One year after becoming law, GENIUS Act stablecoins have moved from a crypto policy fight to a payments market with bank, card-network and fintech participation. The law didn’t make Tether disappear or turn every token into a bank product. It did set a U.S. rulebook: permitted issuers, one-to-one reserves, monthly disclosures and Bank Secrecy Act obligations. The result is clearer, bigger, and more competitive.
What is the GENIUS Act?
The GENIUS Act became Public Law 119-27 on July 18, 2025, after being introduced on May 1, passing the Senate 68–30 on June 17, and clearing the House 308–122 on July 17. For a sector used to regulatory drift, that sequence mattered. It gave dollar stablecoins a federal lane instead of leaving the market to enforcement letters, state licenses and legal guesswork.
The law limits issuance for U.S. persons to “permitted issuers.” Those are insured depository institution subsidiaries, federal-qualified nonbank payment stablecoin issuers, or state-qualified payment stablecoin issuers. State-qualified oversight has a ceiling: it applies only to issuers with stablecoin issuance of $10 billion or less.
Under the framework, permitted issuers must hold one-to-one reserves in U.S. currency or similarly liquid assets, disclose redemption policies and publish monthly reserve details. Permitted payment stablecoins are not treated as securities under securities law, but issuers are subject to the Bank Secrecy Act for anti-money-laundering purposes. That mix is the real policy trade: less securities-law ambiguity, more payments-style compliance.
If you followed the pre-law debate, the change is obvious. Earlier fights over U.S. crypto rules often centered on whether Washington was falling behind other jurisdictions; our prior coverage of U.S. crypto regulation delays captured that frustration before the stablecoin bill crossed the line.
GENIUS Act stablecoins: what changed in the market?
By July 2026, the stablecoin market was larger than it had been when lawmakers were still arguing over the bill. DefiLlama showed total stablecoin supply, often used as market cap, at about $311.955 billion in July 2026. USDT accounted for around $184.109 billion and 59.02% dominance, while USDC was about $73.292 billion.
That is the first big lesson from the first year of GENIUS Act stablecoins: regulation did not automatically crown the most compliance-friendly brand by supply. Tether’s USDT still dominated the stock of outstanding coins in July 2026. Circle’s USDC, however, looked far stronger when measured by adjusted transaction volume.
CoinDesk, citing Visa Onchain Analytics, reported that adjusted stablecoin transaction volume reached $1.79 trillion in June 2026 and totaled $8.82 trillion in the first half of 2026. In that H1 2026 adjusted volume, USDC accounted for about 70%, while USDT accounted for about 25%. Supply and usage were telling two different stories.
Here’s the useful calculation most summaries skip. If USDC had about 70% of $8.82 trillion in adjusted H1 2026 volume, that implies roughly $6.17 trillion in adjusted transactions over six months. USDT’s 25% share implies about $2.21 trillion. Yet USDT’s July 2026 supply was more than twice USDC’s. Bigger float did not mean bigger adjusted payments flow.
| Metric | 2026 figure | Source context |
|---|---|---|
| Total stablecoin supply | About $311.955 billion in July 2026 | DefiLlama stablecoin dashboard |
| USDT supply and dominance | About $184.109 billion; 59.02% in July 2026 | DefiLlama stablecoin dashboard |
| USDC supply | About $73.292 billion in July 2026 | DefiLlama stablecoin dashboard |
| Adjusted stablecoin volume | $1.79 trillion in June 2026 | CoinDesk citing Visa Onchain Analytics |
| H1 adjusted volume | $8.82 trillion in H1 2026 | CoinDesk citing Visa Onchain Analytics |
| USDC share of adjusted volume | About 70% in H1 2026 | CoinDesk citing Visa data |
| USDT share of adjusted volume | About 25% in H1 2026 | CoinDesk citing Visa data |
Why Visa, Stripe and Fiserv moved faster
Payments companies don’t enter markets because a bill has a catchy acronym. They enter when legal risk, customer demand and operational plumbing line up well enough. The GENIUS Act stablecoins framework helped with the first part, and the market took care of the rest.
