According to Fixygen, the widespread adoption of stablecoins could change not only the payments market but also the way central banks’ monetary policy operates, warned Petra Chudin, a member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank (SNB).
The SNB representative outlined her position on new forms of money on September 30 at the KOF Prognosetagung 2026 in Zurich.
One of the main risks is linked to a potential shift of funds from traditional bank deposits to stablecoins.
If individuals and companies begin transferring large amounts of money from bank accounts into digital tokens, commercial banks could lose part of their relatively cheap source of funding.
As a result, resources for lending to the economy will decrease, and banks will have to seek more expensive market-based financing.
But for central banks, the problem runs even deeper. By changing the interest rate, the central bank influences the cost of money within the banking system. Banks then adjust their deposit and loan rates accordingly, which affects household spending, corporate investment, and, ultimately, inflation.
The greater the proportion of money that moves outside the traditional banking system into stablecoins, the weaker this channel for transmitting monetary policy could potentially become.
Chudin also highlighted the fundamental issue of the unity of money. Under normal conditions, one Swiss franc in a bank account is equivalent to one franc in cash or central bank money.
A stablecoin is an obligation of a private issuer and does not necessarily have the same characteristics as central bank money.
This is precisely why the widespread adoption of various private digital currencies could potentially lead to a more fragmented monetary system. At the same time, the SNB does not reject the technology of digital money itself.
Switzerland is one of the most active European markets for institutional tokenization. The central bank is already experimenting with settlements using central bank digital currency for transactions involving tokenized assets.
Thus, the question for regulators is no longer whether new forms of money will emerge, but rather which digital form of money will become the primary unit of account—stablecoins issued by private companies, tokenized bank deposits, or central bank digital currencies.
This rivalry is becoming one of the most prominent structural trends in the financial market of 2026.
In the United Kingdom alone, Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, and NatWest conducted the first interbank transactions involving tokenized deposits in September.
At the same time, European banks are developing their own stablecoin projects, while global financial groups are experimenting with round-the-clock settlements on the blockchain.
As a result, the market is gradually moving beyond the former “cryptocurrency versus banks” dichotomy. Banks and central banks are beginning to build their own digital infrastructure that competes with the functions currently performed by USDT, USDC, and other stablecoins.
According to Experts.news, the largest banks are beginning to move traditional bank money onto the blockchain, creating a potential competitor to the USDT and USDC stablecoins. In the UK, Barclays, HSBC UK, Lloyds Banking Group, Monzo, Nationwide, NatWest, and Santander are already testing tokenized deposits, while in the U.S., Citi is simultaneously building infrastructure that allows corporate clients to work with stablecoins via Coinbase.
In effect, two models for the future of digital money are taking shape. The first involves the use of independent stablecoins issued by companies such as Tether and Circle. The second transfers existing funds from bank accounts onto the blockchain.
British banks took an important step in this direction on September 24, 2026. The industry association UK Finance announced the completion of the first real-world customer transactions involving tokenized deposits in pounds sterling as part of the Great British Tokenized Deposit (GBTD) project.
Participants in the project include Barclays, HSBC UK, Lloyds Banking Group, Monzo, Nationwide, NatWest, and Santander.
The banks conducted two live mortgage refinancing transactions. The tokenized funds were automatically blocked until the terms of the agreement were met, after which the payment was processed without any additional manual steps.
Another test involved a purchase on a consumer marketplace. It demonstrated the ability to transfer tokenized bank funds between customers of different banks via a shared infrastructure.
The main difference between this model and USDT or USDC lies in the legal nature of the money.
A tokenized deposit is not a separate cryptocurrency. It is a digital representation of regular money that the customer already holds in a bank account.
If there is 1,000 GBP in a bank account, the bank can theoretically represent this amount in the digital infrastructure as a corresponding amount of tokenized pounds. In this case, the bank continues to bear the obligation to the customer, and the funds themselves retain the legal status of a bank deposit.
A stablecoin works differently.
USDT is issued by Tether, and USDC by Circle. The user effectively exchanges regular money for a digital token, the value of which the issuer commits to maintaining at the level of the corresponding fiat currency through reserve assets.
Therefore, a tokenized bank deposit and a stablecoin may look the same on the blockchain, but economically they are different instruments.
Banks have a significant advantage—their existing system of trust, regulation, and customer relationships.
UK Finance explicitly states that tokenized deposits must retain the regulatory guarantees of traditional bank deposits while acquiring the properties of digital money—programmability, faster settlements, and the ability to automatically execute payments once specified conditions are met.
It is precisely this programmability that could become one of the technology’s main advantages.
For example, when purchasing real estate, funds can be automatically transferred to the seller only after the transaction has been registered. Payment to a supplier can be made after confirmation of delivery. In financial transactions, the transfer of a security and payment for it can occur almost simultaneously.
As a result, the number of intermediate transactions is reduced, as is the risk that one party will fulfill its obligations while the other does not.
