Huobi Growth Academy | Global Stablecoin Strategy In-Depth Research Report: From Dollar Hegemony to Financial Operating System

I. Overview of the Stablecoin Sector

From the perspective of scale and structure, stablecoins are experiencing a threefold growth inflection point of "volume---price---use." The first aspect is "volume": since the third quarter of 2025, multiple authoritative and industry media have almost simultaneously reported an observation range of "close to/first breaking through $300 billion," while the industry association AFME on the capital market side reported a more cautious anchor of $286 billion in September. This discrepancy mainly stems from different statistical windows and inclusion criteria, but the direction of "returning to and refreshing historical highs" is indisputable. AFME further pointed out that the proportion of dollar-denominated stablecoins reached 99.5%, pushing the structural certainty of "unipolar dollarization" to a historical peak. At the same time, FN London, under the Financial Times, presented a dual duopoly of USDT and USDC in terms of market share and liquidity, maintaining a combined share in the 70-80% range across different metrics/time points, reinforcing the anchoring power of dollar stablecoins on on-chain funding curves and pricing systems. The second aspect is "use": cross-border settlement/remittance and B2B fund transfers have become the strongest engines for real-world adoption. Morgan Stanley Investment Management disclosed that the scale of cross-border stablecoin payments in Turkey alone will exceed $63 billion in 2024, while countries like India, Nigeria, and Indonesia have entered the high-adoption category. This demand is not a "circulation within the crypto space," but a systematic alternative to traditional cross-border financial friction and uncertainty. Furthermore, Visa's latest white paper extends the technical scope of stablecoins from "payments" to "cross-border credit/on-chain credit infrastructure," emphasizing that under the combination of programmable cash and smart contracts, global lending will usher in automation, low friction, and high verifiability throughout the entire lifecycle of "matching---contracting---performing---settling." This means that the marginal value of stablecoins will leap from "reducing cross-border payment costs" to "rewriting the cross-border credit production function." The third aspect is "price" (i.e., efficiency and financial conditions): Ethereum L2s (like Base) and high-performance public chains (like Solana) have established lower latency and lower fee "last-mile" settlement networks, combined with compliant RWA and short-term government bond tokenized asset pools, making stablecoins not only "transferable dollars" but also "re-pledgeable, accessible to funding curves" dollars, thereby reducing the radius of capital turnover and increasing turnover efficiency per unit time. These threefold growth factors collectively drive a paradigm shift from cyclical rebounds to structural penetration: "thickening" market capitalization, "strengthening" dollar anchors, and "deepening" scenarios, upgrading stablecoins from "matching intermediaries" to "operating capital and credit generation bases" through higher capital reuse rates. On this curve, short-term public sentiment or individual case events (such as recent instances of certain stablecoins quickly rolling back after mistakenly minting excess during internal transfer phases) serve more as "risk management and audit visualization" stress tests and do not alter the main trend: historical highs at the total level, extreme dollarization at the structural level, and the extension of use from "payments" to "credit."

