Field Guide v1.1 Page updated 2026-10-13 Page history · Release notes

Research Sources

Summaries of the 49 research reports behind the Digital Money Adoption scores and the Use Cases section, grouped by the quarter each report was published.

Version 1.0 — October 15, 2026. Reorganized by publication quarter. Earlier versions grouped reports by the batch in which they were added.

How to read this page

IDs are permanent. Each report has a three-digit ID assigned in the order it was added to the Field Guide, so IDs are not sequential within a quarter. ID 011 is retired (a duplicate of 006) and 034 is reserved for Part 3 of American Banker’s consumer survey.
Quarters follow the publication date, not the date of the data. A July report with June data is listed in Q3.
Geography rule: the DMA scores U.S. adoption. Non-U.S. production evidence is cited as background unless it bears directly on a U.S. use case.
Canonical figures: stablecoin supply is $313B at September 30, 2026 (026). B2B stablecoin payment volume is the $76B annualized run rate (010). Other supply and B2B figures are cited only for what they measure separately.

Q1 2026 and Earlier

Reports published through March 31, 2026, including 2025 reports that form the baseline for every quarter.

001. EY-Parthenon: Stablecoins in Focus

Publisher: EY-Parthenon · Date: September 2025 · Methodology: Survey of 350 decision-makers (CFO, CTO, CIO, head of blockchain/digital assets) at corporates (n=250) and FIs (n=100). U.S.-focused (63%), EMEA (17%), rest of world (20%). Fielded June 10–24, 2025.

Headline Metrics

13% overall utilization among surveyed FIs and corporates globally
23% of financial institutions have used stablecoins; only 8% of corporates
54% of non-users expect to begin using within 6–12 months
95% of respondents anticipate growing interest over the next 6–12 months
41% of users report cost savings of 10% or more, primarily in cross-border payments

FI Projections by 2030

5%–10% of global payments will use stablecoins ($2.1T–$4.2T in value)
15% of FIs already offer stablecoin services; 57% plan to explore new offerings
79% of FIs plan to leverage a third party to build out infrastructure

Use Cases in Detail

Cross-border supplier payments (62% of current users) — The dominant use case. Manufacturing, automotive, and technology companies use stablecoins to pay overseas suppliers, freeing capital from multi-day settlement windows and reducing FX spread costs. Cost savings of 10%+ reported by 41% of current users.

Cross-border treasury and cash management (44%) — Multinational treasury teams move cash between subsidiaries across jurisdictions, particularly where local currency conversion is expensive or capital controls apply.

Consumer payment acceptance (44%) — Primarily in financial services and technology sectors for digital goods, gaming, and platform commerce. Physical retail acceptance remains limited.

Sub-merchant/contractor disbursement (42%) — Marketplaces disbursing to sellers; platforms disbursing to contractors. Programmability enables conditional payment release tied to fulfillment.

Yield on stablecoin holdings (33%) — Through DeFi protocols or structured products. Directly implicated by the GENIUS Act’s yield prohibition debate.

002. IMF Working Paper WP/26/52

Publisher: International Monetary Fund · Date: March 2026

The IMF paper focuses on systemic implications of stablecoin adoption for monetary policy and financial stability. Key finding: stablecoin adoption in markets with currency instability is materially faster than in developed markets — and the dollarization risk this creates for emerging economies is the IMF’s primary concern, not the payment efficiency gains that corporate treasury teams value.

003. UOB: Stablecoins in Regulated Finance

Publisher: United Overseas Bank (Singapore) · Date: March 2026

UOB writes from the perspective of a Singapore-headquartered bank operating across Southeast Asia. Key findings: B2B cross-border settlement, intraday liquidity management, programmable contractor payroll, and trade finance smart contract settlement are all documented as real or emerging use cases in UOB’s market context.

004. Visa/Dune: Beyond Dollarization

Publisher: Visa and Dune Analytics · Date: March 2026 (data through February 2026) · Pages: 34

Key findings: 30x growth in addresses holding local currency (non-USD) stablecoins, from about 40,000 in January 2023 to more than 1.2 million in February 2026; monthly transfer volume up 16x, from about $600 million to $10 billion, over the same period; euro stablecoins are more than 80% of the $1.2B tracked market cap, with the Brazilian real about 10%; about 2% of supply sits in DEX liquidity pools. Dedicated issuer regimes (MiCA, Singapore, Japan, Brazil) correlate with growth.

005. CoinDesk/Ripple: The Definitive Stablecoin Landscape Series — North America

Publisher: CoinDesk Research · Commissioned by: Ripple · Date: March 26, 2026 · URL: CoinDesk Research

The most comprehensive recent data set on North American stablecoin volumes, market structure, institutional deployment, and regulatory environment. Commissioned by Ripple; methodology and underlying data sourced from on-chain analytics, exchange reporting, and institutional disclosures. Note: commissioned research; findings should be read alongside independent sources.

Headline Market Metrics

Total stablecoin market cap 2025: $308B (+50% YoY)
On-chain volume 2025: $33.4T (+74% YoY)
North America stablecoin volume: $5.32T (16.1% of global)
Average NA transaction size: $35,016 — highest globally (sourced to IMF)
B2B share of stablecoin payments: 62.9% (up from 17.4% in 2024)

Merchant and Commerce Data

NA merchant stablecoin volume: +38% to $625M
Monthly crypto card volume: +533%, peaked $87.7M December 2025
Walmart and Amazon exploring stablecoin vendor payments
USDC share on NA exchanges: 45.9% (up from 20%)

Capital Markets and Institutional Data

RWA TVL 2025: $20.8B (+97.6%)
Aave stablecoin collateral: 30.6% (from 20.5%); Morpho: 34.7% (from 20.6%)
JPM Coin (JPMD) launched on Base, November 2025
Ripple Prime: $3T annual, $10B daily, 50M transactions/day
RLUSD: $1.43B market cap, $43.3B traded 2025, 323 days to $1B

Regulatory Context

GENIUS Act enacted July 2025; bans yield-bearing stablecoins (payment stablecoin category); requires 1:1 reserves; $10B threshold for federal vs. state licensing
OCC proposed rulemaking February 2026; final rules expected mid-to-late 2026

Use Cases in Detail

Cross-border B2B payments (dominant use case) — B2B share jumped from 17.4% to 62.9% of stablecoin payments in a single year. Conduit ($10B annualized, +16× YoY) and BVNK ($30B annualized; Mastercard agreed in March 2026 to acquire it for up to $1.8B, closing August 3, 2026) are the leading platforms. SpaceX/Stripe Bridge use case: local currency accepted in Argentina/Nigeria, converted to USDC instantly, settled into global treasury.

Merchant and commerce settlement — Visa/Circle settlement run rate reached $7B annualized across 9 blockchains. NA merchant volume up 38% to $625M. Monthly crypto card volume surged +533%. Walmart and Amazon said to be evaluating stablecoin vendor payment programs.

Institutional capital markets — RWA TVL grew 97.6% to $20.8B. DeFi protocol adoption accelerating: Aave (30.6% stablecoin collateral) and Morpho (34.7%) represent institutional-grade on-chain lending. RLUSD reached $1.43B market cap and $43.3B traded in its first year.

006. BVNK: Stablecoin Utility Report 2026

Publisher: BVNK, in partnership with Coinbase; fieldwork by YouGov · Date: February 2026 (fieldwork September–October 2025) · Pages: 57 · Methodology: YouGov online survey of 4,658 adults in 15 countries who hold, have held or intend to acquire crypto or stablecoins · URL: bvnk.com/utility

Consumer and small business survey on actual stablecoin payment behavior. The 15 countries span seven regions: the U.S.; Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico; the UK, France and Germany; the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand; India; Nigeria and South Africa; and Australia. Note: BVNK is a stablecoin payment infrastructure company, and Mastercard agreed to acquire it on March 17, 2026 (Mastercard), closing August 3, 2026 (Mastercard). This is proprietary research designed to support its market position. The underlying YouGov methodology is credible; read findings as directionally useful rather than independent academic research.

Headline Findings

Merchant acceptance is a critical blocker: desire to spend stablecoins exceeds actual spending in every spend category tested
71% would use a linked debit card to spend stablecoins, rising to 78% in low- and middle-income economies
73% of freelancers and gig workers say crypto and stablecoins improved their ability to work with international clients; 46% say the improvement was significant
~35% of freelancer and seller annual earnings arrive in stablecoins (mean)
Lower fees (30%), security (28%) and global access (27%) are the top drivers of current stablecoin payment use
Holders allocate about one-third of their savings to crypto and stablecoins

Merchant and Consumer Data

The report’s central finding is a structural gap: stablecoin holders want to spend them, but merchant acceptance has not kept pace. 71% would use a stablecoin card, which shows readiness on the demand side; the bottleneck is acceptance infrastructure, not consumer appetite. Holders want stablecoin payments to behave like money they already use, and dislike complexity such as extra steps, network choices and irreversible transactions.

