Cobo Stable Weekly No.12 ｜Stablecoins: The Next Internet’s Money Layer
JD.com enters stablecoin payments. The GENIUS Act redraws the compliance map. What started as a crypto workaround is now shaping up to be the monetary layer of the next internet.
Global payments are undergoing a revolution, and stablecoins are at the heart of this transformation. They're not just reshaping how money moves across borders—they're completely redefining what payments can be. Cobo stands at the cutting edge of this shift, building the full-stack infrastructure that powers next-gen stablecoin solutions: from secure wallet tech to risk control and compliance and yield-generating options that actually make your money work.
Go with Cobo, and you can zero in on building cool stuff and growing your user base, while surfing the stablecoin revolution without the infrastructure headaches.
Stablecoins are being revalued by Wall Street—not as cost savers, but as growth infrastructure.
→ Global execs now prioritize speed & market access over price
→ Circle up 600%, $45B valuation = 70% of USDC
→ JD.com joins the race with global stablecoin plans
→ GENIUS Act clears the road for compliant issuers like Circle; pressures Tether
Market Overview and Growth Highlights
Stablecoin Total Market Cap Reaches $251.752B
The total stablecoin market capitalization has reached $251.752 billion, reflecting a week-over-week growth of $835.49 million. In terms of market share, USDT continues to dominate with a 62.23% share, followed by USDC, which holds the second position with a market cap of $61.03 billion (24.24% share).
Blockchain Network Distribution
Top 3 Networks by Stablecoin Market Cap:
Ethereum: $125.747B
Tron: $79.175B
Solana: $10.614B
Top 3 Fastest-Growing Networks (Weekly):
Story：+72.91%（USDC dominance: 100%）
TON：+31.24%（USDT dominance: 49.8%）
Scroll：+20.50%（USDC dominance:76.32）
Data Source: DefiLlama
🎯Wall Street Discovers Stablecoins Aren't Just Cost Cutters
A new survey of 300 global finance execs reveals a fundamental shift: stablecoins are evolving from "cost-saving tools" to "growth engines" that unlock new markets and revenue streams.
The data shows executives now prioritize "faster settlement" and "market expansion capabilities" over simple cost reduction when evaluating stablecoin benefits.
Regulatory Clarity = Green Light
90% of institutions view frameworks like EU's MiCA and the US GENIUS Act as enablers, not barriers. This has triggered parallel adoption paths globally:
Latin America: Leading in crossborder payments
Asia: Trade-driven expansion (think JD's supply chain play)
North America: Mature infrastructure attracting institutional players
Europe: Compliance-first approach under MiCA guidance
The New Asset Class
This "cost savings → value creation" shift is reshaping capital markets. Circle's recent public listing isn't just a company milestone—it's Wall Street officially recognizing compliant stablecoins as a distinct asset category.
Investors are realizing Circle isn't a traditional bank (no credit risk) or SaaS company (no subscription model). It's something new: a hyper-efficient financial infrastructure play that generates profit from net interest margins on reserves and scales through distribution partnerships like Coinbase.
The Meta Bet
Buying Circle stock isn't just betting on one company—it's betting on the "money layer" of the next internet. Wall Street is finally pricing stablecoins not as payment rails, but as the foundation of digital commerce infrastructure.
The narrative has officially flipped from operational efficiency to strategic growth driver.
🎯JD's Stablecoin Revenge Play
JD completely botched China's mobile payments war. While WeChat Pay and Alipay carved up 90% of the market, JD Pay got stuck with scraps. Liu Qiangdong called it his "biggest mistake"—losing control of the payment rails that power commerce.
Now he's betting stablecoins can give him a second shot.
The Crossborder Opening
Here's the thing: crossborder payments are still broken. China's CIPS system processed ¥175 trillion in 2024 but it's slow and expensive. Third-party solutions still rely on legacy banking rails. Stablecoins sidestep all of this—blockchain-native, real-time, peer-to-peer value transfer without the correspondent banking mess.
Liu's pitch is ambitious: stablecoin licenses in every major currency zone, cutting crossborder B2B costs by 90% and settlement times to under 10 seconds.
The Hong Kong Foothold
JD Blockchain Technology (Hong Kong) just entered the HKMA's stablecoin sandbox in July 2024. That's their regulatory beachhead.
The strategy is classic JD: use their existing supply chain as the first customer to solve the cold start problem. Every local JD operation—Japan, Europe, wherever—gets its own local currency stablecoin for frictionless settlement.
The Endgame
Start with internal B2B rails, evolve into an open "international stablecoin settlement hub." Multiple compliant stablecoins creating an on-chain FX market that bypasses traditional banking entirely.
