The US stablecoin bill is about to be implemented, and one article penetrates the current situation of the stablecoin track

Author: Nianqing, ChainCatcher

The recent popularity of CZ and BNB Chain may make everyone ignore a big event, namely the major progress of the first stablecoin bill in the United States.

On March 13, local time, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee did pass the "Guiding and Establishing a US Stable Coin National Innovation Act" (hereinafter referred to as the "GENIUS Act") with 18:6 votes. The bill needs to be supported by at least 60 votes in the Senate, and then enter the House of Representatives for deliberation and will eventually be signed by President Trump. Previous reports that the Trump administration set August as a deadline for passing the stablecoin bill.

While the crypto market is in another round of downturn, the total market value of stablecoins continues to rise. According to DefiLlama data, the market value of stablecoins has increased by another $1.91 billion in the past seven days, exceeding $229 billion for the first time. In addition, stablecoin issuers accounted for more than 70% of the total on-chain protocol revenue in the past 30 days.

The implementation of US stablecoin bills such as GENIUS will have a huge impact on the current stablecoin landscape. This article will start from the perspective of stablecoin regulation and sort out the core projects of the major stablecoins issued in the United States and the potentially beneficial stablecoin infrastructure track.

****The impact of the bill on the stablecoin landscape: Circle launches a

counterattack against Tether****

The primary impact of the GENIUS Act is the increase in compliance costs, and compliant issuing entities and traditional giants will have more advantages. Currently, the largest stablecoin issuer, Tether, has a market share of over 60%, accounting for an absolute dominant position, but it still has a long way to go in terms of compliance.

Tether is not a native American project, and its registered place, legal entity and core operations are overseas. Earlier this year, Tether said after obtaining a license for the El Salvador Digital Asset Service Provider (DASP) that Tether and its subsidiaries are about to complete all formalities for relocation to El Salvador and are based in El Salvador.

At the same time, the Crypto Asset Market Supervision Regulations (MiCA) came into effect in full force on December 30, 2024. Tether was not approved to withdraw from the European market, while 10 institutions including Circle, Crypto.com, Societe Generale, etc. were approved to issue euro and US dollar stablecoins.

Tether is about to face regulatory pressure from the US GENIUS Act. Circle's co-founder Jeremy Allaire argues that all USD-based stablecoin issuers should register in the United States on the grounds of protecting consumers and ensuring fair competition in the cryptocurrency market. “Whether you are an offshore company or are based in Hong Kong, if you want to offer your dollar stablecoin in the United States, you should register in the United States as we have to do elsewhere,” he said.

This comment points directly to Tether. Although Circle is far from Tether in scale, it has firmly chosen the same compliance path as Coinbase from the beginning. The US dollar stablecoin (USDC) issued by Circle was issued and regulated in the United States and was officially approved as the first stablecoin to comply with MiCA regulations in 2024.

While the competitors’ business model should be to build better products and larger distribution networks, their real intention is to “eliminate Tether”, and every business or political meeting they hold takes the ultimate goal of achieving that intention, and while this may seem a bit exaggerated, it is true.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino responded that competitors are trying to "eliminate Tether" through legal and political conferences, and Tether will not sit still.

The interests of the Tether Empire are still mixed in the United States. In addition to Paolo Ardoino's self-proclaimed "USDT is the most successful tool for US dollar hegemony and the allocation of emerging markets" (the huge US Treasury position), Tether's fund custody and banking services rely in part on local U.S. institutions. For example, its main partner, Cantor Fitzgerald, is responsible for managing some of its assets. Cantor Fitzgerald's chairman and CEO Howard Lutnick is the newly appointed Secretary of Commerce of the Trump administration (he has resigned from the relevant position). In addition, Tether also invested heavily ($775 million) in Rumble, a video sharing platform that is closely linked to Trump.

But once the legislation related to stablecoins is completed, in order to comply with the proposed U.S. stablecoin regulation, Tether may need to sell some assets that do not comply with regulations, including Bitcoin, precious metals, corporate notes and secured loans. Does Tether choose to embrace U.S. compliance or maintain existing strategies? After all, the positioning of this "offshore dollar stablecoin" is also a huge advantage under the current situation of weak crypto regulation .

