10-28-2025 
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Stablecoin transaction volume is soaring, tradfi companies are leaning in hard, and Japan’s first yen-denominated token has roared onto the stage like Godzilla emerging from Tokyo Bay.
- Stablecoin volume soars on regulatory certainty
- Zelle, Western Union, Citi want in
- Canada stable rules coming?
- Tether sets USAT launch date
- EU sanctions A7A5, Grinex exchange
- China’s central banker says old restrictions still apply
- JPYC launches yen stablecoin
The Andreessen Horowitz (NASDAQ: ZADIHX) venture capital group’s a16z crypto offshoot released its latest ‘State of Crypto’ report last week, and one of the key takeaways is this year’s surge in stablecoin transaction volume.
In the 12 months ending September 30, stablecoin volume hit $46 trillion, although that figure drops to just $9 trillion once you exclude “inorganic activity (such as bots or other artificially inflationary practices).” Regardless, the $9 trillion represents an 87% rise over the same period last year, and September’s adjusted volume alone was nearly $1.25 trillion.
That $9 trillion is just over half the volume that Visa (NASDAQ: V) handled in the 12 months ending June 30, and it dwarfs the $1.7 trillion that payment processor PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) did over the same period. However, a16z offers the additional caveat that the ‘adjusted’ stat isn’t a true apples-to-apples comparison, as stablecoin flow isn’t quite the same thing as retail payments.
Similarly bullish stats were reported by blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs, which found that stablecoin volume topped $4 trillion in the period spanning January to July 2025, up 83% from last year. Stablecoins hit an all-time volume peak this August and now comprise 30% of all on-chain transaction volume.
A fall update from blockchain analysts Artemis claims stablecoins produced over $10 billion in payments volume in the month of August, up from $6 billion in February. The August total is also more than twice the sum handled in August 2024, and Artemis projects that, at the current run rate, a full year’s worth of stablecoin payments could top $122 billion.
These figures will almost certainly continue to increase, particularly in the U.S., where the GENIUS Act’s approval in July has convinced some more mainstream financial institutions to finally come off the sidelines.
C’mon in, the water’s warm
Case in point: on October 24, Early Warning Services, network operator of the Zelle payment service, announced a “stablecoin initiative” to enable Zelle to “deliver faster and more reliable cross-border money movement.” Early Warning CEO Cameron Fowler cited “improved regulatory clarity in the U.S.” as driving the decision.
The announcement didn’t state which stablecoin(s) Zelle might utilize via this initiative. On October 24, Semafor reported that Early Warning was mulling issuing its own stablecoin, although CEO Fowler declined the invitation to elaborate.
Early Warning is jointly controlled by seven major U.S. banks, including Bank of America (NASDAQ: BAC), JPMorgan Chase (NASDAQ: JPM), U.S. Bank (NASDAQ: USB) and Wells Fargo (NASDAQ: WFC). Zelle launched in 2017 as a PayPal/Venmo alternative and handled over $1 trillion in volume last year.
Not to be outdone, Western Union (NASDAQ: WU) just announced its own stablecoin pilot program. Speaking on the company’s Q3 earnings call, CEO Devin McGranahan noted that “historically, WU has taken a cautious stance towards crypto,” but “with the passage of the GENIUS Act,” the company was “expanding our partnerships and capabilities to allow customers to move and hold stablecoin digital assets.”
McGranahan said the idea is to give WU customers “more choice and control in how they manage and move their money.” Innovations like stablecoins “align closely with our broader strategy to modernize the movement of money … they position Western Union to lead in a future where digital assets could play a growing role in global finance.” McGranahan said he’d offer more details at the company’s Investor Day next month.
It has indeed taken Western Union a while to get here, having filed crypto-related trademark applications three years ago only to sit on them and do nothing. The company’s interest appeared to rise this summer, around the time GENIUS was signed into law, with McGranahan calling stablecoins “just one more opportunity to innovate.”
And in a joint announcement on Monday, the Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) digital asset exchange and U.S. banking giant Citi (NASDAQ: C) are “collaborating to develop digital asset payment capabilities for institutional clients and explore additional global clients in the future.”
The announcement was light on specifics, but the initial phase of this tie-up will focus on “fiat pay-ins/pay-outs, supporting Coinbase’s on/off-ramps—the bridge between traditional fiat and digital asset ecosystems—along with payments orchestration.” However, the partners promised to offer additional details on “the exploration of creating alternative fiat to onchain stablecoin payout methods” within a couple months.
