Let’s start with an interesting statistic: in 2024, Tether, the issuers of USDT, reported approximately $13 billion in net profit, with around 150 employees, translating to $86 million in profit per employee (Tether Report). This makes Tether, by comparison, Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs and Apple report profit per employee in the $300k to $1 million range. Sounds like a lucrative business model…

Unsurprisingly, over the last year, we have seen a surge of institutions entering the stablecoin arena. Amazon, Walmart, and other household names are now openly exploring how stablecoins can fit into their ecosystems. This marks a major shift: stablecoins, once a niche crypto-native financial primitive, are now drawing serious attention from some of the world’s largest companies. The success of Circle’s IPO only further cements the growing appetite among investors to gain exposure to this rapidly maturing segment of digital finance.

At first glance, this enthusiasm makes sense. The idea of programmable dollars, 24/7 instant settlement, and global composability is compelling. I covered a lot of the benefits of tokenization in a past article. But as with previous waves of institutional crypto adoption, there’s a learning curve.

Many of these new entrants are approaching stablecoins not through the lens of how crypto infrastructure actually works, but from a traditional corporate perspective; one that often leans toward control, ownership, and brand identity.

Part of this eagerness can be traced back to the success of companies like Starbucks, who have effectively built financial businesses inside their core product offerings. According to several reports, Starbucks holds around $2 billion in prepaid card balances. These funds act as an interest-free float; essentially allowing Starbucks to operate like a small bank. They benefit from breakage (unspent balances) to generate additional revenue and deepen customer loyalty by locking users into their closed-loop ecosystem.

The appeal is obvious. With stablecoins, this financial leverage becomes far more accessible. Any company, whether a retailer, fintech app, or digital platform, can now offer wallet balances denominated in dollars, instantly settling payments while capturing float and generate yield. Apple has shown similar ambitions in its foray into payments with Apple Pay and FinanceKit, hinting at a longer-term vision of embedded financial services within consumer tech ecosystems.

The narrative is straightforward: launch your own stablecoin, capture user deposits, control payment rails, monetize float, and reduce reliance on legacy financial intermediaries. In theory, you become your own bank. But in practice, this approach often overlooks the deeper complexities of stablecoin infrastructure.

We have seen this playbook before. Back in 2017 and 2018, many corporations jumped into blockchain with private, permissioned networks like IBM Hyperledger. The idea was to capture the benefits of blockchain technology while retaining full control. The problem? Siloed networks lacked interoperability, composability, and most importantly, meaningful liquidity. Without network effects, these private chains failed to deliver real-world value.

Fast forward a few years, and many of those same institutions are now embracing public infrastructure through rollups and Layer 2 solutions. You can read all about that in my previous article. The industry has realized that value in crypto comes not from isolated control but from participating in open, connected ecosystems where assets, applications, and liquidity can freely interact.

The stablecoin rush carries similar risks of fragmentation. Many corporations see the success of Circle and Tether and assume that simply issuing a branded dollar token will replicate that success. But the real value of stablecoins lies not in their branding, but in their liquidity, usability, and integrations.

Today, the stablecoin market has grown to nearly 260 billion dollars in total market capitalization, with an overwhelming concentration among just a few issuers. Tether (USDT) leads with more than 150 billion dollars in circulating supply, followed by Circle’s USDC with over 60 billion dollars.

This dominance did not happen by accident. Both issuers built extensive distribution networks by forming partnerships with major centralized exchanges, payment processors, fintech platforms, custodians, and institutional clients. Circle, for example, secured strategic alliances with Coinbase, Visa, and traditional banks, and Shopify, embedding USDC into both crypto-native and traditional financial rails. Tether capitalized early by dominating liquidity across most crypto trading venues globally, especially in Asia, ensuring that USDT became the de facto settlement currency for much of global crypto trading. These partnerships created deep liquidity, network effects, and cross-platform utility that new entrants will find increasingly difficult to replicate.

A stablecoin is only as useful as the places it can be spent, traded, and utilized. Creating yet another stablecoin adds friction rather than removing it. Fragmented liquidity makes it harder to access yield opportunities (beyond holding bonds with the dollar reserves), reduces payment efficiency, and forces unnecessary infrastructure duplication. We risk building dozens of incompatible corporate stablecoins, effectively creating a balkanized system of on-chain eurodollar. Fragmented, siloed, and increasingly difficult to interoperate.

