#深度创作营 The Last Big Gamble in London's Financial District: When Revolut Wears the Crown, Stablecoins Are No Longer Toys

February 2026 in London, the air is filled with a strange sense of excitement. While Wall Street elites are still playing cat and mouse with the U.S. OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) over Payoneer and Crypto’s national trust bank licenses, the British on the other side of the Atlantic have quietly flipped the table. The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) didn’t hold fancy seminars but directly threw Revolut, Monee Financial Technologies, ReStabilise, and VVTX into a “digital sandbox.” This isn’t a cozy tech pilot; fundamentally, it’s the City of London’s bloodied declaration of loyalty to the Web3 world in order to maintain its status as a global financial hub post-Brexit. Counterintuitively, the protagonists being brought into line aren’t the traditional banks in suits but the once-derided fintech unicorns, considered “barbarians.”

This Is Not a Playground; It’s a Cage Match with Shackles

Don’t be fooled by the seemingly playful term “sandbox.” In the regulator’s context, a sandbox isn’t about building castles; it’s a psychiatric ward with padded walls and sniper rifles hanging from the ceiling. FCA selected these four companies from 20 applications, especially giants like Revolut, with a very blunt purpose: they need to figure out whether this beast called stablecoins will bite the hand that feeds it in an absolutely controlled vacuum environment. It’s not just a technical test; it’s an experiment in the transfer of power. FCA executive Matthew Long talks about “building trust,” but look closely at the focus of this sandbox—issuance, redemption mechanisms, payment settlements. Is this about testing innovation? No, it’s about testing “control.” FCA wants to verify whether, when hundreds of millions of pounds turn into on-chain code and users demand 1:1 peg within milliseconds, these non-bank institutions’ balance sheets will collapse like dominoes. The British are shrewd—they don’t want to kill cryptocurrencies but absolutely cannot allow a second Terra/Luna to play out on the Thames. So, this sandbox experiment is essentially putting stablecoins in a “compliance” tight suit, with every move measured on the edge of suffocation.

Wall Street Is Still Writing PPTs; London Has Already Run the Code

Raise your perspective a bit, and you’ll see this is actually a game of stockpile competition among G7 countries. Just look at how absurd the current situation is: Americans are still tangled in philosophical debates about definitions; old-school payment companies like Payoneer have to beg for OCC charters to launch stablecoin banks, with approval processes as long as foot-binding; the EU’s MiCA regulation, though grand, is so cumbersome that many companies are deterred—BVNK, for example, only managed to get its ticket into Malta after great effort. Meanwhile, the Brits chose the sneakiest route—agile development. FCA plans to release its final policy statement by summer 2026, a speed that’s almost light speed in traditional financial regulation. The UK government is very clear: after losing the EU single market passport, London must find a new liquidity engine. Stablecoins are that engine. Through the sandbox model, the UK is essentially telling global Web3 capital: stop looking at New York’s face, stop filling out forms in Brussels—come to London, where you can legally turn fiat into tokens, as long as you’re willing to wear our shackles. It’s a highly pragmatic gamble—betting that in the tiny cracks of dollar hegemony’s cracks, the pound can, through blockchain’s shell, flow back into the world’s veins.

The “Loyalty” Moment of Stablecoins: From Punk Rebellion to Royal Endorsement

This sandbox experiment marks the end of an era: the idealism of crypto punks is dead. When giants like Revolut, with tens of millions of users, start testing stablecoin issuance under regulatory scrutiny, it means Web3 has fully transitioned from “a tool for resisting the system” to “part of the system.” Those who once dreamed of replacing central banks with code are now queuing up to be absorbed by them. For ordinary users and investors, this is not just good news but a signal. The future stablecoin market will no longer be dominated by offshore black boxes like USDT but will be taken over by these “mainstream” players who have been through the sandbox, with rigorous audits and redemption promises. The UK is developing a set of standards—limits on holdings, reserve custody, anti-money laundering measures. Once these standards are proven in the sandbox, they will quickly become templates for major economies worldwide. At that point, compliance will no longer be optional but the only ticket for survival. Revolut is just the first to take the plunge; behind it lies an entire global payment industry chain being reshaped. You see, what’s called financial innovation often ends up as a new dish on the table of vested interests—only this time, the cutlery is blockchain.