The State of Stables by Stablecon and Artemis

Stablecoins are no longer theoretical. Entrepreneurs are actively challenging legacy payment rails, embedding programmable dollars into global commerce, and redefining how value moves.

Introducing The State of Stables, a new quarterly report by Stablecon and Artemis to track the data, products, companies, and regulatory shifts shaping the stablecoin ecosystem. The Q1 2026 edition spotlights the rise of stablecoin-linked cards, a breakout category accelerating stablecoins into everyday payments.

Justin and Andrew dive into the data, then examine the significance of stablecoin cards, highlight a profile of Farooq Malik, founder of card issuance platform Rain, and discuss a signature policy issue under fierce debate in Washington: the right to pay yield on stablecoins.

Access the report at: https://dx4rw.share.hsforms.com/2WH3VBt1aSWa0-5JAfKK2uw

Transcript

Setting The Stage: Genius Act

Justin Friedman 0:00

Passage of the stablecoin legislation drafted by the Senate, dubbed the Genius Act. Because analysts say a wave of competition could complicate things.

Andrew Van Aken 0:08

Stablecoin is your debut right here at the NASDAQ today.

Host Intros And Report Launch

Justin Friedman 0:13

Welcome to the podcast. I'm Justin Friedman. I lead policy here at StableCon. StableCon is a conference series where we gather the stablecoin ecosystem. We'll be in Amsterdam in May, and we'll be in Washington, D.C. in September. And we're very excited to see our listeners there in person. Today we have Andrew Van Aken. And our guest here is the co-author of a report issued by Stablecon and Artemis on February 19th. And we're calling this the State of Stables. This will be our quarterly report on what's going on in the stablecoin universe. And this is our very first edition. Andrew, welcome. Tell us about yourself and tell us about Artemis.

Andrew Van Aken 1:03

Well, first off, where I am, it's very warm. So I came underdressed with a short-sleeved shirt, but it's just too warm where I am. So I am a data scientist at Artemis. I spend most of my time looking at stablecoin data all day, every day, making charts, making graphs with wonderful colors. And we Artemis is a data analytics company focusing specifically on blockchain data. We work with all types of clients from fintechs to investors to really help them understand what's going on in the stablecoin world. And so about a few months ago, we we we chatted and said, hey, why not why not bring stablecoin data to the people and show it on a quarterly basis? And so here we are, uh February 19th, as you said, uh with our first report. Very exciting seeing this all get out for the very first time.

Why Stablecoins Matter Now

Scale, Supply, And Real-World Use

Justin Friedman 1:52

So I'll talk for a moment about why we're doing this. There's a paradigm shift happening in payments, in banking, in stored value, in value transfer. This is often overstated. We talk a lot about paradigm shifts, but rarely is there a technology that actually changes the game and forces us to reconsider our notions about the world and how we interact with the economy. So I in general, let me ask you something. How would you describe this moment we're at at what is probably still the dawn of the stablecoin era?

Andrew Van Aken 2:32

Yeah, I mean, like you said, uh the fact that money can move around the world instantaneously at any time, any day, it's pretty fascinating. And oftentimes below one cent a transaction has been absolutely staggering. Uh and I think that we've really seen it in the data too, where things like B2B volume, supply stablecoin supply, the number of stable coins have just all had these absurdly high inflecting charts. And so it's finally gone past this, you know, the knock we used to hear was oh, it's only stable coins are only being used for trading or degenerate lending. But now we're really starting to see these, you know, these payment companies, these institutions really lean into stable coins and get on-chain. And so we've really seen this like really proliferation of use cases from prediction markets to payments to on-chain yield to lending. It's been just astonishing to see really like what one technology can do for all of finance.

Justin Friedman 3:30

Amazing. So tell me about stable coin circulation. This is something that we cover in the report, and I think a lot of people are wondering you know, what is the scale of stable coins? Have they reached escape velocity? And also, interestingly, what are is the to what degree are stable coins being used for things that interact more with the real world rather than say just crypto trading? How are people using them for payments? How are businesses using them to move value? I think there is this narrative that stable coins exist just to bridge between various cryptocurrencies. Is that still true? And is that going to be true for the foreseeable?