The next phase of the British project will involve using tokenized deposits to settle payments for digital assets. GBTD participants plan to link customers’ tokenized funds to digital securities.
In this way, banks are attempting to create within the regulated financial system the opportunities that blockchain and stablecoins initially offered outside of it.
However, it is still too early to write off USDT and USDC.
The scale of the existing stablecoin market is incomparable to the banks’ experiments. According to CoinGecko data as of October 3, the market capitalization of USDT alone is approximately $184 billion, while that of USDC is approximately $74 billion.
The total stablecoin market already exceeds $300 billion.
Stablecoins are particularly strong in international money transfers. They operate around the clock, can move between different blockchains and platforms, and do not require the sender and recipient to be served by the same bank.
This is where a fundamental problem arises for the traditional banking system.
If a significant portion of international payments shifts to USDT, USDC, or other stablecoins, banks will have to compete for payment flows that previously passed almost entirely through the banking infrastructure.
Furthermore, a massive shift of funds from bank deposits to stablecoins could potentially reduce banks’ deposit base, which is used to lend to the economy.
The Bank of England is explicitly taking this risk into account as it develops new regulations for digital currencies.
In June 2026, the Bank of England published draft rules for systemic stablecoins. The regulator proposed a model under which at least 40% of a systemic stablecoin’s reserves must be held directly at the Bank of England, while up to 60% may be invested in short-term UK government bonds.
Restrictions on the amount of stablecoins that individual users and companies can hold are also being considered for a transitional period.
However, the Bank of England does not propose banning stablecoins. On the contrary, its strategy envisions the coexistence of several types of digital currencies.
In the future, traditional bank deposits, their tokenized versions, regulated stablecoins, and a potential central bank digital pound could all be used simultaneously.
Therefore, real competition is developing not so much between banks and cryptocurrencies as between different models of digital money.
Citi’s strategy is illustrative in this regard.
On September 28, Citi and Coinbase announced an expansion of their partnership, which effectively combines traditional banking infrastructure with stablecoins.
Coinbase has selected Citi’s Virtual Account Wallet to power Coinbase Virtual Accounts. Incoming traditional currency can be automatically converted into stablecoins.
Conversely, Citi’s corporate clients will be able to accept payments in stablecoins via the Spring by Citi payment platform and the Coinbase Payments infrastructure.
Coinbase accepts the digital payment and facilitates its conversion, after which Citi processes the settlement in traditional currency as a bank.
This is particularly important for corporate clients: the company gains the ability to accept stablecoins without having to build its own infrastructure for storing and managing crypto assets.
According to Citi, this solution potentially gives its corporate clients access to over 150 million stablecoin holders worldwide.
Thus, major banks are adopting different strategies.
British banks such as Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest, and others are creating tokenized versions of their own deposit funds.
Citi, meanwhile, is developing a banking blockchain infrastructure and building a bridge between traditional money and existing stablecoins.
In the long run, these models may not displace one another but rather share the market.
Tokenized deposits have a natural advantage within the banking system—for payroll, corporate payments, mortgages, lending, and securities transactions.
Stablecoins are stronger in areas where round-the-clock cross-border transfers, interoperability between different platforms, and the ability to freely move digital money between blockchains are particularly important.
But for banks, this issue is becoming strategic. If they fail to migrate deposits and payments to a programmable digital infrastructure, a significant portion of the new market could go to Tether, Circle, Coinbase, and other companies in the crypto industry.
That is why competition between USDT, USDC, and tokenized bank deposits could become one of the key drivers of the global financial system’s development in the coming years.
Sources: UK Finance, Bank of England, Citi, Coinbase, CoinGecko.
Democratic staff members of the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) published a study on the use of the USDT stablecoin in financial transactions linked to Iran and sanctioned entities.
The report was released on September 28, 2026, by Senator Richard Blumenthal, the senior Democrat on the PSI. It is important to note that the report’s findings represent the position of the subcommittee’s Democratic investigators and do not constitute a judicial determination of wrongdoing on the part of Tether.
The authors conducted a blockchain analysis of 846 cryptocurrency wallets that had been included on U.S. or Israeli sanctions lists or were subject to confiscation measures due to alleged ties to Iran and its regional entities.
According to the investigation, 84% of the wallets examined used USDT exclusively or almost exclusively. The authors assert that the stablecoin has become one of the primary tools for moving funds within the Iranian-linked shadow financial infrastructure.
The report also asserts that such transactions were used by entities linked to the Central Bank of Iran, oil operations, and regional organizations.
Blumenthal called on the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate possible violations of sanctions and banking laws.
Tether, for its part, claims to be cooperating with U.S. law enforcement agencies. According to Reuters, the company states that in 2026 it froze nearly $550 million in USDT linked to Iran.
The new report may intensify the debate surrounding AML control requirements for stablecoin issuers, particularly as the U.S. is establishing a new federal regulatory framework for this market.
