In the latest sign of digital currencies going mainstream, Silicon Valley’s most prominent startup incubator will allow its spring cohort of entrepreneurs to receive their funding in stablecoins. Y Combinator, whose alumni include the founders of Airbnb and DoorDash, announced on Tuesday that founders can opt to receive their customary allotment—typically around $500,000—in the Circle-issued USDC.
Startup founders who choose stablecoins can choose to receive the tokens on various blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana, Nemil Dalal, a visiting partner at Y Combinator who focuses on crypto, told Fortune. He added that Y Combinator may expand to other stablecoins depending on demand.
“Stablecoins is one of the key pillars for us,” Dalal said, referring to one of the areas where Y Combinator would like to see more startup ideas. “So we just want to live and breathe that as well.”
Price agnostic
While many crypto venture capitalists have let the startups in their portfolio take funding from stablecoins for some time, more traditional tech investors haven’t given that opportunity to founders. Dalal, for example, said he wasn’t aware of any legacy VCs who offer that option. “We’re excited for a world where, in the future, we think a lot of startups will eventually start raising capital on-chain,” he said.
Stablecoins have been around for more than a decade, but historically, their adoption was primarily limited to crypto traders seeking a non-volatile asset in which to park profits. In the past two years, however, stablecoins have burst into the headlines following a push by Wall Street and corporations that view the assets as a faster and more inexpensive way to move money around.
Big Tech has taken notice, especially after President Donald Trump signed into law in July a bill regulating the crypto assets. The fintech giant Stripe completed a $1.1 billion acquisition of stablecoin startup Bridge in February 2025 and has since backed its own blockchain designed for stablecoin transactions. The cloud infrastructure company Cloudflare announced its intention to launch its own stablecoin in September. And the buy-now, pay-later firm Klarna launched its own token as well in November.
Those announcements largely came during a more bullish crypto market that saw Bitcoin and other tokens notch all-time highs. Now, sentiment has soured as the world’s largest cryptocurrency nears monthslong lows. But, Dalal, the visiting partner at Y Combinator, said that bearish outlook doesn’t apply to stablecoins. “The excitement on stablecoins is just growing,” he said. “It’s actually agnostic of prices.”
