BIS Chief Questions USDC-Style Stablecoins for Payments at Scale in Five-Market Study

BIS Doubts Stablecoin Payments

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) — the Basel-based institution that acts as a bank for central banks — has renewed its critique of stablecoins at the exact moment governments are finalizing rulebooks around them. BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos, who is also a candidate to succeed European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde next year, argued on Friday that stablecoins do not credibly function as a means of payment at scale. His preferred alternative: tokenized bank deposits, blockchain representations of commercial-bank balances that institutions such as JPMorgan Chase already run in production. In his view, tokenized deposits are a more direct route to harness tokenization while keeping the monetary system's foundations intact. He did concede one argument stablecoin advocates — including US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — have made: dollar-pegged tokens could lower government borrowing costs. But he warned the effect could cut both ways for consumers, since a migration of deposits into stablecoins would raise banks' funding costs and likely be passed on through more expensive loans. De Cos also flagged limited interoperability between stablecoin platforms, inconsistent anti-money-laundering controls, and the risk that widespread offshore use of dollar tokens could undermine monetary sovereignty and weaken domestic monetary policy. The remarks landed alongside new research from the BIS-linked Financial Stability Institute, published Thursday, which compares stablecoin issuer rules across the US, European Union, UK, Hong Kong and Singapore. The US and Singapore take the most restrictive line on non-bank issuers: under the GENIUS Act, lending, staking, proprietary trading and custody of third-party crypto assets generally sit outside what a payment stablecoin issuer may do. Hong Kong, the UK and the EU permit additional activities with separate authorization or regulatory consent. Notably, the study finds the restrictions bind the issuing entity itself, not the wider corporate group — leaving affiliates free to perform activities the issuer cannot.

Artemis Sees $1 Trillion Stablecoin Market

While the BIS frames stablecoins as a sovereign-risk problem, the research firm Artemis published a thesis this week arguing the market is mispricing the sector's flagship issuer. According to the analysis circulated by WuBlockchain, Circle — the company behind USDC — recorded its second-worst trading day in history on the day the Open Standard alliance was announced, with CRCL shares sinking 17% to near record lows. The coalition is backed by more than 140 companies, including Stripe, Visa, Mastercard and Google, and plans to launch OUSD, an alliance token that would split stablecoin economics among members and, in effect, challenge the Circle–Tether duopoly. Artemis counters on three fronts. Growth: stablecoin supply is compounding at roughly a 40% annual rate and should exceed $1 trillion by 2030 — and for the first time it has decoupled from crypto prices, with circulating supply holding steady even as digital assets fell 50–70% from their highs. Moat: winner-take-most dynamics favor incumbents; hundreds of issuers have launched, yet Circle and Tether still command over 80% of supply, because the cross-chain, cross-application and cross-exchange liquidity that venues like Uniswap helped demonstrate is extremely hard to rebuild from zero. Alliances: history shows consortiums rarely succeed — Artemis scores Open Standard at only about one-third of the necessary conditions, citing weak governance and several “partners” who said they were never consulted. On valuation, Circle generates roughly $2.8 billion in revenue against an ~$18 billion market cap — a 6.7x price-to-sales multiple, versus ~14x for payment networks and 17x for high-growth fintechs like Robinhood. If USDC holds a 20% share of a trillion-dollar market, interest income alone reaches about $4 billion; Circle Payments Network adds roughly $400 million, on annualized volume of $23 billion as of end-July 2026, up 6.8x year-on-year and 70% quarter-on-quarter, on a path toward ~$200 billion by 2030; and the Arc chain could contribute about $500 million in gas fees. That points to around $5 billion in total revenue and, at a 10x multiple, a ~$50 billion market cap. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Gate.

For COINOTAG, the two stories describe the same payment rail from opposite ends. The FSI brief — the load-bearing primary document in this pool — shows regulators still cannot agree on who may issue a stablecoin or what that entity may do, precisely the uncertainty that pushes banks toward the tokenized-deposit camp. Yet the demand side keeps printing: supply growth that no longer tracks crypto cycles, and Circle Payments Network volume compounding at triple-digit rates. Until the five-way rule divergence narrows, expect the growth story to run alongside — not because of — regulatory clarity, with tokenized deposits and stablecoins competing for the same payment flows.