---
title: "The business is a spread on T-bills"
author: Mariusz Szyma
date: 2026-09-15
lang: en
canonical: https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/the-business/
series: "Stablecoins: Past, Present and Future"
series_part: 4/11
series_url: https://szyma.co/en/blog/stablecoins/
data_as_of: 4–10 Sep 2026
---

# The business is a spread on T-bills

A dollar token looks like a payments product. The issuer that prints it lives on the interest the reserve earns, and the holder of USDC or USDT is paid none of that interest unless some other firm, or a second token, stands in the way. This chapter follows that spread through Circle's SEC filings, Tether's attestations, the Coinbase contract that takes about half of Circle's reserve income, and the wrappers that grew up next to the GENIUS Act yield ban.

## What you'll learn

- Name the line that actually pays a fiat-backed issuer, and say what share of Circle's top line it was in Q2 2026.
- Tell Circle's net margin on a reserve dollar from Tether's, and keep Tether's operating profit apart from the result that marks gold and bitcoin to market.
- Read the Coinbase collaboration as a distribution cost, not as a capital-markets footnote.
- Place PayPal, Sky and Ethena next to the statutory ban on issuer-paid yield, and say which of the three is even a payment stablecoin.
- Run the same reserve bases through a falling-rate table and name the rate at which Circle's remaining spread no longer covers the opex band in these sources.

## Reserve yield is the engine

**Reserve yield** is the interest the issuer earns on cash, short Treasury bills, overnight repo and money-market funds held against tokens in circulation. For a fiat-backed issuer it is the engine: [chapter 1](/en/blog/stablecoins/what-one-usdc-means/) already recorded that the holder of a payment stablecoin is paid 0% unless the tokens sit in a distributor loyalty program or in a wrapper. Sources used here put that share of the business at 95% or more of revenue for this family. Mint and redemption fees at verified institutional desks are, in the same material, waived or trivial, because a cheap primary window is what holds the peg, not what pays the firm.

**The reserve return rate** is that interest expressed as a percentage of the reserve. Circle and Tether ran near 3.48% gross on the readings used here. What they keep after partners and costs is a different number, and it is the number that decides whether this is a fat business or a thin one.

Circle holds most of the USDC reserve in the Circle Reserve Fund, managed by BlackRock. Circle's 10-K for year-end 2025, relayed in the Polish edition, puts that fund at about 88% of USDC reserves. The rest sits as bank deposits for redemption liquidity. [Chapter 3](/en/blog/stablecoins/types-and-pegs/) walked the composition. This chapter asks who is paid from it.

Circle is the only large issuer whose answer sits in an SEC filing. Circle Internet Group reports under CIK 1876042, ticker CRCL since June 2025. Tether does not file 10-Q or 10-K. Its window is a BDO attestation, an ISAE 3000 assurance opinion on management's assertion for a stated date, which [chapter 3](/en/blog/stablecoins/types-and-pegs/) already distinguished from a reserve audit.

In Q2 2026 Circle's reserve income was 667.7 mn USD, 95.2% of 701.3 mn USD of revenue plus reserve income (Circle Q2 2026 press release, 5 August 2026). A company listed on the NYSE, with a payments token in the product name, lives almost entirely on Treasury interest.

## Circle keeps about forty cents before its own costs

**Revenue less distribution costs**, RLDC, is Circle's own cut of the top line after it has paid Coinbase and other partners, and before compensation, research, and the cost of being public. Across five published quarters from Q1 2025 through Q2 2026, distribution and transaction costs ran 58.6% to 61.8% of revenue plus reserve income. Circle therefore keeps roughly 38 to 42 cents of each such dollar as RLDC. Forty cents is a rounding of that band, not a third disclosure.

The quarterly table is the Polish edition's compilation from Circle's earnings releases of 25 February, 11 May and 5 August 2026. Q4 2025 is not in that table and is not filled in here.

| Quarter | Revenue + reserve income (mn USD) | Distribution costs (mn USD) | Distribution share | Net income (mn USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 2025 | 578.6 | 347.7 | 60.1% | 64.8 |
| Q2 2025 | 658.1 | 407.0 | 61.8% | −482.1 |
| Q3 2025 | 739.8 | 447.7 | 60.5% | 214.4 |
| Q1 2026 | 694.1 | 406.7 | 58.6% | 55.3 |
| Q2 2026 | 701.3 | 412.4 | 58.8% | 48.2 |