In terms of driving forces, the demand and supply sides form a "real demand × regulatory dividend" dual-curve overlay, reinforcing the aforementioned threefold growth. The demand side primarily comes from the "currency substitution" demand in emerging markets. Against a backdrop of high inflation and depreciation, the spontaneous adoption of on-chain dollars as "hard currency" and settlement media is becoming increasingly evident. Joint observations by Morgan Stanley and Chainalysis show that bottom-up cross-border payments/remittances have become the fastest penetration point for stablecoins, exhibiting typical counter-cyclical characteristics: "the more turbulent, the more growth." The demand side also arises from the operational capital efficiency constraints of global enterprises: cross-border e-commerce, foreign trade, offshore platforms, and the developer economy all require T+0/minute-level arrival and low chargeback certainty, making stablecoins a "second track to replace SWIFT/agent bank networks," continuously driving down "last-mile" costs under the technological dividends of multi-chain parallelism and L2 proliferation. Cross-border settlement/remittance, B2B payments, and fund pool turnover have become the primary strong scenarios for "real-world adoption." The supply side is mainly reflected in the regulatory dividend curve: the U.S. "GENIUS Act" was signed into effect on July 18, 2025, establishing a unified regulatory baseline for stablecoins at the federal level for the first time, mandating 100% high liquidity reserves (such as dollars or short-term U.S. Treasury bonds) and monthly reserve disclosures, while clarifying redemption, custody, supervision, and enforcement powers, effectively writing "safe---transparent---redeemable" into regulatory constraints. The Hong Kong "Stablecoin Ordinance" will take effect on August 1, 2025, establishing a licensing framework and activity boundaries, with the Monetary Authority having released supporting pages and details to ensure the quality of reserves, redemption mechanisms, and risk control. The EU's MiCA will gradually come into effect starting at the end of 2024, while ESMA has successively released secondary and tertiary regulatory technical standards and knowledge/competence guidelines, marking the inclusion of stablecoins into a "financial infrastructure-level" prudential regulatory system in Europe. The clarity of regulation has two outcomes: first, it significantly reduces compliance uncertainty and cross-border compliance costs for issuers, clearing networks, and merchant acceptance endpoints, leading to a continuous decrease in friction for "real-world adoption"; second, it alters the industry's "risk---return---scale" function, internalizing the externalities of reserve safety and information disclosure into compliance costs, thereby raising industry thresholds and accelerating the strong getting stronger. Coupled with the public chain technology curve (L2 proliferation/high TPS chains) and RWA funding curve (short-term bond tokenization/money market funds on-chain), stablecoins have completed the extension from "cross-border payment entry" to "cross-border credit and on-chain capital market base": Visa's latest white paper explicitly states that stablecoins will become the foundational layer of the "global credit ecosystem," with the automation capabilities of smart contracts in pre-loan matching, in-loan monitoring, post-loan settlement, and disposal, meaning that the generation, circulation, and pricing of credit will shift from being primarily "manual and credential-based" to being primarily "code and data-based." This also explains why, at a time when total volume is hitting historical highs and structural dollarization is extreme, the industrial logic has shifted from "cyclical rebounds" to "structural penetration." In this process, the U.S. federal anchoring, Hong Kong's licensing implementation, and the EU's MiCA rollout have formed a cross-continental institutional synergy, upgrading the global expansion of stablecoins from a "commercial phenomenon" to a "policy and financial infrastructure synergy" systemic project, providing a credible, auditable, and combinable underlying cash and settlement layer for subsequent complex trade finance modules such as cross-border credit, accounts receivable securitization, inventory financing, and factoring.

II. Trends and Analysis of Dollar Stablecoins

In the global stablecoin landscape, U.S. dollar stablecoins are not just a market product but a key pivot deeply embedded in national interests and geopolitical financial strategies. The underlying logic can be understood from three dimensions: maintaining dollar hegemony, alleviating fiscal pressure, and leading global rule-making. First, dollar stablecoins have become a new tool for maintaining the international status of the dollar. Traditionally, dollar hegemony relies on reserve currency status, the SWIFT system, and the petrodollar mechanism. However, over the past decade, the global trend of "de-dollarization," although slow, has been gradually eroding the dollar's settlement share and reserve weight. Against this backdrop, the expansion of dollar stablecoins provides an asymmetric path, bypassing sovereign currency systems and capital controls to directly transmit the "dollar value proposition" to end users. Whether in high-inflation economies like Venezuela and Argentina or in cross-border trade scenarios in Africa and Southeast Asia, stablecoins have essentially become the "on-chain dollars" that residents and businesses actively choose, penetrating local financial systems in a low-cost, low-friction manner. This penetration does not require military or geopolitical tools but is achieved through market-driven behavior, resulting in "digital dollarization," thereby expanding the coverage radius of the dollar ecosystem. As JPMorgan's latest research points out, by 2027, the expansion of stablecoins could bring an additional $1.4 trillion in structural demand for the dollar, effectively offsetting some of the "de-dollarization" trend, meaning that the U.S. has achieved a low-cost extension of monetary hegemony through stablecoins.