According to Fixygen, the volume of tracked cross-border transfers in stablecoins rose by 77.5% over the latest reporting period—from $124.2 billion to $220.3 billion, according to data from the Chainalysis Geography of Cryptocurrency Report 2026, published on September 23.
The average monthly volume of cross-border transactions more than doubled—from approximately $11 billion in January 2025 to $24 billion in June 2026.
Chainalysis emphasizes, however, that the actual volume of international stablecoin transfers is likely significantly higher. The statistics include only transactions for which the company can identify both the sender’s and recipient’s countries.
A distinctive feature of the market is the relatively small size of transactions. The average cross-border transfer is about $3,000, which, according to analysts, does not correspond to typical institutional transactions.
This pattern points to the growing practical use of stablecoins—for paying suppliers, sending money between countries, and transferring savings out of unstable national currencies.
At the same time, the geography of fund flows is changing. The largest quarter of cross-border routes accounts for 96.1% of the value of transfers, but Chainalysis has observed the rapid emergence of new payment corridors.
During the period under review, 4,708 new cross-border routes emerged, through which a total of $2.64 billion was transferred. The world’s largest stablecoin, USDT, plays a significant role in these transactions.
Growth continues even amid weak conditions in the cryptocurrency market. The total volume of funds flowing into cryptocurrency services decreased by 4.3%—from $9.3 trillion to $8.9 trillion—while the inflow of stablecoins to these services increased by 5.3%.
Peer-to-peer transactions are growing even faster. The volume of transfers between personal wallets within individual countries more than quadrupled—from $56.8 billion to $228.7 billion.
According to Chainalysis, stablecoins are becoming less dependent on speculative cycles in the crypto market and are gradually forming an independent international payment infrastructure.
Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin, USDT, has launched StableFund, a private credit investment fund, in partnership with the asset management firm Fasanara Capital, according to Fixygen.
The fund’s initial capital amounts to $400 million, provided by Tether and Fasanara. Going forward, the partners intend to raise up to $3 billion in institutional capital from third-party investors.
StableFund will provide loans primarily to small and medium-sized enterprises that face difficulties in securing bank financing. According to the project organizers’ estimates, the global funding gap for small and medium-sized businesses amounts to approximately $5.7 trillion.
Tether and Fasanara estimate the global private credit market itself at roughly $3 trillion, and it could grow to $5 trillion by 2029.
A key feature of the project is the use of stablecoin infrastructure to finance companies in the real economy. This means that USDT is gradually moving far beyond its traditional role as a settlement instrument for crypto exchanges.
For Tether, this marks a continuation of its business diversification. The company is already investing in government bonds, gold, Bitcoin, energy projects, artificial intelligence, and telecommunications.
The launch of StableFund demonstrates a new market trend: the largest stablecoin issuers are beginning to transform from infrastructure companies in the crypto sector into full-fledged financial intermediaries.
For USDT itself, this also potentially creates an additional source of real demand—the use of the stablecoin not only for crypto trading and international money transfers, but also for business lending.
The total market capitalization of the global stablecoin market has reached approximately $305.4 billion, continuing to grow amid the widespread adoption of digital dollars in cryptocurrency payments, trading, and decentralized finance, according to Fixygen.
According to DefiLlama, as of September 10, 2026, the supply of stablecoins has increased by approximately $1.69 billion, or 0.56%, over the past seven days, and by 1.6% over the past 30 days.
Tether (USDT) remains the largest stablecoin with a market capitalization of about $183.4 billion. It accounts for approximately 60% of the entire segment.
In second place is USDC, issued by Circle, with a market capitalization of about $74.5 billion. Over the past month, its supply has increased by approximately 3%.
Thus, the two largest dollar-pegged stablecoins alone control about 84.4% of the entire market.
In third place is Sky Dollar (USDS) with a market capitalization of approximately $6.64 billion, followed by DAI at $4.79 billion and Ethena USDe at approximately $4.44 billion.
USDe has recently shown the most notable growth among major stablecoins: its market capitalization has increased by approximately 13% over the past month.
The growth in stablecoin market capitalization is an important indicator of the state of the cryptocurrency market. Unlike the rise in the value of Bitcoin or Ethereum, an increase in the market capitalization of dollar-pegged tokens largely signifies the emergence of additional nominal volume of digital dollars that can be used for trading, remittances, lending, and other transactions within the cryptoeconomy.
Therefore, the growth in the supply of stablecoins is often viewed as an indicator of increased available liquidity. However, this in itself does not guarantee further growth in Bitcoin or other crypto assets—some of the funds may be used for settlements, international transfers, or held outside of risky assets.
The market structure remains extremely concentrated: USDT accounts for six out of every ten dollars of the segment’s market capitalization, and the gap between Tether and its closest competitor, USDC, exceeds $108 billion.
Stablecoins are digital tokens whose value is typically pegged to traditional currencies, primarily the U.S. dollar. They are one of the main settlement instruments in the cryptocurrency market and, at the same time, are increasingly being used beyond its borders for international payments and money transfers.
Data source: DefiLlama Stablecoins