![Circle's revenue plus reserve income sat in a 694.1 to 739.8 mn USD band from Q3 2025 through Q2 2026, and distribution costs stayed between 58.6% and 61.8% of that top line each published quarter. Q4 2025 is absent from the table.](https://szyma.co/blog/img/circle-economics.06f8ab90.svg)

The top line stopped rising. Q3 2025 at 739.8 mn USD was higher than Q2 2026 at 701.3 mn USD. USDC supply was relatively stable over that stretch; the Polish edition reads the drop as a lower reference rate, not a collapse in tokens. Circle itself disclosed the sensitivity: against a 4.26% average reserve return as of 30 June 2025, a +100 bps move implies +618 mn USD of reserve income in a year and +315 mn USD of distribution costs. About half of every extra dollar from a higher rate is already spoken for before Circle pays its own people.

> **Example:** Take that +100 bps disclosure at face value. Circle would book 618 mn USD of extra reserve income and hand 315 mn USD of it to distribution partners. The remainder, 303 mn USD, is still RLDC, not net income. Operating costs come after.

Full-year 2025 makes the same split visible at a different scale. Revenue plus reserve income was 2,746.6 mn USD, up 63.9% year on year. Net loss from continuing operations was 69.5 mn USD, against a 157.0 mn USD profit the year before. The loss is a one-off accounting charge: 424 mn USD of stock-based compensation tied to vesting conditions met at the IPO (Circle press release, 25 February 2026). Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes that charge, was 582.2 mn USD. Q2 2025's −482.1 mn USD net income in the quarterly table is the IPO-quarter print; it is not the same figure as the 424 mn USD FY charge, and the two are not averaged here.

The IPO itself priced at 31 USD a share on 4 June 2025, raising 1.1 bn USD at a 6.9 bn USD valuation, and closed day one at 82.84 USD, up 167%. That is why a stock-comp charge of that size hit FY2025 at all. The pricing print is secondary reporting.

Circle's custody fee to BNY Mellon is not separately disclosed in any source reviewed for this chapter. No estimate is used.

Annualized Q2 2026 net income of 48.2 mn USD, times four, over DefiLlama's 74.46 bn USD of USDC on 4 September 2026, is about 0.26% a year. That is a fraction of the 3.48% gross reserve return, because distribution and operating costs sit between the two.

![Top 2 USD-pegged tokens were 82.8% of supply, top 5 were 87.9%, and top 10 were 93.0% on 4 Sep 2026, with an HHI of 4,059 on the same DefiLlama reading.](https://szyma.co/blog/img/supply-concentration.b52082b8.svg)

USDT at 183.34 bn USD and USDC at 74.46 bn USD were 82.84% of USD-pegged supply on that day, the figure [chapter 3](/en/blog/stablecoins/types-and-pegs/) already used. The chart's three cut-offs, 82.8%, 87.9% and 93.0%, are roundings of that same reading. An HHI of 4,059 sits next to those shares and is not a fourth percentage.

## Tether keeps the gross yield and takes the mark-to-market

Tether's 2024 group net profit is given as 13 bn USD: about 7 bn USD from Treasuries and repo, about 5 bn USD of unrealized gold and bitcoin gains, and about 1 bn USD other. The Polish edition says Tether earned more than 13 bn USD in 2024 and more than 10 bn USD in 2025, with a headcount in the hundreds rather than the thousands. A precise opex figure is unpublished. None is invented here.

Two Tether metrics have to stay apart. Net operating profit counts interest on bills and repo. The result that also marks gold and bitcoin to market is a different line. Q1 2026 net operating profit was 1.04 bn USD. Q2 2026 was about 1.5 bn USD. For the first half of 2026 the mark-to-market result was about −3.17 bn USD, because gold fell about 15% and bitcoin moved from 68,200 USD to 58,600 USD in the quarter, wiping about 1.8 bn USD off those two positions (crypto.news, 1 August 2026, via the Polish edition). Adding 1.5 bn USD to −3.17 bn USD and calling the sum Tether's profit mixes two lines.

> **Watch out:** Tether's excess-reserve buffer fell from 8.23 bn USD at the end of Q1 2026, a record in these sources, to 4.11 bn USD at the end of Q2 2026, about 50% down in a quarter, while operating profit stayed positive. The buffer moved with gold and bitcoin, not with the T-bill book.

