The State of Stablecoins

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Quick basics. A stablecoin is a crypto token built to stay worth about a dollar. The US now has a law for them, the GENIUS Act, one year old on July 18.

Total supply is just over $300 billion. USDT is about $184 billion. USDC is about $73 billion. Those two are most of the market.

So the coin layer is crowded. This week, almost nobody raised money to launch a new coin. They raised to build software that moves existing ones. Velocity raised $38 million for treasury tools. Cyclops raised $20 million selling payment software to payment companies.

For founders: the coin layer is crowded. The software layer is where the money is moving.

I’m bringing this up in the weekly article because our team is preparing a list of investors interested in stablecoin niche.

It will include all appropriate links, stage focus, fit notes, top topics covered by them in the last 6 months, rounds invested, and any recent important news.

Stay tuned for it, as well as for our incoming beta app launch!

We will be giving out free access to our app to users, setting them up, along with providing some tailored researches from the database with 800+ VCs.

Three rounds closed this week. All three build tools on top of stablecoins that already exist.

Pact Labs puts USAT, Tether's US dollar stablecoin, into company payroll. That means paying staff in the stablecoin and letting them draw earned wages before payday. Pact says it has moved about $2 billion in loans and has 500,000 users. Velocity handles treasury and settlement for companies. Treasury means where a company keeps its cash. Settlement means moving money between two parties and confirming it is done. Velocity does this with stablecoins instead of banks, and it is run by Eric Queathem, who spent nine years at Worldpay. ADI Chain builds the rails for a dirham stablecoin backed by named UAE institutions.

The pattern: money went to payroll, treasury, settlement, and local-currency rails — the jobs stablecoins do — not to new stablecoins.

Payroll and early wage access. Workers get paid every two weeks, but bills come sooner. Pact Labs raised $7M, Tether-led, to run payroll on a stablecoin and let staff draw earned wages early. The startup: payroll on a regulated stablecoin, with early wage access built in.

Business treasury and settlement. Paying a supplier abroad through banks takes days and costs fees. With stablecoins it settles in minutes. Velocity raised $38M to do this for enterprises. The startup: a treasury tool to hold, move, and reconcile company cash in stablecoins.

Local-currency stablecoins with real backing. Most stablecoins are US dollars. ADI Chain raised $50M for a UAE dirham version backed by named local institutions. The startup: a stablecoin for one country's currency, with named regulated backers and one clear use.

These are directions the money is pointing, not guaranteed businesses. A funded competitor proves the problem is real. It also means you already have a competitor.

Pitch each firm from the angle it just backed. Tether wants stablecoin distribution into real payments, so pitch payroll, wages, or Bitcoin rails. Dragonfly and FirstMark backed enterprise stablecoin infrastructure, so pitch treasury and settlement for companies. Coinbase Ventures backs anything that grows onchain payments. Ripple backs cross-border and B2B payments, and pushes its own RLUSD stablecoin, so pitch settlement and treasury.

One warning about the raw data. The feed lists firms like Lateral Capital, CL207, and White Star Capital next to these raises. Those are newsletters that reported the raise. Reporting a raise is not the same as leading it. Pitch the named lead investors above, not the newsletter that covered the news.

The GENIUS Act was signed July 18, 2025. It turned one year old on July 18, 2026. The law told US regulators to write the detailed rules by that date. They missed it. Only draft proposals exist. Comment periods run past July 18. There is a backstop date of January 18, 2027.

For a founder, the timing is useful. The law is passed, so the direction is set. The rules are not final, so the market is still forming. That window is a reason to raise and build now, before the rulebook locks in early 2027.

Discipline line: the law is real and passed. The detailed rulebook is not final yet. Do not tell an investor stablecoins are "fully regulated." They are legal. The rules are still being written. And big firms can lose interest in crypto fast — they have before. This is a pattern in the data, not a promise.

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