For years the stablecoin discussion was basically Tether versus Circle. That is starting to look outdated pretty fast.
Last month Open USD was announced with more than 140 companies behind it, including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock and Stripe. In Europe, Qivalis now has 37 banks across 15 countries working on a euro stablecoin planned for later this year.
They are not doing this because every bank suddenly became a crypto fan. Stablecoins are turning into payment and settlement rails, and there is a lot of money in controlling the distribution and the reserves.
MiCA is a big part of why the European side is taking shape now. Qivalis is pursuing authorisation from the Dutch central bank for a stablecoin designed around MiCAR. That gives it a realistic route across Europe instead of needing a completely different setup in every country.
The funny part is that 37 banks still do not guarantee adoption. If the coin does not reach the places people already use, whether that is Coinbase, Nexo, Kraken, major wallets or DeFi, it could still become another euro stablecoin with impressive logos and no real liquidity.
I am not sure having a new stablecoin for every group of companies is automatically better either. It could fragment liquidity and make a simple idea unnecessarily messy.
But the wider trend is pretty clear. Visa, Mastercard and some of Europe’s biggest banks are not asking whether onchain money will matter. They are trying to make sure nobody else owns the rails when it does imo..