The same DefiLlama bases of 4 September 2026 give a clean comparison of operating profit per reserve dollar. Tether: 1.5 bn USD over about 183.34 bn USD is about 0.81% in the quarter, about 3.2% annualized, close to the 3.48% gross return, because Tether does not pay a Coinbase-scale distribution share. Circle: 48 mn USD over about 74.46 bn USD is about 0.065% in the quarter, about 0.26% annualized. Same kind of reserve, different net.

Tether's gold line has an unresolved discrepancy in the Polish edition (17.4 bn USD in the Q4 2025 attestation against about 8 bn USD in a Q1 2026 secondary write-up). That gap is not averaged and is not used to settle Q2's buffer drop.

## Coinbase is the price of Circle's distribution

Coinbase is the exchange and custodian that distributes USDC to retail and institutions, runs a holder reward on its own platform, and issued Base, the Ethereum L2 where a large stock of USDC now sits. The commercial terms sit in a collaboration agreement dated 18 August 2023, signed when Circle and Coinbase dissolved the Centre consortium and made Circle the sole USDC issuer, with Coinbase taking a minority equity stake.

The split is specific. Coinbase receives 100% of reserve income on USDC held on its platform, and 50% of the residual reserve income on USDC circulating elsewhere, after issuer allocations and other partner fees. The agreement was renewed on 18 August 2026 through 2029, on unchanged structure.

Scale, from secondary write-ups the Polish edition used: Coinbase's share of Circle's distribution costs was about 908 mn USD in 2024, about 54% of related Circle revenue that year, and 1.4 bn USD in 2025, about 51% of revenue. In Q2 2026, CryptoSlate (2 September 2026) put distribution and transaction costs at 410.4 mn USD, of which 324.6 mn USD was Coinbase-related, about 79% of that quarter's distribution bill. The quarterly table's Q2 2026 distribution line is 412.4 mn USD. Both figures are kept. They are not averaged.

![Of one dollar of Circle Q2 2026 revenue plus reserve income, 58.8 cents went to distributors on the quarterly table, leaving 41.2 cents of RLDC and 6.9 cents of net income, with the five-quarter band at 58–62 cents, 5 Aug 2026.](https://szyma.co/blog/img/reserve-yield-waterfall.60da39e9.svg)

If new USDC supply concentrates on Coinbase's platform, where Coinbase takes 100% of the reserve income rather than 50%, each extra dollar of supply produces less RLDC than the last. That is why USDC growth does not translate linearly into Circle net income.

> **My take:** Circle controls mint and burn and does not control the economics of getting the token in front of users. Tether's higher net margin on a reserve dollar is, on this record, the absence of a comparable distribution tax plus the lower cost of remaining private, not a higher gross return on bills.

## The yield ban moved interest into a second token

The GENIUS Act, signed 18 July 2025, bars a Federal Qualified Payment Stablecoin Issuer from paying interest or yield directly to holders. [Chapter 1](/en/blog/stablecoins/what-one-usdc-means/) named the ban. Issuers under 10 bn USD of issuance can use state licensing with lighter federal oversight; that track is in the statute and is not, in these sources, a finished uniform capital rule. The OCC's Bulletin 2026-3, a notice of proposed rulemaking dated 25 February 2026, writes up reserve, redemption and the yield package. Final OCC rules were not out by September 2026. The statutory backstop effective date remains 18 January 2027.

The market did not rewrite the issuer. It split the product. **A yield-bearing wrapper**, already defined in [chapter 1](/en/blog/stablecoins/what-one-usdc-means/), is a second token that holds the payment stablecoin, or sits next to it, and pays the interest the payment-token issuer may not. Three live constructions sit in this material. None had a final US supervisory ruling as of September 2026.

PayPal funds the PYUSD holder reward itself, as a loyalty program. Paxos Trust is the issuer that mints the token and holds the reserve, and as a payment-stablecoin issuer it may not pay that reward from the reserve. PayPal, the distributor, pays from its own pocket. That is the cleanest of the three structurally, and it is the one with a long analogue in card rewards.

