Executives from MoonPay, Ripple, and Paxos said at Consensus Miami 2026 that stablecoin regulations are accelerating institutional adoption, but large gaps in infrastructure and privacy still hinder mainstream usage.
Executives from three of the most active stablecoin companies told the Consensus Miami 2026 audience on May 8 that new U.S. regulations have fundamentally changed the competitive landscape for dollar-pegged tokens, allowing traditional financial institutions to enter a previously difficult-to-enter market. However, this change has revealed a new set of problems that the industry has yet to solve.
Richard Harrison, vice president of banking and payment partnerships at MoonPay, said: $genius This law gave businesses across traditional finance a regulatory framework within which to operate. “what $genius Harrison noted during the panel discussion that traditional financial companies are moving into 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 is functional, but mass-market adoption depends entirely on supporting infrastructure. “How do you use a stablecoin to pay rent?” he said. “How do you use it to buy coffee?”
Institutional demand and real-world usability
Jack MacDonald, Ripple’s senior vice president of stablecoins, told a panel that institutional investors are less focused on market capitalization and more focused on practical details such as regulatory compliance, custodial security, and whether stablecoins can be useful for more than transactions.
MacDonald said Ripple remains focused on treasury operations, collateral management and cross-border payment settlement as key enterprise use cases, arguing that utilities, not speculative interests, should drive adoption.
Harrison added that while stablecoins currently make up a relatively small share of global remittance flows, he expects that figure could reach around 10% of the market over the next five years as payment rails improve and more merchants integrate digital dollar services.
Stablecoin-based cross-border transfers are already settled almost instantly with fees of less than $1, compared to traditional bank fees that can exceed 6%.
Brent Perrault, senior staff software engineer at Paxos, said privacy remains the most persistent unresolved issue in the field. Public blockchains expose transaction amounts and fund flows, raising compliance and confidentiality concerns for companies that handle sensitive financial data.
Perrault cautioned that partial privacy solutions are insufficient because users will inevitably move between private and public blockchain environments. He said competitive differentiation among stablecoin issuers is now increasingly driven not just by technical specifications, but also by trust, distribution partnerships, and user incentives.
Distribution gaps and what happens next
Perot cited the growth of PayPal USD and Charles Schwab’s use of Paxos infrastructure as evidence that demand from incumbent financial institutions is real and expanding beyond crypto-native companies.
The challenge, he said, is that even well-capitalized issuers with strong compliance records face significant friction when trying to connect stablecoin rails to everyday payment systems that consumers and businesses already use.
The committee’s comments at Consensus Miami come as the CLARITY Act heads toward a May 14 Senate Banking Committee rate hike. As reported by crypto.news, five major banking industry groups rejected Tillis Alsobrooks’ stablecoin compromise language days before the vote.
Although Consensus executives did not directly address the price increase, their remarks underscored why the regulatory outcome is important for companies building stablecoin payment products at scale.
The stablecoin market currently totals approximately $317 billion. Western Union announced its USDPT stablecoin in Solana in early May, issued through Anchorage Digital.
This entry reflects exactly the dynamic Harrison described. Regulation has lowered the barriers, but the infrastructure needed to make stablecoins work in everyday consumer situations is still being built.