In a tweet following the announcement, Coinbase’s official X account celebrated the deal’s focus on “unlocking the power of stablecoins for payments.” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted that “crypto and stablecoins are the tools that will update the global financial system” and the two companies will “work on improving stablecoin utility and digital asset adoption with their clients.”
Canada stablecoin rules in federal budget?
All this stateside stablecoin excitement reportedly has its northern neighbor accelerating plans to join this party. On October 27, Bloomberg reported that Canadian officials have been having “detailed discussions with regulators and industry participants for weeks” with an eye toward addressing the subject of stablecoins in the federal government’s next budget, which will be released on November 4.
There was little else of substance in the report, but it follows a September 18 speech by Rob Morrow, executive director of payments at the Bank of Canada, in which he noted the “growing interest in using stablecoins for cross-border payments.” Morrow added that “regulation can help address concerns and challenges associated with this technology” and believes Canada should “weigh the merits of federal stablecoin regulation.”
Canada leaves much of its financial regulatory decisions to provincial securities and derivatives regulators, but the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA)—an umbrella group for those provincial regulators—imposes its own requirements on ‘value-referenced crypto assets’ (VRCA), aka stablecoins.
In December 2024, USDC issuer Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL) became the first (and to date only) stablecoin issuer to sign an undertaking with CSA members regarding the VRCA requirements. But even that undertaking “does not mean the CSA approves or endorses the VRCA, endorses its safety, or that the issuer or the VRCA is compliant with Canadian securities laws.”
Tether U.S.-focused stablecoin launch in December
USDT, the world’s leading stablecoin issued by Tether, was chased off Canadian exchanges years ago and the company hasn’t made any efforts to follow Circle’s undertaking lead. It also seems unlikely that Tether will launch a Canada-specific stablecoin like it’s doing south of the 49th parallel, where its U.S.-focused USAT stablecoin finally has a launch date.
In an interview at last week’s Plan B Forum in Lugano, Switzerland, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino revealed that USAT—a joint venture of Tether and the U.S.-licensed Anchorage Digital crypto bank/custodian—will make its official debut in December.
Ardoino claims USAT will be fully GENIUS-compliant, leaving USDT to serve customers in emerging markets. Ardoino said USAT will “hit the ground running and we’re going to start taking away market share from our competitors that were the ones that tried to kill us in the first place.”
Those ‘competitors’ almost certainly include Circle, whose senior director of global policy and regulatory strategy testified at a 2024 House of Representatives hearing in which she urged U.S. authorities to target Tether by its “U.S. touchpoints.” That’s a reference to Wall Street giant Cantor Fitzgerald (NASDAQ: ZCFITX), which claims to custody the over $100 billion in U.S. Treasury bills allegedly backing most of the circulating USDT.
USDT’s market cap topped $183 billion this weekend, up from $137 billion when the year began. Ardoino recently projected that Tether’s 2025 profit will “approach” $15 billion, which would be an improvement over the $13.7 billion in ‘net equity’ Tether claimed to have earned in 2024. Ardoino said Tether has “a 99% profit margin. There is no other company in the world that has that.”EU sanctions A7A5 issuer, Grinex exchange
Not all stablecoin news is positive. While TRM’s report claims that the vast majority of stablecoin activity is licit, stablecoins nonetheless account for 60% of illicit crypto activity. Investment fraud topped the illicit stablecoin activity chart, but extortion/blackmail saw a 380% surge in activity this year.
Sanctions-related activity accounted for 27.6% of overall illicit volume, and while leading stablecoins like USDT and USDC have seen their share of this sanction-evading volume decrease, other stablecoins are rising to meet the demand.
This includes A7A5, the controversial Russian rouble-denominated stablecoin, which has seen its transaction volume surge this year as it plays an ever greater role in helping Russia dodge Western economic sanctions.
On October 23, the Council of the European Union announced its 19th package of sanctions against Russian entities, including “the developer of A7A5, the Kyrgyz issuer of that coin, and the operator of a platform where significant volumes of A7A5 is traded. Transactions involving this stablecoin have also been prohibited across the EU.”
The platform on which these ‘significant volumes’ on A7A5 occur is listed as Grinex, the Kyrgyzstan-based exchange suspected of emerging from the ashes of Garantex, the exchange taken down this spring by an international coalition of law enforcement. Grinex has denied ties to Garantex.
The EU Council’s order states the following: “Grinex is a major platform for trading the stablecoin A7A5, which is collateralised by PSB Bank, a Russian State-owned institution. For every rouble spent on A7A5, an equivalent sum is deposited into PSB Bank, thereby increasing the State-owned institution’s capital. A7A5 was developed by LLC A7 and PSB Bank, and is issued by LLC Old Vector. Therefore, Grinex is supporting and benefitting from the Government of the Russian Federation, which is responsible for the annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of Ukraine. In addition, Grinex is associated with PSB Bank, LLC A7 and LLC Old Vector.”