Sky pays the Sky Savings Rate to sUSDS holders. In Q2 2026 that rate was 3.75%, down from above 8% in 2024. The brief's funding mix for that quarter is about 38% USDC through the Peg Stability Module, about 25% crypto vaults, about 22% RWA loans, about 10% Spark. The Polish edition, reading the same months, puts tokenized real-world assets at about 60–70% of the stack that funds the rate, with a 3.52–3.75% band for Q2/Q3 2026. Both readings sit here. Sky has no corporate issuer in the Circle sense: parameter changes go through SKY token-holder governance. Whether a US supervisor treats "there is no issuer-person" as outside the ban is not established.

Ethena passes the perpetual futures funding rate through to sUSDe. **The funding rate**, recalled from [chapter 3](/en/blog/stablecoins/types-and-pegs/), is the periodic payment between longs and shorts on that perpetual. sUSDe APY ran from 55.9% in March 2024 to about 4.3% in August 2024, with a cycle average around 11% and a historical range of about −6% to +75%. Ethena's reserve fund is described as about 9× overcapitalized against the risk committee's recommended minimum. USDe is not a payment stablecoin under the GENIUS Act definition in [chapter 1](/en/blog/stablecoins/what-one-usdc-means/). The ban does not apply to it by category, which is a different fact from "Ethena found a loophole inside the category." DAI and USDS are not payment stablecoins under that definition either.

Coinbase's USDC holder reward, "up to 3.50% APY" for Coinbase One members on Coinbase's own site, is a distributor loyalty payment funded from Coinbase's share of reserve income, not a Circle coupon on the token. The OCC's February 2026 proposal would treat some issuer-affiliate yield arrangements as inside the ban. The comment period closed 1 May 2026. A final rule on that point was not in force in September 2026.

## Falling rates shrink this business from the top

The upper bound of the federal funds target range was 3.75% on 2 September 2026, after the FOMC held 3.5–3.75% on 17 June 2026. A March 2026 dot plot median pointed to one more 25 bp cut that year, to 3.25–3.50% by December. Those are the policy rates in the Polish edition. The table below is not a forecast. It is gross reserve income on the 4 September 2026 DefiLlama bases, 183.34 bn USD of USDT and 74.46 bn USD of USDC, at round rates, with Circle RLDC taken at about 40% of gross, inside the company's 38–43.7% guidance band. Fees, Tether's gold and bitcoin, and Circle's non-reserve lines are left out.

| Rate | Tether gross / year | Circle gross / year | Circle RLDC / year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5% | 9.17 bn USD | 3.72 bn USD | 1.49 bn USD |
| 4% | 7.33 bn USD | 2.98 bn USD | 1.19 bn USD |
| 3% | 5.50 bn USD | 2.23 bn USD | 0.89 bn USD |
| 2% | 3.67 bn USD | 1.49 bn USD | 0.60 bn USD |
| 1% | 1.83 bn USD | 0.74 bn USD | 0.30 bn USD |
| 0% | 0 | 0 | 0 |

Circle's adjusted operating expenses were 144 mn USD in Q4 2025, up 32% year on year. The brief's normalized band is about 600–700 mn USD a year. At a 1% reserve rate, Circle RLDC in the table is about 0.30 bn USD, below that band. At that rate the present cost structure would not cover opex from RLDC unless USDC supply grew enough, or other lines (Arc, Circle Payments Network, USYC) filled the gap, or the Coinbase split were rewritten in Circle's favour. None of those three outcomes is in the 2026 numbers.

Tether's breakeven sits lower. The firm has no comparable distribution contract and, as a private Salvadoran entity in these sources, a thinner public-company cost base. Even at 1%, 1.83 bn USD of gross interest is, on this record, likely to cover Tether's opex. A precise Tether opex figure would make that sentence tighter. It has not been published. At 0% the interest engine is gone for both firms, and Tether's remaining P&L would be the gold and bitcoin line that already swung the 2026 half-year result negative.

USDT and USDC, which pay the holder nothing, moved by about −2.0% and −1.1% year to date through 4 September 2026, while PYUSD fell 16.4% and USDe fell 32.1%. Over the same window BUIDL rose 87.1% and USDY 225.7%. A later chapter on chains and distribution picks that tape up.

