Stablecoins in policy expansion are no longer just a pure "Web3" narrative. The U.S. House of Representatives passed three crypto-related legislations: the CLARITY Act, the GENIUS Act, and the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, with the GENIUS Act expected to be signed into law by Trump on local time Friday.
This not only marks the first national regulatory framework for stablecoins in the United States but also sends a clear signal that stablecoins are moving out of the gray area and into the edge of the mainstream financial system. Meanwhile, major financial centers like Hong Kong, China, and the EU are accelerating their steps, and the global stablecoin landscape is about to undergo a reshaping.
Looking back at the past few months, we will find that stablecoins have almost overnight transformed from a financial variable under regulatory scrutiny to a new infrastructure officially recognized. What has happened behind this, who is driving stablecoins to become the new protagonist on the global financial stage, and how should we rationally understand this wave of enthusiasm?
From Web3 Narrative to National Strategy, Who is Driving?
From the beginning of the year to now, stablecoins have undoubtedly become the global financial policy and narrative focus.
However, this wave of enthusiasm is not accidental, nor is it the product of natural technological evolution, but a structural turn driven by policy forces, especially the policy shift during the Trump era, which played an extremely disruptive "catfish role".
On one hand, Trump has always been clearly opposed to Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), explicitly stating support for a market-driven digital dollar route. On the other hand, from endorsing the family enterprise's USD1 to promoting and about to sign the GENIUS Act, Trump is also practically fulfilling his campaign promise of loosening the crypto market.
This series of signals has directly forced global regulators to re-examine stablecoins. Therefore, within just a few months, stablecoins have leaped from a marginal issue in the crypto circle to a discussion focus at the national strategic level. Among them, besides Hong Kong, China setting a timeline for the Stablecoin Regulation, major global economies have begun to simultaneously seriously consider and accelerate the establishment of a clear compliant framework for stablecoins:
- The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) Regulation, effective in 2024, comprehensively covers the compliant supervision of crypto assets and provides a detailed classification of stablecoins;
- The ruling party of South Korea's new president Lee Jae-myung proposed the Digital Asset Basic Law, clearly stipulating that as long as a Korean company has at least 500 million won (about $370,000) in capital and ensures refund through reserve funds, it can issue stablecoins;
Objectively speaking, the passage of the GENIUS Act is not just a loosening of stablecoins by the United States, but a clear choice of the digital dollar route - abandoning Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) while supporting compliant, privately issued US dollar stablecoins.
It can be foreseen that the United States' stance will become a reference paradigm for regulatory design in other countries, promoting stablecoins into the universal discussion framework of global financial policies.
The Path of Stablecoins is Changing
In the past few years, the stablecoin market landscape has been long dominated by Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC), representing two paths of "circulation efficiency" and "compliant transparency":
- USDT focuses on cross-platform circulation and matching efficiency, occupying a dominant position in exchanges and gray settlement networks;
- USDC emphasizes asset compliance and transparency, deeply cultivating regulatory-friendly scenarios and institutional client systems;
In terms of overall scale, stablecoins have maintained a growth trend since 2025 - according to CoinGecko data, as of July 18, the total market value of stablecoins across the network is about $262 billion, growing by over 20% compared to the beginning of the year.
This means that in the process of crypto market recovery, stablecoins remain the most core "liquidity entry point". Among them, the duopoly of USDT and USDC remains solid - USDT's total market value exceeds $160 billion, accounting for over 60%; USDC remains around $65 billion, accounting for about 25%, with the two combined accounting for nearly 90%.
Since 2024, more and more Web2 financial enterprises and traditional capital forces have begun to enter the market, using stablecoins to build on-chain settlement tools. For example, PayPal's PYUSD and USD1, which is backed by new political capital, are two representative signals:
PYUSD (PayPal USD) is launched by payment giant PayPal, naturally possessing cross-border settlement scenarios and global merchant networks; USD1 aims at on-chain compliant deposit and withdrawal and cross-border business, supported by political and business resources endorsed by Trump, cutting into enterprise settlement scenarios.
It can be said that under the support of institutional and national forces, these emerging stablecoin projects are driving the function of stablecoins to evolve from a "Web3 liquidity tool" to a value bridge connecting Web3 and the real economic system, and their usage scenarios are gradually penetrating from exchanges and wallets into diverse use cases such as supply chain finance, cross-border trade, freelancer settlement, and OTC scenarios.
Behind the Surge, What Are the Real Challenges for Stablecoins?
However, objectively speaking, the GENIUS Act not only provides institutional recognition for stablecoins but also brings more compliance requirements, setting clearer regulatory boundaries for their development.
For instance, issuers need to accept KYC/AML management, funds must have custodial isolation and third-party auditing, and there might be issuance limits or usage restrictions in extreme cases. This means stablecoins have gained a legal identity but have formally entered the "regulated monetary role".
From this perspective, whether stablecoins can break through the application limitations of Web3 is the key to achieving incremental landing. Moreover, the greatest growth potential of stablecoins is not within the Crypto internal circle, but in the broader Web2 and global real economy.
Like USDT and USDC's main incremental growth, it no longer comes from on-chain interactive users, but from small and medium enterprises, individual merchants with strong cross-border settlement needs, emerging markets and financially disadvantaged regions unable to access SWIFT network, residents of inflation-prone countries, content creators and freelancers unable to use PayPal or Stripe.
In other words, its biggest incremental growth is not in Web3, but in Web2 - the real killer application of stablecoins is not the "next DeFi protocol", but "replacing traditional US dollar accounts".
This means that once stablecoins become the foundational carrier of digital dollars globally, they will inevitably touch upon sensitive nerves like monetary sovereignty, financial sanctions, and geopolitical order.
Therefore, the next stage of stablecoins' growth will be closely related to the new map of US dollar globalization and will become a new battlefield among governments, international institutions, and financial giants.
In Conclusion
The essence of currency issuance has always been an extension of power, depending not only on asset reserves and clearing efficiency but also on national credit, regulatory approval, and international status endorsement.
Stablecoins are no exception. If they want to truly penetrate the real economic system from the Crypto world, market mechanisms or commercial logic alone are ultimately insufficient. Therefore, the compliance assistance brought by the global policy shift in 2025 is indeed an important driver for stablecoins to go mainstream, but it also means they must survive in a more complex game.
This is a long-cycle game, and we are at the stage where it truly begins.
