Money is 20/20: Stablecoin Dispatch Volume 2

Welcome to the second edition of Stablecoin Dispatch!

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This week, I’m at Money 20/20 Europe in Amsterdam. The 3-day conference brings together the top financial services minds from all around the world. This year’s lineup is pretty hot with executives from Klarna, Stripe, Monzo, and the Bank of England. MasterCard has teased an exclusive announcement for Tuesday, so I’m looking forward to hearing what they have in store for us.

There is also a Stablecoin presence on the agenda. I’m keeping my ears perked to hear Yele Bademosi , the CEO of Onboard Global and my former boss at Binance, tell us how he went to hell and back and remains bullish on crypto.

I’m a member of this year’s Amplify cohort, so I’m super excited to be at Money 20/20 and will bring you all the updates next week. Please follow StablecoinDispatch on Threads.

This week’s news

Does the US Senate have time for GENIUS?

The US Senate has a significant amount of constitutional work to do, thanks to Trump. Added to that labour of love is the Big Beautiful Bill, which grants massive tax cuts to businesses and slashes federal expenses. Unlike me, Senators are having a buzzy start to their 2025 summer and aren’t going to be lounging somewhere in Europe.

Veronica Irwin writes for the Brogan Law PLLC Newsletter, questioning the Congressional ability to focus on and pass the GENIUS Act before August. Heck, any time this year. Should we be worried?

Global Stablecoin payment volume reaches $94 billion. 

Artemis ' latest Stablecoin report pegs global stable volume at $94 billion between January 2023 and February 2025.

B2B payments are the most active, with an annual run rate of $36 billion, followed by P2P ($18 billion), card-linked payments ($13.2 billion), B2C ($3.3 billion), and prefunding ($2.5 billion). All sectors are experiencing rapid growth, except for P2P, which has seen a decline in transactions.

My take: Around 95% of global cross-border volume is driven by business-to-business payments. It’s only natural that we see this growth in stablecoin business volume as more providers onboard stablecoins and start using them to initiate and settle business remittances. This graph will continue to grow until it reaches the moon.

Atticus to become this year’s first stablecoin unicorn

Stealth stablecoin startup @Atticus is in talks to raise a new round at a unicorn valuation (between $1.5bn and $2bn). Palmer Lucky, founder and CEO of the defense company Anduril, is reportedly leading the fundraising round.

Atticus is founded by Owen Rapport, who previously founded digital assets compliance firm Aer Compliance, and Jacob Hirschman, who was Circle’s former special counsel of products and regulatory affairs.

My take: The market becomes interesting when anonymous companies raise at a steep valuation. This better be good.

In other news…

StablR and Oobit have launched a MiCA-compliant stablecoin initiative. This comes as European exchanges begin to delist USDT for non-compliance with MiCA rules. Oobit will integrate StablR’s EUR (EURR) and USD (USDR) into its platform. Interestingly, both startups are backed by Tether. I know, I know, everyone who works in comms at StablR hates the name.

Bloomberg advises us to beware of stablecoin hype, as seen in Circle's IPO. I am not listening.

Keyrails has launched StableOS - a compliant operating system that connects traditional financial institutions to stablecoin infrastructure. Huge congrats to Berhan and the team.

Worldpay teamed up with BVNK to launch Stablecoin payouts for global businesses. This enables stablecoin usage in 180 markets where Worldpay and its customers operate.

Stuff you should read

Regulation and the Single-mindedness of money. This paper by researchers at King’s College London argues that the ideology behind one kind of money could hinder innovation with fiat-backed stablecoins. They ask regulators to take a chill pill. On the non-fungibility of stablecoins and network effects.

That’s all for this week, if you’re at Money 20/20, please send me a DM, I’d love to meet a few subscribers.

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