17.00 - 17.45: Gordon Liao (Circle Internet Financial) presents "Five Facts About Stablecoins". Joint work with Lin William Cong (Nanyang Technological University; Cornell University), Eswar S. Prasad (Cornell University; Brookings Institution; NBER) and Tony Zhang (Arizona State University).

Abstract: We document five facts about payment stablecoins using granular blockchain data from 2020 to 2025. First, stablecoins are functioning as a transaction currency: their onchain transaction volume now exceeds Bitcoin's despite a far smaller outstanding supply, their velocity has risen sharply, and their transaction-size distribution has shifted toward small-value transfers.

Second, we develop a Bayesian refinement of the standard visitor-share attribution methodology that uses transaction-timing data to help geolocate individual wallets. This approach shows that stablecoin activity is distributed broadly across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, but that standard methods substantially overstate the cross-regional share of flows.

Third, we estimate a structural model of cash management on stablecoin transaction data and find that the typical stablecoin wallet operates on quantitative terms comparable to traditional cash holdings in terms of wallet replenishment opportunities and estimated transaction costs.

Fourth, stablecoins are becoming the settlement currency for a rapidly expanding onchain credit market in which lending terms are enforced by rule-based smart contracts rather than by intermediary discretion; balance-sheet accounting disciplined by reserve and currency data indicates that stablecoins' growth reallocates rather than destroys credit.

Fifth, stablecoins support programmable, machine-initiated payments: smart contracts participate in roughly a third of stablecoin transactions and over two-thirds of transfer volume on Ethereum, and early agentic-payment protocols such as x402 demonstrate machine-to-machine commerce at sub-cent transaction sizes. Together, these facts suggest that stablecoins are behaving as tokenized money. We discuss implications for traditional financial markets and the design of regulatory frameworks.

17.45 - 18.30: Rashad Ahmed (Andersen Institute for Finance and Economics) presents "Stablecoins: A Revolutionary Payment Technology with Financial Risks". Joint work with James A. Clouse (Andersen Institute for Finance and Economics), Fabio Natalucci (Andersen Institute for Finance and Economics), Alessandro Rebucci (Johns Hopkins University, Andersen Institute for Finance and Economics and NBER) and Geyue Sun (The George Washington University and Andersen Institute for Finance and Economics).

Abstract: The GENIUS Act, recently signed into law, establishes a dual federal and state regulatory framework for stablecoins, effectively segmenting the USD stablecoin market into GENIUS-compliant stablecoins and those that are not. This paper discusses the use cases and potential benefits of stablecoins in terms of payment system efficiency and costs, as well as their substitutability with money market mutual funds and bank deposits. It then analyzes the financial stability risks associated with both GENIUS-compliant and unregulated stablecoins using empirical analysis and historical case studies. It concludes by discussing the economic implications of the emergence of a large dollar stablecoin ecosystem. The discussion is supported by a new survey of expert opinions canvassed through Large Language Model (LLM) analysis of all U.S. podcast episodes on stablecoins from January 20 to July 17, 2025.