A framework for figuring out whose stablecoin revenue actually survives 2026.
In September 2025, some of the best-capitalized companies in crypto stood in a public auction and competed to give their revenue away. Paxos bid 95% of the reserve yield. Ethena bid 95% plus $75 million in ecosystem incentives. Frax and Agora bid 100%. The prize was the right to issue USDH, Hyperliquid’s native stablecoin, and the bidding logic ran in reverse: whoever promised to keep the least deserved to win the most.
That auction was not an anomaly. It was the stablecoin business model meeting honest price discovery for the first time, and it poses the question this piece tries to answer: for each dollar of a stablecoin’s supply, what does the issuer have to pay to stop it from leaving? The answer determines which issuers keep their revenue over the next three years, and it has almost nothing to do with the market-cap league table.
A commodity business that prints $13 billion
A fiat-backed stablecoin is a float business. The issuer holds customer dollars, invests them in short-dated Treasuries at 4 to 5%, and pays holders nothing. Revenue equals float times the spread kept. Tether ran this machine to over $13 billion of profit in 2024.
Which should be impossible. The product is a perfect commodity; every stablecoin is a token worth one dollar, and any rival can offer holders a share of the yield and pull float away. Dozens of yield-bearing alternatives exist. Tether pays nothing and keeps growing anyway.
Profits persisting in a commodity market mean something blocks the competition, and the industry’s shorthand for that something, “the moat,” conceals a category error. The moat is not a property of the coin. It is a property of each individual dollar of float, set by who holds that dollar and why.
Every dollar of float has a deposit beta
Banking solved this classification problem a century ago. Balances spread across millions of small checking accounts are core deposits: sticky, cheap, indifferent to rates. Balances from a few large yield-seeking institutions are hot money, and banks funded by hot money periodically die overnight; Silicon Valley Bank’s depositor base was small, sophisticated, and coordinated through the same group chats, and it moved as one organism in March 2023.
Bank analysts quantify the difference as deposit beta: the fraction of market interest rates an institution must pass through to retain a deposit. Empirical studies put the average US bank’s pass-through at roughly 30 to 46%, but the average hides the point; checking accounts sit near zero, brokered institutional money near one, and a bank’s franchise value is largely the value of its low-beta book.
A stablecoin’s circulating supply is functionally a deposit base, so the transplant is direct. Every dollar of float is either free float, which stays without being paid, or rented float, which stays only for as long as the yield is handed over. An issuer’s defensible revenue is free float times the Treasury rate. Everything else is assets under management wearing a stablecoin costume.
The float segments, from most expensive to keep to cheapest:
B2B reserve float. Another issuer’s treasury, like USDtb sitting in BUIDL. Beta of roughly 1.0. Nobody owns the relationship; the buyer shops.
Platform-captive float. Traders on one venue, like USDC on Hyperliquid. Beta of roughly 1.0 once the venue negotiates. The platform owns the relationship.
DeFi incentive float. Yield farmers. Beta of roughly 1.0, owned by whoever pays most this month.
Exchange-distributed retail. CEX users, like USDC on Coinbase. The beta is contractual: it is the rev-share. The exchange owns the relationship.
Fragmented transactional float. Small wallets and emerging-market commerce, which in practice means USDT. Beta of roughly zero, and the issuer owns the relationship structurally.
The bottom segment deserves a sentence of respect, because it is the only one that cannot be bought. A $200 balance forgoes about fifty cents a month by not chasing yield; nobody rewires their financial life for that. And in the corridors where USDT circulates as the unit of account, from Lagos to Buenos Aires to Istanbul, leaving requires your whole economic neighborhood to leave with you. Coordinating millions of strangers is the hardest problem in economics, which is exactly why this float is defensible.
Exhibit 1: the rent, measured in GAAP
Rented float is not a metaphor. Circle is a public company, and the ransom it pays to keep its float sits on the income statement as “distribution, transaction and other costs,” most of it the Coinbase revenue share (Coinbase collects 100% of reserve income on USDC held on its platform and 50% elsewhere; $908 million of Circle’s $1,011 million in 2024 distribution costs went to Coinbase).
The trajectory is the finding. In 2022, Circle paid out 37 cents of every revenue dollar for distribution. By 2024 it was 60 cents. Across 2025’s reported quarters it held near 61 cents, on much larger revenue. USDC’s supply roughly doubled over that period, which is the point: the supply grew and the share of it Circle gets paid to hold shrank. Growth composed of rented float raises revenue and dilutes revenue quality at the same time, and no supply chart will ever show you that.
