This Week in Stablecoins: Wall Street Eyes Federally Approved Blockchain Rails

Perhaps one of 2025’s most surprising events has been the legitimization of stablecoins within traditional finance. 

This legitimization is coming from the Oval Office, with this week marking the first in U.S. history with a clear regulatory framework for stablecoin issuers and crypto firms to operate under after the GENIUS Act was signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 18. 

Already on Thursday (July 24), Anchorage Digital and Ethena Labs teamed up to issue the first-ever GENIUS Act-compliant, federally regulated stablecoin.

Consulting firms like McKinsey were quick to issue guidance for their clients around the use of stablecoins, while financial services players like Barclays jumped out the gate with new thought leadership to ride the wave of stablecoins in payments and banking. 

The real opportunity, Barclays argued, is in programmable money: stablecoins that trigger smart contract execution in supply chain payments, real estate escrow or capital market trades.

Against that backdrop, and with the new law in place, multinational firms are increasingly embedding stablecoin rails into their payment flows — not to chase crypto profits, but to cut costs, reduce settlement risk and unlock real-time liquidity. 

Once viewed as a bridge for speculative crypto trades, stablecoins are now being considered for more concrete operations like B2B payments, supply chain finance and treasury operations.

Read more: Citi, JPMorgan Tell Investors Stablecoins Core to Future Payments Strategy 

From Wall Street stalwarts like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan to global remittance leaders like Western Union, major financial actors are eyeing a potential pivot to blockchain-enabled infrastructure — not to upend the financial system, but to streamline it. 

On Wednesday (July 23), BNY and Goldman Sachs announced the launch of a blockchain-based solution that allows institutional clients to settle tokenized traditional assets — think bonds and equities — with near real-time finality. At its core, the initiative offers atomic settlement — the simultaneous exchange of assets and payments — something the traditional financial system has long struggled with due to fragmented infrastructure and clearinghouse intermediation.

Digital banking firm Atlas is now offering stablecoin accounts as part of its multicurrency banking product. 

Western Union, long the face of legacy remittance systems, seems unbothered by the stablecoin ascent. CEO and President Devin McGranahan recently said in a report that stablecoins aren’t a threat to its business. 

Meanwhile, JPMorgan is reportedly exploring crypto-asset-based lending, granting loans against its customers’ cryptocurrency holdings.

Stablecoin issuer Tether is also reportedly on track to return to doing business in the United States. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said Wednesday (July 23) that the company is “well in progress of establishing our U.S. domestic strategy” and plans to focus on payments and interbank settlement and trading.

Read also: 4 Questions CFOs Need to Ask as Wall Street Embraces Stablecoins

Unlike previous waves of blockchain enthusiasm driven by retail traders, NFTs or Web3 idealism, today’s stablecoin movement is infrastructural. The focus is on latency, compliance, settlement risk and operational cost — pain points that CFOs, not TikTok influencers, lose sleep over.

None of this progress is without friction. The stablecoin ecosystem remains fragmented across chains, standards and jurisdictions. Interoperability is still a work in progress, and concerns about AML/KYC compliance and systemic risk persist.

JPMorgan Chase, for example, is reportedly skeptical of claims that the stablecoin market will grow eightfold to reach $2 trillion.

Even the GENIUS Act, while a significant step, leaves much to be clarified at the regulatory level.

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