Tether, USDC, And Business Models

Card-Linked Payments Breakout

Andrew Van Aken 4:17

The the two things I would say to that is we, for one, we see this two same two trends that have been happening over and over and over again since really um 2020. That is we have uh Tron and Ethereum really leading in stablecoin supply. Two chains that could not be more different in any way. Uh so first you have Tron, which, as people know, is really this payments chain, if you will, wasn't designed specifically to do that, but facilitates billions and billions of dollars of simple stablecoin transfers every single month. On the other hand, you have Ethereum, where there has been this absolute proliferation of stable coins uh that's been used for a variety of different things: lending, DeFi, trading, prediction markets, uh, all these different sort of use cases for stable coins. And what we see is that this just continues to trend. This trend just continues. And we also see that on the stablecoin by issuer side. So not only do we have this sort of almost like two-party system for chains, but we also see it for you know stable coins as well, where Tether and Circle continue to be by far the biggest leaders of stablecoin adoption, where Tether uh has uh you know well above $100 billion of supply, um, coming up on almost $200 billion of supply. And USDC has uh about $70 billion of supply. And why we keep harping on this supply, supply, supply concept is because ultimately, you know, stablecoin providers they make money by this way. So they take stable coins, invest the money into often short-term treasuries, and collect the interest. And so I think one of the reasons why we focus so much on this um stable coin supply metric is because that is in fact how these companies actually come back to making money. And so to sum it all up, we see these two same trends of you know, Ethereum, Tron. We've seen other chains grow recently, Solana, Binance Chain, et cetera. Um, and it's really you know uh a fascinating race to see who can um sort of just strop these two chains. And on the stablecoin side, it's really been a lot of tether um and Ethereum. Um, but that brings me to a good segue of you know, what are these things used for? Justin, our zeitgeist of the month of what you call it, is card-linked payment via stable coins. And um, well, first we have this beautiful market map that was done uh by by not me, unfortunately, uh laying out the entire uh, almost the entire stablecoin card link space with companies like Brain, Gnosis Pay, um, and a few others. Um and we have a uh we have a whole write-up as well on all things stablecoin link cards. Um why has this taken off so much, Justin? What's what's going on here? Why are people using stablecoin link cards so much?

Justin Friedman 7:10

Well, we've seen apparently over 100% annual growth since early 2023. So this is real. Like this is not something to sneeze at at this point. And cards are probably a great point of entry because it's a familiar experience, right? For merchants accepting payment at point of sale, there's no difference, right? Someone presents a card or card number and the merchant takes payment and it's processed over, say, the Visa or MasterCard network. And there's no difference for the merchant. No inconvenience, no friction. For the user who wants to pay in stable coins, it's happening in the background. They don't have to pull up a QR code, they don't need to use any specific app. So that seamlessness is going to enable card-linked stablecoin payments in a way that are going to be a gateway drug for a lot of users.

Interchange Economics And Rewards

Andrew Van Aken 8:10

How do you think this? I mean, we've heard a lot of uh being the regulation expert on this uh uh in the whole and policy expert in the whole space. How does this interplay with genius? How does this interplay with um, you know, you know, recent sort of uh court cases of you know possibly having Visa and MasterCard having to lower their interchange fees? Like I'm curious like how you think of this of stablecoin link cards and like the context of all these other legislation and policy that's been moving forward.

Surge In New Stablecoins

Justin Friedman 8:41

Yeah, so we think that this actually strengthens Visa and MasterCard and their moat on um the payments ecosystem. This is an opportunity for them to improve economics, to get faster settlement, to uh uh avoid hops in the infrastructure. And with pressure on interchange fees in various parts of the world, this is going to be all that much more important. It's interesting to compare the US to Europe. So interchange is pretty closely regulated in Europe, and so uh there's less to earn versus in the US, where you know you might get up to 3% interchange on a card transaction. And that allows the issuers to pay rewards to their users, right? A lot of our listeners may be travel fiends and they have the travel cards and they collect a lot of coins, and there are very rich rewards for using the right card in the right moment. And that's something that is almost uniquely American, and users still expect those kinds of rewards from whatever card they choose. So if they're gonna choose a stable coin link card, they're gonna continue to expect to be rewarded in some form. And issuers and the card networks are gonna have to find a way to be able to support those economics going forward, or people are just not gonna transition away from their traditional, you know, airline loyalty cards or uh Chase or Capital One issued travel cards.

Andrew Van Aken 10:17

I need my lounges, Justin. Like I don't see the USDC lounge, you know, at the at JFK. I don't see the tether lounge at JFK.

Justin Friedman 10:23

Or the Yeah, the uh where is the where's the circle lounge? Where's the tether lounge? Um we'll see, but but it's fun to think about that. Like, you know, a few years ago, these names were, you know, the these were brands that nobody had heard of. Nobody was talking about them, certainly not in the context of travel. And so imagining that there might be a circle lounge or a USDC lounge at JFK Airport in the not so distant future, that's kind of wild. But that's where we're at with the emergence of stable coins.