Venezuela’s oil-for-stablecoins program working just fine
Sanctions are proving equally hard to enforce against Venezuela, according to an October 26 New York Times report. The report claimed that “dollars denominated in crypto tokens now account for up to half of the hard currency that enters the Venezuelan economy legally.”
The Trump administration recently imposed new restrictions on Western oil firms operating in Venezuelan that significantly reduced the Maduro government’s hard currency supply. But Venezuela authorized two new digital asset exchanges shortly after Trump returned to the White House in January, and these exchanges are helping Venezuela work around the new restrictions.
Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA reportedly sells most of its output to China, which pays for the oil in stablecoins, which PDVSA uses to pay its contractors. A limited number of banks reportedly sell stablecoins to private sector companies in exchange for the local bolivar currency, while the authorized crypto exchanges are allowed to trade bolivars at a weaker exchange rate.
PDVSA has previously been flagged for selling its oil abroad to customers willing to pay in stablecoins like USDT. For these customers, the risks of being caught violating the sanctions/export embargoes are offset by discounted prices for the oil. In August, Reuters quoted a Venezuelan official saying the country was getting around the new restrictions via “non-traditional mechanisms of management in the exchange market.”
China’s mixed stablecoin signals continue
While China is apparently okay with using stablecoins to help Venezuela evade sanctions, it’s less cool with its own citizens and companies transacting with any digital currency other than the state-issued digital yuan.
On October 27, Pan Gongsheng, governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), gave a speech at the annual Financial Street Forum in Beijing. Pan talked up the government’s plans to expand the digital yuan’s reach, including by allowing more commercial banks to participate in digital yuan pilot programs.
But Pan also took a shot at other digital currencies, reminding attendees that policies issued in 2017 restricting their use “remain effective.” Pan also warned that stablecoins “are still in their early stages of development” and “as a financial activity, stablecoins currently fail to effectively meet basic requirements such as customer identification and anti-money-laundering, exacerbating gaps in global financial regulation.”
China has expressed unease at the Trump administration’s claims that stablecoins are reaffirming the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency, and Pan warned that dollar-denominated stablecoins risk robbing developing nations of monetary sovereignty.
Despite its dollar fears, China continues to express interest in an ‘offshore’ version of its digital yuan, although Hong Kong regulators recently clarified that it hadn’t authorized any offshore yuan stablecoins under its Stablecoin Ordinance rules, which took effect in August. Similarly, some Chinese corporate giants are reportedly pausing their stablecoin-issuing plans due to local authorities—including the PBoC—deciding things were moving too fast for Beijing’s liking.
Japan’s first yen-denominated stable is go!
As Pan was delivering his speech, Japanese fintech outfit JPYC was winning the race to launch the first Japan-based yen-denominated stablecoin. After applying to Japan’s Financial Services Agency in August, JPYC confirmed Monday that its new stablecoin (also called JPYC) was now available via a new platform called JPYC EX (aka JPYC Exchange).
JPYC says the token is overcollateralized by cash deposits and government bonds, and CEO Noritaka Okabe said the company hopes to issue ¥10 trillion (US$65.5 billion) worth of its stablecoin over the next three years.
The token will be available on the Ethereum, Avalanche, and Polygon networks to start. For the time being, there are no issuance or redemption fees, although users will pay whatever transfer/gas fees their chosen network imposes. JPYC recommends using the MetaMask wallet, but other options are possible.
JPYC is registered as a money transfer business that permits international transfers, and plans are afoot for JPYC to tap into existing point-of-sale payment networks to expand the token’s use cases. A slide displayed during Okabe’s presentation shows seven businesses—including Nudge, a local digital credit card startup—have either incorporated JPYC into their operations or are considering doing so.
Okabe said his group hopes to “spur innovation by giving startups access to low transaction and settlement fees.” But Okabe added that JPYC is itself “open to capital tie-ups” because “increasing global interoperability would benefit us, too.”
Reuters quoted a former Bank of Japan exec saying the jury was still out on how much impact yen stablecoins will have within Japan, but added that “if megabanks join the market, the pace could accelerate.”
Speaking of, last week brought word that a trio of Japan’s major banks is combining on a yen-denominated stablecoin that will initially target the banks’ corporate clients, including trading house Mitsubishi Corp.
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