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The State of Stables, Q3-2026 · The Stable Pulse

• 0:00
  Intro: Passage of the stablecoin legislation drafted by the Senate, dubbed the Genie Senate.
• 0:05
  Intro: Because analysts say a wave of competition can complicate things.
• 0:08
  Andrew Van Aken: Stablecoin is your debut right here at the NASDAQ.
• 0:13
  Justin Friedman: Welcome to another edition of the Stable Pulse.
• 0:15
  Justin Friedman: I'm your host, Justin Friedman, head of policy at Stablecon.
• 0:19
  Justin Friedman: Joining me today is my colleague, Sanjeep Khalida, the new president of StableCon, along with our friend, Andrew Van Aken, a data scientist and the stablecoin lead at Artemis Analytics.
• 0:31
  Justin Friedman: Stablecon partners with Artemis to bring you this quarterly report, The State of Stables, where we unpack the data and trends characterizing the fast-moving emergence of stablecoins, profiling the entrepreneurs behind the tech, the new products, platforms, and solutions they bring to life, and the way stablecoins are changing the world around us.
• 0:51
  Justin Friedman: Sanji, before we get into the report, could you introduce our listeners to Stablecon?
• 0:57
  Sanjib Kalita: Absolutely.
• 0:58
  Sanjib Kalita: Stablecon organizes the world's largest events focused on stablecoins.
• 1:03
  Sanjib Kalita: We bring together the largest community of leaders and builders on stablecoins at events worldwide.
• 1:09
  Sanjib Kalita: And we provide the knowledge and the networks for leaders to engage with the industry most effectively.
• 1:15
  Sanjib Kalita: Our flagship event happens next week at the Gaylord National Harbor in DC, September 9th and 10th.
• 1:21
  Sanjib Kalita: So don't miss Stablecoin USA.
• 1:23
  Justin Friedman: All right.
• 1:24
  Justin Friedman: Andrew, what is Artemis Analytics?
• 1:27
  Andrew Van Aken: What is Artemis Analytics?
• 1:29
  Andrew Van Aken: Artemis is really a research and investing platform for all things digital finance.
• 1:33
  Andrew Van Aken: We make it easy to surface data via API, Snowflake, and now a new AI investing harness.
• 1:40
  Andrew Van Aken: So check it out.
• 1:41
  Andrew Van Aken: And Justin, what do you do with StableCon?
• 1:43
  Justin Friedman: I cover regulation, public policy, and industry standards related to stablecoins, payments, and the new on-chain economy.
• 1:50
  Justin Friedman: Let's unpack the state of stables for the third quarter of 2026, where our focus, this time, is Latin America.
• 1:59
  Justin Friedman: In Latin America, stablecoins have entered the implementation phase.
• 2:04
  Justin Friedman: In 2025, the LATAM stablecoin story was largely about retail adoption.
• 2:09
  Justin Friedman: Dollar stable coins had become the region's main transactional crypto asset used for savings, remittances, and exchange access.
• 2:18
  Justin Friedman: USDT and USDC represented more than 90% of the exchange-related on-chain volume.
• 2:24
  Justin Friedman: Retail adoption has continued.
• 2:26
  Justin Friedman: But the more important shift is into B2B and enterprise use.
• 2:30
  Justin Friedman: 2025 was about explaining stable coins.
• 2:33
  Justin Friedman: 2026 is about implementation.
• 2:36
  Justin Friedman: Over the past year, businesses and financial institutions have integrated stablecoins into supplier payments, treasury, payroll, and regulated settlement.
• 2:45
  Justin Friedman: The question has shifted from why stable coins matter to how they fit compliantly into existing operations.
• 2:51
  Justin Friedman: B2B stable coins and treasury are becoming the center of gravity.
• 2:57
  Justin Friedman: Emerging regulation is starting to define market structure, but so far, dollars are dominating as Brazilian hail stablecoins split into retail and institutional markets.
• 3:10
  Justin Friedman: But watch this space for local issuance that we expect to come forward in the coming months and years.
• 3:16
  Justin Friedman: Latin America is clearly moving from organic stablecoin adoption toward regulated financial infrastructure, still built primarily around the dollar.
• 3:25
  Andrew Van Aken: Aaron Ross Powell Justin, why do you why do you think local stablecoin adoption has lagged?
