About 90% of the world's largest financial institutions, including JPMorgan, PayPal, and Revolut, have either integrated their own stablecoins or are preparing to launch them. The surge in corporate token issuance isn't just about speed and convenience, especially when liquid alternatives like USDT and USDC are available.
In a new piece, ForkLog explores the reasons behind the variety of stablecoins and the potential and actual benefits for issuers.
Impact of the GENIUS Act
According to CoinGecko, by mid-2026, the market capitalization of the stablecoin segment is expected to exceed $300 billion, marking a roughly 95% increase over two years. In June, the adjusted trading volume reached $1.79 trillion.
While Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC) still control the lion's share of liquidity—59% and 24% respectively—on-chain data indicates active fragmentation in the sector. In just 2025, the number of stablecoins with a supply exceeding $10 million grew by 89%. The traditional duopoly is being challenged by dozens of institutional players.
The catalyst for this trend was the signing of the GENIUS Act in the U.S. on July 18, 2025. This legislation established a federal definition of payment stablecoins and regulated their issuance. Although the rules will only take effect in January 2027, the market architecture is already changing rapidly.
This initiative effectively equated traditional banks with digital asset issuers. Now, any financial institution with federal deposit insurance can legally issue dollar tokens through subsidiaries.
Libertarian economist Evgeny Romanenko reminded ForkLog of nuances that should not be overlooked when discussing "stablecoins":
"Strictly speaking, discussing stablecoins in the context of cryptocurrencies should become improper, just like talking about CBDCs within blockchain. Because if stablecoins have any direct relation, it's to fiat, not to cryptocurrencies, which by definition cannot have any issuers censoring transactions. This is merely a form of fiat existing in the crypto world, nothing more. One should remain vigilant about this."
The expert added that "from a praxeological standpoint, the phenomenon of 'stable price' is nonsense, something that cannot exist in market conditions."
From the Collapse of Libra to Institutional Cartels
In 2019, Facebook (Meta) attempted to change the game by announcing Libra—a global stablecoin backed by fiat currencies and government bonds. The plan to integrate the payment system into products with a billion-user audience drew fierce backlash from authorities.
The U.S. Congress and European central banks warned that this posed a threat to macroeconomic stability. The pressure forced Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal to exit the consortium even before the launch. A rebranding to Diem and a shift back to a single-currency model did not save the project: by early 2022, the assets were sold to Silvergate Bank, and the initiative was shut down.
In 2019, JPMorgan launched JPM Coin. In this case, the bank faced no obstacles—possibly due to stringent regulatory oversight. The product was positioned solely as a settlement token for transactions between institutional clients within the financial system.
Over the years, the concept of private stablecoins has evolved from an absolute taboo to a tool for corporate dominance. The only change has been the list of those allowed to operate the "printing press."
Key corporate stablecoin launches include:
- June 2023 — FDUSD (First Digital). A Hong Kong project that gained mass liquidity on Binance as a replacement for BUSD;
- August 2023 — PYUSD (PayPal). The first consumer stablecoin from a major non-financial tech company;
- December 2023 — EURCV (Societe Generale). A euro-pegged pioneer from a top European bank, launched on the Ethereum blockchain;
- February 2024 — USDe (Ethena). A synthetic stablecoin that changed market architecture through delta-neutral hedging mechanics to generate yield;
- April 2024 — Sony Bank Stablecoin (Sony). A pilot launch of a fiat digital token on Polygon, aimed at integration into the gaming ecosystem and payment for the intellectual property of the Japanese conglomerate;
- December 2024 — RLUSD (Ripple). An institutional token focused on corporate clients, cross-border settlements, and RWA outside the traditional banking system;
- March 2025 — USD1 (World Liberty Financial). A stablecoin affiliated with the Trump family, structurally integrated with major centralized platforms;
- March 2026 — Open USD (OUSD). A unified stablecoin from a fintech consortium led by Visa and Mastercard, created as an alternative to the existing monopoly.
In the past two years, the number of announcements for new private stablecoins has significantly increased. They are being issued by a wide range of market participants, from payment companies like MoneyGram (MGUSD) and Western Union (USDPT) to the American fintech bank SoFi (SoFiUSD) and the European consortium AllUnity involving Deutsche Bank (EURAU, CHFAU, and SEKAU).