It's either brilliant positioning or expensive revenge fantasy. But after missing payments 1.0, JD isn't taking any chances with 2.0.
🎯 GENIUS Act Reshapes Stablecoin Power Dynamics
The GENIUS Act just passed the U.S. Senate with a 68–30 vote, setting the first formal legislative framework for stablecoins. More than a regulatory milestone, it’s a rewriting of the game—one that directly impacts Tether, Circle, and the U.S. banking sector.
Tether faces a ticking clock. The Act mandates U.S.-style audits and reserves, and gives centralized platforms three years to phase out non-compliant stablecoins. That puts USDT on track for an “orderly exit” from the U.S. unless Tether pivots—perhaps toward compliant offerings, global south markets, or a foreign issuer exemption.
For Circle, it’s a greenlight. USDC’s reserve structure gets legislative validation, and its position as a cash-equivalent payment token is now locked in. With Coinbase as its distribution backbone, Circle is positioned to capture outsized regulatory and market momentum.
The Act draws a firm line: compliant stablecoins can’t offer interest. But tokenized bank deposits like JPMD can. This splits the field into two lanes:
USDC: open-access, non-interest-bearing digital cash
JPMD: closed-loop, interest-bearing digital liabilities
Interestingly, JPMorgan has launched assets on Coinbase’s Base network, not on a private chain—signaling that even the biggest banks can’t ignore the gravity of open ecosystems.
Beneath it all is a deeper play: exporting U.S. regulatory standards through stablecoin frameworks. But while USD stablecoins can be tools of soft power, they don’t solve FX risk for non-dollar users—highlighting the rising demand for localized stablecoins and on-chain forex markets.
Big Picture
🔮 Analyst Jon Ma values Circle at $55 billion, implying extreme multiples of 58.1x gross profit and 163.7x net profit based on 2025 projections. His model forecasts Circle hitting $9 billion revenue by 2029, driven by the new Circle Payment Network and USDC maintaining 28.5% market share in a $1.2 trillion stablecoin market. The sky-high valuation multiples suggest investors have already priced in substantial growth from both CPN adoption and stablecoin market expansion. Ma's analysis implies Circle's current $55 billion valuation may have already captured its future upside, leaving limited room for further appreciation.
Regulation & Compliance
🏛️ The Senate just passed the GENIUS Act 68-30, creating the first federal stablecoin framework requiring full cash/Treasury backing and dual state-federal oversight. While Americans can still hold USDT, it's effectively getting regulated out of the US financial system. This opens massive opportunities for compliant players like Circle to integrate into banking and payment apps. Tether's decade-long dominance just hit a regulatory wall.
Capital Moves
💰 Chinese payment giant Lakala announced plans for a Hong Kong IPO to fund its push into digital currency cross-border payments, as domestic digital currency stocks surge on stablecoin momentum.The timing is perfect as Hong Kong's formal Stablecoin Ordinance launches August 1st, creating the regulatory framework Chinese companies need to compete globally. Lakala is essentially making a $multi-trillion bet that stablecoins will become the new rails for international payments, joining the race against Stripe and PayPal. This marks Chinese payment players' serious entry into the global stablecoin infrastructure game.
💰 XFX just raised a seed round to solve stablecoins' biggest problem: the "crypto in seconds, fiat in days" mismatch where instant on-chain transfers get stuck waiting for slow traditional FX settlement. Founded by three ex-Bitso executives and backed by Haun Ventures, they're building a crypto-native FX layer that combines on-chain transfers with proprietary liquidity to deliver instant local currency to recipients. With stablecoin volume hitting $37 trillion annually, XFX is targeting the infrastructure gap that keeps global payments from being truly seamless.
💰 Ubyx just raised $10M from Galaxy Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and Founders Fund to build a universal clearing network for stablecoins. Their platform connects multiple stablecoin issuers with traditional banks, letting businesses redeem any stablecoin for fiat at 1:1 directly into their existing accounts. It's solving the "last mile" problem that keeps stablecoins from being truly interchangeable money. The heavyweight investor backing signals the market is shifting from isolated issuers toward collaborative infrastructure that could finally make stablecoins as fungible as regular dollars.
💰Ramp just bagged $200M at a $16B valuation, tripling from $7.6B last April as payment volume hit $80B annually. The corporate spend platform evolved beyond cards into full financial ops, now serving 40k+ businesses with AI-powered expense tracking and procurement tools. The standout move is their Stripe partnership launching stablecoin-backed corporate cards for smoother cross-border payments. CEO Eric Glyman's pitch is classic fintech automation: let robots handle receipts and bookkeeping so humans can focus on building. The stablecoin integration signals Ramp's bet on digital currency rails becoming standard for international business payments.