Second, dollar stablecoins have become an important new buyer supporting the U.S. Treasury market at the fiscal and financial level. Although global demand for U.S. Treasuries remains strong, the continuous expansion of the fiscal deficit and fluctuations in interest rates put long-term pressure on the U.S. government in terms of financing. The issuance mechanism of stablecoins is inherently tied to the demand for high liquidity reserves, and under the clear requirements of the "GENIUS Act," these reserves must primarily consist of short-term U.S. Treasuries or cash equivalents. This means that as the market capitalization of stablecoins gradually expands from hundreds of billions to potentially trillions of dollars, the underlying reserve assets will become a stable and continuously growing buying force in the Treasury market, acting similarly to "quasi-central bank buyers." This not only improves the maturity structure of U.S. Treasuries but may also lower overall financing costs, providing a new "structural pivot" for U.S. fiscal policy. Multiple research institutions have modeled that by 2030, the potential scale of stablecoins could reach $1.6 trillion, with incremental demand for U.S. Treasuries reaching hundreds of billions of dollars. Finally, the U.S. has achieved a strategic shift in rule-making from "suppression" to "incorporation." Early regulatory attitudes towards stablecoins were not friendly, as lawmakers feared they posed threats to monetary policy and financial stability. However, as the market scale continued to expand, the U.S. quickly realized that it could not stifle this trend through suppression and instead adopted a model of "rights confirmation---regulation---incorporation." The "GENIUS Act," as a milestone piece of legislation, officially took effect in July 2025, establishing a unified regulatory framework at the federal level. This law not only imposes mandatory requirements on reserve quality, liquidity, and transparency but also clarifies the parallel legality of banking and non-banking issuance channels, while incorporating AML/KYC, redemption mechanisms, and custody responsibilities into compliance hard constraints, ensuring that stablecoin operations remain within controllable boundaries. More critically, this law gives the U.S. a first-mover advantage in international standard-setting, allowing the U.S. to export its stablecoin regulatory logic in future multilateral platforms such as the G20, IMF, and BIS, making dollar stablecoins not only dominant in the market but also the "default standard" institutionally.

In summary, the strategic logic of the U.S. regarding dollar stablecoins has achieved a threefold convergence: at the international monetary level, stablecoins are an extension of digital dollarization, maintaining and expanding dollar hegemony at low cost; at the fiscal and financial level, stablecoins create new long-term buying power for the Treasury market, alleviating fiscal pressure; at the regulatory and institutional level, the U.S. has completed the rights confirmation and incorporation of stablecoins through the "GENIUS Act," ensuring its dominant voice in the future global digital financial order. These three strategic pivots not only complement each other but also resonate in practice: when the market capitalization of dollar stablecoins expands to trillions of dollars, it will both strengthen the dollar's international monetary status and support the sustainability of domestic fiscal financing, while also establishing global standards at the legal and regulatory levels. This combination of "institutional priority" and "network first-mover advantage" means that dollar stablecoins are not just market products but also important extensions of U.S. national interests. In the future global stablecoin competitive landscape, this moat will persist, while non-dollar stablecoins, although they may have some development space in regional markets, will struggle to shake the core position of dollar stablecoins in the short term. In other words, the future of stablecoins is not only a market choice in digital finance but also a monetary strategy under great power competition, and the U.S. has clearly occupied the high ground in this game.

III. Trends and Analysis of Non-Dollar Stablecoins

The overall landscape of non-dollar stablecoins is showing a typical characteristic of "weak overall, strong locally." Looking back to 2018, their market share once approached 49%, almost forming a balance with dollar stablecoins. However, in just a few years, this share has fallen to less than 1%, with industry data platform RWA.xyz even estimating an extreme low of 0.18%. The euro stablecoin has become the only visible entity in absolute scale, with a total market capitalization of approximately $456 million, occupying the vast majority of non-dollar stablecoin space, while stablecoins for other currencies in Asia, Australia, and elsewhere are still in the early or pilot stages. Meanwhile, the EU capital markets industry association AFME pointed out in its September report that the share of dollar stablecoins has reached as high as 99.5%, meaning that global on-chain liquidity is almost entirely tied to a single point in dollars. This excessive concentration poses structural risks; if extreme regulation, technological, or credit shocks occur in the U.S., the spillover effects will quickly transmit to global markets through the settlement layer. Therefore, promoting non-dollar stablecoins is not merely a matter of commercial competition but a strategic necessity for maintaining systemic resilience and monetary sovereignty.

