Weekly Stable

The Weekly Stable (Vol 3)

Hi stable subscribers,

Sometimes when you ask, the internet delivers.

I was curious whether anyone had put together a killer guide for businesses to implement a stablecoin strategy, and the Nilos founder sent me this primer on everything from business case development to provider selection to pilot and launch.

I would put this up there with Simon Taylor's Stablecoins aren't cheaper; They're better as one of the great detail-level primers on stablecoin ops and mechanics.

Artemis also published the January vintage of their monthly Stablecoin Market Update this week. (We'll be sharing a few takeaways on our Twitter.)

But the biggest news this week was the Senate Banking Committee's proposed legislation to establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins in the US. It's incredible how quickly legislators have moved to pave the path for sanctioned regulated stables over the past three weeks. The GENIUS Act from US Senator Bill Hagerty has a few interesting proposals that would make stablecoin issuance operate more like deposit banking:

Issuers would need to submit monthly audited reports on their reserves.
The act establishes licensing and reserve requirements for issuers (no exotic or risky underlying assets).
The act applies the Federal Reserve's rules for issuers of >$10B and state rules for <$10B.
It allows non-bank issuers of stablecoins to promote competition (ie: fintechs and crypto companies can issue their own compliant stables).
The act only contemplates dollar-backed stablecoins and doesn't (yet) discuss non-USD stables. Presumably there will be some discussion of FX and interoperability with CBDCs and foreign stables.
The act doesn't ban yield generation on stables, so long as yield doesn't contribute to risk, so there is a path forward for high-APY stables.
The act doesn't discuss algorithmic stablecoins – or specifically, those not backed 1:1 by cash and cash equivalents. It will be interesting to see if the Senate clears the path for fractional reserve banking via stables, or requires tighter asset-matching.

If you add up all currently-issued USD stablecoins, the market cap makes stablecoins the 18th largest holder of US Treasury debt as of the mid-point of last year. This could have incredibly important and far-reaching implications for protecting the value of the US dollar in an increasingly fragmented world of digital currencies.

There are no slow weeks in 2025.

Enjoy another week of stablecoin news below.

(And find us online at @thestablecon and linkedin/stablecon)

💡

A Message From our Partner

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🚀 Product Launches

Brava, launched a stablecoin management system designed to help institutional investors, wealth managers, and high-net-worth individuals optimize their stablecoin holdings by automatically identifying competitive yields. The platform will initially support major stablecoins such as USDC, USDT, and DAI, and plans to expand to other currencies later in the year.

Tether, the stablecoin issuer, announced the integration of USDt into Bitcoin's ecosystem. The integration, supported by the Taproot Assets protocol developed by Lightning Labs, aimed to combine Bitcoin's decentralization and security with the speed and scalability of the Lightning Network. Tether also announced $13 billion in net profits for 2024; interestingly, only $7 billion of profits come from its Treasuries and repo agreements – $5 billion come from gold and bitcoin holdings.

💸 Fundraises

Cedar Money raised a $9.9 million seed round to transform international money flows using stablecoins to deliver faster, more reliable, and cost-effective cross-border payments between developed and emerging markets.