Andrew Van Aken 10:55

I'm looking, I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to it. Um Do you want to go on to a new topic here? I think we have um we have a few data points on um, first off, the the number of stable coins. And I having created this slide, I obviously am a fan of it, but I think it actually uh highlights a few things. So what we're doing here is we're looking at the number of stable coins above $10 million in supply. And so back in 2024-ish, and if you know, we were sitting around 50, um, we are now close to tripling. And so uh by around this time of this call, we're about 130 so with you know many more stable coins down the pipeline. Um so first, I mean, my my basic question to you, Justin, is what what do you think is is driving the surge of these? And I mean, it's clear we're definitely seeing, you know, post-Genius. Uh, I mean, you could draw a line right here. Uh, genius was passed, and then all of a sudden, you know, new stable coins are up uh 40% month over month. Do you think this is driven by genius? Or what are your thoughts on this?

Crypto-Backed Design Innovations

Justin Friedman 12:05

Uh look, the Genius Act is certainly an important enabling lever, and that is bringing a lot of mainstream financial institutions and commercial entities to the table who are curious about stable coins, who want to start accepting payment in stable coins, who maybe want to issue their own stable coin. It lends legitimacy to this instrument and this marketplace in a very real way. But that is largely in the world of fiat-backed stable coins. What I'm seeing in this chart is actually huge growth in crypto-backed stable coins. So let me flip it back to you, Andrew, and ask you what is behind that trend?

Andrew Van Aken 12:47

Yeah, so oh boy, a lot to unpack here. So we've seen just so many different types of innovations in stable coins from you know Athena's delta neutral stable coin, which essentially shorts a futures contract and longs a spot asset to over-collateralize stable coins. So I when we talk about crypto-backed stable coins, we're really talking about these uh more DeFi native type products. And uh obviously it's probably easier to launch something like this than to actually get the funds to, you know, get the fiat money to actually produce a stable coin. Um, so I've really been like seeing this design space of stable coins really um increase in the past past few months. And we've even started to see these, you know, gold stable coins. I'm not sure exactly how this works. Um but yeah, it's been kind of fascinating to see that also like right at the you know explosion of all things stablecoin payments. We've also seen like an explosion of like DeFi you know type stable coins as well. So um the stablecoin industry is not sleeping. They are really trying to think out of the box and uh do all sorts of uh crazy ideas.

Justin Friedman 14:03

Uh let's flip over to uh anything else on that?

Andrew Van Aken 14:06

Yeah, no, no, that's it.

Geography Of Stablecoin Flows

Justin Friedman 14:07

Where do you want to go next? Okay, so let's look at our geo trends. Oh, I want to know where our stable coin users are.

Andrew Van Aken 14:16

Okay, this is a question that we get five times a week. So thank you for making it number six, Justin. Um what's been surprising to us is we've also so often do we hear like uh stable coins in emerging markets. But when we actually look at the flows of stable coins, we actually see that the United States is the top receiver of so right here we're looking at receiving countries that have received stable coins. The United States is the top receiver of stable coins. So at first I was like, okay, this is why does this make sense? Well, I think it makes sense because one, a lot of these uh companies, a lot of these small businesses, they ultimately want dollars. They, you know, obviously United States native currency is the dollar. And so they they clearly want dollars. Um, and so for them, you know, having to receive dollars also instantaneously, also of lower fees, it's like, wow, yeah, I certainly would do that. So we tend to see a lot of these flows from more emerging countries um or almost you know non-top five um currencies being sent um to the United States via dollars. The other area that we see a lot of growth is actually um in these Asian-based countries, so China, Hong Kong, Singapore, for example. Um we really like first saw those countries take an early lead in um usage, especially um in exchanges like Binance or OKX, a lot of these exchanges that were started in Asia, uh, they actually tend to have the largest stable coin supply sitting on them right now. So naturally it makes sense that you know they were sort of ahead of the game in terms of adoption of payments. Um so we tend to see a lot of these, you know, you know, Asian-based developed countries. But then, you know, further down the line, it it what pops out to me that's interesting is you know, Mexico, India. These are some countries that have our the largest remittance corridors in the world, um, you know, UAE to India, uh United States to Mexico. And so it's almost like we're starting to see um some of these remittance channels almost get disrupted by stable coins. And uh so it's it's kind of fascinating to see you know so many different uh trends and ideas in one chart, but I think that's exactly what we're what we're seeing here.