Among the non-dollar camp, the eurozone is leading the way. The implementation of the EU's MiCA legislation provides unprecedented legal certainty for the issuance and circulation of stablecoins. Circle has announced that its USDC/EURC products fully comply with MiCA requirements and is actively promoting a multi-chain deployment strategy. Driven by this, the market capitalization of euro stablecoins achieved triple-digit growth in 2025, with EURC alone rising by 155%, from $11.7 million at the beginning of the year to $29.8 million. Although the absolute scale is still far smaller than that of dollar stablecoins, the growth momentum is clearly visible. The EU Parliament, along with ESMA and the ECB, is intensively launching technical standards and regulatory rules, imposing strict requirements on issuance, redemption, and reserves, gradually building a compliant cold-start ecosystem. Australia's path differs from that of the eurozone, leaning more towards a top-down experiment led by traditional banks. Among the four major banks, ANZ and NAB have launched A$DC and AUDN, respectively, while the retail market is filled by the licensed payment company AUDD, primarily targeting cross-border payments and efficiency optimization. However, overall development remains at the pilot stage with limited institutions and scenarios, failing to form large-scale retail applications. The biggest uncertainty lies in the absence of a nationwide unified legal framework, while the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is actively researching a digital Australian dollar (CBDC). If officially issued, it could potentially replace or squeeze existing private stablecoins. If regulation opens up in the future, leveraging the dual advantages of bank backing and retail payment scenarios, Australian stablecoins have the potential for rapid replication, but their relationship with CBDCs as substitutes or complements remains unresolved. The South Korean market presents a paradox: despite the country's high acceptance of crypto assets overall, the development of stablecoins has almost stagnated. The key issue is that legislation is severely lagging, with the earliest expected effectiveness not until 2027, leading conglomerates and large internet platforms to collectively adopt a wait-and-see approach. Additionally, regulators tend to promote "controllable private chains," and the scarcity and low yield of the domestic short-term bond market impose dual constraints on issuers regarding profit models and commercialization incentives. Hong Kong is one of the few cases where "regulations are ahead." In May 2025, the Hong Kong Legislative Council passed the "Stablecoin Ordinance," which officially took effect on August 1, becoming the first major financial center to launch a comprehensive regulatory framework for stablecoins. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority subsequently released implementation details, clarifying compliance boundaries for HKD anchoring and domestic issuance. However, while the system is ahead, the market has experienced "localized cooling." Some Chinese-funded institutions have chosen to proceed cautiously or delay applications under the prudent regulatory attitude in the mainland, leading to a decline in market enthusiasm. It is expected that by the end of 2025 or early 2026, regulators will issue a very limited number of initial licenses, conducting rolling pilots in a "prudent rhythm---gradual opening" manner. This means that while Hong Kong has the advantages of being an international financial hub and having leading regulations, its development pace is constrained by the mainland's cross-border capital controls and risk isolation considerations, leaving the breadth and speed of market expansion uncertain. Japan has taken a unique path in institutional design, becoming an innovative model of "trust-based strong regulation." Through the "Amendment to the Fund Settlement Act," Japan has established a regulatory model of "trust custody + licensed financial institutions leading," ensuring that stablecoins operate entirely within a compliant framework. In the fall of 2025, JPYC was approved as the first compliant yen stablecoin, issued by the Progmat Coin platform of Mitsubishi UFJ Trust, with plans to issue a total of 1 trillion yen within three years. The reserve assets are anchored to Japanese bank deposits and government bonds (JGBs), targeting cross-border remittances, corporate settlements, and the DeFi ecosystem.

