Risks, Regulation & Use Cases of Stablecoins

What you'll learn

• Real-World Use Cases
• Stablecoins in DeFi
• The Regulatory Landscape: GENIUS Act and MiCA
• Key Risks Summary
• Best Practices
• For Deeper Reading

Key terms

GENIUS Act

The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act. First U.S. federal stablecoin framework. Senate passed June 17, 2025 (68-30); House July 17, 2025; signed by President Trump July 18, 2025.

MiCA

EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation. Stablecoin (ART/EMT) rules effective June 30, 2024; broader CASP rules December 30, 2024. Effectively delisted USDT from EU exchanges.

Remittance

Cross-border money transfer, typically migrant workers sending funds home. Global market ~$905B in 2024 ($685B to low/middle-income countries). Top recipients: India $129B, Mexico $68B.

Stablecoin payment volume

Total dollar value of stablecoin transactions used for payments. Reached ~$11.1T in 2025 (vs. $5.99T in 2024, +85% YoY) per Artemis Analytics, approaching Visa’s $14.2T.

BlackRock BUIDL

BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund. Tokenized money market fund that surpassed $2B AUM by March 2026.

Bridge / Stripe acquisition

Stripe acquired stablecoin payments platform Bridge for $1.1B in October 2024 — a landmark integration of stablecoins into mainstream payments.

Total Value Locked (TVL)

Aggregate value of crypto deposited in DeFi protocols. Stablecoins make up a large share of DeFi TVL through lending, liquidity pools, and yield strategies.

CBDC

Central Bank Digital Currency — government-issued digital money. The U.S. has deprioritized a CBDC under GENIUS, favoring regulated private stablecoins.

Address freeze / blacklist

Centralized issuers (Tether, Circle) can render specific addresses unable to transact. Used for OFAC sanctions, hack proceeds, and law-enforcement orders.

sUSDS / sUSDe

Yield-bearing wrapped versions of USDS and USDe. sUSDS pays the Sky Savings Rate; sUSDe captures perpetual funding-rate yield from Ethena’s delta-neutral position.

EURC

Circle’s euro-denominated stablecoin. Became one of the dominant on-chain euros in the EU after MiCA stablecoin rules took effect.

Argentina crypto adoption

Argentina saw ~$91B in crypto transfers in 2024, with 61.8% in stablecoins (vs. 44.7% globally) — a flagship case of stablecoins as digital savings against local-currency inflation.