It’s been an eventful few weeks for stablecoins—privately issued cryptocurrencies pegged to a stable asset like the U.S. dollar and redeemable for the underlying fiat currency.
Circle Internet, the issuer of USDC, the world’s second-largest stablecoin, made a flashy public debut, with shares soaring more than 8x from their IPO price. At the same time, the U.S. Senate passed the GENIUS Act, a landmark piece of legislation establishing the first comprehensive federal regulatory framework for stablecoins. The bill introduces mandatory 1:1 reserve backing, audits, and anti-money laundering compliance measures to reduce systemic risk and support consumer confidence.
Backed by strong political support—including from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who projects the stablecoin market could exceed $2 trillion by 2028—the GENIUS Act is seen as a pivotal step toward integrating stablecoins into mainstream finance. It opens the door for a wide range of issuers, from banks and fintechs to major retailers, to launch or integrate stablecoins into their payment infrastructure.
Unsurprisingly, this regulatory clarity is already sparking accelerated interest from corporates and fintechs. The most immediate—and arguably most compelling—use case is in cross-border payments, where stablecoins offer a faster, cheaper alternative to legacy payment networks.
Two major players in payments, Fiserv and PayPal, have announced stablecoin-based initiatives aimed at upgrading their infrastructure for remittance and settlement services, leveraging blockchain’s speed and low transaction costs.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan (yes JPMorgan) is entering the space with JPMD, a U.S. dollar token built on Coinbase’s Base blockchain. Designed for institutional use, JPMD enables near-instant transfers of tokenized dollar deposits between clients, offering an alternative to public stablecoins like USDC and Tether (USDT).
The e-commerce sector is also also moving fast on the topic. Shopify, in partnership with Stripe and Coinbase, plans to allow merchants to accept USDC payments by year-end, with settlement available either in local currency or USDC. Amazon and Walmart are reportedly exploring their own stablecoin strategies, with the jury still out on whether these will be dedicated to customer payments or streamlining B2B cross-border supplier payments, a key area of potential savings.
Indeed, B2B/cross-border payments may prove to be stablecoins’ “killer app.” Blockchain enables faster, lower-cost processing without depending on traditional card networks like Visa and Mastercard, which currently have limited presence in the B2B segment.
In the consumer space, however, we believe stablecoin adoption will take more time. Credit cards are likely to remain dominant thanks to widespread acceptance, ease of use, rewards programs, and built-in consumer protections. In the near term, stablecoin payment use cases are then likely to remain niche. Still, Shopify’s USDC integration could serve as a useful test for broader consumer adoption and will be worth monitoring. As it stands, Visa and Mastercard face minimal risk from stablecoin disruption in the short run in our view.
Nonetheless, stablecoins are clearly on a path to playing a significant role in the financial system, as evidenced by the growing number of multinationals evaluating their use for faster, cheaper, and more transparent cross-border payments.
For equity investors, opportunities to gain exposure to this secular trend are limited. Circle Internet—the company behind USDC, which has a circulating supply of $61 billion versus Tether’s $153 billion—is the most direct play. Circle stands to benefit from the rising supply of coins—in line with increased demand for stablecoins—and rising interest income on its treasury bills reserves, provided interest rates do not decline significantly.
While Circle’s valuation isn’t cheap—currently trading at 17x 2026 estimated revenue (more than $3 billion)—this may be justified by a robust growth pace (25-30% per year) in its core business with upside risk should new opportunities take off (white-labeled stablecoin issuance for other firms and tokenized asset products). Circle’s earnings could also benefit from a significant margin expansion, considering that the company already boasts 10% operating margins and has a largely fixed cost base.
Finally, Coinbase could be another play on the stablecoin story as it rents out its infrastructure, just like Circle, to companies seeking to launch their own stablecoins. This new revenue stream could also boost Coinbase’s topline growth and provide significant margin leverage. Fintech: It’s Show Time For Stablecoins
