Latest news on the stablecoin track: USDT's market value exceeded US$150 billion for the first time, and competition between financial and technology giants is fierce. Tether and Circle consolidate the "moat"

Author: Weilin, PANews

On May 13, defilama data showed that the market value of stablecoins reached US$242.821 billion. Among them, Tether's USDT market value exceeded US$150 billion for the first time, reaching US$150.663 billion, with a market value accounting for 62%. Following closely behind is Circle's USDC, accounting for nearly 25% of the stablecoin market.

In recent months, there have been continuous dynamics about stablecoins in the crypto market, such as changes in the U.S. regulatory environment, Tether plans to launch a new dollar-backed stablecoin in the U.S. later this year. Circle submitted a public offering registration application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on April 1, and plans to go public.

At the same time, giants with financial technology genes such as Stripe and PayPal are also actively entering the market. Coupled with financial companies such as BlackRock, traditional banks (such as Bank of America and Standard Chartered) and income stablecoin projects, these companies are expected to impact the situation where Tether and Circle divide the world, bring more innovation to the stablecoin market and promote mass adoption. Stablecoins are being used for cross-border payments, DeFi protocols and on-chain transactions, and are also said by a16z Crypto to bring about "WhatsApp moment" in the currency field.

In this article, PANews compiled recent developments of stablecoins for major technology and financial companies, bringing a panoramic observation to the track and showing the industry impact they bring.

Technology companies rush to pay for stablecoins: Stripe, PayPal,

Coinbase, etc.

Stripe

On May 7 and 8, Stripe announced the launch of a "stablecoin financial account", allowing corporate users to hold account balances in stablecoins in 101 countries. In addition, they released USDB through Bridge, a programmable stablecoin that developers can embed into their applications and receive rewards by building the USDB ecosystem.

Stripe completed the acquisition of Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure platform, for US$1.1 billion in February 2025, further promoting the application of stablecoin in global payments. Bridge supports payment processing for stablecoins such as USDC, and Visa recently launched a payment card that supports stablecoins through Bridge.

PayPal

On April 23, PayPal announced that from 2025, US users will receive a 3.7% return on PYUSD holdings in PayPal or Venmo balances. By providing yield, they incentivize users to purchase and hold stablecoins within their platform, while PYUSD’s use outside the platform can also bring more benefits to PayPal. Yield rate is just the first step, and there may be more measures to drive PYUSD transaction volume and integration in the future.

Coinbase

On May 6, Coinbase launched the x402 payment standard, a stablecoin payment standard designed for Internet native payments, designed to enable atomic transactions between APIs, applications and AI agents.

Meta

On May 9, according to Fortune, Meta is initially negotiating stablecoin applications with several crypto companies three years after giving up the Libra/Diem project, exploring cross-border payments to creators through stablecoins to reduce fees. Since January this year, former Plaid executive Ginger Baker has served as vice president of Meta products, leading the relevant promotion.

MoneyGram

On May 7, MoneyGram released the "MoneyGram Ramps", a cash deposit and withdrawal channel that supports stablecoins, covering more than 170 countries. MoneyGram has a global cash network, providing a new way for stablecoins to interoperate with daily consumption and spending.

Traditional payment giants strike back: Mastercard and Visa

On April 28, Mastercard announced that it will cooperate with Circle, OKX, Paxos and other exchanges and wallets to launch a wider integration of stablecoin, allowing consumers to consume stablecoin balances through Mastercard cards. At the same time, merchants can also directly settle fiat card payments to USDC.

In addition, as mentioned above, on April 30, Visa announced a partnership with Stripe-backed Bridge to allow fintech developers to issue Visa cards pegged to stablecoins, allowing users to pay with stablecoin balances at fiat currency points through the Visa network.

These products significantly lower the threshold for users to adopt stablecoins through integration with existing payment systems. Users do not need to worry about whether the merchant supports stablecoin payments, they can complete the payment by using the bound Visa or Mastercard card.

Two leading leaders Circle and Tether consolidate "moat", Paxos launches

stablecoin alliance

Circle

On April 21, Circle announced the launch of the Circle Payments Network to improve international payments with several global banks and stablecoin startups. Circle directly challenges SWIFT and traditional banking networks to try to replace its inefficient messaging services and payment processes. On April 1, Circle applied for listing. Circle filed an application for listing on the New York Stock Exchange, which marked further recognition of the legitimacy of stablecoin payments.