BVNK’s auto-conversion model addresses this by making stablecoin rails invisible to merchants: the merchant receives local fiat currency; only the settlement layer uses stablecoins.

Cross-Border and Freelancer Data

The freelancer finding is the report’s most concrete data point: 73% report an improved ability to work internationally, with ~35% of earnings arriving in stablecoins. Adoption and spending intent are highest in low- and middle-income economies, where Nigeria, South Africa, India and the Philippines lead everyday spending.

Use Cases Supported

Merchant and Commerce Settlement — Consumer demand for stablecoin spending is high; auto-conversion infrastructure solves the merchant acceptance friction.

Cross-Border Payment Friction — Quantifies the freelancer and small business experience that the B2B platform data describes at larger scale.

Programmable and Automated Payments — Cross-border contractor payroll is the strongest individual use case finding in the report.

007. American Banker: 2026 Value of On-Chain Survey (3-Part Series)

Publisher: American Banker (Arizent) · Author: Frank Gargano, Data Reporter · Date: March 24, 27 and 31, 2026 (survey fielded February 2026) · URL: Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 (paywall)

Three-part series reporting results of the 2026 Value of On-Chain Survey, fielded online in February 2026 among 199 banking professionals across banks, credit unions, online-only bank divisions, and unchartered neobanks. Measures institutional planning posture, use case priorities, blockers, and stablecoin issuance intent. Findings below are checked against the full text of all three articles, held on file; the articles are paywalled and are quoted, not reproduced.

Part 1: Big Banks Are Leading the On-Chain and Stablecoin Race

About 30% have implemented or are piloting on-chain technology; 15% are in early internal discussions
54% of community bankers and 44% of credit union respondents say no discussions have taken place
Top consumer use case: cross-border payments and remittances (43%); top business use case: cross-border payment rails (41%), followed by payout and disbursement rails (37%)
Expect to issue a publicly accessible stablecoin within 10 years: national banks 54%, midsize and regional banks about 40%, community banks and credit unions 31%

Part 2: Regulatory Clarity Will Reignite the On-Chain Race Among Banks

68% agree that failing to adopt on-chain technology in time will put them behind peers; 60% see on-chain fintechs as noteworthy competitors
49% say clients are ready and interested in on-chain products
Hurdles: regulatory uncertainty (79%) and legacy systems (72%)
Regulatory clarity is the top change needed to speed adoption (40%), ahead of customer demand (22%) and integration with existing systems (17%)

Part 3: On-Chain Investments Could Drive Payments Growth

Client demand is the top motivator for public digital-asset services (loyalty tokens 62%, business custody 61%); long-term revenue potential leads for tokenization (tokenized deposits for business clients 63%)
Payments and settlement efficiency is the top expected near-term return (40%) and long-term value (67%)
64% agree on-chain rails significantly reduce costs; 57% say they add high operational risk
Retail and mass-market customers are the most common strategic focus (35%)
Top consumer benefits: faster payments (82%) and lower transaction costs (73%)

Use Cases Supported

Bank Readiness (primary) — The survey is the foundational source for the [Bank Readiness: The Supply Side](../adoption-progress/bank-readiness.md page. It measures supply-side institutional posture, not deployment volumes.

Cross-Border Payment Friction — Cross-border payments as the #1 use case for both consumer and business segments aligns with and reinforces the production deployment data in the Use Cases section.

009. Zero Hash: 2026 Stablecoin Momentum Report

Publisher: Zero Hash · Date: January 2026 · Pages: 49

Produced by Zero Hash — a stablecoin infrastructure provider whose platform processes payments for enterprise clients including Stripe, Mastercard, and Worldpay — this is an industry report with broad coverage across use cases, policy, and 2026 outlook. Edward Woodford (Zero Hash CEO) contributes the afterword. Sections cover: Where We Are Now, Applications in Practice, Policy & Regulation, 2026 Outlook.

Headline Metrics

$3.4B annualized TPV on Circle Payments Network (CPN) as of late 2025
400% YoY growth in enterprise RFIs at Zero Hash
$1.5B/month global crypto card spending by December 2025 (vs. $100M in January 2023)
Stablecoin transaction volumes surpassed Mastercard annual volumes on a notional basis (~2021, per ZH chart)

Key Findings

Applications in Practice: Cross-border B2B payroll (Gusto, Deel, 10,000+ freelancers in 100+ countries), marketplace vendor payments (Worldpay via Zero Hash), treasury sweep for corporate cash management, card settlement on Solana. The dominant corridors are LatAm (Felix Pago, Bitso), Africa (Yellow Card), and Southeast Asia.

Policy & Regulation: GENIUS Act confirmed signed July 2025. ZH flags the cross-border definitional gap: a U.S. PPSI-issued stablecoin and an EU e-money token are separately regulated — no cross-border interoperability framework exists. Yield restriction debate flagged as ongoing under the CLARITY Act companion bill.

2026 Outlook: ZH projects continued growth in enterprise treasury, tokenized payments, and agentic use cases. Lists stablecoin-linked debit/credit cards and AI agent micropayments as the two fastest-growing emerging verticals.

Use Cases Supported

Cross-Border Payment Friction (primary), Merchant & Commerce Settlement (card data), Programmable Payments (agentic outlook).

010. Artemis / Castle Island Ventures / Dragonfly: Stablecoin Payments from the Ground Up (Part 2)

Publisher: Artemis, Castle Island Ventures, Dragonfly · Date: October 2025 · Pages: 25

This is the most rigorous primary-data payments study among the reports added in June 2026. Methodology: on-chain transaction classification of stablecoin payments between January 2023 and August 2025, distinguishing payments for goods/services from trading and internal transfers. Survey of 2,150 global stablecoin users across LatAm, Africa, Asia/Pacific, and Europe/North America. The definitive data source for B2B volume, remittance corridor breakdowns, and USDT vs. USDC market share by transaction type.

Headline Metrics

$136B cumulative stablecoin payments volume (goods/services, Jan 2023–Aug 2025)
$122B annualized payments run rate as of August 2025
$76B/yr B2B payments; $19B/yr P2P; $18B/yr card-linked; $3.6B/yr prefunding
USDT: 85% market share by payment transaction volume; USDC: growing but predominantly DeFi
Top sending countries: USA, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, UK
Top receiving regions: LatAm, Africa, Southeast Asia
71% of LatAm FIs using stablecoins (Fireblocks data)

Key Findings

B2B cross-border is the dominant production use case globally. Argentina alone: $34B in 2024 stablecoin transactions (~2/3 cross-border). Nigerian USDC volumes >$3B/month in 2025. Freelancers receive ~35% of income in stablecoins; 73% report improved ability to work internationally (BVNK cross-reference). The stablecoin card market grew from $1.6B annualized (Jan 2023) to $18B (Aug 2025).

Use Cases Supported

Cross-Border Payment Friction (primary, definitive volume data), Merchant & Commerce Settlement (card data), Treasury and Liquidity Efficiency (B2B prefunding).

012. Circle: Internet Financial System (IFS) Report 2026

Publisher: Circle · Date: January 2026

Circle's annual state-of-the-industry report, framed around the "Internet Financial System" thesis: stablecoins as native internet money that operates outside banking hours, across borders without intermediaries, and with programmable settlement. Circle is the issuer of USDC and operator of the Circle Payments Network. Read with awareness of issuer perspective; data cited is generally credible and cross-referenced by independent sources.

Headline Metrics

$21.5T cumulative USDC transaction volume (2018–2025)
$8B+ tokenized fund AUM in circulation (as of early 2026)
Circle Payments Network (CPN): 100x growth in TPV; $3.4B annualized by late 2025
dLocal integration: USDC payments across 40+ countries in Brazil and Mexico

Key Findings

Tokenized money market funds (BlackRock BUIDL, Franklin Templeton BENJI) are described as "always-on sweep instruments" — live institutional practice for 24/7 treasury management outside banking hours. CPN positions as the institutional alternative to SWIFT for stablecoin-native settlement, with dLocal as the LatAm on/off-ramp. Circle also covers CFTC tokenized collateral initiative for derivatives margin (December 2025).

Use Cases Supported

Cross-Border Payment Friction (CPN, primary), Treasury and Liquidity Efficiency (tokenized MMF sweep, primary), Institutional Capital Markets Infrastructure (CFTC derivatives collateral pilot).

017. Moody's: FAQ on Stablecoins, a Key and Growing Digital Asset Class [MCO4]

Publisher: Moody's Ratings (Sector In-Depth, Digital Economy – Cross Region) · Date: February 3, 2026 · Pages: 8

Moody's question-and-answer brief on stablecoin types, credit and market risk, depegging, governance and regulation.