The signing of the GENIUS Act and the adoption of MiCA have fully legalized the model that previously led to Libra's demise. By 2026, the industry entered a phase of corporate wars: the consortium Open USD emerged to challenge the hegemony of the two market leaders. This group included participants behind Meta's stablecoin attempt, such as Stripe, Coinbase, Shopify, and Spotify. On June 30, the day Open USD was announced, Circle's shares fell by 18%.
Why Do They Need Stablecoins?
The mechanics of fiat-backed stablecoins—USDT, USDC, PYUSD, and most new corporate tokens—generally work as follows. The issuer receives fiat liquidity and issues tokens in return, but instead of holding the underlying asset, it is used to purchase short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, generating 4-5% annual returns. This premium is credited to the issuing company's accounts. The coin holder only has the right to redeem it one-to-one.
By the end of 2023, Tether's net profit reached $6.2 billion, of which $4 billion came directly from Treasury bonds and reverse repo transactions. By 2024, this figure surpassed $13 billion, and in 2025, it stabilized at over $10 billion.
Tether's reserve structure (March 2026). Source: Tether.As demonstrated by the example of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, one can profit from this scheme without being an issuer. In the first quarter of 2026, the exchange reported $305 million in revenue from stablecoins, accounting for 44% of its total service segment revenue. Without issuing its own token, the CEX uses a partnership scheme: retail customers receive about 3.5% annually as "loyalty rewards" for holding USDC, while the platform takes half of Circle's total reserve income under a revenue-sharing agreement.
Against this backdrop, the logic of corporate players becomes extremely pragmatic: why give up a billion-dollar margin to Tether or Circle when you can deploy your own smart contract and keep the cash flows to yourself? This calculation likely underpinned the launches of PYUSD, RLUSD, and dozens of local banking tokens. But that's not all.
In addition to profit generation, issuers may pursue other goals:
- Diversifying risks amid political influence and regulatory pressure (asset seizures, fund freezes);
- Capturing a share of the infrastructure of the new financial system to control liquidity and provide a wide range of services;
- Insuring against sudden problems with monopolists.
Web3 researcher Vladimir Menaskop identified two factors motivating the issuance of stablecoins: the mandatory tokenization of business and the desire to take a leading position in centralized systems.
The expert also noted a historical trend: PayPal and WebMoney emerged almost simultaneously and carved out their niches. Prior to that, there were numerous experiments, including DigiCash, and until the advent of Bitcoin, startups competed among themselves, dropping out only in the 2020s.
"Tokenization is not just about issuing a token with your ticker. It's primarily about liquidity. It moves today at an incredible speed, and it will only get faster. If you have old-style money, you are simply excluded from this race. Perhaps forever. This is also evident right now in AI competitions: those who lag behind are left behind."
Menaskop believes that the RWA segment also plays a significant role. If an issuer can prove to the industry that their product is the best tokenized dollar, they will automatically secure multi-billion contracts across various sectors, from gold and oil to agriculture and energy.
Menaskop agrees that profit and diversification are "sound and valid theses" in the context of stablecoin issuance, but not all of them are reasons:
"Any USD wrapper is direct competition with China, which benefits from de-dollarization. The U.S. has managed to revive what NASA almost lost with the help of Musk, Bezos, and others: why not pull off this trick in the economy? Therefore, strangely enough, I would say that profit is a consequence, not a cause. The cause is the desire to retain existing markets and preemptively stake claims on new ones."
Romanenko believes that following Tether's economic model is quite logical:
"Other issuers will want to replicate the scheme, as long as they are willing to support the redemption of their stablecoins for real dollars. Unlike the genesis of central banks, which were once granted the privilege of ceasing to redeem their banknotes for gold, which was a gross violation of principles that had worked for centuries."
If Not the Train, Then the Tracks
The strategy of Open USD significantly distinguishes the consortium from other market players. The coalition has waived minting and burning fees, promising to distribute the majority of reserve income among ecosystem partners instead of accumulating it on the issuer's balance sheet. This transforms OUSD from a speculative asset into a highly efficient and cost-effective settlement infrastructure for banks, payment systems, and fintech platforms.
This new approach confirms the desire to occupy all remaining niches around the new financial system, including infrastructure. The leadership of companies previously unrelated to blockchain, cryptocurrencies, or RWA is striving to keep pace in the technological race.