Exhibit 2: the deposit base, on-chain
If float quality is real, it should be visible in holder structure. I pulled the holder data for three dollar tokens on Ethereum mainnet from Blockscout on July 5, 2026.
Three tokens, one product, three different animals:
USDtb ($727M supply) is the pure B2B case: 92% of supply sits in ten addresses, and the single largest, an Ethena custody wallet, holds 43% by itself. Behind the labels, this is essentially one treasury desk’s allocation decision. Its stated beta is one by construction; USDtb’s model passes reserve yield through, and BlackRock’s BUIDL, which backs it, keeps that relationship only by remaining the highest bidder among interchangeable tokenized T-bill funds.
USDC ($50.1B on Ethereum) shows an institutional-DeFi profile: 8.1 million holding addresses, with 27% of supply in the top ten, led by Sky’s peg-stability module and a cluster of institutional smart accounts. Fragmented enough to look retail, but the retail is largely intermediated, and the intermediaries, as Exhibit 1 shows, send Circle an invoice.
USDT ($97.1B on Ethereum, more than 16.7 million holding addresses) is the interesting one, because its top-10 concentration (50%) is higher than USDC’s, and the composition explains why that’s a strength rather than a weakness: the big addresses are almost entirely exchange custody wallets (Binance and OKX dominate the list) holding on behalf of millions of end users, plus the issuer’s own treasury and a bridge lockbox. And Ethereum is USDT’s institutional venue; the retail long tail lives on Tron, where USDT’s supply exceeds $86 billion on a network that passed 389 million total accounts in June, built almost entirely on cheap USDT transfers in emerging markets. Tether’s deposit base is the shape a bank would pay a premium for.
One honest complication: exchange custody blurs wallet counts in both directions. A Binance hot wallet is one address and millions of users. The framework handles this cleanly, though, because custody is precisely the case where the platform owns the relationship, and platform-owned float is where the next section’s repricing happens.
2026 keeps running the experiment
Hyperliquid separated the two moats. Native Markets won the USDH ticker in September 2025. Eight months later USDH had stalled near $100 million while USDC on Hyperliquid doubled to roughly $5 billion; the challenger has since faded toward $20 million on its way to sunset.
Liquidity gravity won; every order book and habit was denominated in USDC, and no governance vote could repeal that. But look at the terms of victory. In May 2026, Coinbase became USDC’s official treasury deployer on Hyperliquid under AQAv2, committing to share the vast majority of the reserve yield with the protocol, and bought the USDH brand to retire it. The incumbent kept 100% of the float and surrendered nearly 100% of the income on it.
The lesson generalizes: the moat that defends supply and the moat that defends margin are different moats. Network effects answer whether the dollars stay. Deposit beta answers who keeps the yield on them. A platform doesn’t need to replace your stablecoin; it needs a credible threat of replacing it, and the yield reprices on its own.
Open USD is a beta-of-one stablecoin by design. The 140-plus-partner consortium announced June 30 (Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, Coinbase, Google among them) routes reserve earnings to distribution partners from day one. Circle’s stock fell 16% on the announcement. Wherever distribution owns the customer, issuer margin is being declared zero in advance.
Regulation is running the same experiment from the other side. The GENIUS Act bans issuers from paying yield to holders, legislating retail float’s beta to zero inside the compliant perimeter; the yield now leaks through distribution deals instead of holder payments. Same leak, different plumbing. Meanwhile MiCA enforcement pushed USDT off regulated EU venues and Tether still lacks a GENIUS reciprocity determination, so the market is splitting into a regulated zone where a dozen interchangeable compliant issuers fight over rented float, and an offshore zone containing nearly all the free float in existence.
Re-rank the table
Total stablecoin supply sits near $312 billion; USDT holds roughly $184 billion of it. Adjust each issuer’s supply for float quality and the standings deform. USDT’s number is disproportionately free float, earning the full spread. USDC’s skews toward exchanges, platforms, and institutions: float Circle demonstrably rents, some of it repriced in public this year. Reserve-backing stablecoins and consortium coins carry betas near one by construction; their supply is real and their defensible revenue rounds to a management fee.
The uncomfortable conclusion is that the industry is celebrating the wrong number. Every consortium launch, yield-share deal, and platform extraction grows the supply charts and shrinks the share of that supply anyone is paid to hold. Distribution always captures the margin in commodity markets; crypto spent five years believing it had built an exception.