Headline Metrics

Market capitalization >$300B by end-2025, more than doubling over the year
At least 19 new stablecoins launched over the past year
Settlement volumes up 87% to $9 trillion in 2025

Key Findings

Fiat-backed stablecoins face credit risk on reserve assets and market-value risk when reserves must be sold under stress. Depegging history includes USDT after the FTX collapse (November 2022) and USDC after Silicon Valley Bank (March 2023); the 2022 TerraUSD collapse pushed algorithmic designs to the margins. Non-bank issuers may run KYC/AML checks at issuance and redemption, but are generally not subject to the same depth of prudential regulation, supervisory oversight or resolution frameworks as banks, nor to regular supervisory stress testing. MiCA and the GENIUS Act require regular reserve attestations, independent audits and clear redemption mechanisms.

Use Cases Supported

GENIUS Act Regulatory Summary (governance gap and risk factors, primary).

020. Polygon: Stablecoin Payments Infrastructure (Enterprise Guide)

Publisher: Polygon · Date: 2026 · Pages: 42

Enterprise guide to building stablecoin payment infrastructure on Polygon's blockchain. Polygon is a Layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution and the blockchain underlying several institutional stablecoin deployments (including Visa's USDC settlement, BlackRock BUIDL, and Mastercard's tokenized asset pilots). This guide covers the full technical stack from custody model selection to smart contract templates. Most technically detailed report among the reports added in June 2026; strongest for infrastructure and programmable payments content.

Key Findings

Covers six use case verticals: settlement (24/7 clearing), payouts (global disbursements), treasury management (FX and liquidity), credit/FX innovations, digital dollar financial inclusion, tokenized deposits. Technical sections cover custodial vs. non-custodial models, wallet creation, core stack layers, and the "vertically integrated vs. assembled stack" architecture decision. Section 5.2 ("What's Real Today vs. What's Coming Soon") provides the clearest current-state vs. roadmap distinction among the reports added in June 2026.

Use Cases Supported

Programmable and Automated Payments (primary), Treasury and Liquidity Efficiency, Institutional Capital Markets Infrastructure (tokenized deposits).

021. PitchBook: Stablecoin Analysis — Stablecoins Are Imperfect but Inevitable

Publisher: PitchBook · Date: October 2025 · Pages: 30

PitchBook's analyst note on the stablecoin market — the same Analyst Note format identified in our June 2026 strategic discussion as a model for the Field Guide's v2 company profile format. Covers market sizing, issuer landscape, regulatory environment, and investment thesis. PitchBook is an independent financial data provider with no commercial stablecoin interest.

Headline Metrics

$289.8B total stablecoin supply (Oct 1, 2025, +66.1% YoY)
$7.2T adjusted YTD volume; $1.0T in September 2025 alone (+158.8% YoY)
133% CAGR in adjusted stablecoin volume since 2023 (Chainalysis)
JPMorgan Kinexys: >$1.5T lifetime transaction volume, $2B+ average daily volume

Key Findings

PitchBook's "imperfect but inevitable" thesis: stablecoins solve real payment problems (speed, cost, programmability) even if they are not yet a systemic replacement for traditional rails. The regulatory section covers GENIUS Act, state-level money transmitter frameworks, SEC enforcement history, and the compliance risk landscape for issuers. PitchBook is the only source to explicitly note that the Brex corporate card stablecoin announcement (September 2025) represents the entry of B2B spend management platforms into stablecoin rails.

Use Cases Supported

Market Overview (supply and volume data, primary), History Timeline (institutional adoption milestones), Cross-Border Payment Friction, Merchant & Commerce Settlement.

025. a16z Crypto: State of Crypto 2025

Publisher: a16z Crypto (Andreessen Horowitz) · Date: 2025 annual · Data as of: September 30, 2025 · Pages: 54

⚠️ Portfolio conflict disclosure: a16z is a venture capital firm with investments in crypto companies including Circle, Coinbase, Robinhood, Ondo Finance, Superstate, and others referenced in this report. Cross-reference all portfolio-company data points independently before citing. All figures are as of September 30, 2025 — some data is 9+ months old as of July 2026 analysis date.

a16z's annual State of Crypto report covers market size, institutional adoption, stablecoins, RWA tokenization, blockchain infrastructure (TPS, L2 economics), AI/crypto convergence, and U.S. regulatory developments. Heavy use of third-party sources: Allium, RWA.xyz, PitchBook, DeFiLlama, Blockworks, Crypto.com. The AI/crypto convergence section (Section 06) is unique among available reports and the primary source for V4 (Programmable Payments) forward analysis.

Headline Metrics

$326B stablecoin supply (Allium, 9/30/2025); 99.8% USD-denominated; top-20 U.S. Treasury holder
$9T/yr adjusted stablecoin volume (vs. $46T unadjusted); comparator: Visa $16T, ACH $87T
Citi projection: $1.6T–$3.7T stablecoin supply by 2030
$30B tokenized RWA ex-stablecoins (Ethereum leads at $9.66B)
~3,400 TPS blockchain throughput (100x+ since 2020); Ethereum L2 fees <$0.01
Circle IPO: >$50B market cap (2025)
Bitcoin ETFs: $150B AUM; Ethereum ETFs: $28B AUM
$33B total user fees across crypto economy → $18B project revenue → $4B token holder accrual
Gartner: $30T in AI agent purchases by 2030 (cited as context for V4 agentic payments outlook)

Key Findings

Stablecoins mainstream (Section 03): Documents the 2025 tipping point — PayPal PYUSD, Visa/Mastercard stablecoin settlement, Bank of America stablecoin announcement, stablecoin supply surpassing $300B. GENIUS Act signed. The $9T adjusted volume figure with the $46T gross figure clearly distinguished.

Institutional adoption (Section 02): Bitcoin ETFs surpassed gold ETF AUM; Circle IPO; Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs offering crypto products to HNW clients; DTCC and major custodians integrating blockchain rails.

AI/Crypto convergence (Section 06): ~25% of tracked crypto companies are building in the "AI x crypto" category. a16z argues stablecoins are the natural payment rail for AI agents because: (1) 24/7 availability, (2) programmable logic, (3) no human intermediary requirement, (4) micropayment capability ($0.001 range). Gartner's $30T AI agent economy projection is cited as the macro context.

U.S. regulatory reset (Section 07): Comprehensive inventory of 2025 regulatory actions — SEC case dismissals (Coinbase, Consensys, Kraken), FDIC/OCC crypto banking guidance rescissions, DOJ policy shift, GENIUS Act and CLARITY Act progress.

Use Cases Supported

Cross-Border Payment Friction (V1 — stablecoin volume data), Treasury and Liquidity Efficiency (V2 — tokenized MMF data), Institutional Capital Markets Infrastructure (V5 — RWA market data, ETF data), Programmable and Automated Payments (V4 — AI/crypto convergence, primary source). DVI note: The AI agent payments section upgrades V4 confidence from Low to Low-Medium; the Gartner $30T projection requires speculative flag.

031. Citi Institute: Stablecoins 2030 — Web3 to Wall Street (Citi GPS) [CI30]

Publisher: Citi Institute · Date: September 2025 · Pages: 54
Link: https://www.citigroup.com/global/insights/stablecoins-2030

Citi's forecast of stablecoin issuance to 2030. The site previously cited its $1.9T base case through PitchBook [PB]; it now cites Citi directly.

Headline Metrics

$1.9T 2030 stablecoin issuance, base case (up from $1.6T in Citi's April 2025 estimate); $4.0T bull case (up from $3.7T) (p. 5)
About $280B issuance in September 2025 (p. 5)

Key Findings

Bank tokens may overtake stablecoins. Citi expects corporates to prefer bank-issued tokens, and projects that 2030 bank-token transaction volumes could exceed stablecoin volumes (p. 5).

Use Cases Supported

Tokenized Bank Deposits; 2. Treasury & Liquidity Management (forecast context only). Forecasts are not adoption evidence and do not move scores.

051. McKinsey with Artemis Analytics: Stablecoins in Payments — What the Raw Transaction Numbers Miss [MCK]

Publisher: McKinsey & Company; data from Artemis Analytics · Authors: Matt Higginson, Alec Zorrilla, Julia Madden, Michael Kirchner · Date: February 18, 2026 · Geography: Global
Link: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/stablecoins-in-payments-what-the-raw-transaction-numbers-miss

Evidence the Field Guide uses:

Actual stablecoin payments are about $390B a year, roughly 0.02% of global payments volume. The figure is annualized from December 2025 activity and more than doubled from 2024.
B2B is about $226B a year, "roughly 60 percent of global stablecoin payment volume," and "B2B payments have increased 733 percent year over year." That is about 0.01% of global B2B payments of roughly $1.6 quadrillion.
Payroll and remittances are about $90B a year, under 1% of a more than $100 trillion segment.
Stablecoin-linked card spending reached $4.5B in 2025, up 673% from 2024. This is card spending, not Visa’s settlement run rate, which is a separate $4.5B figure.