Overall, the development status of non-dollar stablecoins can be summarized as "overall dilemma, local differentiation." In the global landscape, the extreme concentration of dollar stablecoins has compressed the space for other currencies, leading to a significant collapse in the share of non-dollar stablecoins. However, at the regional level, the euro and yen represent a long-term route of "sovereignty and regulatory certainty," likely forming differentiated competitive advantages in cross-border payments and trade finance; Hong Kong maintains a unique position with its financial hub and regulatory lead; Australia and South Korea remain in exploratory and wait-and-see stages, with the potential for rapid breakthroughs depending on legal frameworks and CBDC positioning. In the future stablecoin system, non-dollar stablecoins may not challenge the dominance of the dollar, but their existence itself holds strategic significance: they can serve as buffers against systemic risks and backup plans, helping countries maintain monetary sovereignty in the digital age.

IV. Investment Prospects and Risks

The investment logic of stablecoins is undergoing a profound paradigm shift, transitioning from the past "coin-based" thinking centered on token prices and market share to a "cash flow and rule-based" framework grounded in cash flow, institutions, and regulations. This shift is not only an upgrade in investment perspective but also a necessary requirement for the entire industry to evolve from a crypto-native phase to financial infrastructure. From the perspective of the layered industrial chain, the most direct beneficiaries are undoubtedly on the issuance side. Stablecoin issuers, custodians, auditing firms, and reserve managers have gained clear compliance pathways and institutional guarantees with the implementation of the "GENIUS Act" in the U.S., as well as the EU's MiCA and Hong Kong's "Stablecoin Ordinance." Mandatory reserve and monthly information disclosure requirements, while increasing operational costs, also raise industry entry barriers, accelerating the concentration of the industry and strengthening the scale advantages of leading issuers. This means that top institutions can achieve stable cash flow through interest income from reserve assets, allocation, and compliance dividends, forming a "stronger getting stronger" pattern.

In addition to issuers, settlement and merchant acceptance networks will be the next important investment direction. Whoever can first integrate stablecoins into enterprise ERP systems and cross-border payment networks on a large scale will be able to build sustainable cash flow through payment commissions, settlement fees, and financial services for operational capital management. The potential of stablecoins lies not only in on-chain exchanges but also in whether they can become "everyday monetary tools" in the business process. Once this embedding is achieved, it will release long-term, predictable cash flow, similar to the moats established by payment network companies. Another area worth关注 is RWA (real-world assets) and short-term bond tokenization. As the scale of stablecoins expands, the allocation of reserve funds will inevitably need to seek yields; tokenization of short-term government bonds and money market funds not only meets reserve compliance requirements but also builds an efficient bridge between stablecoins and traditional financial markets. Ultimately, a closed loop of stablecoins---short-term bonds tokenization---fund markets is expected to form, making the entire on-chain dollar liquidity curve more mature. Additionally, compliance technology and on-chain identity management are also areas worth investing in. The U.S. "GENIUS Act," the EU's MiCA, and Hong Kong's regulations collectively emphasize the importance of KYC, AML, and blacklist management, meaning that "regulatable open public chains" have become an industry consensus. Technology companies providing on-chain identity and compliance modules will play important roles in the future stablecoin ecosystem. From a regional comparison, the U.S. is undoubtedly the market with the largest scale dividends. The first-mover advantage of the dollar and the clarity of federal legislation mean that banks, payment giants, and even tech companies may deeply engage in the stablecoin sector. Investment targets include both issuers and financial infrastructure builders. The opportunity in the EU lies in institutional-level B2B settlements and euro-denominated DeFi ecosystems, with the MiCA compliance framework and expectations for a digital euro shaping a market space centered on "robustness + compliance." Hong Kong, with its leading regulations and international resources, is expected to become a bridgehead for offshore RMB, HKD, and cross-border asset allocation, especially against the backdrop of Chinese-funded institutions proceeding cautiously, where foreign and local financial institutions may gain faster access. Japan, through its "trust-based strong regulation" model, has created a highly secure template; if JPYC and its subsequent products can reach a trillion yen issuance scale, it could change the supply-demand structure of certain maturity segments of JGBs. Australia and South Korea remain in exploratory stages, with investment opportunities more reflected in small-scale pilots and the window period after policy dividends are released. In terms of valuation and pricing frameworks, the issuer's revenue model can be simplified to reserve asset interest income multiplied by AUM, adjusted according to profit-sharing ratios and incentive costs. Scale, interest spread, redemption rate, and compliance costs are key factors determining profitability. Revenue from settlement and acceptance networks mainly comes from payment commissions, settlement fees, and financial value-added, with core variables being merchant density, ERP integration depth, and compliance loss rates. Revenue from on-chain funding markets is directly related to net interest margins, programmable credit stock, and risk-adjusted capital returns, with the key being the stability of asset sources and the efficiency of default disposal.

