Don't read “Visa adds Western Union stablecoin settlement” as a sign that stablecoins are about to take off.
On 11/12, Anchorage Digital announced that Visa and eligible partners can now use Western Union's USDPT to settle payables on VisaNet, with plans to make room for other stablecoins issued by Anchorage later on. The headline sounds dramatic, but let's check the on-chain data: DefiLlama shows USDPT's circulating supply was about $18 million on 11/12. It hit a high of about $22.4 million on 10/1, then stayed mostly flat for the following six weeks.
I think the real story here is the race to become the “stablecoin settlement bank.” Western Union's head of digital assets put it plainly in an interview on 11/5: USDPT's main job is to reduce the funds tied up in pre-funding accounts at correspondent banks around the world. Switching to 24/7 on-chain settlement frees up Western Union's capital; Anchorage gets a piece of the action from issuance and custody all the way through to settlement rails. It has also said its goal is to become an institutional-grade stablecoin settlement bank. Visa, meanwhile, connects to any chain and any coin, always sitting in the middle to collect tolls.
One caveat: circulating supply is a stock, not a flow. An $18 million supply could easily turn over several times a day, so don't use it to infer settlement volume. But the fact that supply hasn't grown in six weeks also tells us something: Western Union's channel hasn't been rolled out widely yet, and funds haven't accumulated on-chain.
If you're looking to spin this into bullish news for SOL, take a breath. USDPT is indeed issued only on Solana, but with a market this small and the use case being institutional settlement, its fee contribution is almost negligible relative to SOL's valuation. If you want to track this, watch two numbers: whether USDPT can break above its previous high of $22.4 million, and which coin from Anchorage will be the second to go live on Visa. Visa's September report put annualized stablecoin settlement at $20 billion, without breaking it down by coin. Don't make up how much of that comes from Western Union.
#稳定币 #Visa
On 11/12, Anchorage Digital announced that Visa and eligible partners can now use Western Union's USDPT to settle payables on VisaNet, with plans to make room for other stablecoins issued by Anchorage later on. The headline sounds dramatic, but let's check the on-chain data: DefiLlama shows USDPT's circulating supply was about $18 million on 11/12. It hit a high of about $22.4 million on 10/1, then stayed mostly flat for the following six weeks.
I think the real story here is the race to become the “stablecoin settlement bank.” Western Union's head of digital assets put it plainly in an interview on 11/5: USDPT's main job is to reduce the funds tied up in pre-funding accounts at correspondent banks around the world. Switching to 24/7 on-chain settlement frees up Western Union's capital; Anchorage gets a piece of the action from issuance and custody all the way through to settlement rails. It has also said its goal is to become an institutional-grade stablecoin settlement bank. Visa, meanwhile, connects to any chain and any coin, always sitting in the middle to collect tolls.
One caveat: circulating supply is a stock, not a flow. An $18 million supply could easily turn over several times a day, so don't use it to infer settlement volume. But the fact that supply hasn't grown in six weeks also tells us something: Western Union's channel hasn't been rolled out widely yet, and funds haven't accumulated on-chain.
If you're looking to spin this into bullish news for SOL, take a breath. USDPT is indeed issued only on Solana, but with a market this small and the use case being institutional settlement, its fee contribution is almost negligible relative to SOL's valuation. If you want to track this, watch two numbers: whether USDPT can break above its previous high of $22.4 million, and which coin from Anchorage will be the second to go live on Visa. Visa's September report put annualized stablecoin settlement at $20 billion, without breaking it down by coin. Don't make up how much of that comes from Western Union.
#稳定币 #Visa