How it relates to other B2B figures: the data are Artemis’s, like the $76B annualized B2B run rate [ART] from Artemis’s October 2025 report, which reflects mid-2025 activity. The $226B is the December 2025 run rate on the same data. Allium’s $137B–$153B for January–August 2026 [ALL], about $205B–$230B a year, is consistent with it.

Also cited by: the WTO’s Stablecoins and world trade (September 14, 2026), which repeats the $226B and 733% figures. The v0.9 site credited them to Visa/Dune in error; corrected October 13, 2026.

Use cases: 1. Cross-Border B2B Payments (Market Evidence); 3. Remittances (Market Evidence); 7. Stablecoin-Based Debit / Prepaid Cards (Market Evidence). Quarter: Q1 2026.

Q2 2026

Reports published April 1 to June 30, 2026.

008. Finzly / American Banker: Setting the Stage for Tokenized Money

Publisher: Finzly / American Banker (Arizent) · Date: April 2026 (survey fielded January–February 2026) · Pages: 6 · URL: Finzly summary and download

Sponsored white paper based on 105 qualified respondents at banks, credit unions, online-only units of traditional banks and neobanks that were at least in early discussions about on-chain technology. The data come from Arizent/American Banker’s The Value of On-Chain 2026, the same survey as 007, so the two entries are not independent evidence. Finzly is a payments infrastructure vendor; read the framing with the sponsor in mind.

Headline Findings

79% agree that the ability to handle traditional and tokenized money on a single unified platform is important (community banks 72%, regional banks 80%, national banks 77%, credit unions 82%). Finzly’s summary page rounds this to 80%.
Readiness to support tokenized deposits is not used: the text says “only one in four” are prepared, but Figure 2 shows 53% “yes” overall (national banks 71%, regional 50%, community 22%, credit unions none).
Many institutions met instant payment rails with bolt-on point solutions; the paper argues tokenized money needs a single ledger and money-movement layer instead.
Pathways the paper lists: issue a proprietary coin (JPMorgan, Wells Fargo), join a consortium token, or adopt an existing stablecoin.

Four Infrastructure Requirements (Finzly summary page)

Real-time ledgering across all accounts and assets
Payment orchestration across rails: ACH, RTP, FedNow, wires, cards, and on-chain
Atomic processing of transactions, balances, and settlement
Interoperability between fiat systems and digital value

“If tokenized deposits are the ‘what,’ then real-time ledgering and payment orchestration are the ‘how.’” — Dean Nolan, Head of Payment Strategy, Finzly

Use Cases Supported

Bank Readiness (primary) — 79% agreeing that a unified platform for traditional and tokenized money is important, set against about 30% implementing or piloting (007), is the most useful infrastructure data point among these sources.

Treasury and Liquidity Efficiency — The unified ledger thesis directly supports Vector 2: once a bank has atomic processing across ACH, FedNow, and on-chain rails, 24/7 liquidity management and intraday settlement become incremental product decisions rather than infrastructure builds.

013. Circle: Payments Product Universe Analysis

Publisher: Canright Communications / internal analysis · Date: May 2026 · Note: Internal working document mapping Circle's payment product portfolio to the five demand vectors.

Use Cases Supported

All five demand vectors (internal classification tool, not an independent third-party source).

014. Deutsche Bank: Digital Money Perspectives

Publisher: Deutsche Bank Research · Date: May 2026 · Pages: 30

Deutsche Bank's institutional research perspective on digital money — stablecoins, tokenized deposits, CBDCs, and tokenized securities — written for institutional clients. Deutsche Bank is simultaneously a regulated issuer exploring its own digital money products and a research publisher. One of the most analytically rigorous institutional bank perspectives among the reports added in June 2026; the regulatory analysis (GENIUS vs. MiCA comparison table, capital treatment for stablecoins under Basel III) and risk taxonomy are among the most detailed among the reports added in June 2026.

Headline Metrics

$4.2T adjusted stablecoin volume (BCG, 2025), $300–550B real-economy payments
$278.4B USD-backed stablecoin supply (April 2026)
1,250% risk weight applied to non-qualifying stablecoins under Basel III (vs. 0% for sovereign bonds)
Tether Treasury holdings: comparable to Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea

Key Findings

The regulatory comparison between GENIUS (U.S.) and MiCA (EU) is the most detailed among the reports added in June 2026: MiCA requires 30–60% of reserves as bank deposits, creating issuer exposure to credit risk and depressed yields — a structural disadvantage vs. GENIUS's T-bill-only reserve requirement. Deutsche Bank also covers Partior (next-gen cross-border settlement, DB as investor), Project Agorá (BIS/7 central banks/40+ FIs), and the SWIFT blockchain ledger pilot (Q2–Q3 2026).

Use Cases Supported

Institutional Capital Markets Infrastructure (primary), GENIUS Act Regulatory Summary (primary), Cross-Border Payment Friction (wCBDC and Partior analysis).

015. Dr. Bhaskar Dasgupta (Independent): Local Currency Stablecoins — A Cross-Country Viability Assessment

Full title: Local Currency Stablecoins: A Cross Country Viability Assessment Using the Reserve Depth and Liquidity Framework

Publisher: Independent Research (working paper) · Date: May 2026 · Pages: 61

Working paper applying the Reserve Depth and Liquidity (RDL) framework to 32 currencies with an active or announced local-currency stablecoin program as of May 2026. Each currency is scored on eight dimensions, including short-term sovereign debt depth, secondary market turnover, inflation stability, trade invoicing in local currency, regulatory clarity, payments infrastructure and network effects. The most granular international regulatory analysis among the reports added in June 2026.

Headline Metrics

32 currencies assessed under the RDL framework
Six currencies satisfy all eight conditions at scale: U.S. dollar, euro, Japanese yen, Singapore dollar, Hong Kong dollar and pound sterling
Dollar-denominated stablecoins: approximately 93% of global stablecoin market capitalization
Euro stablecoins: approximately 0.3% of USD stablecoin market cap; JPY stablecoins: approximately 0.01%

Key Findings

The dollar is structurally dominant: the U.S. T-bill market is roughly an order of magnitude larger than the next-deepest short-term sovereign debt market. Pegged currencies, principally the UAE dirham, occupy a middle ground; the UAE Payment Token Services Regulation creates local-currency demand by restricting foreign payment tokens from domestic commercial payments. India and Brazil represent the two main alternative paradigms in emerging markets. For most other currencies, interoperability infrastructure at the central-bank-money level is more realistic than direct stablecoin substitution. The paper includes a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction regulatory treatment covering the EU, UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, UAE, Japan, China and Brazil.

Use Cases Supported

GENIUS Act Regulatory Summary (international frameworks, primary), Market Overview (non-USD stablecoin supply data). Non-USD Local Currency Stablecoins (primary).

016. Moody's: Growing Stablecoin Use Highlights Policy, Liquidity and Price Vulnerabilities [MCO1]

Publisher: Moody's Ratings (Sector In-Depth, Digital Economy – Global) · Date: May 13, 2026 · Pages: 12

Moody's report on the risks fiat-backed stablecoins pose to users and policymakers, written from a credit ratings and risk assessment perspective. Covers market scale and concentration, use-case mix, a risk map, emerging-market monetary sovereignty, and how major jurisdictions outside the U.S. are responding.

Headline Metrics

Stablecoin market: >$300B in early 2026, a 60-fold expansion since end-2019; average annual growth >50% in 2025
99% of fiat-backed supply pegged to the U.S. dollar; USDT + USDC >80% of fiat-backed value
Total supply ≈ ~1% of U.S. Treasury securities outstanding; ~5% of U.S. T-bills
Use mix: crypto trading 88%, payments 5%, transfers to and from crypto 4%, tokenized asset settlement 3%
Around two-thirds of stablecoins held outside the U.S.; consumer use about 0.2% of global e-commerce

Key Findings

Moody's maps stablecoin risks in three groups: instrument level (issuer solvency and reserve quality, redemption and de-pegging, settlement finality, remote freezing), capital and compliance (capital control circumvention, balance-of-payments opacity, KYC/AML enforcement gaps), and monetary and fiscal (policy transmission, lender-of-last-resort capacity, currency substitution). It groups non-U.S. policy responses into four approaches: restrict/CBDC (China, India), regulated integration (UAE, Singapore), hybrid (EU) and pragmatic cooption (Brazil, Mexico). It also flags the multi-issuer risk that a jointly issued token's credit standing can converge to the weakest-regulated co-issuer.

Use Cases Supported

Market Overview (supply and use-mix data, primary), GENIUS Act Regulatory Summary (international frameworks and risk map, primary), History Timeline (supply growth data).