In July, Hyundai Card completed a test of cross-border transfers between Hyundai Motor divisions using stablecoins. In the experiment, $20,000 was converted into "stablecoins," sent from the U.S. to Mexico, and then exchanged back into dollars—the entire process took about seven minutes instead of three to four hours. Tether, Avalanche, and payment infrastructure company Axiym participated in the project.
Hyundai intends to utilize the technology itself without issuing a stablecoin.
Menaskop believes this is a logical path of development amid competition:
"You can always move towards processing something rather than developing another stablecoin. Or, if following business logic, you can always retain the B2B segment for yourself and leave B2C to those who seem bigger and scarier."
In his view, these are all the same paths that will ultimately lead to a single high-speed highway:
"Seven minutes is an impressive figure, but given the race for TPS and other technical specifications, soon we will be talking about seven seconds and then seven fractions of a second."
Romanenko advises not to forget that a fiat unit is "merely a commitment of a central bank that has degraded to a de facto refusal to redeem for gold under state privilege."
"It becomes a commitment on top of a commitment, a shaky structure, a complete mess. But who cares about that nowadays? And when companies like Hyundai get involved, we encounter derivatives of derivatives of derivatives, a 'sandwich' of commitments that currently hold each other up," the expert added.
What Will This Lead To?
A few years ago, the landscape of stablecoins was simple: the dominant USDT and the catching-up USDC. Today, this market is fragmenting in several directions, and what is happening is not an excess of liquidity but a direct consequence of the war for control over payment infrastructure.
Local alliances are forming in the market: in June, processing giant Fiserv and PayPal announced the compatibility of their tokens FIUSD and PYUSD. However, this is just a single precedent against the backdrop of dozens of isolated projects that are technically and legally incompatible with each other.
This kind of fragmentation has a historical parallel—the era of free banking in the U.S. (1837–1863). During that time, the States enacted laws allowing almost anyone to open a bank if they deposited a small bond. Hundreds of private financial institutions issued their own banknotes. The value of each note fluctuated depending on the distance from the issuer and the level of trust in it. The era of financial chaos ended with the forced establishment of a unified state standard.
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.For the modern financial market, the question is pertinent: will this scenario of conservation repeat itself, and who, if it happens, will ultimately take on the role of a single regulatory hub?
"The era of free banking did not end on its own—it was consciously liquidated. This was the result of a decades-long special operation, which, in my opinion, was conducted by the largest bankers, misleading society and authorities about the nature of money and the causes of crises. They then made states their allies, showing politicians the advantages of replacing genuine private money, backed by gold and freely exchangeable for it, with privileged bank money that allowed for virtually unlimited credit," Romanenko believes.
Menaskop, for his part, is confident that history will repeat itself:
"This is exactly how it should happen. More precisely, what I call the crypto-offshore will remain in anonymous cryptocurrencies, in private DeFi, and so on, but the rest of the world will be divided between a rigid CBDC model (of a hypothetical China) and an equally rigid stablecoin model (of a hypothetical U.S.)."
Alongside corporate wars, a political divide has emerged. In this configuration, stablecoins cease to be merely neutral payment instruments. Along with the token, issuers export their own compliance rules, including mechanisms for unilaterally blocking addresses and censoring transactions.
"In a hypothetical tomorrow, when everything settles down, those who denied the necessity of many altcoins will come to their senses and want them back, but that opportunity will not exist. If Tether and Circle currently block only certain large wallets, it won't be long before this process is fully automated with AI, and any wrong move towards the 'favorite party' will be seen as sabotage. Therefore, this is not just about pressure on monopolies, but about their conscious creation," Menaskop summarized.
Romanenko added another possible scenario:
"Theoretically, with stablecoins, there could be a situation where an issuer creates, say, 1 billion tokens on-chain and claims, in collusion with an auditor, that they have $1 billion in top-tier treasuries in assets. But only their CEO knows that they actually have $500 million. And then the real price of the stablecoin is $0.5, while everyone accepts it as if it were worth $1—until the first exposure."
In his opinion, the main task—returning money to its market form—is not only not being solved by the issuers of numerous stablecoins, but rather they are creating derivatives of questionable quality on top of the already least reliable derivative of gold—fiat national currencies.
"The result is a guaranteed increase in the number of monetary substitutes in the world. One pyramid is being built on top of another, and this entire structure only increases risks, distancing humanity from full-fledged money under the guise of expanding diversity and increasing market opportunities through the proliferation of financial instruments," the expert noted.