What Stablecoin Regulation Means for Business
The GENIUS Act opens up a new frontier and strategic choices for leaders.
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The GENIUS Act establishes federal regulation for stablecoins, creating new strategic options for businesses. These digital tokens offer instant settlement, programmability, and global accessibility — potentially disrupting traditional payment systems that cost businesses $187 billion annually. Companies must choose between using stablecoins to gain efficiency or building strategic financial platforms similar to the loyalty programs airlines have established to monetize customer relationships.
For much of the 20th century, speaking on the phone across state lines was a luxury good — a conversation that ran a tab by the minute, all controlled by the Bell System in its private fiefdom. Decades later, policy rewired the economics of the communications infrastructure. The AT&T breakup in 1984, followed by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, unleashed a wave of competition. Prices collapsed. The running tab on calls vanished. It was a script WhatsApp would follow years later, exploiting the high cost of SMS to seize messaging away from mobile carriers.
Today, the world of payments looks uncomfortably familiar. A handful of institutions, such as credit card issuers and banks, run the tollbooths of everyday payments, collecting a toll on every swipe, tap, or wire. What amounts to a private tax on the economy has a brilliant marketing scheme: Consumers, showered in merchant-funded rewards, believe they are getting a free service, all while the background radiation of invisible fees shapes business models — to the tune of $187 billion in merchant fees in 2024. The passage of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act presents leaders with new options that could upend that system.
What Are Stablecoins, and Why Are They Different?
A stablecoin is a digital token designed to be a true dollar bill for the internet. The GENIUS Act, which became U.S. federal law in July 2025, mandates that to qualify as stablecoins, these tokens must be fully backed by high-quality, liquid assets, making them redeemable on demand 1-to-1 for U.S. dollars. This guarantee is what separates them from a balance inside PayPal or Cash App, which is merely an IOU from the payment system, and from other cryptocurrencies, which fluctuate in value.
The historical problem with this concept has always been trust: How do you know that the money is really there? The GENIUS Act addresses this by creating rules for reserve composition, legal claims, and audits. This regulatory clarity gives businesses the confidence they need to adopt the technology. For innovators, it’s a green light to take a sledgehammer to the 50-year-old infrastructure that has determined how money moves.
Compared with traditional payments, stablecoins offer three fundamental advantages:
1. Efficiency. Stablecoins enable instant settlement, 24/7,
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Carlos Tapang