018. Moody's: US Financial Markets Envision an Inevitable Shift to Tokenized Assets and Digital Money [MCO2]

Publisher: Moody's Ratings (Sector In-Depth, Financial Institutions – US) · Date: May 12, 2026 · Pages: 9

Based on conversations with major U.S. banks and financial market intermediaries and a review of public disclosures. Moody's finds a forming consensus for a "slow, then fast" transition to tokenized assets and digital money.

Headline Metrics

Tokenized money market funds: about $10 billion outstanding, growing quickly
U.S. money market fund sector: about $8 trillion; a common scenario has a large share tokenizing
Stablecoin payments for goods and services: about $350–550 billion in 2025

Key Findings

Tokenized money and assets are live in the U.S. but narrowly used. Banks view tokenized deposits as a natural evolution and view private stablecoins warily; stablecoins do not natively settle at par without intermediaries and lack federal deposit insurance. Production milestones include the 2025 "Great Collateral Experiment" repo pilot, DTC's late-2025 SEC no-action relief, and DTCC's May 4, 2026 announcement of limited production trades of tokenized securities from July 2026. Key hurdles: legal ownership and settlement finality, intermediary processes, and integrating distributed ledger technology into market operations.

Use Cases Supported

Institutional Capital Markets Infrastructure (primary), Tokenized Money Market Funds, GENIUS Act Regulatory Summary (bank perspective), History Timeline.

019. Moody's: Tokenization Will Change US Transaction Flows; Less Likely to Remove Intermediaries [MCO3]

Publisher: Moody's Ratings (Sector In-Depth, Financial Institutions – US) · Date: May 11, 2026 · Pages: 13

Moody's scenario analysis of how tokenization and digital money will change U.S. financial institutions' transaction flows, and whether settlement will run mainly on stablecoins, tokenized deposits or tokenized money market funds.

Key Findings

Three scenarios: a "steady growth" base case, in which tokenization scales in select assets but banks, asset managers and infrastructure providers keep central roles; a low-growth case, in which digital money stays confined to niche uses; and a rapid-growth case with risk of incumbent disintermediation. Since early 2025, U.S. tokenization policy has shifted from enforcement toward integration. The GENIUS Act's ban on issuers paying interest reinforces stablecoins as settlement utilities, which limits their competitiveness with tokenized MMFs and tokenized deposits.

Use Cases Supported

Market Overview (scenarios, primary), Treasury & Liquidity Management, Tokenized Bank Deposits.

022. Research Series: Stablecoin-Based Cards — Technical and Legal Architecture (Model 02: Exchange-Custodial Card)

Publisher: Research Series (unnamed) · Date: 2026 · Pages: 44

Technical and legal architecture analysis for stablecoin-linked payment cards, specifically the Exchange-Custodial Card model (Model 02 in a four-model series: Self-Custody, Exchange-Custodial, Full-Stack Issuer, White-Label/PM). This is the most detailed technical treatment of the stablecoin card use case among the reports added in June 2026, covering custody boundaries, card network integration, regulatory treatment under Reg E, and the legal distinctions between custodial models.

Key Findings

Covers how exchange-controlled unified custody wallets integrate with Visa/Mastercard card networks and stablecoin issuers. Legal analysis covers the Reg E consumer protection gap for stablecoin-linked cards (stablecoins are not covered by Regulation E as currently written), liability allocation between issuers, custodians, and card networks, and the chargeback/fraud management framework differences from traditional card products.

Use Cases Supported

Merchant & Commerce Settlement (card architecture, primary), Programmable and Automated Payments (custodial model analysis).

023. Chainalysis: The New Rails — How Digital Assets Are Reshaping the Foundations of Finance

Publisher: Chainalysis · Date: 2026 (data through Q1 2026) · Pages: 37

Chainalysis is the leading blockchain analytics firm, used by regulators, financial institutions, and law enforcement for on-chain compliance and market intelligence. The New Rails covers five areas: Stablecoin Payments, Tokenized Real-World Assets, Blockchain Infrastructure, Compliance Standards, and Agentic Payments. The most comprehensive single report among the reports added in June 2026 for breadth and the primary source for the Agentic Payments use case.

Headline Metrics

$28T adjusted stablecoin volume (2025)
133% CAGR in adjusted stablecoin volume since 2023
Tokenized RWAs approaching $30B in total assets under management
Coinbase x402 protocol: 100M+ cumulative transactions on Base through Q1 2026; tester-to-payer conversion improved 4x in six months

Key Findings

Stablecoin Payments (pp. 2–6): Stablecoin payment advantages are "already driving adoption in remittances, B2B payments, and treasury operations." If current growth in transaction counts holds, on-chain stablecoin transactions could match Visa and Mastercard's off-chain transactions between 2031 and 2039.

Tokenized RWAs (pp. 7–13): Institutional categories reached $1B in on-chain value fastest: asset-backed credit in 6.1 months and specialty finance in 21.5 months, versus 36.2 months for commodities; tokenized stocks had yet to reach $1B.

Compliance Standards (pp. 23–28): Just under half of organizations onboarded into digital assets in 2026 operate at alerting standards that would have placed them in the top 10% in 2020.

Agentic Payments (pp. 29–36): x402 (developed by Coinbase, live mainly on Base) lets machines pay for resources directly over HTTP. Transactions of $1 or more rose from 49% of volume in early 2025 to 95% by early 2026, and growth moderated in Q1 2026 as speculative activity cooled.

Use Cases Supported

All five demand vectors. Primary source for Programmable and Automated Payments (agentic sub-vector) and Institutional Capital Markets Infrastructure (tokenized RWA data).

024. Pantera Capital: State of Tokenization Q1 2026 (May Update)

Publisher: Pantera Capital · Date: May 2026 · Pages: 36 · Portal: https://tokenization.panteraresearchlab.xyz/

Pantera's flagship tokenization market report tracks 593 tokenized assets across all major RWA categories using the proprietary Tokenization Progress Index (TPI). The TPI scores assets on three dimensions — Issuance & Redemption, Transferability & Settlement, and Complexity & Composability — on a 1–5 scale producing a composite that maps to three tiers: Wrapper (≤2.5), Hybrid (2.5–3.5), and Native (≥3.5). Pantera is a crypto hedge fund and VC with $5B+ AUM; TPI scores are technical maturity assessments only, explicitly not investment merit opinions.

Headline Metrics

$321.1B total tracked tokenization market (91.6% stablecoins at $293B)
2.04/5 average composite TPI — market remains overwhelmingly Wrapper-tier
77.6% of scored assets in Wrapper tier; 11.1% Hybrid; 2.7% Native
12% of market has reached Phase 3 (Compose) in Pantera's four-phase playbook
Private credit: 64.3% DeFi utilization — highest of any non-stablecoin category
Canton Network TPI: ~1.75 (below market average despite institutional backing — intentional compliance tradeoff)

Key Findings

The "newspaper-on-a-website" thesis: the $321B tokenization market has proven assets can be distributed on-chain, but has not yet produced the native financial instruments that define what tokenization actually becomes — programmable compliance, autonomous collateral management, real-time yield optimization, embedded governance. The Tokenization Playbook maps four phases: Wrap (put existing assets on-chain), Connect (link to DeFi/settlement rails), Compose (integrate with other protocols), Originate (create born-on-chain assets). Phase 4 (Originate) is where genuine transformation occurs.

By asset class: stablecoins are most mature (~2.67 composite, 14% Native); real estate is lowest (~1.27); private credit is the largest DeFi utilization outlier (64.3% — Maple Finance drives most of this). Tokenized Treasuries sit at $12B but only 3.2% DeFi utilization, reflecting institutional preference for permissioned structures.

Use Cases Supported

Institutional Capital Markets Infrastructure (V5) — primary, definitive TPI framework; Treasury and Liquidity Efficiency (V2); Programmable and Automated Payments (V4 — Phase 4 Originate analysis). High DVI relevance: Pantera's Wrapper/Hybrid/Native taxonomy is directly applicable to V5 maturity scoring.

032. Citi Institute: Tokenization 2030 — Wall Street On-Chain (Citi GPS) [CT30]

Publisher: Citi Institute (Ronit Ghose, Kaiwan Master, Sophia Bantanidis, Ronak Shah, Ishan Sharma, Shaanthi Chahal) · Date: June 2026 · Pages: 55
Link: https://www.citigroup.com/rcs/citigpa/storage/public/Citi_Institute_GPS_Report_Tokenization_2030.pdf

Forecast of tokenized financial assets to 2030, with practitioner interviews from T. Rowe Price, Securitize, Blockstream and Brevan Howard.

Headline Metrics

$5.5T tokenized assets by 2030, base case; $8.2T bull, $2.7T bear (pp. 7, 21)
Base-case assumptions: 10% of the $8T U.S. T-bill market tokenized ($0.8T); 5% of $12T in money market funds ($0.6T) (pp. 21, 23)
About $17B tokenized financial assets in April 2026 (DefiLlama), about three times a year earlier (p. 19)
About $5B tokenized credit (p. 27)

Key Findings

Demand, not technology, is the constraint. Wealth clients "are not actively demanding tokenized equities or 24x7 markets," and Citi says investor adoption is the main constraint (pp. 39–40). This supports low Customer Demand scores for tokenized-asset use cases.

