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Financial companies from Bank of America to Fiserv are preparing to launch their own dollar-backed crypto tokens now that a new U.S. law has established the first-ever rules for stablecoins, but experts warn the path forward could be anything but simple. U.S. President Donald Trump on July 18 signed the GENIUS Act into law, setting federal rules and guidelines for cryptocurrency tokens pegged to the U.S. dollar known as stablecoins. This U.S. law, the first designed to facilitate crypto usage, could pave the way for the digital assets to become an everyday way to make payments and move money, experts said. The use of stablecoins, designed to maintain a constant value, usually a 1:1 U.S. dollar peg, has exploded in recent years, notably among crypto traders moving funds to and from other tokens, such as bitcoin and ether. Now, a slate of companies are entertaining their own stablecoin strategies to capitalize on the promise of instant payments and settlement that stablecoins offer. Payments on traditional banking rails can take several days to arrive, or take even longer across international borders. Among the companies considering stablecoins are Walmart and Amazon, the Wall Street Journal reported in June. Walmart and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment. However, the new law will not immediately open the floodgates, experts said. The newfound opportunity to dabble in stablecoins can lead to numerous tricky considerations for firms, both strategic and technical. Companies have to embark on a lengthy process to deploy their own stablecoins, or decide whether it makes more sense to integrate existing stablecoins, like issuer Circle’s USDC, into their business. Companies first have to decide the purpose of their stablecoins. For example, a retail platform could make a stablecoin available to customers to buy goods, which could appeal to crypto-savvy users. Some companies could use them internally for cross-border payments, given that stablecoins can enable near-instant payments, often with lower fees. How a company plans to use a stablecoin could affect whether it creates a stablecoin or works with a partner. “The intended use is going to matter a lot,” said Stephen Aschettino, a partner at Steptoe. “Is this something really designed to drive customers to engage with the issuer, or is the issuer’s primary motivation to have a stablecoin that is more ubiquitous?” For nonbanks, stablecoins will bring new compliance costs and oversight requirements, given that the GENIUS Act requires issuers to comply with anti-money laundering and “know your customer” (KYC) requirements. “Those that already have robust KYC risk management and regulatory change management programs or working towards implementing these program elements may have a competitive advantage,” said Jill DeWitt, senior director of compliance and third-party risk management solutions at Moody’s. One group likely to enjoy that advantage is banks, which are no strangers to screening for sanctions-related risks and verifying the identities of their customers. Bank of America and Citigroup are actively considering issuing their own stablecoins, the CEOs of both banks said in earnings calls last month. Others like Morgan Stanley are closely monitoring stablecoin developments. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank will be involved in stablecoins, without giving details. Banks need to weigh several factors before going live with stablecoins, including how holding the tokens might affect liquidity requirements, said Julia Demidova, head of digital currencies product and strategy at FIS. Banks holding assets like stablecoins on their balance sheets might be required to hold more capital under current U.S. bank rules. “The GENIUS Act is great, but if the bank is treating their stablecoin on the balance sheet under prudential banking regulation, you still need to look at the risk weight of the asset,” she said. Another crucial question is how to issue stablecoins. Like other cryptocurrencies, stablecoins are created on a blockchain, a digital ledger that records transactions. Hundreds of blockchain networks exist today, two of the most popular being ethereum and solana. Both are considered public or “permissionless” blockchains because all transactions on those networks are available for anyone to see. Still, it is unclear which attribute companies issuing stablecoins would prioritize. Banks, in particular, could opt for their own private, or “permissioned,” blockchains instead, Demidova said. “The banks would desire and demand that very clear governance and structure,” she said. “In that permissionless environment, you don’t have the governance and controls in place.” Others like said Nassim Eddequiouaq, CEO of Bastion, a provider of infrastructure for companies to issue their own stablecoins, see merits to permissionless blockchains. “We’ve seen a tremendous amount of interest for existing blockchains that have seen user adoption, that have been battle tested at scale, including during activity spikes,” he said. Although the GENIUS Act has been signed into law, its effective date is potentially several years off, with federal banking regulators expected to issue rules in the meantime to fill in certain gaps. