Executives from MoonPay, Ripple, and Paxos told the Consensus Miami 2026 audience on May 8 that new US regulation has fundamentally changed the competitive landscape for dollar-pegged tokens. Richard Harrison, MoonPay's vice president of banking and payment partnerships, said the passage of the GENIUS Act gave firms across traditional finance a regulatory framework to operate within. According to Harrison, traditional finance firms are now entering stablecoins at a faster pace because compliance is easier to evaluate, bringing clarity to an otherwise difficult market to enter.
Despite regulatory progress, major infrastructure and privacy gaps remain critical barriers to mainstream adoption. Jack McDonald, Ripple's senior vice president for stablecoins, told the panel that institutional clients are focused less on market capitalisation and more on practical details: regulatory compliance, custody security, and whether stablecoins can do something useful beyond trading. McDonald emphasized that utility must drive adoption rather than speculative interest, with Ripple concentrating on treasury operations, collateral management, and cross-border payment settlement as primary enterprise use cases.
Brent Perrault, a senior staff software engineer at Paxos, warned that privacy remains the sector's most persistent unresolved problem. Public blockchains expose transaction amounts and the flow of funds, creating compliance and confidentiality concerns for businesses handling sensitive financial data. Perrault noted that partial privacy solutions are insufficient because users inevitably move between private and public blockchain environments. He said competitive differentiation among stablecoin issuers is now increasingly driven by trust, distribution partnerships, and user incentives rather than technical specification alone.
Harrison projected that stablecoins could reach around 10% of the global remittance market over the next five years as payment rails improve and more merchants integrate digital dollar services. According to Harrison, stablecoin-based cross-border transfers already settle near-instantly at fees below one dollar, compared with traditional banking fees that can exceed 6%. Brent Perrault pointed to PayPal USD's growth and Charles Schwab's use of Paxos infrastructure as evidence that demand from established financial institutions is real and expanding beyond crypto-native firms.
The panel's comments came as the CLARITY Act moves toward its Senate Banking Committee markup on May 14. As reported by crypto.news, five major banking trade groups rejected the Tillis-Alsobrooks stablecoin compromise language just days before the vote. The stablecoin market currently sits at approximately ₹26.5 lakh crore in total value, with Western Union announcing its USDPT stablecoin on Solana earlier in May through Anchorage Digital. The executives emphasized that even well-capitalised issuers with strong compliance records face significant friction when trying to connect stablecoin rails to everyday payment systems consumers and businesses already use.