"1.5 out of 10." Blockstream's Peter Bain places tokenized assets at about 1.5 of 10 on the adoption curve (pp. 7, 19). The DMA measures readiness across six dimensions rather than penetration, so its scores sit on a different scale; the Methodology page explains the difference.

Dual-instrument future. Citi expects U.S. on-chain money to be a mix of stablecoins and tokenized deposits (p. 12).

Use Cases Supported

Tokenized MMFs; 5. Tokenized Government Securities; 11. Tokenized Private Credit (Customer Demand, qualitative; market context). 9. Tokenized Bank Deposits (framing). The DefiLlama series here is not mixed with Pantera's rwa.xyz series.

047. Reserve Bank of Australia and DFCRC: Project Acacia — Exploring the Role of Digital Money in Wholesale Tokenised Asset Markets [ACA]

Publisher: Reserve Bank of Australia and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre · Date: May 2026 · Pages: 70 · Geography: Australia (background)
Link: https://www.rba.gov.au/payments-and-infrastructure/tokenised-money/pdf/project-acacia-final-report.pdf

Content: separates digitally native deposit tokens from "digital twin" tokenized deposits (p. 12 and throughout). Large global banks have used their deposit tokens for their own customers' cross-border payments and liquidity management, not for interbank payments (p. 32).

Use cases: 9. Tokenized Bank Deposits (definition used in the Glossary); 2. Treasury & Liquidity Management (framing). The report's stablecoin and RWA totals are not used.

Q3 2026

Reports published July 1 to September 30, 2026, including papers and speeches from the Kansas City Fed’s Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium (August 27–29, 2026).

026. CoinDesk Data: Stablecoins & Tokenized Assets Report (STAR), September 2026 [CDS]

Publisher: CoinDesk Data · Edition: September 2026 · Data as of: September 30, 2026 · Pages: 17
Link: https://data.coindesk.com/reports/stablecoins-tokenized-assets-report-september-2026

CoinDesk's monthly market report on stablecoin supply and tokenized real-world assets. It is the source of the Field Guide's canonical stablecoin supply figure for v1.0. Some market-cap data comes from DeFiLlama, and CoinDesk notes possible backfill discrepancies.

Headline Metrics

$313B stablecoin market cap at September 30, 2026, up 1.29% in September and still below its record earlier in 2026 (pp. 5–6)
$17.3B tokenized bond and money market fund assets, down 8.1% in September (p. 12)
$2.40B Circle USYC, now the largest tokenized Treasury product; BlackRock BUIDL down 19.6% to $2.24B; Franklin iBENJI $1.72B (p. 12)
$5.62B tokenized private credit, up 7.15% in September (p. 11)

Key Findings

Flat quarter. Supply ended Q3 roughly where it began. This matches the BIS finding that the market has plateaued at $300B–$320B since October 2025 (045).

Tokenized Treasury products shrank in September. The decline in BUIDL and in the category total is Q3 counter-evidence for Tokenized MMFs.

U.S. events in September: the U.S. Bank USBDC pilot payment on Stellar (September 9; a single intercompany payment, not a client launch), the SEC's Innovation Exemption for tokenized NMS stock (September 17), and Circle's Arc mainnet launch with USDC as native gas (September 16) (p. 4).

Use Cases Supported

Tokenized MMFs; 5. Tokenized Government Securities; 11. Tokenized Private Credit (market evidence). All use cases (supply context). The UK tokenized-sterling-deposit transactions and the Tether/Fasanara fund are non-U.S. and treated as background.

027. Allium: State of Stablecoins and Payments, Q3 2026 Preview [ALL]

Publisher: Allium · Date: September 17, 2026 · Data through: August 31, 2026 · Pages: 44
Link: https://www.allium.so/reports/state-of-stablecoins-and-payments-september-2026

On-chain analytics report that classifies stablecoin transfers into payments, store of value, and investment and trading. Allium sells the data it reports. The Field Guide uses Allium for composition and penetration measures, not as its supply or B2B volume total.

Headline Metrics

$401B–$527B stablecoin payments January–August 2026, up 42–63% on the same period of 2025; the range reflects four classification methods (p. 15)
0.31% stablecoin share of retail cross-border payment value on conventional rails in 2025; 0.19% for B2B (FXC Intelligence and Allium, July 2026) (p. 19)
5% of $85T raw transfer volume counted as adjusted activity ($4.0T); payments are at most 13% of that (p. 14)
29M x402 agent payments in August 2026, seven times October 2025, averaging 6 cents each (p. 22)

Key Findings

Penetration is still well under 1%. The 0.19% B2B cross-border share is the Field Guide's penetration measure for Cross-Border B2B Payments. It measures share, not volume, so it sits alongside the $76B [ART] run rate rather than replacing it.

Payments by category (lower bound, January–August 2026): payroll $43B, remittances $37B, supplier payments $28B, retail purchases $19B (p. 17).

U.S. breakout is thin. U.S. wallets received $5.7B of stablecoin payments January–August 2026, fifth after Thailand, Turkey, Indonesia and Mexico; the receiving end was attributed for only 13.5% of payments (p. 20).

Agentic payments are real but tiny. Monthly x402 volume was about $1.6M in August; 89% of agent payments buy infrastructure, analytics or data (pp. 22–23).

Use Cases Supported

Cross-Border B2B Payments (penetration share); 6. Stablecoin Remittances; 7. Stablecoin-Based Debit / Prepaid Cards (Ether.fi Cash, single issuer); 14. Agentic / M2M Payments (market evidence). Allium's $137B–$153B B2B figure uses a different method and period from [ART] and is not presented as growth.

028. Pantera Capital: State of Tokenization (September 2026 Update) [PAN]

Publisher: Pantera Capital Research · Date: September 2026 · Data as of: June 30, 2026 · Pages: 39
Link: https://panteracapital.com/conference-call/state-of-tokenization/

Second-quarter update to 024. Pantera tracks 671 tokenized assets on rwa.xyz data and scores them on its Tokenization Progress Index (TPI). Pantera discloses investments in some of the instruments discussed (p. 39).

Headline Metrics

$331.8B tokenized market across 671 assets at June 30, 2026; stablecoins $295.5B (89.1%), non-stablecoin $36.3B (pp. 3, 27, 29)
$16.5B tokenized U.S. Treasuries, up $3.5B in Q2; tokenized private credit up $1B to $5.1B (p. 30)
0.1% monthly turnover for rates products in June vs 204.6% for tokenized equities; 46 of 48 whitelist-only products below 1% (pp. 10, 15)
506 of 598 scored products are "Wrappers" (TPI ≤ 2.5); 501 of 515 kept the same score from Q1 to Q2 (p. 31)

Key Findings

Held, not traded. Tokenized Treasury and money market products are bought and held; they barely move on-chain. This supports the Infrastructure Readiness and Customer Demand caps on Tokenized MMFs and Treasuries.

Q2 U.S. milestones (pp. 34–35): HSBC's Tokenized Deposit Service in the U.S. (April 13), J.P. Morgan Asset Management's JLTXX on Ethereum (May 13), and DTCC's live production trades (July 15). All three are confirmed against the issuers' own releases.

Use Cases Supported

Tokenized MMFs; 5. Tokenized Government Securities; 9. Tokenized Bank Deposits (HSBC); 11. Tokenized Private Credit; 8. DeFi / On-Chain Lending (Morpho, small amounts). Stablecoin totals in this report are context only; the canonical supply figure is [CDS].

029. Citi Services and The ValueExchange: Digital Collateral — A Practical Reality [CIDC]

Publisher: Citi Services, with The ValueExchange · Date: September 2026 · Pages: 16
Link: https://www.citigroup.com/global/insights/digital-collateral-a-practical-reality

Vendor publication on tokenized collateral, with survey data from The ValueExchange and case studies of Citi clients.

Headline Metrics

About 5% of repo turnover now traded each month in tokenized form, per Citi's estimate (p. 6). Duffie (035) gives the same share and notes that virtually all of it is between affiliates of the same firm.
27% of institutional brokers, banks and asset managers plan to pledge on-chain securities as collateral in 2027 (p. 4)
6–7% more collateral posted than needed (p. 5)

Key Findings

U.S. infrastructure dates. Tokenized U.S. Treasuries become available through DTCC in October 2026; DTCC and 18 institutions ran live tokenized-Treasury repo trades over several weekends in 2025 (p. 6).

Collateral use is in production at the margin. The Franklin Templeton case study uses tokenized money market funds as margin collateral (pp. 10–11).

Caution. The report's two "346" figures (p. 4, daily repo turnover; p. 15, idle collateral a year) have no footnotes; neither is cited on the site.