The existing centralized stablecoins in the United States

As early as the end of 2024, based on the new US administration and Trump's friendly attitude towards cryptocurrencies and the expectations of stablecoin reserves and regulation, major institutions predicted that the stablecoin track will usher in larger-scale explosions and growth opportunities. In addition, Tether won a high profit of US$13 billion in 2024, and more and more companies have begun to enter the market in order to deploy stablecoin business as soon as possible and seize market share. For example:

• Paypal has long cooperated with Paxos to withdraw from its stablecoin PYUSD and plans to expand its promotion this year;
• BlackRock launched the tokenized fund BUIDL as early as last year. Currently, Ethena's stablecoin USDtb and Frax's frxUSD both invested in BUIDL as reserve funds;
• Stripe acquires Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure platform for $1.1 billion;
• Ripple stablecoin RLUSD is launched before 2025;
• Visa launched a tokenized asset platform that allows banks to issue stablecoins;
• Robinhood is working with Paxos to create an open network for stablecoins;
• Bank of America plans to launch its own stablecoins after regulation is clear;

The current legislative direction is more conducive to the issuers of the US domestic stablecoin. We can first take a look at what are the major US stablecoins that are already available (the filtering criteria are the issuing entity registered in the United States).

Data source: DefiLlama , CoinmarketCap

It is worth mentioning that DefiLlama also classified BlackRock's USD BUIDL as a stablecoin. BUIDL is not a centralized stablecoin in the traditional sense, but a tokenized investment fund, investing 100% in cash, US Treasury and repurchase agreements. Maintain a stable value of USD 1 per token. Mainly aimed at institutions. The most essential difference between tokenized assets and stablecoins is that only investment value does not have payment function. Franklin has also issued a fund similar to BUIDL.

For comparison, we can have a comprehensive understanding of the track pattern of USD stablecoin. Currently, the stablecoins that are flowing can be roughly divided into centralized stablecoins (USDT, USDC), decentralized stablecoins (Ethena USDe, DAI, USDD), RWA stablecoins (Ondo's USDY, Usual USD, Ethena's USDtb), etc. The following figure shows the top 15 stablecoins on CoinmarketCap ranked by market value.

Comparison of the average supply of mainstream stablecoins in circulation, source: Visa Onchain Analytics D ashboard

In addition to USDT and these stablecoins registered and issued by the United States, there are two important participants in the centralized stablecoin track, namely First Digital (FUSD) and TrueUSD (TUSD).

First Digital USD (FDUSD)

• Market value: US$2 billion
• Issuing entity: FD121 Limited, a subsidiary of First Digital Limited, headquartered in Hong Kong.
• Release date: June 2023.
• Asset Backed: FDUSD is a 1:1 stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, backed by cash and cash equivalents such as short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, and its reserves are escrowed by First Digital Trust Limited.
• Issuing networks: Ethereum, Sui, Solana, BSC

FDUSD is regulated in Asia. In 2023, due to the regulatory pressure from the SEC, Paxos chose to terminate its partnership with Binance on BUSD, and Binance also announced the removal of BUSD. Subsequently, FDUSD became one of the major stablecoins on Binance.

TruUSD (TUSD)

• Market value: US$9.5 billion
• Issuing entity: Techteryx (formerly TrustToken), a company with an Asian background.
• Release date: April 2018
• Asset support: TUSD is 1:1 pegged to USD, backed by USD deposits, reserves are stored in escrow accounts of multiple trust companies and are subject to real-time on-chain verification.
• Issuing networks: Ethereum, TRON, Avalanche, BNB Chain, Fantom, Polygon, etc.

TUSD is one of the earliest stablecoins on the market, even earlier than USDC and USDP. At the end of 2020, Techteryx Ltd., an investment company registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), led the acquisition of TUSD. In September last year, the SEC filed charges against TrueCoin LLC and TrustToken Inc. for TrueUSD (TUSD) suspected of fraudulent and unregistered investment contract sales. It was later reported that more than 99% of its assets were reserved in First Digital, and Justin Sun's team held more than 80%.