• 3:29
  Andrew Van Aken: Because people have been trying to I don't want to say make a narrative for years now, but it's almost getting up Q4 2026 and there's still still not that many non-USD stable coins.
• 3:42
  Andrew Van Aken: What's going on, Justin?
• 3:43
  Justin Friedman: Aaron Powell My theory is that the same way the Genius Act brought trust and confidence in payment stable coins in the United States, Latin America is still waiting for that regulatory clarity.
• 3:58
  Justin Friedman: So regulated stable coins are required to keep reserves, those reserves are audited, and there are rules around redemption and honoring the commitments that stablecoin issuers have made.
• 4:11
  Justin Friedman: Once that policy comes into place, I think you're going to see some real interest in local issuance in Latin American currencies.
• 4:21
  Andrew Van Aken: Sorry if I pre-jumped your thunder in your policy corner, but uh let's let's take some look at some data.
• 4:28
  Andrew Van Aken: And I'm actually very curious your guys' opinion on this because stable coin supply.
• 4:33
  Andrew Van Aken: Not good.
• 4:34
  Andrew Van Aken: Not looking good, guys.
• 4:35
  Andrew Van Aken: It's flat.
• 4:36
  Andrew Van Aken: It's been flat since last October, and it's actually slightly down.
• 4:40
  Andrew Van Aken: It's almost a down 1% year over year.
• 4:43
  Andrew Van Aken: We've seen this trend continue where Tron and Ethereum continue to account for the most amount of stable coins.
• 4:51
  Andrew Van Aken: And other chains, Solana and Airbnb, have been growing a little bit, but still a majority on Tron Ethereum.
• 4:59
  Andrew Van Aken: And then on the on the currency side, you continue to see stable coins USD, T, Tether, and USDC circle.
• 5:08
  Andrew Van Aken: So maybe Sanjay, but I'll pass this one to you.
• 5:11
  Andrew Van Aken: Is it concerning that stablecoin growth isn't going up, or do we need like an entirely new metric to measure going forward?
• 5:19
  Sanjib Kalita: No, no, I that's a great question.
• 5:21
  Sanjib Kalita: And I I think that if my my first initial reaction is that it's it's probably a bit of the market read of, for example, you know, the the Clarity Act stalling.
• 5:31
  Sanjib Kalita: I you know, I I I I I think that when Genius Act passed, that obviously introduced a lot of market optimism and belief that momentum was on the side of stable coins.
• 5:45
  Sanjib Kalita: And you know, more recently, obviously, you know, there there's been some um road bumps.
• 5:51
  Sanjib Kalita: And that so I I I I think you know, to uh you know, to Justin's point about trust, um you know, I I think that regulation is needed for trust.
• 6:03
  Sanjib Kalita: That's my read.
• 6:05
  Andrew Van Aken: Justin Albertia, what uh what do we need to do to get more stable coins?
• 6:09
  Justin Friedman: I think that stable coins have proven their value as a mechanism for moving money both domestically and across borders.
• 6:18
  Justin Friedman: But what I'm waiting to see is the real commercial adoption.
• 6:23
  Justin Friedman: So something that excites me is loyalty programs that are looking to be global in nature and can only work on stablecoin rails.
• 6:32
  Justin Friedman: There are all sorts of country segregated programs.
• 6:36
  Justin Friedman: I recently learned that the Starbucks wallet only works separately in the United States and Canada.
• 6:41
  Justin Friedman: And people who live in New York and Ontario and often cross the border find that their Starbucks wallets don't work in the opposite country.
• 6:50
  Justin Friedman: That's a problem that's solvable with stable coins.
• 6:53
  Justin Friedman: So I think when we see that enterprise integration of stable coins into consumer-facing programs, that's going to be a real uh takeoff moment.
• 7:02
  Andrew Van Aken: Gotcha.
• 7:03
  Andrew Van Aken: Gotcha.
• 7:04
  Andrew Van Aken: And but on the flip side, we've seen the number of stable coins continue to just go up and up and up.
• 7:11
  Andrew Van Aken: And so we hit a new high this past quarter.
• 7:14
  Andrew Van Aken: We're inching to 150 stable coins above $10 million.