The only exception that exists is the float that can’t be bought: fragmented, transactional, unit-of-account money, accumulated over a decade of ground-level adoption, priced in USDT because everything around it is. That is most of the defensible revenue in a $300 billion industry, and one issuer owns it, from outside the regulated perimeter.
Watch one variable from here: whether wallets begin abstracting yield away from retail holders, auto-converting idle balances into yield-bearing equivalents in the background. That would raise the deposit beta of the last low-beta segment without any holder ever “deciding” to switch, and it is the single biggest threat to the franchise this piece describes.
Jeremy Allaire co-founded Circle in 2013 and serves as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
He helped develop USD Coin (USDC), one of the world’s largest regulated dollar-backed stablecoins.
Before Circle, Allaire founded Brightcove and co-created several internet technology companies focused on digital media and online finance.
Jeremy Allaire is one of the leading entrepreneurs shaping the digital asset industry. As Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Circle, he has played a central role in building regulated blockchain-based financial infrastructure.
Under his leadership, Circle has grown into one of the world’s most recognized fintech companies, with USD Coin (USDC) becoming a widely used stablecoin for payments, trading, and decentralized finance.
Throughout his career, Allaire has focused on using internet technologies to modernize financial systems. His work spans digital media, online video, blockchain technology, and global payments, making him one of the most influential executives in the fintech sector.
Early Life and Educational Background
Jeremy D. Allaire was born on May 13, 1971, in the United States. Growing up during the rapid expansion of personal computing, he developed an early interest in software development and internet technologies. His passion for technology led him to begin programming while still young, eventually inspiring his entrepreneurial ambitions.
Allaire attended Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he studied Political Science and Philosophy. Although his formal education centered on liberal arts, he remained deeply engaged with software development and the rapidly emerging internet industry.
Before entering the blockchain space, Allaire established himself as a successful technology entrepreneur. In 1995, he co-founded Allaire Corporation alongside his brother JJ Allaire. The company developed ColdFusion, one of the earliest and most influential web application development platforms. Macromedia acquired Allaire Corporation in 2001 for approximately $360 million, cementing Jeremy Allaire’s reputation as a successful internet entrepreneur.
In 2013, Jeremy Allaire co-founded Circle with Sean Neville to create internet-based financial services powered by blockchain technology. The company’s mission was to make transferring value over the internet as simple as sending information.
Circle initially focused on cryptocurrency payments before expanding into digital financial infrastructure. Its biggest milestone came in 2018 with the launch of USD Coin (USDC), a fully reserved U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin developed in partnership with Coinbase through the Centre Consortium.
USDC has since become one of the world’s largest stablecoins, supporting cross-border payments, decentralized finance, institutional settlements, and tokenized financial applications. Under Allaire’s leadership, Circle has also introduced services for businesses, developers, financial institutions, and payment providers seeking regulated blockchain solutions.
The company has continued expanding globally while emphasizing transparency, regulatory compliance, and financial innovation.
Leadership Beyond Circle
Beyond his role at Circle, Allaire remains an influential voice in global financial policy discussions surrounding digital assets, stablecoins, and blockchain regulation. He frequently engages with policymakers, central banks, and financial institutions to advocate for clear regulatory frameworks that encourage responsible innovation while protecting consumers.
His testimony before lawmakers and participation in international financial forums have positioned him as one of the industry’s most respected executives. Outside his executive responsibilities, Allaire regularly speaks about the future of programmable money, tokenized assets, and internet-native financial infrastructure. He continues to promote blockchain technology as a foundation for faster, more transparent, and more efficient global financial systems.
Net Worth and Industry Recognition
Jeremy Allaire’s wealth largely comes from his ownership stake in Circle and decades of successful technology entrepreneurship. Following Circle’s continued expansion and its growing role in the global stablecoin market, his net worth has been estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
His contributions to financial technology have earned widespread recognition throughout the technology industry. Over the course of his career, he has been recognized as an internet pioneer, fintech innovator, and blockchain advocate for helping bridge traditional finance with digital assets.
Today, Allaire continues leading Circle as it expands digital payment infrastructure and stablecoin adoption worldwide. He remains one of the most prominent executives advancing regulated blockchain finance while supporting broader institutional adoption of digital assets.
Conclusion
Jeremy Allaire has spent more than three decades building companies that leverage internet technology to transform industries. From developing early web software at Allaire Corporation to launching Brightcove and later co-founding Circle, his career reflects a consistent focus on digital innovation.
His leadership at Circle has helped establish USDC as one of the world’s leading stablecoins while advancing regulated blockchain infrastructure for businesses and financial institutions. As digital finance continues evolving, Allaire remains one of the executives shaping the future of global payments and internet-based financial services.
