In New York morning trade, we are looking at crypto slightly lower in terms of the majors, including Bitcoin and, and we're looking at stablecoin year.
New York Stock Exchange listed circle little change in hovering right around the $100 level this morning while the crypto industry is still closely eyeing Capitol Hill for progress on the Clarity Act, with over 100 crypto firms calling on Congress.
To move forward with market structure now, despite stablecoins being a leading Defi theme that has accelerated in the face of volatility, analysts note that some problematic characteristics of the digital dollar, and they are centralized, which could violate crypto's push for decentralization.
But stablecoins also face a capital efficiency struggle, and they can also be used to off-ramp stolen funds.
Some of the industry were frustrated that circle didn't increase funds during the $280 million drift high.
Well yesterday freezing $344 million on trying to suspected illegal activity.
So there's a lot of headlines coming through hard and fast.
Well joining me live here at the New York Stock Exchange to weigh in Joe Vollono, Chief Commercial Officer for STBL.
So great to have you here.
Joining me to be with you.
There has been a lot of market volatility in 2026, but I do want to start out with stablecoins.
So what do you think is the role of stablecoins in financial markets?
I mean, you know, the stablecoin market at the moment is a dollar denominated market.
90% of all stablecoins are denominated in US dollars.
And if you look at the volatility and some of the stresses in the market.
That you mentioned, you know what happens in those scenarios.
It's a flight to safety and the stablecoin market, as you've seen, I don't think there's been a step change given some of the recent turmoil that's caused expressly by activities whether it's what's happening in Iran or elsewhere, but certainly the trend line over the last three years we were at about 75%. billion dollars in total volume market cap about three years ago now it's about $320 billion.
We're approaching $1 trillion in volumes monthly now, so the trend is clear.
And what's most interesting to me then is from a geopolitical standpoint what does that mean when you're seeing basically dollars being exported like a digital euro globally.
All of these things, all these debates we're having around the Clarity Act, everybody thinks this is a discussion between the stablecoin industry and the banking industry.
It is, but if you zoom out a little bit, it's also a global nation state debate.
China has just announced in January that they're going to enable yield properties on the digital yuan.
Everybody is looking at what everybody else is doing, and it's sort of a game theory cascading around the world as everybody tries to figure out their strategies.
I think the main takeaway is stablecoins aren't simply about payments and settlement anymore.
This is core monetary infrastructure and enterprises, commercial banks, and sovereigns all need to figure out their strategy.
Yeah absolutely and 2026 has been quite the unexpected year across all asset classes, and you mentioned geopolitics of course we continue to monitor the situation in the Middle East and when we think about the role of crypto in particular stablecoin, the situation in the Middle East has highlighted that even further.
So what do you think is the future of stable coins?
I mean I think the future is.
This is going to be a massive market.
I think it's driven in large part by what's happening right now around tokenization.
All of these real world assets are coming on chain.
It's easy to tokenize anything.
And then the question is how do you give that utility and liquidity?
And the answer, the obvious answer is stablecoins.
And I think that's really what's going to be the next wave of evolution in stablecoins.
We call it stablecoin 2.0, and it's going to be where enterprises take these tokenized treasuries and money market funds.
And use them as collateral to mint their own stable coins and then they can keep the yield on their underlying reserves.
So this is an entire paradigm shift in the industry that moves away from the centralized issuer model and places the users who provide value into this ecosystem at the center of the model where they can also extract the economics from the stablecoin.
So I think that's going to be the future and this is going to be a multi-trillion dollar asset class by the time we're all done.
And finally you and I are sitting here at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City in the US, and of course we're awaiting regulatory clarity from the nation's capital.
So what do you think needs to happen as we head into the rest of 2026?
You know, obviously this debate, this seems like a never ending debate around the Clarity Act and just, you know, yesterday or the day before the bank lobbies asking for another extension through the Senate Banking Committee.
Ultimately we need to get.
These regulatory frameworks resolved.
The Genius Act was a massive watershed moment.
But in order for institutional capital to really enter the market, and I think there's a lot of dry powder on the sidelines, we need to have market structure reform established.
I've spent years working with banks, commercial banks, central banks, monetary authorities.
They're trying to figure out how to be in this business.
But if they don't have comfort from their regulators and real clarity supported by legislation, supported by law.
That they can they can they can undertake these actions, then there's still going to be hesitancy, understandably.
So I think once all of this gets resolved, that's going to be a real catalyst to seeing the market really really excel even further.
And finally we have about 60 seconds here.
So for the layperson out there who are watching this right now and they're wondering what the impact will be for them in the long term, whether you're stateside or overseas, what would you say to them.
It's really an interesting question.
If you're overseas right now, the impact is more pronounced.
If you're a lot of these developing economies, the global South, inflationary economies, they've been using digital assets for a long time because it's a way for them to get dollar exposure.
And when that's happening, they're not using their domestic fiat currencies.
So, that's a risk for the domestic countries that they're trying to sort through.
But for the user it's a wonderful tool.
It's a great asset, and in these economies it's easy from a retail standpoint to go in and transact with stablecoin in the states right now they're we're still developing the retail use cases at the institutional enterprise level.
I think this market is maturing very quickly, so I think.
Future looks like stablecoins coexisting alongside fiat, alongside CBDCs, alongside bank deposits, and they're going to be used for different use cases.
These different forms of money will have a role, and I think it's inevitably where we're heading with stablecoins in particular.
Joe, a lot to keep our eyes on as we head into the rest of 2026.
So thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you.
Thank you.