• 7:19
  Andrew Van Aken: Uh it's this is kind of conflicting to me because on one end, you have supply just tapering off, but on the other end, people are still experimenting with this and still trying new things.
• 7:33
  Andrew Van Aken: Uh curious to either of you, did you have a favorite stable coin of uh Q uh what is this, Q3 2026?
• 7:41
  Andrew Van Aken: Or uh what does this does do do you hear that people are still experimenting with stable coins?
• 7:46
  Andrew Van Aken: Or how would you react to this?
• 7:48
  Justin Friedman: Do I have a favorite?
• 7:49
  Justin Friedman: Um it it hasn't been issued yet, but it's just in coin.
• 7:53
  Justin Friedman: Um so watch this space.
• 7:55
  Justin Friedman: Okay, okay.
• 7:56
  Sanjib Kalita: No, no, I like I I I I I don't have a favorite at this point, but like I I think that it it's also um you know what what what I'm getting what I'm sort of sensing from the more hearing from the market is that uh distribution is is becoming increasingly important.
• 8:14
  Sanjib Kalita: So I I sort of see these this increase in coins as I I'm guessing that they're they're trying to use it as a distribution mechanism, I think.
• 8:26
  Andrew Van Aken: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:28
  Andrew Van Aken: Okay, last last data slide for the people that like charts out there.
• 8:32
  Andrew Van Aken: Uh lots of Latam.
• 8:34
  Andrew Van Aken: So here we're looking at Latam stablecoin payment service providers, and the growth has been staggering.
• 8:40
  Andrew Van Aken: We went from $500 million in the beginning of 2023 a month.
• 8:47
  Andrew Van Aken: Now we're nearing $3 billion a month.
• 8:49
  Andrew Van Aken: Uh and across like all different types of countries, Argentina, Brazil, um, Mexico.
• 8:55
  Andrew Van Aken: So this definitely is not a one country escaping inflation theme.
• 9:01
  Andrew Van Aken: You have all sorts of countries using stable coins for a variety of different things.
• 9:06
  Andrew Van Aken: And I'm I'm excited to see how how this how companies continue to find interesting use cases for uh for stable coins, especially if I can't get my coffee in Argentina.
• 9:17
  Andrew Van Aken: It'd be pretty upsetting, Justin.
• 9:19
  Andrew Van Aken: I'm not gonna lie.
• 9:21
  Justin Friedman: I must admit, I have a coffee habit.
• 9:23
  Justin Friedman: And uh when I travel, um I I will use any method of payment that they that they take.
• 9:30
  Justin Friedman: Take all of my money.
• 9:32
  Andrew Van Aken: Take all of all the coins.
• 9:33
  Andrew Van Aken: Yes, indeed.
• 9:34
  Andrew Van Aken: Uh do we want to hit deal of the quarter?
• 9:36
  Andrew Van Aken: Sanjay over to you.
• 9:38
  Sanjib Kalita: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:39
  Sanjib Kalita: So so the deal of the quarter is that Kraken's parent company, Payword, uh, acquired the Hong Kong-based uh uh Reap for $600 million in cash and stock, uh valuing Payword's equity at about $20 billion.
• 9:55
  Sanjib Kalita: And uh, you know, Reap builds stable coin uh uh basically payment rails and and uh treasury tools and operates in quarters across Asia, Latin America, Mexico, and Africa.
• 10:09
  Sanjib Kalita: Um and uh you know I I think that um you know part and I I've sort of seen this uh across multiple um competitors in the space, it's like an exchange uh accessing um or trying to become an infrastructure player, so moving beyond their core exchange business.
• 10:29
  Sanjib Kalita: And and I think that that also um points to a little bit of where um you know value is being created in this in this space.
• 10:38
  Sanjib Kalita: Um you know, I I think it initially um you know it it's it's actually sort of like when Bitcoin was first launched, you know, they it was initially thought of as a low-cost payments method, uh methodology, but but it wound up being actually a great investment vehicle.
• 10:55
  Sanjib Kalita: And and now we're sort of seeing the flip of that, which I think is sort of interesting.
• 10:59
  Sanjib Kalita: But um there's also a big um competitive element to this um because uh you with Stripe's acquisition of a bridge, uh, you know, rip REAP is you know acquisition is is uh structurally the same move.