Visa said in 2026 that it operated more than 130 stablecoin-funded card programs across more than 50 countries and expected that number to roughly double during the year. That doesn’t mean every coffee purchase is suddenly moving over crypto rails. It does mean card programs, treasury teams and settlement providers now have a clearer reason to test tokenized dollars.
Stripe’s 2026 announcements were even more direct. In May 2026, the company said it was accepting stablecoin payments in 32 additional markets, expanding Global Payouts to 160 countries in stablecoins, adding Treasury stablecoin support for 41 additional markets and opening Connect marketplace stablecoin rails for 100 additional countries. For marketplaces and exporters, that’s where stablecoins stop being a crypto topic and become a payments feature.
Fiserv, a less flashy but deeply important player, announced FIUSD on June 23, 2025. It said the stablecoin would be added to its banking and payments infrastructure by year-end, using infrastructure from Paxos and Circle and available via Solana. Fiserv also said its network included about 10,000 financial institution clients, six million merchant locations and 90 billion transactions annually. If even a small slice of that network uses stablecoin settlement, the effect is not small.
For more on why merchants care about settlement speed and cross-border costs rather than crypto ideology, see our explainer on stablecoins as business payment rails. That is the practical adoption story behind the headlines.
Which stablecoins are regulated under the GENIUS Act?
The law focuses on payment stablecoins issued for U.S. persons by permitted issuers. In plain English, a compliant U.S. product needs an eligible issuer, one-to-one reserves, public reserve reporting and a redemption policy you can actually read. It also brings issuer AML obligations through the Bank Secrecy Act.
Not every token called a stablecoin fits neatly into that bucket. Algorithmic designs, offshore-issued tokens used by non-U.S. persons, euro stablecoins under European rules and exchange-specific instruments can sit outside or at the edge of the U.S. framework depending on structure and market access. Honestly, this is where retail users can get overconfident. A dollar peg is not the same as a U.S.-regulated payment stablecoin.
Before treating a coin as a low-risk dollar substitute, check four things:
- Who is the issuer, and is it a permitted issuer for U.S. persons under the 2025 law?
- Are reserves one-to-one in U.S. currency or similarly liquid assets, with monthly details published?
- What does the redemption policy say about timing, fees and eligible redeemers?
- Is the token used for payments, trading collateral, DeFi yield or something else entirely?
The pitfall nobody likes to mention is redemption access. A stablecoin can trade at $1 on an exchange while ordinary users still lack direct redemption rights with the issuer. Market price, issuer redemption and exchange liquidity are related, but they are not the same thing.
The Europe counterweight: Qivalis and MiCAR
The U.S. did not regulate stablecoins in a vacuum. Europe’s MiCAR regime pushed banks to consider their own euro-denominated alternatives, and the Qivalis consortium became the clearest example by mid-2026. On February 4, 2026, Qivalis said BBVA had joined its MiCAR-compliant euro-stablecoin consortium, bringing named member banks to 12: Banca Sella, BBVA, BNP Paribas, CaixaBank, Danske Bank, DekaBank, DZ BANK, ING, KBC, Raiffeisen Bank International, SEB and UniCredit.
On April 21, 2026, Qivalis and Fireblocks announced Fireblocks as core infrastructure partner for a euro-denominated stablecoin scheduled for the second half of 2026, subject to authorization by De Nederlandsche Bank. Then, on May 20, Qivalis said 25 new banks had joined, more than tripling the consortium. The Electronic Money Association said on June 19, 2026 that Qivalis had 37 European banks and was set up to develop and launch a euro stablecoin in 2026.
There’s a catch. Qivalis’ own July 6, 2026 website disclosure said Qivalis B.V. had applied to De Nederlandsche Bank for authorization as an electronic money institution and was not yet authorized or issuing electronic money or payment services to the public. At this stage, it’s a serious consortium, not a live retail product.