FAQs
1. Who is Jeremy Allaire?
Jeremy Allaire is the Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Circle, the financial technology company behind USD Coin (USDC).
2. Where did Jeremy Allaire study?
He attended Macalester College in Minnesota, where he studied Political Science and Philosophy while developing a strong interest in software and internet technologies.
3. What is Circle?
Circle is a global financial technology company that develops blockchain-based payment infrastructure and issues USD Coin (USDC), one of the world’s leading regulated stablecoins.
4. What is USDC?
USDC is a fully reserved U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin designed for digital payments, trading, cross-border settlements, and decentralized finance applications.
5. What companies did Jeremy Allaire found before Circle?
Before Circle, Allaire co-founded Allaire Corporation, creator of ColdFusion, and later founded Brightcove, a leading online video technology company.
Stablecoins keep inching closer to the part of crypto that matters most in the long run: actual usage. Stripe’s move to support merchant settlement using USDC on Solana is another reminder that the payments story is starting to carry more weight than the pure trading story.
That is important because payments have always been one of crypto’s most promising ideas, but for years the real-world user experience lagged behind the pitch.
For more details, visit the official Stripe platform.
TL;DR
Stripe introduced stablecoin payment settlement for US merchants using Solana.
The rollout centres on USDC and aims to make on-chain settlement practical inside merchant flows.
It is another sign that stablecoins are moving from trading tools to real payment infrastructure.
Why Solana Fits This Use Case
Solana’s low-cost and relatively fast settlement profile makes it an obvious network for this kind of rollout. For merchants, cost and speed matter more than crypto ideology. If a network can help settle transactions cleanly and cheaply, that is what counts.
Stripe’s presence also changes the conversation. This is not a niche wallet project trying to prove a concept. It is a major payments company plugging stablecoins into a merchant-facing workflow.
The Bigger Stablecoin Shift
For the wider market, the story is not just about Solana or Stripe. It is about the continued normalization of stablecoins as a payment rail. That can support demand for infrastructure, liquidity, and settlement tools far beyond trading desks.
If these integrations continue, stablecoins will look less like a crypto side product and more like one of the sector’s clearest practical wins.
This article is based on information from Stripe.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
This report is based on information from Stripe. at Stripe
Circle says it has secured the first European electronic money institution license for a global stablecoin issuer under MiCA, giving USDC and EURC a clearer regulated path across the region.
For more details, visit the official Circle platform.
TL;DR
Circle has received an EMI license in France under the MiCA framework.
The license supports compliant issuance of USDC and EURC in Europe.
The approval gives Circle an early advantage as stablecoin rules tighten.
Europe’s stablecoin market is entering a new phase. MiCA is no longer just a policy acronym; it is deciding which issuers can operate cleanly inside the bloc and which products face restrictions on exchanges and platforms.
Why Circle Moved Early
Circle has spent years presenting USDC as a regulated, institution-friendly stablecoin. The MiCA license fits that positioning. Instead of waiting to see how enforcement plays out, the company now has a licensing story it can take to exchanges, fintech partners, and institutional users.
The approval also matters for EURC. Euro-denominated stablecoins have never matched the scale of dollar tokens, but Europe’s regulatory framework could give compliant euro products a better foundation than they have had in previous cycles.
The Pressure On Rivals
The competitive angle is clear. Stablecoin issuers that lack MiCA authorization may find their European utility reduced, especially on regulated platforms. Circle can now argue that it has crossed the compliance line first among global issuers.
That does not mean USDC automatically wins Europe. Liquidity, integrations, fees, and user habits still matter. But in a market where exchanges are already adjusting stablecoin access, regulatory certainty is becoming a product feature.
This report is based on information from Circle.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
The stablecoin market has a new heavyweight challenger, and it is not arriving as a single issuer trying to outmuscle Tether or Circle alone. Open Standard has introduced Open USD, a dollar-backed stablecoin effort backed by more than 140 businesses across payments, fintech, crypto, and broader financial infrastructure.
That makes the story bigger than another ticker. It turns stablecoin competition into a distribution fight.
Open Standard says Open USD is designed for the internet economy, with more than 140 businesses signed up around the project. The model is built around low-cost, high-throughput, broadly accessible stablecoin usage, with economics intended to align with the businesses growing it.
That is a direct challenge to the current stablecoin order. Tether and Circle dominate today because USDT and USDC have liquidity, trust, integrations, and network effects. Open USD is trying to enter the market with partner distribution built in from day one.
