At Consensus Miami 2026, senior executives from MoonPay, Ripple, and Paxos said recent U.S. regulatory moves have accelerated institutional interest in dollar-pegged stablecoins — but warned that hard technical and operational problems remain before these tokens can reach mainstream payments.
MoonPay’s Richard Harrison credited the GENIUS Act with providing a clear regulatory framework that has effectively given traditional finance firms a ‘‘permission slip’’ to enter the market. That clarity, he said, is speeding adoption by organisations that previously found compliance questions a major obstacle. But Harrison cautioned that the core product alone is not enough: like electric vehicles, stablecoins require a supporting infrastructure to enable everyday uses — paying rent, buying coffee, or other consumer payments.
Jack McDonald of Ripple emphasised that institutional demand is being driven less by headline market capitalisation and more by practical considerations: regulated product structures, trusted custody solutions, and demonstrable utility beyond trading. Ripple has been concentrating on enterprise-oriented use cases such as treasury operations, collateral management, and cross-border settlement, arguing that real-world utility will determine whether stablecoins gain sustained traction.
Brent Perrault, a senior staff engineer at Paxos, identified privacy as the sector’s most persistent unsolved issue. Public blockchains expose transaction amounts and fund flows in ways that create confidentiality and compliance problems for businesses handling sensitive payments. Perrault warned that partial privacy fixes are insufficient because users and businesses inevitably move between public and private environments, re-exposing sensitive data. As a result, he said, competitive differentiation among issuers is increasingly shaped by trust, distribution partnerships, and user incentives as much as by technical specs.
Panelists pointed to concrete signs of institutional uptake: PayPal USD’s growth and Charles Schwab’s use of Paxos infrastructure were cited as evidence that established financial firms are adopting regulated stablecoins. Yet even well-capitalised, compliant issuers face sizable friction connecting blockchain rails to the payment systems consumers and businesses actually use.
The executives’ comments came as the CLARITY Act was approaching a Senate Banking Committee markup. Regulatory outcomes remain important to companies building scaled stablecoin payments because rules shape market access, custody expectations, and institutional participation.
The stablecoin market is substantial — roughly $317 billion in total value — and recent enterprise entries such as Western Union’s USDPT on Solana show how regulation can lower barriers. Still, the consensus view at the panel was clear: regulation has opened doors, but major infrastructure work and robust privacy solutions are required before stablecoins can deliver everyday, enterprise-scale payment functionality.