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, for instance, is expected to issue rules to outline several risk management and compliance requirements. Under the new U.S. framework, the Treasury Department will have to issue a rule on foreign stablecoin regulatory regimes and their compatibility with the new U.S. framework. “These things are going to have to phase in,” said Aschettino. Hannah Lang, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group is seeing its stock (NYSE: CRCL) rise yet again. Shares in the company are up more than 7% in early morning as of the time of this writing. At one point, shares were up as much as 10% after markets opened. The reason? Circle just posted its first quarterly earnings as a public company, and investors seem to like what they are seeing. Heres what you need to know. Circle posts its first quarterly results as a public company Today, Circle announced its Q2 2025 financial resultsthe first quarterly results the company has posted as a publicly traded business. The big number most investors seem to care about from Circles Q2 earnings is its revenue. The company said that for the quarter, its total revenue grew to $658 million. Thats a 53% increase year over year. It also said that the circulation of its stablecoin, USDC, grew 90% year over year to reach a total of $61.3 billion at the quarters end. The more the circulation of Circles USDC stablecoin grows, the more Circle stands to make. Thats because Circle makes the majority of its revenues not from cryptocurrencies themselves, but from U.S. Treasuries. Circle, much like a bank, knows that only a fraction of all the USDC in circulation will be redeemed at any one time, so it only needs to keep a portion of reserves in cash to be instantaneously redeemable by USDC holders, Mitrade points out. It invests the rest in short-term U.S. Treasuries. This means that as the circulation of USDC grows, Circle stands to make more income from its investments in short-term U.S. Treasuries, thereby increasing its revenue. Yet despite the 53% revenue growth Circle announced, the company still posted a net loss of $482 million. That net loss was mainly attributed to IPO-related noncash charges, including stock-based compensation payouts. CRCL stock surged after its June IPO Despite charges related to its IPO significantly contributing to the companys Q2 net loss, Circles public offering has been very good to investors. Since Circle went public in June, its stock surged. By the end of June, CRCL stock had risen 750%. Circle, like many crypto companies, has been greatly helped by a more friendly crypto regulatory environment under the Trump Administration. Those policies are why more cryptocurrency companies seem more interested in pursuing IPOs, including trading platform eToro, which did so in May, and cryptocurrency exchange Bullish, which is having its IPO tomorrow. Over the past month, however, CRCL stock has lost about 7.65% of its value. As of the time of this writing, with todays post-earnings boost, CRCL shares are hovering around $168.16. When the company went public in June, its IPO share price was $31 per share.
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E-Commerce
Billionaire SpaceX, Tesla and X owner Elon Musk says he plans to sue Apple for not featuring X and its Grok artificial intelligence chatbot app in its top recommended apps in its App Store. Musk posted the comments on X late Monday, saying, Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your Must Have section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps? Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know. Grok is owned by Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI. Musk went on to say that Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation. xAI will take immediate legal action. He gave no further details. There was no immediate comment from Apple, which has faced various allegations of antitrust violations in recent years. A federal judge recently found that Apple violated a court injunction in an antitrust case filed by Fortnite maker Epic Games. Regulators of the 27-nation European Union fined Apple 500 million euros in April for breaking competition rules by preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options outside its App Store. Last year, the EU fined the U.S. tech giant nearly $2 billion for unfairly favoring its own music streaming service by forbidding rivals like Spotify from telling users how they could pay for cheaper subscriptions outside of iPhone apps. As of early Tuesday, the top app in Apple’s App Store was TikTok, followed by Tinder, Duolingo, YouTube and Bumble. Open AI’s ChatGPT was ranked 7th.
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E-Commerce
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