New Launches
👀 Coinbase just launched Coinbase Payments on Base, letting merchants accept USDC directly—starting with Shopify integration that sent COIN up 16%. The genius move is building on their own L2: they capture sequencer fees from transactions while offering gas-less payments to users. It's recreating traditional payment economics but with blockchain efficiency, diversifying beyond trading fees while cementing USDC as Web3's payment standard.
👀 Paxos just launched Paxos Labs offering "Issuance-as-a-Service" for white-label stablecoins, letting fintechs and exchanges slap their brand on Paxos's regulated infrastructure. Instead of spending years building compliance frameworks, companies can now launch branded stablecoins instantly using Paxos's backend. It's the stablecoin equivalent of Shopify—turning regulatory moats into commoditized services. This could massively accelerate institutional adoption by removing the biggest barrier to entry: compliance headaches.
👀 Fellow just launched a payment routing platform that lets you instantly move money between any wallet, bank, or app using just a text message—think Apple Pay to Coinbase or Phantom to your bank account. They use stablecoins for settlement to achieve instant finality, eliminating the multi-day waits between different payment rails. Built by crypto fund and fintech veterans, it's essentially trying to make money move as freely as information by breaking down account silos. It's the universal translator for finance that everyone's been waiting for.
👀 X is launching investment and trading features "soon" according to CEO Linda Yaccarino, accelerating Elon Musk's vision of transforming the platform into a financial super app. The trading capability will complement the "X Money" P2P payment service being built with Visa, mirroring WeChat's model. Given Musk's crypto enthusiasm and Tesla's $1.2B Bitcoin position, the industry expects significant digital asset integration. This could create a massive mainstream crypto on-ramp by embedding trading into millions of users' daily social media experience.
👀 Alchemy Pay is launching its own blockchain in Q4 2025 with a native stablecoin, designed as a central hub for frictionless stablecoin swaps between global tokens like USDT and regional ones like EURC. The timing capitalizes on emerging regulatory clarity from the US, Hong Kong, and EU frameworks. Leveraging its existing 173-country payment network, Alchemy Pay is positioning itself as key infrastructure for the compliant cross-border stablecoin economy, essentially building the rails for regulated global digital currency flows.
👀 Financial giant Revolut is reportedly exploring its own stablecoin launch, joining Amazon and Walmart in eyeing the $251 billion market as new regulations like the GENIUS Act create compliant pathways. The $48 billion fintech could leverage stablecoins to slash payment costs and earn yield on reserves, intensifying competition for Tether and Circle. This wave of institutional entrants is blurring traditional finance and crypto boundaries while raising regulatory concerns about tech giants creating private currencies. Senator Elizabeth Warren has warned these moves could enable data exploitation and stifle competition in the payments ecosystem.
Market Adoption
🌱Circle is embedding USDC directly into traditional banking apps through a partnership with fintech Matera. Banks can now offer USDC accounts alongside regular fiat using Matera's "Digital Twin" ledger, letting stablecoin settlements flow through local rails like Brazil's Pix. Users get 24/7 global payments without leaving their banking app. It's Circle's biggest push yet to make stablecoins standard financial infrastructure, not just crypto novelty.
🌱 JPMorgan just went full public blockchain, launching JPMD on Coinbase's Base for institutional clients. It's basically a stablecoin but backed by actual FDIC-insured deposits instead of Treasury bonds—giving it regulatory advantages that pure stablecoins can't touch. Starting with internal use but launching on Base (not their private chain) shows clear ambitions to compete in the broader payments game. Traditional finance just fired a shot across the bow of Circle and Tether.
🌱Visa is doubling down on stablecoins with a new Yellow Card partnership in Africa and a bold prediction that "every institution that moves money will need a stablecoin strategy" in 2025. They've already processed $225M in USDC settlements and invested in payments firm BVNK, signaling serious commitment beyond pilot programs. The CEMEA expansion targets underbanked regions where stablecoins could leapfrog traditional banking infrastructure. Visa is positioning stablecoins as "the new payment rails for the internet," essentially betting their future on crypto becoming the backbone of global finance.
🌱Animoca Brands is launching a HKD-pegged stablecoin with Standard Chartered and HKT, perfectly timed for Hong Kong's new stablecoin regulations taking effect August 1st. The token targets gaming ecosystems, cross-border trade, and serves as a bridge for mainland Chinese assets seeking international exposure. Animoca sees this as building a neutral financial system in Hong Kong that connects traditional finance with Web3 as more financial products migrate on-chain. The move positions Hong Kong as a compliant gateway for Asian stablecoin adoption.