• 11:15
  Sanjib Kalita: Um once again, the exchange and the infrastructure platforms um you know underneath the same roof.
• 11:23
  Sanjib Kalita: Um and uh and and going back to what we just talked about, Latin America, um, you know, that there's a great opportunity in Latin America.
• 11:32
  Sanjib Kalita: And I I almost think about it you know, similar to um uh you know, even thinking about mobile phones, like in Indonesia, like they were um they sort of leapfrogged landlines into mobile.
• 11:46
  Sanjib Kalita: And and and uh you know with Latin America, they were a bit slow in e-commerce adoption, you know, like I'd say a decade or so ago.
• 11:56
  Sanjib Kalita: And now with um stable coin technology, it's it's a way to you know get better technology and more modern technology uh built in.
• 12:04
  Sanjib Kalita: Um so I I I I I I think that that there's um and also uh payword is looking towards an um an IPO.
• 12:15
  Sanjib Kalita: And and and so I think this this also is a bit of uh once again to the competitive framing of how payword can be uh one of the key players in in this market going ahead.
• 12:27
  Andrew Van Aken: Do you think the story becomes too much for people to really absorb?
• 12:33
  Andrew Van Aken: Like one of the things I've been maybe not, I mean I struggle with everything in life, but been struggling with is like a Robin Hood.
• 12:40
  Andrew Van Aken: I mean, they do prediction markets, they have a blockchain, they have equity trading, they have savings.
• 12:46
  Andrew Van Aken: Like, is is this just going to be the foreseeable trend where these blockchain companies just keep keep buying and like build and building like across the entire consumer stack, B2B, everything?
• 12:59
  Sanjib Kalita: I it's I I I that that's a great question.
• 13:02
  Sanjib Kalita: And I think that um uh at least at this point, like the there's um the they're all it's it's it's a bit of like showing like how broad they can be to to and and and and and this is sort of the easiest way to do that.
• 13:24
  Sanjib Kalita: I mean not that it's easy.
• 13:25
  Andrew Van Aken: Yeah, especially because they're I mean, Reap was Hong Kong based.
• 13:28
  Andrew Van Aken: Kraken uh I believe a lot of their crypto volume is in Europe, and so that's like an easy plug and play.
• 13:33
  Andrew Van Aken: Hey, we can you know expand uh halfway across the world.
• 13:36
  Andrew Van Aken: The CEO profile, BAM of Mesh.
• 13:40
  Sanjib Kalita: All right.
• 13:40
  Sanjib Kalita: Um, so BAM uh you know, as easy as uh co-founder and CEO of Mesh.
• 13:48
  Sanjib Kalita: And Mesh um was was basically founded um to uh uh aggregate um accounts in investment accounts and and into a common portal and then um into a common view.
• 14:05
  Sanjib Kalita: And uh after building mesh, like he sort of realized that um it wasn't account access that was the value driver, it was the movement of value, uh movement of uh of money that and and and and so they've um they've actually uh shifted and um and uh like we're f focused on um the the payment orchestration layer and and and um if we think about uh stable coins and crypto in in general, um you know the the number the uh there's so many people that actually have accounts or that hold crypto and and and theoretically stablecoin make the transfer easier, but um you know what what BAM Azizi at Mesh uh realized was that you know it's not a penetration problem, it's an orchestration problem.
• 14:59
  Sanjib Kalita: And so mesh really helps um uh like so say if you wanted to buy something from a merchant that was on one blockchain and you uh you hold stable coins in another blockchain, uh actually doing that transaction is like very complicated.
• 15:16
  Sanjib Kalita: And and and so mesh takes the uh makes that simple.
• 15:20
  Sanjib Kalita: And um as as they got into it, what they also realized that it's a a question of uh of rights access, but or basically you know being able to um make the data transferable and um and and with that enabling the value to transfer easily.
• 15:39
  Sanjib Kalita: So um I I I think that um over you know over the next um uh you know three to five years, uh, you know, that there there's a lot of um as I mentioned at the end of the orchestration and you know the movement of uh of this data is is gonna be uh critical.
• 16:04
  Sanjib Kalita: And um and and so whereas right now, you know, of of the 35 trillion uh dollars of stablecoin that is moved, only about $390 billion of that was actual payments.