Who are the players in the stablecoin infrastructure?

Stripe's huge acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge has attracted investors' attention to stablecoin infrastructure. The reason why Stripe spent $1.1 billion to acquire Bridge was because it took a fancy to the stablecoin orchestration and issuance API it developed, a technology that allows any company or team to provide digital dollar-based services to its end consumers or businesses. Its clients include the U.S. government, Coinbase, SpaceX, etc.

In March, crypto payment giant MoonPay stepped up its leap forward by acquiring API-first stablecoin infrastructure startup Iron. Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Germany, Iron’s core product is a stablecoin payment API that allows companies to embed stablecoins into payment and operation systems, provide virtual account functions, and support instant, low-cost cross-border transactions. It can be imagined that once the US stablecoin legislation is implemented, more participants with capital strength urgently need projects that can directly provide technical solutions.

Stablecoin infrastructure usually refers to an entity that provides underlying technology, services or platforms for the issuance, management, transaction, payment or compliance of stablecoins. To further subdivide stablecoin infrastructure, we can roughly divide it into the following categories:

• Stablecoin-as-a-service : The infrastructure for providing APIs for fast issuing stablecoins;
• Stablecoin payment service : Provide stablecoin payment services to banks, traditional payment companies and other entities;
• Others, such as the stablecoin liquidity management platform to solve the problem of fragmentation of stablecoin ecosystems.

(Because potential acquisitions and mergers are not so geographical, the site of the project is not strictly restricted when screening stablecoin infrastructure, but mainly considers the scale and influence of the project.)

1. Stablecoin is a service

Paxos

Founded in 2012, Paxos provides "stablecoin-as-a-service" through white-card services to customize and issue stablecoins for other companies (such as PayPal, Binance). This service includes token design, reserve management, compliance support and technology integration.

Paxos has issued a variety of stablecoins, including Pax Dollar (USDP) (2018), Binance USD (BUSD) (in cooperation with Binance, has been discontinued), PayPal USD (PYUSD) (issued for PayPal), and Global Dollar (USDG) (registered and issued in Singapore). Among them, BUSD has been the third largest stablecoin after USDT and USDC for a long time.

Paxos provides blockchain settlement services for securities and asset transactions, supports stablecoin payments, and provides enterprises with APIs for minting, redemption and management, supporting multi-chain deployment. In addition, Paxos provides reserve custody and transparency reporting (verified by independent auditors), providing stablecoin compliance guarantees.

Recently, Paxos has also jointly developed the Global Dollar Network, a stablecoin network, with Robinhood, aims to accelerate the use of stablecoins globally and incentivize the promotion and distribution of USDG by sharing the benefits of reserve assets with participants.

Stably

Stably is a U.S.-based asset tokenization infrastructure provider. Stably cooperates with regulated financial institutions to launch white-label stablecoins or tokenized assets in a compliant manner. Stably allows organizations to issue stablecoins or native stablecoins for their communities or brands. It is worth mentioning that Stably serves not only banks and institutions to issue compliant stablecoins, but also serves emerging blockchains (i.e. issuing decentralized stablecoins).

In 23 years, Stably launched the US dollar stablecoin Stably USD on the Bitcoin network, with the symbol #USD. This is a BRC20 standard stablecoin created based on the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol, each #USD is backed in a 1:1 ratio USD in a collateral account managed by a US-regulated custodian to meet the interests of KYC/AML-verified token holders.

Quantoz Payments

Quantoz Payments is a Netherlands-based payment technology company founded in 2022, focusing on issuing and managing regulated electronic currency tokens (EMTs) through blockchain technology. Quantoz Payments issues stablecoins (E-Money Tokens) pegged to fiat currencies and provides related payment and fund management services. Quantoz Payments holds an electronic currency institution (EMI) license issued by the Central Bank of the Netherlands and is subject to strict supervision.

