Executives from MoonPay, Ripple and Paxos said at Consensus Miami 2026 that while stablecoin regulation has accelerated institutional adoption, key infrastructure and privacy gaps still block mainstream use.
summation
- MoonPay Vice President Richard Harrison said the GENIUS Act has accelerated the entry of traditional finance into stablecoins by providing regulatory clearance to companies.
- Jack McDonald, Ripple SVP, argued that institutional adoption will depend on a regulated product, trustworthy custody, and utility beyond market capitalization.
- Paxos engineer Brent Perrault warned that unresolved privacy issues on public blockchains remain a significant barrier to enterprise-scale stablecoin payments.
Top executives from three of the most active stablecoin companies told the Consensus Miami 2026 audience on May 8 that new U.S. regulations will fundamentally change the competitive landscape for dollar-pegged tokens, allowing traditional financial institutions to enter markets that were previously difficult to enter. However, these changes have revealed new challenges that the industry has not yet solved.
Richard Harrison, Vice President of Banking and Payments Partnerships at MoonPay, said the passage of the GENIUS Act provides a regulatory framework within which businesses across traditional finance can operate. “What GENIUS brought us was clarity,” Harrison told the panel, noting that traditional financial firms are now entering stablecoins at a faster rate because compliance is easier to assess.
Harrison likened the current state of stablecoin adoption to an electric car. The core product works, but mass market share depends entirely on the supporting infrastructure. “How do I use stablecoins to pay rent?” he said “How do I use it to buy a cup of coffee?”
Comparison of institutional demand and actual usability
Jack McDonald, Ripple’s senior vice president of stablecoins, told the panel that institutional customers are focused less on market capitalization and more on practical details such as regulatory compliance, custody security and whether stablecoins can perform useful functions beyond trading.
McDonald said Ripple continues to focus on treasury operations, collateral management and cross-border payment settlement as key enterprise use cases, arguing that utilities should drive adoption rather than speculative interest.
Harrison added that while stablecoins currently account for a relatively small share of global remittance flows, he expects this figure to reach around 10% of the market over the next five years as payment methods 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 software engineer at Paxos, said privacy remains the most unresolved issue in the sector. Public blockchains expose transaction amounts and fund flows, creating compliance and confidentiality issues for companies handling sensitive financial data.
Perrault warned that partial privacy solutions are not sufficient as users inevitably move between private and public blockchain environments. He said competitive differentiation among stablecoin issuers is now increasingly driven by trust, distribution partnerships and user incentives rather than technical specifications.
Deployment gap and future plans
Perrault pointed to the growth of PayPal USD and Charles Schwab’s use of the Paxos infrastructure as evidence that demand from traditional financial institutions is real and expanding beyond cryptocurrency-based businesses.
The problem is that even well-capitalized issuers with strong compliance records face significant friction when trying to connect stablecoin rails to the everyday payment systems that consumers and businesses are already using.
The panel’s comments at Consensus Miami come as the CLARITY Act moves to the Senate Banking Committee markup on May 14. As crypto.news reported, five major banking trade groups rejected the Tillis-Alsobrooks stablecoin compromise language just days before the vote.
Although Consensus executives did not directly comment on the markup, their comments highlighted why the regulatory consequences are important for companies building large-scale stablecoin payment products.
The stablecoin market currently has a total value of approximately $317 billion. Western Union announced Solana’s USDPT stablecoin, issued through Anchorage Digital, in early May.
The items accurately reflect the dynamic described by Harrison. Regulations have lowered the barriers, but the infrastructure needed to make stablecoins work in everyday consumer environments is still being built.