Stablecoin startup Agora has completed a $50 million Series A funding round led by crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, with participation from Dragonfly Capital. Agora, operating under the ticker @withAUSD, provides white-label stablecoin issuance services based on its stablecoin AUSD, which offers users a dollar-pegged asset to mitigate volatility. The company aims to power the next wave of digital finance with its full-stack stablecoin infrastructure, having built deep on-chain liquidity across multiple platforms over the past year. In a related development, Dakota, a crypto-native banking platform enabling secure USD transfers and crypto transactions without relying on traditional banks, raised $12.5 million in a Series A round led by CoinFund, with additional investments from Digital Currency Group, 6th Man Ventures, and Triton. Dakota was founded by a former Coinbase executive and focuses on integrating bank accounts with stablecoin-powered payments to bridge traditional banking and crypto finance.