The Yield Debate Under Genius

Market Shifts If Yield Moves To DeFi

Justin Friedman 16:36

Thanks, Andrew. So I want to take a moment and talk about a key issue that we are tracking, which is the payment of stablecoin yield. So we earlier mentioned the Genius Act, which sets out to regulate and supervise stablecoin issuers in the US. Very important. A genius compliant issuer will have reserves that are managed according to certain standards. They'll be regularly examined by regulators in the United States. And so this adds a lot of legitimacy to the very issuance of a stablecoin. But there's a real question that is hanging in the balance right now, which is whether issuers, exchanges, or others in the ecosystem are going to be able to reward users for holding stable coins. The status quo that was written into the Genius Act, which was only passed last summer in mid-2025, so less than a year ago, was that issuers would be prohibited from paying yield. But it doesn't speak to whether others in the value chain will be able to reward users for holding stable coins or using stable coins. Now there's a pitched battle happening in Washington where essentially you have the banking lobby calling this a loophole and pushing Congress to amend the statute, probably through the crypto market structure legislation that's currently working its way through Congress, and tighten that up. So the banking industry I think would you know pretty explicitly like to see an altogether ban on that yield. Crypto-native companies want much more flexibility. I think that there's an understanding that companies are willing to accept this compromise that issuers cannot pay yield, but it's really a question of will others in the ecosystem be able to reward users for activity-based uses of stable coins and pay incentives to say participate in lending or um gaming or other use cases. And so that is really an open question. In the meantime, this has stalled the crypto market structure legislation. And if this is the end of the story for that, then what will stand is the status quo that was struck in the Genius Act. And that means that issuers will be barred from paying yield, but others will not. And that's a compromise that a lot of our listeners can probably live with. So, Andrew, do you have any thoughts on how the marketplace may change depending on where this issue lands?

Andrew Van Aken 19:28

Yeah, it's a good question. It's I mean, we might see almost like stable coin flight out of these exchanges into things like you know, Ave or Morpho, or it it I feel like it becomes so complicated because you know, Coinbase, I feel like has this tight integration with Morpho and allows people to deposit Bitcoin into Morpho to earn yields. So do they kind of like just like point people to the use the Coinbase wallet app, which then people can deposit into Morpho? So I think depending on the region, uh, we'll probably and possibly stablecoin as well. Like I could see Circle being more impacted by this because if you know a significant amount of USDC is being held on Coinbase, and then people say, like, hey, actually, like I need to get yield somewhere else, I'm just gonna move it into DeFi, where um, you know, the laws are less less defined. You know, I could just go to Ave and deposit some USDC in there. So I think depending on the level of sophistication, uh, we might see you know these you know crypto back stable coins you know keep going and and we might see uh uh you know these DeFi protocols like Aave, Morfo, you know, get more assets because people saying, like, I can't earn yield here, I might as well you know try somewhere else. So um luckily we're tracking all this and uh and let's have an update you know in a few months on on how this is all playing out.

CEO Spotlight And Community Requests

Events, Report Links, And Closing

Justin Friedman 20:49

Yeah, yeah. Looking forward to coming back to this issue. So one other thing I want to mention that you'll find in this report is a CEO profile. And this time we focused on Farouk Malik, who runs Rain, which is the stablecoin-backed card issuer juggernaut, that recently raised a huge round and is on just the war path to maybe take over this space. So encourage you to uh look into the report to learn about Farouk. And also, we would ask you to give us some tips on what you want to see in the next edition of this report. Contact us. I'm easy to find on LinkedIn, Justin Friedman. Contact Andrew. You can also reach out to Stablecon founder and CEO Nick Milanovich. And we're going to um invite you once again to join us for Stablecon EMIA in Amsterdam. That's May 19th and 20th, andor Stablecon USA, September 9th to 11th in Washington, DC. Tickets are on sale, and you'll Find a discount code in the report. So do download it. And to find that report, Andrew, where do we look? So to wrap up, we're going to invite you to download the Stablecon and Artemis report, the State of Stables, first quarter edition. You can find a link in the show notes. And it's also posted on our social media for StableCon and Artemis. Find us on LinkedIn, also Twitter. We're at stablecon.com if you want to register for the upcoming conferences. Andrew, should we follow you on social media?

Andrew Van Aken 22:38

Yeah, please do. We're at Artemis. We have a great short handle, and you guys can find us at Artemis.xyz.

Justin Friedman 22:46

Great. Well, thanks for the collaboration on this. Really looking forward to the suggestions that we get for next quarter's edition. We want to see the trends that you're interested in having covered in this quarterly report and also exciting CEOs or companies that you'd love to see profiled, or for my sake, policy and regulatory issues that are unfolding and that we should be keeping an eye on. Thanks, Andrew.

Andrew Van Aken 23:12

Thank you, Justin.