Quantoz Payments has issued two euro stablecoins EURD, EURQ and one dollar stablecoin USDQ. It has cooperated with companies such as Bitfinex, Kraken, Tether, NPEX, Dusk, Fabric Ventures, Deloitte, etc., involving stablecoin listing, investment support and technology integration, especially in the promotion of European markets.

In November, Tether announced an investment in Quantoz Payments to launch a stablecoin that complies with MiCAR standards.

Stablecoin payment service

Stablecoin payment service is actually an important branch of the crypto payment business. Here, we only organize some projects that focus on stablecoins serving centralized entities.

Zero Hash

Zero Hash is a U.S. company founded in 2017 and is a provider of B2B2C cryptocurrency and stablecoin infrastructure. Its core business is to provide enterprises with solutions that seamlessly connect fiat, cryptocurrency and stablecoins through APIs and embedded technologies, including cross-border payments, commercial transactions, trading platforms, remittances, tokenization, wallets and on/off-ramps. Supports support for multiple stablecoins and multiple blockchains.

For example, Zero Hash provides payment track support for Franklin Templeton’s tokenized fund BENJI, helping it realize stablecoin settlement and the stablecoin international remittance process for WhatsApp’s cross-border payment startup Felix. In addition, Zero Hash also cooperates with payment companies such as MoonPay and Shift4.

In terms of financing, Zero Hash has received support from well-known investment institutions such as Point72 Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and NYCA, with a total financing amount of over US$167 million.

BVNK

BVNK is a UK-based fintech company that provides enterprise-class stablecoin payment infrastructure that helps businesses send and receive stablecoin payments, convert currencies and add crypto payments to the checkout process. Integrate payment, conversion and hosting capabilities with a single API, easy to embed in existing enterprise systems.

In 2024, BVNK launched the self-hosted infrastructure Layer1 for stablecoin payments. Both BVNK and Zero Hash offer API-driven stablecoin payments, but BVNK emphasizes global banking integration and self-custody, while Zero Hash focuses on U.S. markets and transaction support.

Last December, BVNK received a $50 million full-equity Series B funding round, led by Haun Ventures, and participated by Coinbase Ventures and existing investor Tiger Global.

Coinflow

Coinflow Labs is a US company focusing on Web3 payment infrastructure, providing instant settlement payment solutions for enterprises through its technology platform, especially in the stablecoin payment field. Coinflow uses stablecoins as a settlement medium to provide instant fund payment products, allowing businesses to instantly pay stablecoin funds to users’ bank accounts using real-time payment channels such as Visa Direct, RTP through clearing houses, and instant SEPA.

For example, Coinflow provides payment solutions for enterprises in the Solana ecosystem, enabling users to purchase NFTs or tokens on the Solana chain through credit cards and instantly convert funds into USDC and pay them to merchants.

Coinflow has completed a $3.7 million financing, with investors including Jump Crypto, Reciprocal Ventures, CMT Digital, etc.

Sphere

Sphere is a crypto payment company based in the United States. Founded in 2022, it calls itself the "Operating System for Stablecoins". Through APIs, codeless tools and embedded widgets, it supports enterprises to accept stablecoin payments and enables seamless conversion between fiat currencies and stablecoins. Sphere focuses on underserved emerging markets (such as Latin America and Oceania).

Sphere has provided stablecoin payment support for projects such as Helium, Latitude.sh. In addition, Sphere cooperates with non-crypto-native merchants in countries such as Mexico, Chile and Brazil to solve the high cross-border payment fees.

In December last year, Sphere completed a $5 million financing led by Coinbase Ventures and Kraken Ventures, with a total financing of $7.8 million.

3. Stablecoin liquidity management platform

As more and more institutions issue different types of stablecoins, stablecoins have experienced serious liquidity fragmentation, fragmentation, user experience and other problems. Therefore, stablecoin liquidity management will also become an important demand.

Perena ********

Perena is a company focused on stablecoin infrastructure that is committed to solving the problems of liquidity dispersion and capital inefficiency in the stablecoin market through blockchain technology. Founder Anna Yuan was once in charge of the stablecoin business at the Solana Foundation.

