depositing accepted stablecoins (USDC, USDT, PYUSD) through Moneta’s issuance portal after KYC. You can also buy USDM with fiat — Norwegian krone, euros, or US dollars — on NBX. Once acquired, USDM moves to a Cardano wallet you control, and from that point on, it behaves like any other on-chain asset: transferable, programmable, usable as collateral, productive in lending markets.

The overwhelming majority of stablecoins on other blockchains arrived there via bridges or wrapping. USDC on Solana, for example, is either a wrapped version of Ethereum-issued USDC or a separately-issued copy. Bridges introduce counterparty risk: if the bridge is exploited, wrapped tokens can be unbacked. History is littered with examples — bridges have been responsible for many of the largest DeFi losses.

USDM is different. It is issued directly on Cardano as a native asset. There is no wrapper. There is no bridge. There is no Ethereum version of USDM that a Cardano version depends on. The Cardano token standard (used for USDM, fGLD, and every other native asset on the chain) treats custom assets as first-class citizens of the ledger — transferable without smart contracts, auditable at the protocol level, and cheaper to send than most alternatives.

Moneta Digital is the primary issuer. Moneta is a regulated financial entity responsible for reserve management, minting, redemption, and compliance with the jurisdictional requirements of each market USDM is available in.

NBX is the co-issuer. NBX is a publicly listed Norwegian exchange — listed on the Oslo Børs. NBX operates the fiat gateway for USDM (the buy-and-sell route that lets you use NOK, EUR, or USD to acquire USDM) and provides the market for fGLD, Cardano’s tokenized-gold asset that integrates closely with USDM.

Both Moneta and NBX run full KYC/KYB on users minting or buying USDM through regulated channels. Once USDM is in a self-custodial wallet, on-chain transfers are permissionless — USDM behaves like any other Cardano-native asset.

For every USDM in circulation, Moneta Digital holds approximately one US dollar in reserves. Reserves are held in regulated financial instruments — cash equivalents, treasury products, or similar highly liquid assets. Moneta publishes reserve attestations — independent reports confirming the composition of these reserves — on a recurring cadence.

If you want to verify this yourself, the Transparency page links to the most recent attestation cycle as each report is published by Moneta.

Redemption works in reverse: an eligible USDM holder can redeem USDM back to fiat through Moneta’s portal (or back to USDC/USDT/PYUSD). Redemption is the mechanism that enforces the 1:1 peg on-chain — if USDM traded meaningfully below $1, an arbitrageur could buy cheap USDM, redeem it for $1, and pocket the difference. That pressure keeps the market price anchored.

USDM becomes productive the moment it leaves an exchange account and enters a self-custodial Cardano wallet. From there, the main paths are:

• Hold it. USDM in a Cardano wallet is safe, stable, and transferable. No yield, but no volatility either.
• Supply it to a lending pool. Protocols like Fluid let you supply USDM to a pool where borrowers draw against collateral. You earn variable APY from borrower interest. See the Stablecoin Yield playbook.
• Use it as the funding currency for DCA strategies. Accumulate tokenized assets (like fGLD gold) on a schedule. See the DCA into Gold playbook.
• Borrow it against collateral. Deposit ADA or fGLD as collateral on Fluid, borrow USDM, keep your underlying exposure. See Borrow Without Selling.
• Leverage real-world-asset positions. The advanced RWA Strategy uses USDM borrowing to amplify tokenized-gold exposure.

Relative to other stablecoins, USDM occupies a specific niche: fiat-backed (not algorithmic), regulated (not offshore), Cardano-native (not bridged). That combination is rare on Cardano. The main comparable is USDCx, a USDC-backed stablecoin available on Cardano through Circle’s xReserve. The two coexist on-chain; they serve different use cases and have different trust assumptions.

A full, data-driven comparison lives on the USDM vs USDCx page.

USDM inherits the standard risks of any fiat-backed stablecoin: peg risk (the possibility the market price briefly diverges from $1), regulatory risk (jurisdictional availability can change), and — for anyone using USDM in DeFi — the additional smart contract, oracle, and liquidation risks of the protocols they interact with.

Full, honest risk disclosures (with mitigations) live at /risks. Read that page before putting meaningful capital to work.

The Coalition’s onboarding playbook walks through acquisition end-to-end: which on-ramp to use, how to set up self-custody, how to verify your first transfer. It’s the fastest path from “I’ve never held USDM” to “I hold USDM in a wallet I control.”

→ Your First USDM playbook