GENIUS Act stablecoins are therefore part of a broader split: the U.S. is building around dollar payment tokens, while Europe is trying to avoid becoming dependent on dollar rails for tokenized payments. If Qivalis launches on schedule, the comparison with U.S. dollar products will become much sharper in late 2026.
What the one-year numbers really say
Raw volume figures can mislead you. Some secondary and industry sources have circulated a $46 trillion annual stablecoin volume figure, apparently based on raw on-chain activity, but the primary Visa dashboard text available for this brief did not confirm that number. Visa-adjusted figures are lower because they try to filter out bot activity, internal transfers and other noise.
That distinction matters. If you compare raw stablecoin volume with PayPal, Visa or ACH, you may be comparing wallet churn with actual payments. Adjusted volume is still imperfect, but it’s closer to the commercial question: how much economic activity is being carried by these tokens?
For investors, the first year of GENIUS Act stablecoins also supports a counter-argument. Regulation did not remove volatility from the broader crypto market, and it did not make all crypto assets safer. It narrowed one part of the risk stack: issuer quality, reserves and redemption rules for payment stablecoins. Bitcoin, exchange tokens and DeFi governance coins still trade on different drivers, as shown by the boom-and-bust pattern we covered in crypto’s 2025 market swings.
Circle, Coinbase and other public-market proxies also benefited from the perception that Washington had picked a workable path for stablecoins. The broader policy backdrop is covered in our look at U.S. cryptocurrency legislation to watch in 2026, where stablecoin rules sit alongside market-structure debates.
How businesses should read the new rulebook
If you run a marketplace, payroll platform, remittance service or export-heavy business, the question is no longer “are stablecoins legal?” The better question is: which issuer, network, wallet provider and compliance partner can survive a bank diligence review?
GENIUS Act stablecoins give you a cleaner starting point, but they don’t erase operational risk. You still need sanctions screening, tax treatment, accounting policies, wallet controls and a plan for failed or delayed redemptions. At this point, using a regulated dollar stablecoin for cross-border payouts can make sense; using a thinly traded token because it has a higher yield is asking for trouble.
Klarna shows how quickly the consumer-fintech angle is changing. Reports in 2026 said Klarna planned to launch KlarnaUSD in 2026, while The Information headline and Spanish and Swedish reports described it as on a testnet or not yet public. Treat that as a signal, not a live product you can build around today.
The more durable shift is boring, and boring is good in payments. Fiserv, Stripe and Visa are not trying to make users think about blockchains. They are trying to make settlement cheaper, faster or more widely available behind familiar interfaces. That is probably how stablecoins win real usage: by disappearing into products you already use.
FAQ
What did the GENIUS Act do for stablecoins?
It created a U.S. framework for payment stablecoins issued to U.S. persons by permitted issuers. The law requires one-to-one reserves, monthly reserve disclosures, redemption policies and Bank Secrecy Act compliance for issuers.
Are GENIUS Act stablecoins securities?
Permitted payment stablecoins are not securities under securities law. That does not mean every token marketed as a stablecoin qualifies, so issuer status and product structure still matter.
Did the GENIUS Act help USDC beat USDT?
By supply, no: USDT still led with about $184.109 billion and 59.02% dominance in July 2026, according to DefiLlama. By adjusted transaction volume, USDC led H1 2026 with about 70% of volume, according to CoinDesk citing Visa data.
Can state-regulated stablecoin issuers grow without limit?
No. Under the 2025 framework, state-qualified payment stablecoin issuer oversight is limited to issuers with stablecoin issuance of $10 billion or less.
Is Europe launching a rival to dollar stablecoins?
Qivalis is developing a MiCAR-compliant euro-denominated stablecoin with a consortium reported at 37 European banks in June 2026. As of July 6, 2026, Qivalis said it was still awaiting authorization from De Nederlandsche Bank and was not yet issuing to the public.
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