However, the risks in the stablecoin sector should not be overlooked. The most critical risk lies in systemic concentration. Currently, dollar stablecoins account for as much as 99.5%, with global on-chain liquidity almost entirely dependent on a single point in dollars. If significant legislative reversals, regulatory tightening, or technical events occur domestically in the U.S., it could trigger a global deleveraging chain reaction. The risk of regulatory repricing also exists; even with the "GENIUS Act," its implementation details and inter-agency coordination may still alter the cost curves and boundaries for non-bank issuers. The strong constraints of the EU's MiCA may force some overseas issuers to "exit the EU" or switch to restricted models; the high compliance costs, strict custody, and replenishment clauses in Hong Kong and Japan raise the funding and technical thresholds. The potential "crowding-out effect" of CBDCs cannot be ignored; once digital euros and digital Australian dollars are put into use, they may create institutional biases in public services, tax collection, and welfare distribution, compressing the space for private stablecoins in local currency-denominated scenarios. Operational risks are also evident; recent incidents of excessive minting by certain issuers, although quickly rolled back, highlight the need for real-time audits of reserve reconciliation and minting-destroying mechanisms. Interest rate and maturity mismatches pose another potential risk; if issuers chase yields while mismatching assets and redemption obligations, it could lead to runs and market turmoil. Finally, the risks of geopolitical and sanctions compliance are also increasing, as stablecoins, as extensions of the dollar, will face higher compliance pressures and blacklist management challenges in specific scenarios. Overall, the future prospects for stablecoin investment are immense, but it is no longer a story of "simply betting on scale," but rather a complex game of cash flow, rules, and institutional certainty. Investors need to focus on which entities can establish stable cash flow models within compliance frameworks, which regions can release structural opportunities amid evolving rules, and which sectors can generate long-term value through the extension of compliance technology and on-chain credit. At the same time, they must remain highly vigilant against potential shocks from systemic concentration and regulatory repricing, especially in the context of dollar dominance and the accelerated advancement of various countries' CBDCs.

V. Conclusion

The evolution of stablecoins has reached a qualitative inflection point, transitioning from merely "how high can market capitalization rise" to a leap from dollar tokens to a global financial operating system. Initially, it serves as an asset, carrying the foundational functions of neutral market conditions and on-chain transactions; subsequently, through network effects, it enters the global B2B and B2C small-value high-frequency settlement segments; ultimately, with the dual support of rules and code, it develops into a programmable cash layer capable of supporting complex financial services such as credit, collateral, bills, and inventory financing. Under the combined forces of monetary, fiscal, and regulatory frameworks, the U.S. has shaped dollar stablecoins into tools for digital dollarization: expanding the global penetration of the dollar while stabilizing demand for U.S. Treasuries and locking in international discourse power. Although non-dollar stablecoins are inherently disadvantaged in network effects and interest spreads, their existence supports regional financial sovereignty and systemic resilience, with the EU, Japan, and Hong Kong constructing their own survival spaces through regulatory foresight or institutional design. For investors, the key is to complete the framework shift: moving from imagining token prices and market shares to validating business models based on cash flow, rules, and compliance technology. In the next two to three years, stablecoins will achieve compliance model implementation across multiple jurisdictions, evolving from "over-the-counter channel assets" to the "foundation of a global financial operating system," profoundly changing the pathways of monetary transmission and the production methods of financial services.