Stablecoins passed ACH this month — and Paxos, HSBC and the banks all moved
Findings · Jul 2026 · 6 min
We keep a standing watch on the stablecoin market inside Aim — the issuers, banks and regulators, not the press releases. This past month the story stopped being about potential: on-chain stablecoin volume overtook the US ACH network for the first time, the SEC handed Paxos the first blockchain-native clearing licence in the country, and HSBC switched on round-the-clock tokenised deposits across five financial hubs. Meanwhile Washington blew past its own GENIUS Act deadline and the big banks went to the White House to fight stablecoin yield. Here's who actually moved.
On-chain stablecoin volume passed the US ACH network
The line finally crossed. On-chain stablecoin volume reached $7.2 trillion in February 2026, edging past the US ACH network's $6.8 trillion for the first time — the rails that run payroll, mortgages and bills for 330 million Americans. It climbed again to $7.5 trillion in March.
This reads less like a spike than a handover: total stablecoin market capitalisation pushed past $316.7 billion to a new all-time high, a shift Consensys' David Cunningham called a tipping point.
The SEC registered Paxos as the first blockchain-native clearing agency
The SEC registered Paxos Securities Settlement Company as a clearing agency, making Paxos the first blockchain-native firm cleared to run a central securities depository in the United States. CEO Charles Cascarilla called it the payoff from seven years of work that began with a 2019 SEC no-action letter and a 2020 settlement pilot.
It lands because Paxos already issues PayPal USD, Global Dollar (USDG) and Pax Gold — putting a regulated clearing rail under the same roof as its stablecoins. Separately, Paxos Labs raised $12 million led by Blockchain Capital to expand branded-stablecoin and on-chain yield products.
HSBC switched on 24/7 tokenised deposits across five hubs
HSBC launched a 24/7 tokenised-deposit service across Hong Kong, Singapore, the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom, with the UAE next. Lewis Sun, its global head of digital currencies, frames a tokenised deposit as an ordinary commercial-bank deposit that happens to be always-on and interest-bearing, with the compliance architecture unchanged.
The pilot ran on Canton Network, the blockchain built by Digital Asset, and the payoff is mundane in the best way: a corporate client that used to pre-fund its payout account every Friday can now top it up over the weekend with the exact amount needed.
Circle's USDC anchors a MiCA-cleared list of fewer than 15
Europe's regulated shelf is short. Fewer than 15 stablecoins held active MiCA authorisation in late 2025, all as e-money tokens, with USDC the default dollar token on EU-licensed exchanges. Circle was the first global issuer authorised under MiCA, via France's ACPR in July 2024.
The euro side is small but climbing: EURC's market cap rose from about €50 million in mid-2024 to more than €300 million by Q3 2025.
Hyundai, Deel and BlackRock put stablecoins into corporate treasury
Corporate use is now operational, not experimental. B2B stablecoin payments grew 733% year on year to roughly $226 billion, with monthly volume hitting a record $1.79 trillion in June 2026. The proof points are live settlements, not pilots — Hyundai Card wired $20,000 of USDT between the US and Mexico in seven minutes, with Deel among the multinationals running intercompany stablecoin flows.
Under the hood it is a two-token market: USDT sat around $184 billion (59.5% share) and USDC around $73 billion (23.6%) in July 2026. Because the GENIUS Act bars issuers from paying yield, treasuries are parking cash in tokenised Treasuries instead — BlackRock's BUIDL alone passed $2.5 billion, about 40% of that market.
Washington missed its GENIUS deadline as banks fought stablecoin yield
The rulebook didn't land. US regulators hit the GENIUS Act's one-year rulemaking deadline on 18 July 2026 without final implementing rules — the OCC, Federal Reserve, FDIC, NCUA, Treasury and FinCEN all still have proposals in draft or comment. The Act now takes effect on the earlier of 18 January 2027 or 120 days after final rules issue.
The bigger fight moved to the White House. Bank groups — JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citi and others — pressed for a broad ban on stablecoin yield, arguing the tokens are payment instruments rather than deposits; Coinbase and Ripple pushed back, and the talks ended without agreement. Analyst Geoff Kendrick warned stablecoins could pull up to $500 billion out of bank deposits in industrialised nations by 2028.
…designed strictly as payment instruments, not interest-bearing products.
Moves worth logging
AZ-COM Maruwa, an Amazon Japan logistics partner, will pay about 2,300 partner companies in the yen stablecoin JPYC — the first large-scale corporate JPYC rollout.
Deloitte attested to Anchorage's USAT reserves — $17.6 million against $17.5 million outstanding — while Tether's far larger USDT stays outside that US audit scope.
What it means
The throughline is that stablecoins crossed from crypto plumbing into the regulated core — clearing houses, commercial-bank deposits, corporate payroll and treasury — faster than Washington could finish the rulebook.
The open question for next month is who sets the terms: the banks trying to cap yield, or the issuers and networks already moving the volume. We'll keep watching it in Aim.