Stablecoin Payments Surge 70% Post-GENIUS Act

Stablecoin payment volume has ballooned in the wake of new U.S. cryptocurrency legislation.

More than $10 billion flowed through stablecoins in August for goods, services and transfers, according to a recent report from blockchain data provider Artemis Analytics. 

That figure is up from $6 billion in February and more than twice the volume from August of last year, according to a report from Artemis, a blockchain data provider. Stablecoin payments could reach $122 billion over a full year, the report said.

“It’s well understood that stablecoins have graduated from merely being a tool used by crypto traders and exchanges to conveniently move money around without relying on banks, to a more widely used tool for consumer and enterprise payments,” the report said.

“Major payments companies such as Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe have begun to incorporate stablecoins into their payment flows.”

However, the report added, stablecoin payments data has tended to be sparse, with estimates made from a top-down basis. Artemis says it compiled its new data using information from 33 stablecoin-based payment companies which process transactions on behalf of end users. 

The findings were reported Saturday (Oct. 25) by Bloomberg News, which noted that this growth in stablecoin payments follows this summer’s passage of the GENIUS Act, which created federal regulations for stablecoin issuers and requires them to back their tokens with highly liquid assets like Treasury bills.

“If you look at stablecoin supply on a certain trend, and then right after GENIUS passed, the trend does inflect even more,” Andrew Van Aken, data scientist at Artemis, told Bloomberg, noting the report’s illustration of an uptick in the growth rate of stablecoin supply. “We certainly think it has had an incremental impact.”

B2B transfers made up the bulk of stablecoin payments at $6.4 billion, while peer-to-peer consumer transactions were at $1.6 billion monthly, the report added.

In other crypto-related news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the bet that incumbent crypto firms are making on crypto adoption by payroll departments, procurement teams, and accountants dealing with cross-border invoices.

“Businesses are looking for a better type of money,” Sid Coelho-Prabhu, senior director of product at Coinbase, who’s leading the effort on Coinbase Business, told PYMNTS.

Companies that “want to accept crypto” are drawn by two chief use cases, he added. “Investment and payments.”

It’s why, after years of focusing on individuals and institutional investors, Coinbase is turning its attention to the middle market, and startups, small-and-medium-sized enterprises, and online-first merchants that increasingly want to hold, send and receive digital assets.

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