Use Cases Supported

FCM Collateral; 5. Tokenized Government Securities; 4. Tokenized MMFs. Survey intent (27%) is supplier-side and does not count as Customer Demand.

030. Citi, Swift and DTCC: The Connective Tissue of Digital Finance [CICT]

Publisher: Citi, Swift and DTCC (white paper released for Sibos 2026) · Date: September 2026 · Pages: 19
Link: https://www.citigroup.com/global/insights/connective-tissue-digital-finance-interoperability-programmability-path-to-institutional-scale

Joint white paper on interoperability and programmability for institutional digital money. Several figures are secondhand.

Headline Metrics

July 9, 2026: Swift's blockchain-based shared ledger ready for use with 17 banks across six continents, including Citi; built on Hyperledger Besu with ISO 20022 (p. 7)
$100B+ invested by banks in blockchain since 2020 (Ripple, CB Insights and UK CBT; p. 3)

Key Findings

Interoperability is the constraint. The paper argues that tokenized deposits need a shared ledger to be used interchangeably between banks 24/7. Swift's ledger is the first production-grade attempt; the first live cross-border tokenized deposit transaction on it came on August 19, 2026 (Standard Chartered and HSBC).

Use Cases Supported

Tokenized Bank Deposits; 2. Treasury & Liquidity Management (infrastructure readiness). Swift ledger transactions are pilots; the Field Guide does not count them as U.S. production volume.

035. Darrell Duffie: Tokenized Finance and the Perimeter of Central Banking [DUF]

Publisher: Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium · Date: August 2026 · Pages: 33, plus presentation slides · Geography: U.S.
Link: https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/18556/duffie.pdf

Argument: Existing stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits are unsuitable as the cash leg for core-market uses such as Treasury financing and clearinghouse payments. Tokenized finance cannot reach efficient scale until large central banks offer 24/7 programmable payments.

Evidence the Field Guide uses: of more than $6T a day in Treasury repo, about 5% is tokenized, "but virtually all of that 'onchain' activity is between affiliates of the same firm" (p. 2); of more than $32T in Treasuries, about $15B is tokenized (p. 2); DTCC's July 2026 production trades on Canton and Besu, and BNY's plan to pilot tokenized Treasuries by the end of 2026 (pp. 12–14).

Use cases: 5. Tokenized Government Securities; 12. FCM Collateral; 9. Tokenized Bank Deposits (Infrastructure Readiness).

036. Isabel Schnabel: Central Banks On-Chain (discussion of Duffie) [SCH]

Publisher: European Central Bank · Date: August 28, 2026 · Format: Speech and slides · Geography: Euro area (background)
Link: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2026/html/ecb.sp260828~fe9afc86e8.en.html

Argument: "Stablecoins cannot replace central bank reserves as the economy's ultimate settlement asset"; they are "best understood as complements to central bank money, not substitutes for it." If tokenized deposits can be programmed and settle in central bank money, they provide the functions stablecoins are meant to offer.

Use cases: 9. Tokenized Bank Deposits; 2. Treasury & Liquidity Management (framing).

037. Christine Parlour, Uday Rajan and Haoxiang Zhu: Stablecoin Risk [PRZ]

Publisher: Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium · Date: July 24, 2026 (paper; presented August 28) · Pages: 22, plus slides · Geography: U.S. (theory)
Link: https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/18592/parlour.pdf

Argument: Banks learn about borrowers from their payment accounts. If payments move to stablecoins, that information leaves the banking system, and nonbank lenders chasing "home run" projects produce an economy with heavier tails.

Note: the paper ($3.5B) and slides ($4.5B) give different Maple Finance AUM figures; Maple reported $4.6B at the end of H1 2026. Neither paper figure is used.

Use cases: 8. DeFi / On-Chain Lending; 11. Tokenized Private Credit (framing).

038. Itay Goldstein: Discussion of "Stablecoin Risk" [GLD]

Publisher: Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium · Date: August 2026 · Format: Slides · Geography: U.S.
Link: https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/jackson-hole-economic-symposium/2026/ (symposium page; discussant slides are posted there)

Evidence the Field Guide uses: cites the WSJ report (June 4, 2026) that J.P. Morgan, Citi and other large banks plan a shared tokenized deposit network. The Clearing House will operate it, with a target launch in the first half of 2027. Counted as Institutional Engagement, not production.

Use cases: 9. Tokenized Bank Deposits; 1. Cross-Border B2B Payments.

039. Gordon Liao, Eswar Prasad and Tony Zhang: Financial Innovation and the International Monetary System [LPZ]

Publisher: Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium · Date: August 2, 2026 · Pages: 107, plus Prasad's slides · Geography: Global
Link: https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/18555/prasad.pdf

Disclosure: Gordon Liao is affiliated with Circle Internet Financial (p. 1).

Argument: dollar-backed payment stablecoins are more likely to reinforce dollar dominance than to weaken it.

Note: the paper's $6.2T monthly stablecoin volume (December 2025, p. 33) is raw on-chain volume, not payments, and is not compared with Artemis or Allium payment figures.

Use cases: 15. Non-USD Local Currency Stablecoins (structural context for its low score).

040. Catherine L. Mann: Discussion of Liao, Prasad and Zhang [MANN]

Publisher: Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium · Date: August 28, 2026 · Format: Slides · Geography: UK (background)
Link: https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/18554/mann_handout.pdf

Argument: within the paper's model, stablecoin-led innovation is unlikely to weaken dollar dominance; institutions, stability and trust are left out of the model.

Use cases: 15. Non-USD Local Currency Stablecoins (framing).

041. Pablo Hernández de Cos: Pushing the Monetary Frontier — Stablecoins and Tokenised Deposits [HDC]

Publisher: Bank for International Settlements · Date: August 28, 2026 · Format: Speech and slides · Geography: Global
Link: https://www.bis.org/speeches/sp260828.htm

Argument: in their current form, stablecoins "do not yet uphold the foundational properties of money," and "notable gaps would need to be closed." "Tokenised deposits should carry the bulk of day-to-day payments and wholesale settlement," with stablecoins in specialized roles such as decentralized lending pools. The slides note there is no interoperable multi-bank or cross-border tokenized deposit system yet.

Use cases: 9. Tokenized Bank Deposits; 1. Cross-Border B2B Payments; 8. DeFi / On-Chain Lending (framing).

042. Kristalina Georgieva: Navigating a Financially More Fluid World [GEO]

Publisher: International Monetary Fund · Date: August 28, 2026 · Format: Remarks · Geography: Global
Link: https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2026/08/28/sp082826-md-navigating-a-financially-more-fluid-world

Argument: stablecoins show "potential to make large-value cross-border payments cheaper and faster," but blockchain is "still a small experiment in a vast global payments picture." The U.S. is "the dominant provider of stablecoin backing"; emerging-market risks include currency substitution and weaker capital controls.

Use cases: 1. Cross-Border B2B Payments; 6. Stablecoin Remittances; 15. Non-USD Local Currency Stablecoins (framing).

043. Kevin Warsh: Opening Remarks, Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium [WAR]

Publisher: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System · Date: August 28, 2026 · Format: Remarks · Geography: U.S.
Link: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/warsh20260828a.htm

Relevance: no stablecoin or tokenization content. Cited only for "Money matters," with its call to watch both central bank money and money created by the banking and financial systems.

Use cases: none (background).

044. Piero Cipollone: From Vision to Delivery — Building Europe's Tokenised Financial Market [ECBV]

Publisher: European Central Bank · Date: August 26, 2026 · Format: Speech · Geography: Euro area (background)
Link: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2026/html/ecb.sp260826~3641116314.en.html

Content: the Eurosystem's roadmap for wholesale settlement of tokenized assets in central bank money: Pontes in the near term and Appia in the long term. Pontes launched on September 21, 2026, with full implementation expected by 2028.

Use cases: none scored (non-U.S. infrastructure). Context for 5. Tokenized Government Securities and 9. Tokenized Bank Deposits.

045. Adrien Currat, Johannes Ehrentraud and Denise Garcia Ocampo: Regulating Stablecoin Issuance — Permissible Entities and Activities (FSI Brief 33) [FSI33]

Publisher: Financial Stability Institute, Bank for International Settlements · Date: August 2026 · Pages: 17 · Geography: Global, with a U.S. section
Link: https://www.bis.org/fsi/fsibriefs33.pdf

Evidence the Field Guide uses: the stablecoin market "has plateaued at around USD 300 billion to 320 billion since October 2025," and two issuers hold about 90% (p. 3). The U.S. section covers the GENIUS Act's $10B threshold for opting into state regulation and the OCC's treatment of yield paid through affiliates (pp. 7, 9).

