Executives from MoonPay, Ripple, and Paxos said at Consensus Miami 2026 that stablecoin regulation has accelerated institutional adoption but that major infrastructure and privacy gaps still hinder mainstream use.
Summary
- MoonPay VP Richard Harrison said the GENIUS Act has given firms a regulatory approval slip, accelerating the transition of traditional currencies to stablecoins.
- Ripple SVP Jack McDonald cautioned that the institutional recovery depends on regulated products, reliable storage, and leverage over market capitalization.
- Paxos developer Brent Perrault warned that unresolved privacy issues in public blockchains remain a significant barrier to enterprise-scale stablecoin payments.
Top executives at three active stablecoin companies told the audience at Consensus Miami 2026 on May 8 that the new US regulation has fundamentally changed the competitive landscape for dollar-pegged tokens, bringing traditional financial institutions into a market that was previously difficult to enter. This change, however, has exposed a new set of problems that the industry has yet to solve.
Richard Harrison, MoonPay’s vice president of banking and payments relations, said the passage of the GENIUS Act gives traditional financial firms a regulatory framework within which to operate. “What GENIUS brought us was clarity,” Harrison told the panel, noting that traditional financial firms are now introducing stablecoins at a faster pace because compliance is easier to assess.
Harrison compared the current state of stablecoin adoption to electric cars: the core product works, but mass market adoption is entirely dependent on the supporting infrastructure. “How do you use stablecoin to pay your rent?” he said. “How do you use it to buy a cup of coffee?”
Institutional necessity versus real-world usability
Jack McDonald, Ripple’s senior vice president of stablecoins, told the panel that institutional clients are less focused on market capitalization and practical details: regulatory compliance, security of stock, and that stablecoins can do something useful outside of trading.
McDonald said Ripple continues to focus on treasury operations, collateral management, and cross-border payments as the main business use cases, arguing that the service should promote adoption rather than speculative profit.
Harrison added that stablecoins currently represent a small part of global remittance flows, although he estimated that this number could reach about 10% of the market in the next five years as payment methods improve and more merchants integrate digital dollar services.
Stablecoin-based cross-border transfers are already near-instant at fees of less than one dollar, compared to traditional bank fees that can exceed 6%.
Brent Perrault, senior staff software engineer at Paxos, said privacy remains a persistent and intractable problem for the industry. Public blockchains expose transaction values and financial flows, creating compliance and privacy concerns for businesses handling sensitive financial data.
Perrault warned that partial privacy solutions are not enough because users inevitably move between the private and public areas of the blockchain. He said the competitive divide among stablecoin issuers is now increasingly driven by trust, distribution partnerships, and user motivations rather than technical specifications alone.
Distribution spaces and what’s next
Perrault cited the growth of PayPal USD and Charles Schwab’s use of the Paxos infrastructure as evidence that demand from established financial institutions is real and expanding beyond crypto-native firms.
The challenge, he said, is that even well-funded issuers with strong compliance records face significant friction when trying to connect stablecoin rails to the everyday payment systems that consumers and businesses already use.
The panel’s comments on Consensus Miami came as the CLARITY Act moves to the Senate Banking Committee’s markup on May 14. As crypto.news reported, five major banking trade groups rejected the language of the Tillis-Alsobrooks stablecoin compromise a few days before the vote.
Consensus executives did not directly address the markup, but their comments underscore why the regulatory effect is important for companies building stablecoin payment products at scale.
The stablecoin market currently sits at around 317 billion dollar value. Western Union announced its USDPT stablecoin on Solana in early May, via Anchorage Digital.
That entry reflects exactly what Harrison described: legislation has lowered the barrier, but the infrastructure needed to make stablecoins work in everyday consumer situations is still being built.