Why This Is Different From Another Stablecoin Launch
Most new stablecoins face the same problem: no one needs them yet. Liquidity is thin, integrations are limited, and users already have familiar options.
Open USD is trying to attack that problem through partnership density. If a large group of businesses integrates the token into payments, trading, fintech apps, and crypto infrastructure, the stablecoin has a clearer path to usage than a token that simply launches and waits for adoption.
The economics are also part of the pitch. Stablecoin issuers usually make money from the yield on reserves backing their tokens. Open Standard’s model is designed to align more of that value with participating businesses, after operating costs.
That matters because reserve economics are one of the most valuable parts of the stablecoin business.
Circle And Tether Still Have The Moat
None of this means Open USD can quickly displace USDT or USDC. Stablecoin moats are difficult to break. Traders care about liquidity. Institutions care about compliance, redemption, custody, and operational reliability. Developers care about integrations and user familiarity.
Tether and Circle have years of advantage across those areas.
But Open USD does not need to replace them overnight to matter. If it captures meaningful payment flows, exchange integrations, or business-to-business settlement demand, it could pressure stablecoin economics across the sector.
For crypto investors, the bigger point is that stablecoins are becoming infrastructure, not just trading tools. The next fight may be less about which token has the most exchange volume and more about which standard businesses want embedded into their payment stack.
Open USD has not proven that yet. But with more than 140 partners aligned around the launch, it has made the stablecoin race much more interesting.
This report is based on information from Open Standard.
The launch also lands at a moment when stablecoins are being pulled closer to mainstream payments. Businesses want cheaper settlement, programmable rails, and global reach, but they also want reliability. Open USD’s challenge will be turning partner alignment into actual day-to-day transaction volume.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Crypto exchange balances saw a notable withdrawal wave heading into July 1, with USDC and Bitcoin leading approximately $850 million in net outflows from centralized platforms. The move adds another layer to a market already watching liquidity, ETF flows, and investor positioning closely.
TL;DR
Centralized exchanges reportedly saw around $850 million in net withdrawals over 24 hours.
USDC led stablecoin outflows with about $503 million leaving exchanges.
Bitcoin recorded around $352.7 million in net withdrawals over the same period.
Exchange outflows are wallet movements, not direct evidence of spot buying or selling.
Exchange flows are useful because they show where traders are moving assets, but they need careful interpretation. A withdrawal does not tell us exactly what the owner plans to do next. It may reflect self-custody, institutional settlement, collateral movement, treasury management, or DeFi deployment.
USDC leads the stablecoin move
The largest reported component of the outflow was USDC, with roughly $503 million leaving centralized exchanges. Stablecoin withdrawals can mean several things. Sometimes traders are moving dollars on-chain to use in DeFi. Sometimes market makers are shifting liquidity between venues. Sometimes funds are simply being pulled into custody after a trading period ends.
Because USDC is widely used as a settlement asset, its movement can offer clues about where liquidity may appear next. If stablecoins leave exchanges and move into wallets or protocols, that may support on-chain activity. If they move into custody and stay idle, the signal is more defensive.
Bitcoin withdrawals add a second signal
Bitcoin also saw significant reported withdrawals, with around $352.7 million in net outflows during the same 24-hour window. BTC leaving exchanges is often interpreted as a sign of holding conviction because coins moved into self-custody are usually less immediately available for sale.
That reading is useful, but it should not be pushed too far. Large holders can move coins between wallets for operational reasons. Institutions can rebalance custody arrangements. Traders can withdraw funds without making a long-term investment statement. The signal is strongest when exchange outflows persist across several days and align with improving price action.
A market looking for cleaner signals
The latest outflow wave comes as Bitcoin and the wider crypto market are searching for direction after a difficult June. Spot ETF flows have weakened, US demand indicators remain mixed, and traders are watching liquidity closely. In that environment, exchange reserve data can help show whether investors are preparing to sell or moving assets away from trading venues.
For now, the takeaway is balanced. USDC and Bitcoin withdrawals suggest capital is moving off centralized exchanges, which can be constructive if it reflects custody confidence or on-chain deployment. But the data does not prove immediate buying pressure. It is one piece of the market puzzle, and it becomes more meaningful if the trend continues through the next several sessions.
For readers, the cleanest takeaway is to separate the raw data from the market interpretation. The figures are useful because they show how capital is moving, but they should still be read alongside price action, liquidity conditions, and the wider risk environment.
This report is based on information from CryptoQuant.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
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