## Key takeaways

1. Reserve yield was 667.7 mn USD, 95.2% of Circle's 701.3 mn USD of revenue plus reserve income, in Q2 2026; the holder of USDC or USDT is paid none of that interest by the issuer.
2. Distribution and transaction costs took 58.6% to 61.8% of Circle's top line in every published quarter from Q1 2025 through Q2 2026, so RLDC is about 38 to 42 cents of each such dollar before Circle's own opex.
3. FY2025 Circle revenue plus reserve income was 2,746.6 mn USD, up 63.9%, with a 69.5 mn USD net loss driven by a 424 mn USD IPO stock-comp charge; Adjusted EBITDA was 582.2 mn USD.
4. Tether's Q2 2026 net operating profit was about 1.5 bn USD. The first-half 2026 mark-to-market result that includes gold and bitcoin was about −3.17 bn USD. Keep the two lines separate.
5. On 4 September 2026 bases, Tether's annualized operating profit per reserve dollar was about 3.2% against Circle's about 0.26%, on a near-identical 3.48% gross return, because Circle pays 58 to 62 cents of each top-line dollar to distributors and Tether does not.
6. The Coinbase agreement of 18 August 2023, renewed through 2029 on 18 August 2026, gives Coinbase 100% of reserve income on platform USDC and 50% of the residual elsewhere; Coinbase was about 79% of Q2 2026 distribution costs on the 410.4 mn USD CryptoSlate reading.
7. The GENIUS Act bars issuer-paid yield on a payment stablecoin; PayPal funds PYUSD rewards as a distributor loyalty program, Sky pays sUSDS 3.75% in Q2 2026 from a mixed book, and Ethena passes a funding rate through sUSDe. USDe and DAI/USDS are not US payment stablecoins.
8. At a 1% reserve rate, Circle RLDC on the 74.46 bn USD base is about 0.30 bn USD a year, below the 600–700 mn USD opex band in these sources; Tether's 1.83 bn USD gross at the same rate is the reason its private model still clears, with opex itself unpublished.

## Glossary

- **Reserve yield**: interest the issuer earns on cash, bills, repo and money-market funds held against circulating tokens. The holder of a payment stablecoin is paid none of it by the issuer.
- **Reserve return rate**: that interest as a percentage of the reserve. Circle and Tether ran near 3.48% gross on the readings used here.
- **RLDC**: revenue less distribution costs. Circle's remaining top line after Coinbase and other partners, before operating expenses. About 38 to 42 cents of each dollar in 2025–2026.
- **Distribution costs**: what Circle books for sharing reserve income with Coinbase and other partners. 58.6% to 61.8% of revenue plus reserve income in the five published quarters.
- **Net operating profit (Tether)**: interest on Treasuries and repo only. Separate from the result that marks gold and bitcoin to market.
- **Excess reserves**: Tether's buffer above tokens in circulation. 8.23 bn USD at end-Q1 2026, 4.11 bn USD at end-Q2 2026.
- **Yield-bearing wrapper**: a second token (sUSDe, sUSDS) or a distributor loyalty program (PayPal on PYUSD, Coinbase on USDC) that pays interest the payment-stablecoin issuer may not pay directly.
- **Collaboration agreement**: the 18 August 2023 Circle–Coinbase contract, renewed 18 August 2026 through 2029, that sets the 100%/50% reserve-income split.

## Go deeper

- [What one USDC actually equals](/en/blog/stablecoins/what-one-usdc-means/): the GENIUS Act yield ban, and why a payment stablecoin is defined by a redemption duty rather than by a coupon.
- [How each kind of stablecoin holds its peg](/en/blog/stablecoins/types-and-pegs/): reserve composition for USDC, USDT, USDS and USDe, which is the asset mix that produces the interest numbers above.
- [What an RWA actually is](/en/blog/rwa/what-is-an-rwa/): why BUIDL and USDY, which rose in 2026 as USDe and PYUSD shrank, are floating-NAV claims and not dollar pegs.
- 🟢 Circle Internet Group, Q4/FY2025, Q1 2026 and Q2 2026 earnings, circle.com/pressroom, and Form 10-K FY2025, SEC EDGAR CIK 1876042, 25 February / 9 March / 11 May / 5 August 2026.
- 🟢 Tether Q1 and Q2 2026 attestations, tether.io, 1 May 2026 and 31 July 2026.
- 🟢 Collaboration Agreement between Coinbase Global, Inc. and Circle Internet Financial, LLC, 18 August 2023, Circle 10-K FY2025 exhibit.