Perena launched a multi-asset stablecoin Swap protocol Numéraire. Its core function is a multi-stable currency liquidity pool, which further improves the capital efficiency and liquidity of the stablecoin market by integrating multiple stablecoins into an interchangeable and liquid token (such as USD*). USD* is essentially a stable pool of LP tokens (also available as a stablecoin itself), which consists of a basket of stablecoins, including Tether, Circle and PayPal USD. Trying to solve the problem of fragmentation of stablecoin ecosystems and reduce the capital requirements for the issuance of new stablecoins.

In November last year, Perena completed a Pre-Seed round of financing of approximately US$3 million. This round of financing was led by Borderless Capital, with Binance Labs, MitonC Fund, Maelstrom Fund, Breed VC, ABCDE Labs and others participating.

Stablecoin issuance network

The issuing network of stablecoins can also be regarded as the infrastructure of stablecoins in a broad sense, but usually stablecoins will choose to expand to multiple networks to accelerate adoption. From the perspective of stablecoins circulation market value, Ethereum and Tron are the main public chains for the current stablecoin issuance, followed by BSC, Solana, Arbitrum, Avalanche and Polygon.

Comparison of mainstream stablecoins supply on various public chains, source: Visa Onchain Analytics Dashboard

Although Ethereum has a leading edge in the TVL of stablecoins, it is not friendly to the issuance and transaction of most stablecoins due to the high transaction costs, and Ethereum's stablecoins are mostly used for DeFi interaction or acquisition of income. If we look at the dimension of stablecoin value transfer (transfer), Tron, BNB Chain, Solana, and Polygon are used more. For example, about 96% of the transaction volume on the Tron network are related to stablecoins. In addition, by region, Avalanche and Stellar are more accepted in the United States and South America, and these two are also American concept projects.

In addition to these mainstream public networks, many networks focusing on stablecoin payment have also been born. Compared with ordinary public chains, these networks are not well-known and are more like an underlying facility, just like Ripple's global payment network RippleNet, which can connect banks, payment providers, digital asset exchanges and enterprises.

In 2023, Latin America's cryptocurrency service provider Ripio launched the Layer 1 blockchain focused on payments in Latin America, in partnership with SenseiNode, Num Finance, Cedalio and Buenbit. Ripio is an important crypto payment participant in Latin America, providing cryptocurrency transactions, digital wallets, payment solutions, stablecoin services and enterprise-level blockchain products. As of 2024, it has more than 10 million users, covering 8 countries including Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Colombia, Chile, the United States and Spain. Monthly trading volume exceeds US$200 million.

In November 2024, seven project parties including Galaxy Digital and Paxos cooperated to launch the Global Dollar Network, a stablecoin network. Its goal is to promote the widespread use of stablecoins in global payments, transactions and financial services through collaboration and innovation, breaking down the inefficiency and high cost barriers of traditional finance. Core asset USDG is a regulated stablecoin issued by Paxos in Singapore.

In February 2025, Ondo Finance, the RWA asset tokenization platform, announced the launch of a new layer of public chain Ondo Chain, and obtained Franklin Templeton, Wellington Management and WisdomTree and other institutions to join the ecological construction. The core goal is to accelerate the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs such as U.S. Treasury bonds, stocks, bonds, ETFs, etc.) through blockchain technology. The payment of stablecoins is also one of its important usage scenarios.

Recently, Keeta Network, a TGE payment public chain, has also attracted the attention of many KOLs and communities because of its token price "value discovery". Keeta Network calls itself the "best blockchain for custody of compliant stablecoins", with its goal of bridging traditional finance (TradFi) with decentralized finance (DeFi), and serving financial institutions in particular. Keeta provides a built-in digital authentication mechanism to issue secure digital certificates through trusted KYC providers. These certificates can instantly verify user identity on the network while protecting privacy and meeting global financial regulatory requirements. The test network is expected to be launched at the end of March.

(This article mentions projects that are not used as investment advice. Welcome to communicate with the author of this article @jiayifan510)