Stablecoins Surge This Week as Market Value Tops $300 Billion

The stablecoin market topped $300 billion in value this week, a new all-time high. It has grown 42% this year, double the 21% growth of the overall cryptocurrency market.

The rapid progression hints at a key aspiration. Rather than serving solely as crypto’s payments plumbing, stablecoins now have their eye on being refactored as a building block for next-generation payments, treasuries and capital markets.

This week’s confluence of policy friction, marketplace innovation and regulatory assessment revealed an industry at an inflection point.

Stablecoins topping $300 billion does not signal the finish line. It marks the starting gate for the next race, which will be transforming stablecoins from speculative plumbing into globally trusted infrastructure.

The discussion around how stablecoin’s digital dollars might serve actual economic functions sharpened in real time at Sibos, the annual global banking summit, where major financial institutions moved beyond thought-leadership panels into tactical explorations of stablecoin-based cross-border payment rails and treasury management efficiencies.

Visa, for example, announced at the event a pilot to allow businesses to prefund Visa Direct with stablecoins rather than fiat, effectively treating stablecoin balances as “money in the bank” for outgoing cross-border payments.

Visa framed the effort not as an experiment in crypto, but as a treasury upgrade by bringing programmable assets into real-world payments infrastructure. Under the pilot, banks, remittance firms and corporates will load stablecoins into Visa Direct, which will then settle payouts in local currency on the recipient side.

Elsewhere, Brex announced plans to add stablecoin payments to its own global corporate card, enabling cardholders to send and receive these payments.

On the institutional front, Circle and Deutsche Börse signed an agreement to integrate Circle’s regulated stablecoins, USDC and EURC, into Deutsche Börse’s trading, settlement and custody infrastructure.

Other announcements like Cloudflare’s NET Dollar, Circle’s experimental transaction-reversal features on its Arc blockchain and Google’s AI-driven payments protocol each come with a particular vision for how stablecoins could evolve from crypto-trading instruments into core corporate tools.

Taken together, these moves represent a maturing stablecoin ecosystem, one that spans payments rails, capital market utilities and embedded application flows.

Read also: PYMNTS Flags Four Stablecoins CFOs Are Testing for Liquidity at Speed

The week’s headlines point to a central tension. Stablecoins have found product-market fit as on-chain liquidity tools in crypto markets, but their next wave of growth depends on off-chain, real-world utility. That requires integration into banking workflows, credible interoperability standards and compliance architectures that satisfy regulators.

The latest flashpoint emerged in the United States, where exchanges offering so-called “rewards” or yield on stablecoin balances have reignited opposition from banks. The GENIUS Act, passed in the U.S. in July, explicitly prohibits banks and stablecoin issuers from offering interest on stablecoin holdings to ward off deposit flight, but it does not ban exchanges from offering rewards.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong took to social platform X in a series of posts accusing entrenched banking lobbies of trying to choke off stablecoin innovation by closing the so-called GENIUS Act’s yield loopholes.

Hypocrisy from banks is causing problems for crypto again.

Banks want to remove your ability to earn rewards when holding stablecoins.

Competition is good for consumers. They’re just mad that they’re losing.

Big banks don’t need another bailout, they need better products. pic.twitter.com/g3oVQPmrrr

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) September 29, 2025

At the same time, the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) in late September passed a recommendation to ban so-called “multi-issuance” stablecoins, or those issued jointly in the European Union and third jurisdictions, citing legal, liquidity and operational risks. Since ESRB guidance is nonbinding, implementation will depend on national regulators and the European Commission. But the public airing signals mounting pressure.

In the United Kingdom, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey appears to be softening his stance. He suggested Wednesday (Oct. 1) that stablecoins could reduce reliance on commercial bank lending, and that the financial system need not remain tethered to incumbent bank intermediation. This signals recognition of stablecoins as structural, not peripheral, to financial plumbing.

In the U.S., Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller publicly argued Monday (Sept. 29) that the private sector is better positioned to innovate stablecoin infrastructure than central banks. His posture aligns with the U.S. approach of enabling regulated stablecoin issuance, rather than displacing it with a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC).

For participants and observers, the most consequential question is not whether stablecoins will persist but who shapes their architectures, under whose rules, and on what chains. In that contest, jurisdictions are staking monetary authority, platform incumbents are hedging relevance, and innovators are navigating a narrow channel.

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