• 16:17
  Sanjib Kalita: And so that just sort of shows even right now the tremendous upside in terms of value that can be unlocked if you can make that um process easy.
• 16:26
  Andrew Van Aken: Oh yeah, we're still so early here, which is fun, which is very exciting.
• 16:30
  Andrew Van Aken: Last but not least, policy corner.
• 16:32
  Andrew Van Aken: Justin, take it away, sir.
• 16:34
  Justin Friedman: Latin America is no stranger to payments innovation.
• 16:38
  Justin Friedman: Brazil's PICS, which is the central bank's real-time transfer system, sells in seconds, costs nothing for consumers to use, and is embedded enough in daily life that street vendors post QR codes instead of taking cash.
• 16:51
  Justin Friedman: Last year, Colombia's central bank launched its own answer, Pre-B.
• 16:56
  Justin Friedman: Across the region, mobile wallets and instant payments have leapfrogged the card infrastructure that took decades to build.
• 17:03
  Justin Friedman: So this is a region that embraces financial technology and where governments favor infrastructure driven by principles of interoperability, efficiency, security, financial inclusion, and minimizing cost for users.
• 17:16
  Justin Friedman: While the US leans into stable coins as the essential new rail to move money, Latin American governments are taking diverging views on how digital assets are allowed to engage with their financial systems.
• 17:28
  Justin Friedman: For remittance-dependent inflation-prone region, it's not a marginal feature that stablecoins can parachute US dollars into their local economies.
• 17:40
  Justin Friedman: Thanks to the Internet, and immigrants' dollars sent home via stablecoins now land in minutes instead of days, avoiding the fees to move and convert USD to the destination currency.
• 17:50
  Justin Friedman: When dollars become easily spendable in recipient countries without converting to local money, governments lose dominion over their economy.
• 17:58
  Justin Friedman: So those efficiency gains for users and the dollarization risk for nations are really two sides of the same coin.
• 18:05
  Justin Friedman: Brazil's stable coin journey is about rationalizing the treatment of cross-border flows.
• 18:12
  Justin Friedman: New regulations are bringing order to chaos in foreign exchange while opening the space for stable coins in the banking system and clearing a path for local issuance and domestic currency.
• 18:23
  Justin Friedman: The new regime means fewer players will achieve compliance, but trust in stable coins will probably improve as Brazil becomes the region's first to integrate crypto rails into its regulated perimeter.
• 18:35
  Justin Friedman: Looking to Brazil's neighbor, Argentina, their president campaigned on a promise to dollarize, conceding that the inflation-pegged Argentine peso is actually a source of instability.
• 18:48
  Justin Friedman: So since 2025, Argentina has made strides to stabilize foreign exchange by easing capital controls to close the gap between the official and parallel rates, hoping to reduce pressure on Argentines to hoard their dollars.
• 19:03
  Justin Friedman: As a result, Argentina is making a wholesale embrace of the US dollar and US dollar-denominated stable coins.
• 19:11
  Justin Friedman: So you really have two different sides of the equation here, with Brazil focusing on its local currency and a regulated perimeter, whereas Argentina is essentially conceding that the dollar is going to be a shadow domestic currency.
• 19:29
  Andrew Van Aken: How do you think UPI and stable coins interact together, or maybe they just live apart from each other?
• 19:36
  Justin Friedman: Yeah, I'm still figuring that out.
• 19:38
  Justin Friedman: I've been asking myself, when money moves in seconds without stable coins, then who needs stable coins?
• 19:46
  Justin Friedman: My guess is that you're going to see technologies that have provided synthetic instant payments looking to stable coins to actually replace the rails so that settlement can happen in an instant, if not atomically.
• 20:02
  Justin Friedman: Whereas under existing rails, there's always going to be that credit risk out there, counterparty risk.
• 20:09
  Justin Friedman: And so this is something that's going to continue to strengthen these solutions and make them faster, cheaper, and more reliable.
• 20:16
  Justin Friedman: You can find the State of Stables online at content.stablecon.com.
• 20:22
  Justin Friedman: Subscribe to the Stablepulse on your favorite podcast platform for more episodes like this and insights of interviews with leaders in the stablecoin ecosystem.
• 20:30
  Justin Friedman: We'll see some of you at Stablecon USA in Washington, DC on September 9th and 10th.