## Sources

- 🟢 Author's knowledge base, module 04 (reserve yield as 95%+ of fiat-backed issuer revenue, Circle Q2 and FY figures, +100 bps sensitivity, RLDC, Coinbase split, Tether 2024 profit split, Q2 2026 operating profit versus H1 mark-to-market, buffer drop, 3.2% versus 0.26%, rate table, 600–700 mn USD Circle opex band, GENIUS Act yield ban and sub-10 bn USD state track).
- 🟢 Polish research edition, `content/blog/stablecoins/biznes.md`: five-quarter Circle table, Circle Reserve Fund ~88% at year-end 2025, Coinbase dollar amounts, Tether attestation standard, gold/BTC mark-to-market, Fed funds 3.75% on 2 September 2026, 2026 supply tape.
- 🟢 Brief `content/blog/en/briefs/stablecoins-04.md`: portable extract of the same module, including 667.7 mn USD reserve income, IPO pricing, and wrapper rates.
- 🟢 Circle earnings releases and 10-K FY2025, SEC EDGAR CIK 1876042, dates as above.
- 🟢 DefiLlama API, 4 September 2026: USDT 183.34 bn USD, USDC 74.46 bn USD, top-two 82.84%, concentration cut-offs and HHI 4,059 as recovered in the brief.
- 🟢 GENIUS Act (P.L. 119-27), signed 18 July 2025; OCC Bulletin 2026-3 (NPRM), 25 February 2026.
- 🟢 Circle–Coinbase Collaboration Agreement, 18 August 2023, Circle 10-K FY2025 exhibit.
- 🟡 KuCoin, August 2026: Coinbase 908 mn USD (2024) and 1.4 bn USD (2025); renewal 18 August 2026 through 2029.
- 🟡 CryptoSlate, 2 September 2026: Q2 2026 distribution 410.4 mn USD, Coinbase 324.6 mn USD (79%).
- 🟡 insights4vc, 23 April 2026, citing Circle: +100 bps → +618 mn USD reserve income and +315 mn USD distribution costs, 30 June 2025 base.
- 🟡 Tether.io / The Block, 30 January 2026: 2024 group profit above 13 bn USD; brief split 7 / 5 / 1 bn USD.
- 🟡 SpotedCrypto, 3 August 2026: Q2 2026 net operating profit ~1.5 bn USD; crypto.news, 1 August 2026: H1 comprehensive result ~−3.17 bn USD.
- 🟡 Tether.io, 31 July 2026: excess reserves 8.23 bn USD (Q1) to 4.11 bn USD (Q2).
- 🟡 blog.web3wagmi, July 2026, and Eco.com, 16 July 2026: Sky Savings Rate 3.75% (Q2 2026) and the 60–70% RWA stack reading.
- 🟡 Ethena / tidresearch, 2026: sUSDe APY path and ~9× reserve overcapitalization.
- 🟡 Coinbase USDC page, accessed 10 September 2026 via `content/blog/en/research/companies.md`: up to 3.50% APY for Coinbase One members.
- 🟡 Federal Reserve FOMC, 17 June 2026; FRED DFEDTARU, 2 September 2026.
- 🔴 TradingView relay of Circle 10-K figures, 9 March 2026, used only where the Polish edition already tied the FY numbers to the filing.

## Caveats

Q4 2025 is missing from the five-quarter Circle table. No figure is invented for it.

Circle's current Circle Mint minimum, and Circle's custody fee to BNY Mellon, are not in these sources.

Tether opex is unpublished. Sentences about Tether's lower breakeven rest on that absence plus the missing distribution tax, not on a dollar cost base.

Circle's Q2 2026 distribution line is 412.4 mn USD in the quarterly table and 410.4 mn USD in CryptoSlate. Both are recorded. They are not averaged.

Tether gold 17.4 bn USD (Q4 2025 attestation) versus about 8 bn USD (Q1 2026 secondary) is unresolved. It is not used as a Q2 2026 input.

Sky's funding mix is 38/25/22/10 in the brief and 60–70% RWA in the Polish edition. Both are kept.

sUSDe's August 2024 print is about 4.3% in the brief; other 2026 readings in the Polish technology article sit at 3.7–4.1%. They are different dates.

The OCC has not finalized uniform capital requirements for permitted payment stablecoin issuers. Bulletin 2026-3 is an NPRM dated 25 February 2026.

Whether PayPal rewards, Sky's "no issuer-person" structure, Ethena's derivative book, or Coinbase's USDC coupon survive a final yield-ban interpretation is not established.

Canton ~371.3 bn USD as a confirmed total is not used.