Checked against the rule text (October 12, 2026): the brief correctly calls the OCC's version "proposed." Proposed § 15.10(c)(4) in the OCC's notice of proposed rulemaking (February 25, 2026) would presume that an issuer is paying prohibited interest or yield when it has an arrangement to pay an affiliate or "related third party" (a yield-as-a-service provider or a white-label partner) that in turn pays holders. Issuers could rebut the presumption with written evidence. As of October 12 the rule is not final, so the site should describe it as proposed. The $10B threshold is in the statute; Treasury's interim final rule on state certifications took effect September 30, 2026.

Use cases: all (market context); Regulatory Clarity dimension across stablecoin use cases.

046. Financial Conduct Authority: Tokenisation in Wholesale Financial Markets (Feedback Statement FS26/1) [FCA26]

Publisher: Financial Conduct Authority (responses to the FCA and Bank of England joint Call for Input) · Date: September 2026 · Geography: UK (background)
Link: https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/feedback/fs26-1.pdf

Content: collateral was "by far the most frequently mentioned use case" in responses (p. 3). Respondents want a permanent regime after the Digital Securities Sandbox and recurring issuance of tokenized gilts (pp. 3, 8).

Use cases: none scored (non-U.S.). Supports collateral as the leading wholesale use case: context for 12. FCM Collateral and 5. Tokenized Government Securities.

048. Kenechukwu Anadu, Patrick McCabe, J.P. Perez-Sangimino and Nathan Swem: A Framework for Understanding the Vulnerabilities of New Money-Like Products [ANA]

Publisher: Journal of Financial Crises 8(3) · Date: 2026 · Pages: 36 · Geography: U.S. (Federal Reserve staff authors)
Link: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/journal-of-financial-crises/vol8/iss3/1/

Content: a framework for judging run risk in money-like products by their liquidity and price-stability features. The paper separates registered tokenized money market funds (net assets of almost $1.5B in September 2025) from tokenized "MMF-like" cash-management vehicles that are not money market funds (over $6B), naming BlackRock's BUIDL as an example of the second group (pp. 8–9).

Field Guide use: the basis for calling BUIDL a tokenized Treasury fund rather than a money market fund across the site.

Use cases: 4. Tokenized MMFs (definition); 2. Treasury & Liquidity Management (run-risk framing).

049. U.S. Faster Payments Council: Stablecoins as a Cross-Border Payment Method [FPC]

Publisher: U.S. Faster Payments Council, Cross-Border Payments Work Group and Digital Assets Work Group · Date: July 22, 2026 · Pages: 19 · Geography: U.S.
Link: https://www.fasterpaymentscouncil.org/userfiles/2080/files/CBPWG_DAWG_Stablecoins%20as%20a%20Cross-Border%20Payment%20Method2_07-22-2026%20Final.pdf

Evidence the Field Guide uses: the report compares direct exchange, where both parties know they are using stablecoins, with indirect exchange, where financial institutions or partner fintechs use stablecoins as a back-end settlement mechanism. It concludes that the indirect model "has several important advantages, foremost of which are clarity on compliance, operational simplicity, and reuse of existing rails" (p. 3). It recommends that financial institutions coordinate through a consortium or other third party on fraud controls, identity, compliance and off-ramps rather than build alone (p. 13). Contributors include BNY, Alacriti, Candescent and PCBB (p. 16).

Not used: the report has no new market data; its supply figure is the BIS's $255B estimate for July 2025 (p. 13). Its statement that GENIUS Act regulations "are not due to be finalized until 2027" (p. 11) does not match the statute, which set a July 18, 2026 deadline for rules and an effective date no later than January 18, 2027.

Use cases: 1. Cross-Border B2B Payments (Institutional Engagement and Customer Demand, qualitative: a U.S. industry body favoring bank-run settlement); 3. Remittances (background). No score moves on this source alone.

050. Sangita Gazi (lead author), Wharton Blockchain and Digital Asset Project: The Stablecoin Toolkit, Part II — Law, Regulation, and Monetary Policy [WBD2]

Publisher: Wharton Blockchain and Digital Asset Project (BDAP), University of Pennsylvania; steering committee includes Kevin Werbach · Date: August 2026 (announced August 4) · Pages: 65 · Geography: U.S. and cross-jurisdiction
Link: https://bdap.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Final_Stablecoin-Toolkit-Regulatory-Report-2.pdf

Evidence the Field Guide uses:

The GENIUS Act takes effect "on the earlier of 18 months after enactment or 120 days after the primary federal regulators issue final implementing rules." The OCC's proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on March 2, 2026 (comments closed May 1) and the FDIC's on April 10, 2026 (p. 10, n. 27). The Field Guide's Regulatory page uses this for the rulemaking status.
On yield, the issuer may not pay holders directly, but the common U.S. structure lets an issuer "split the yield with other firms, such as exchanges that pass some of it on"; drafts of the CLARITY Act would restrict holding incentives while allowing some distribution benefits (p. 25).
The major jurisdictions have converged on a fiat-referenced token redeemable at par and fully backed by segregated reserves, while algorithmic, crypto-collateralized and synthetic designs stay largely outside these frameworks (executive summary; Appendix A).

Not used: the UK dates (FCA final rules June 30, 2026; regime effective October 25, 2027; p. 30) are non-U.S. background. Part I of the Toolkit (January 2026) is background and is not listed.

Use cases: Regulatory Clarity dimension across stablecoin use cases. Supports no change to Regulatory Clarity scores in Q3: the rules remain proposed.

Q4 2026

Reports published from October 1, 2026.

033. American Banker Market Intelligence: On-Chain Consumer Survey 2026, Part 2 [AB2]

Publisher: American Banker Market Intelligence (Megan Ryan) · Date: October 6, 2026 · Sample: 1,000 U.S. consumers, May–June 2026; unweighted, quota-balanced on gender and age
Link: https://www.americanbanker.com/payments/news/american-banker-research-shows-that-digital-assets-are-ignored-until-it-improves-clients-ability-to-receive-funds-heres-how-banks-can-respond (subscription required)

Part 2 of a three-part survey, "Payment cadence over crypto jargon: Frequency wins loyalty." Part 3 (cross-border) will be added as 034 when it is published.

Headline Metrics

74% of U.S. consumers hold no cryptocurrency or stablecoins; among holders, 20% hold stablecoins
60% of employed respondents are interested in being paid in a digital currency that "works like cash"; 27% very interested
87% of frequent cross-border senders interested in digital wages, vs 47% of non-senders
55% "not at all familiar" with stablecoins; 23% think stablecoins are FDIC-insured

Key Findings

Hide the plumbing. Respondents ranked instant conversion to dollars (27%), instant earned-wage access (25%) and bank-account integration (23%) above the $1 peg, which placed 8th of 10 (14%).

Interest is stated, not shown. Only 24% of holders say they hold crypto to pay for things. Misconceptions about insurance and acceptance cut against near-term point-of-sale readiness.

Use Cases Supported

Stablecoin Remittances; 7. Stablecoin-Based Debit / Prepaid Cards; 13. POS / Retail Merchant Acceptance (Customer Demand, U.S.). Stated interest is weighted below actual use.

Page History

12 reader-facing changes since 2026-07-01; last change 2026-10-13 (v1.0).

Show all changes

Date	Release	Change
2026-10-13	v1.0	Research Sources reorganized by publication quarter; three-digit permanent IDs 001–051; v1.0 entries 026–051 added; Comment blocks removed
2026-10-13	v1.0	Finzly entry 8 segment figures per Figure 1; drop readiness figure (text and Figure 2 disagree)
2026-10-13	v1.0	Finzly/American Banker (entry 8) checked against white paper PDF: 79% not 80%, 105 respondents, April 2026, same survey as entry 7; add 25% readiness figure
2026-10-13	v1.0	American Banker survey (entry 7) and Bank Readiness checked against full article text; remove two unsupported claims, add survey figures
2026-10-13	v1.0	Research Sources entry 4 (Visa/Dune) limited to report findings; remove unsupported B2B +733% / $226B claim from entry 4 and Solution Viability
2026-10-13	v1.0	merge duplicate BVNK entries (6 and 11), correct BVNK survey details and Mastercard deal dates; standardize Chainalysis code to [CHAIN]
2026-10-13	v1.0	Research Sources entry 23 (Chainalysis) limited to claims in the report; Pix, Visa run-rate, DTCC, compliance and SAGEUSD items removed; date corrected
2026-10-12	v1.0	correct Moody's and Dasgupta source attribution on Regulatory, Research Sources and History pages
2026-07-12	v0.8 refresh	Added Use Case Overview, Updated Use Case pages, and a Roadmap section.
2026-07-12	v0.8 refresh	Added Use Case Overview, Updated Use Case pages, and a Roadmap section.
2026-07-10	v0.8 refresh	Updated the Research Sources version and contents
2026-07-01	v0.8	v0.8: Batch 4 content integration — 57-company directory, regulatory, history, use cases, digest, research sources

Infrastructure and formatting commits are omitted. Release-level detail is in the Release Notes.