What are stablecoins?
Jun. 15, 2025 8:00 AM ET
By: Anuron Mitra, SA News Editor
The word "stablecoin" has become the talk of town after Circle Internet's (NYSE: CRCL) blockbuster market debut on the New York Stock Exchange last week.
Class A shares of Circle (NYSE: CRCL), a stablecoin issuer, have surged a staggering +330.8% from their initial public offering price of $31, giving the company a market cap north of $27B.
In the wake of Circle's (NYSE: CRCL) splashy debut, it appears that some of the biggest U.S. companies also want to get in on the act. A Wall Street Journal report this week said retail giants Walmart ( WMT) and Amazon ( AMZN), along with online travel agency Expedia ( EXPE), have explored issuing their own stablecoins.
So, What Are Stablecoins?Stablecoins are a type of digital token or cryptocurrency whose value is pegged one-for-one to an actual asset, such as fiat money or gold, in order to maintain a stable price.
Stablecoins thus are different from other popular cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin ( BTC-USD) whose values are highly volatile and fluctuate based on supply and demand.
Some Stablecoin StatsStablecoins currently in circulation have a market cap exceeding $250B. Nearly 99% of these are pegged to the U.S. dollar.
Fiat-backed stablecoins comprise about 86% of the total circulating supply.
The largest stablecoin by value is Tether ( USDT-USD), which has a market cap of $155.54B. In comparison, the world's largest cryptocurrency, bitcoin ( BTC-USD), has a market cap of $2.08T.
(All stats according to CoinMarketCap).
Are Stablecoins Regulated?The U.S. currently has no regulatory framework for stablecoins.
However, Congress is currently working on it, with the GENIUS Act advancing in the Senate and the STABLE Act pending in the House.
See here the full text of the "Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins" or GENIUS Act.
See here the full text of the "Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy" or STABLE Act.
Both acts are meant to establish a regime to regulate stablecoins.
A Resilient Financial AllyCathie Wood's ARK Invest believes that stablecoins could become one of the U.S. government's most important strategic assets over the next five to ten years.
"Tether, Circle, and the broader stablecoin industry could create one of the largest sources of demand for U.S. Treasuries in the coming years, potentially replacing China and Japan as the top holders by 2030," Lorenzo Valente, director of research of digital assets at ARK, said in a Seeking Alpha article last Monday.
Aside from Tether ( USDT-USD), here are some other stablecoins: ( USDC-USD), ( PYUSD-USD), ( TUSD-USD), ( USDP-USD), ( BUSD-USD), and ( GUSD-USD).
And here are some crypto-linked exchange-traded funds of interest: (NYSEARCA: BITQ), (NASDAQ: DAPP), (NASDAQ: BKCH), (NYSEARCA: BLOK), (NYSEARCA: CRPT), and (NYSEARCA: IBLC).
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