There is also an element of ego at play, a desire to see your corporate logo stamped on the digital dollar your users are spending. But customers rarely care which flavor of dollar they are using. Telegram provides a much cleaner model by offering in-app USD balances using USDT (Tether) behind the scenes, without forcing users to interact with unnecessary technical detail.

The smarter approach is for companies to partner with regulated, professional stablecoin issuers who are already building global infrastructure. Firms like Circle, Paxos, and others offer stablecoins that are widely integrated across exchanges, wallets, payment providers, and DeFi protocols. By plugging into these existing ecosystems, companies can:

• Instantly offer stablecoin balances to their users

• Share in yield generated from underlying assets

• Avoid the legal, compliance, and technical burden of issuing and managing their own stablecoin

• Benefit from network effects and broader interoperability

This model allows different industries to tailor stablecoin offerings to their business models:

• Retail and loyalty programs (e.g., Starbucks) capture float and enhance customer stickiness without needing to pass on yield

• Fintech apps (e.g., Robinhood) can offer high-yield accounts to compete with traditional banks

• E-commerce platforms (e.g., Shopify) can reduce payment processing costs and offer cashback incentives

Today, much of stablecoin yield comes from short-term government securities like T-bills. But over time, we are likely to see an increasing share of stablecoin yield sourced from on-chain activity. Lending protocols, liquid staking derivatives, real-world asset tokenization, and programmable financial primitives will open new avenues for earning yield directly within crypto networks.

To access this future, stablecoins must remain deeply embedded in on-chain ecosystems. The more composable, integrated, and widely supported a stablecoin becomes, the better positioned it will be to tap into these emerging sources of yield. Fragmentation into dozens of corporate-issued stablecoins risks cutting these companies off from the very opportunities they hope to capture.

Fragmented stablecoin ecosystems create operational headaches. Liquidity becomes shallow, slippage increases, and cross-platform integrations break down. DeFi protocols thrive on pooled liquidity. The deeper the pool, the more efficient and competitive the yield opportunities. Splitting liquidity across countless corporate stablecoins drains value from the entire system.

Just as interoperability became the lesson learned from the failed private blockchain experiments of the past, stablecoins will follow a similar arc. The more participants rally around shared standards and existing liquidity hubs, the more sustainable and lucrative the ecosystem becomes.

Stablecoins derive strength from network effects: the more widely accepted and integrated they are, the more valuable they become. Companies that choose to integrate into existing stablecoin ecosystems can ride these network effects immediately. They gain access to global payment rails, on-chain liquidity, growing user bases, and ongoing innovation happening across DeFi.

Ultimately, the most lucrative stablecoin opportunities will not go to those who issue the most branded tokens, but to those who offer the most useful, widely integrated financial experiences.

The temptation to issue a corporate stablecoin is understandable. But the true opportunity is not in minting your own token. It lies in providing your users with better financial experiences, seamless payments, instant settlement, and access to yield opportunities that were never possible before.

Companies should focus less on building their own silos and more on tapping into the growing global stablecoin infrastructure that already exists. Dollars are dollars. The future will reward those who build utility and composability, not just branding.

JPMorgan has joined the tokenized money race with its “deposit token,” JPMD, a permissioned, commercial bank-issued digital dollar built on Coinbase’s Base rollup. Unlike traditional stablecoins backed by cash or treasury reserves, JPMD represents tokenized claims on actual deposits held by JPMorgan and is expected to be interest-bearing, with regulatory oversight and deposit insurance. Although not public like USDC or USDT, JPMD exemplifies how banks can leverage existing infrastructure while tapping into digital rails, reinforcing the thesis that corporate entry into tokenized money doesn’t automatically require issuing a standalone stablecoin. Read more about it here.

Shopify has partnered with Coinbase and Stripe to enable frictionless USDC payments on its Base-powered checkout, allowing merchants to accept global digital dollars without building new infrastructure. Customers can use crypto wallets at checkout (including guest and Shop Pay), while merchants receive payouts in local currency by default at zero foreign exchange fees, or opt to hold USDC in their own wallets. Supported by a first-of-its-kind smart contract enabling “authorize now, capture later” flows, Shopify also plans to offer cashback (up to 0.5% for merchants, 1% for customers) to drive adoption. This move not only reduces payment costs and settlement times, but also signals a broader shift: stablecoins are evolving from niche crypto tools to mainstream commerce enablers. Learn more about it here.