Tether

As the stablecoin market expands, on May 13, defilama data showed that the stablecoin market value was US$242.821 billion. Among them, Tether's USDT market value exceeded US$150 billion for the first time, reaching US$150.663 billion, with a market value accounting for 62%. While USDT continues to grow, other stablecoins are also expanding, causing USDT's market dominance to drop from 70% to 62% over the past year. To keep growing, USDT has taken a bold approach to expanding its cross-chain capabilities, from implementing the multi-chain token USDT0, powered by LayerZero OFT, to building a hub with Legacy Hub and Plasma as its core. Through these methods, they are solving past challenges. In addition, Tether plans to launch a new dollar-backed stablecoin in the United States later this year.

Ondo

On April 18, Ondo Finance announced the launch of its USD bond token USDY on the Stellar blockchain. In May, Ondo launched a cross-chain bridging solution for USDY, enabling it to seamlessly transfer between the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and the Solana ecosystem. This is the first solution of its kind tokenized RWA, significantly improving USDY's interoperability and global accessibility.

On May 12, Ondo Finance announced that USDY will be logged into the Latin American platform TruBit, supporting users from the five countries of Megaba and Migo.

Paxos

Stablecoin issuer Paxos has partnered with Anchorage Digital, Bullish, Galaxy Digital, Kraken, Nuvei and Robinhood to launch the Global Dollar Network, an open network designed to accelerate the use of stablecoins worldwide. On April 14 this year, Visa announced that it will join the Global Dollar Network stablecoin alliance initiated by Paxos.

On May 12, Global Dollar Network, a stablecoin alliance, announced the addition of 19 new members, including cryptocurrency exchange BitMart, cryptocurrency custody, wallet provider Arculus, and stablecoin payment companies Beam, FOMO Pay, AlfredPay and Noah.

World Liberty Financial

World Liberty Financial Inc. (WLFI) is the developer of the DeFi protocol and governance platform inspired by U.S. President Trump. On March 25, the company announced today that it plans to launch the stablecoin USD1, which can be exchanged for USD (USD) at a 1:1 ratio. The statement shows that WLFI's USD1 will be 100% guaranteed by U.S. short-term Treasury bonds, dollar deposits and other cash equivalents. Initially, the USD1 token will be minted on the Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) blockchains, with plans to expand to other protocols in the future. Each token is anchored to a value of $1.

Ethena

On December 16, 2024, DeFi project Ethena Labs announced that its new stablecoin USDtb was officially launched. As a blockchain-based dollar stablecoin, 90% of USDtb's reserve funds are invested in BlackRock's tokenized fund BUIDL, and cooperates with leading real-life asset tokenization company Securities.

As of May 13, defilama data showed that Ethena's synthetic USD USD is the third largest dollar-linked asset in the crypto market, with an issuance scale second only to USDT and USDC, with a market value of US$4.745 billion. On April 12, Ethena Labs launched the USDe reserve certificate, which will be updated weekly. As of the snapshot on April 26, the supply of USDe tokens was 4.765 billion, Ethena's coin/redemption contract had $44.695 million to meet redemption needs, $60.95 million in the reserve fund, and the Copper custody assets were about $663 million.

On April 17, Ethena and asset tokenization platform Securities stated that it plans to launch the blockchain Converge, which focuses on real-world assets (RWA) in the second quarter of this year. The main network will be built on Arbitrum and Celestia, support USDe and USDtb tokens to pay Gas fees, and maintain security through staking ENA.

On May 1, Ethena Labs announced a partnership with TON Blockchain to integrate its USDe products into Telegram, covering its billion users. The cooperation includes integration with unmanaged TON wallets, hosted wallets in Telegram and TON DeFi applications.

On May 5, Ethena Labs also announced that USDe has been launched on Hyperliquid and HyperEVM.

Traditional banks enter and issue stablecoins: Bank of America, Standard

Chartered Bank

Bank of America

On May 3, Bank of America said that the bank is willing to issue its own stablecoins if Congress introduces relevant legislation. Bank of America is the second largest lender in the United States. The bank's CEO Brian Moynihan has previously stated: "As long as legislation allows, we will enter the stablecoin business field."

Standard Chartered

On February 17, Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), Animoca Brands and HKT announced that it had reached an agreement to establish a joint venture (JV) and plans to apply for a license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) to issue stablecoins supported by Hong Kong dollar.

Related readings:

"APY up to 9%, a 20 profitable stablecoins"

"a16z Partner: Why can stablecoins subvert cross-border payments? 》