合规、流动性、分发，稳定币发行的真正战场在哪里？

Author | Chuk (Former Paxos Employee)

Translation | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Translator | Dingdang (@XiaMiPP)

Introduction: Everyone is Issuing Stablecoins

Stablecoins are evolving into application-level financial infrastructure. Following the enactment of the GENIUS Act and clearer regulatory frameworks, brands like Western Union, Klarna, Sony Bank, Fiserv, and others are shifting from “integrating USDC” to launching their own dollars through white-label issuance partners.

This shift is supported by the explosive growth of “issuance-as-a-service” platforms. A few years ago, Paxos was almost the only preferred option; now, depending on the project type, there are over 10 feasible pathways, including new platforms like Bridge and MoonPay, compliance-first Anchorage, and industry giants like Coinbase.

The increasing options make stablecoin issuance seem like a commodified capability—at least at the token core architecture level, this is true. But “commodification” depends on who the buyers are and what specific tasks need to be completed. Once the token’s underlying operations are distinguished from liquidity management, regulatory compliance, and peripheral support capabilities (deposit/withdrawal channels, fund orchestration, account systems, card services), this market no longer resembles a price competition but more of a layered competition: the truly hard-to-copy “results” are where pricing power is most easily concentrated.

In other words: Core issuance capabilities are becoming more uniform, but in aspects like compliance, redemption efficiency, launch time, and bundled services—areas with high operational result requirements—suppliers are not easily interchangeable.

White-label stablecoin supply is growing rapidly, creating a vast issuer market beyond USDC/USDT. Source: Artemis

If you see issuers as completely interchangeable entities, you overlook where the real constraints lie and misjudge where profits might be retained.

Why do enterprises launch their own branded stablecoins?

This is a reasonable question. Enterprises are mainly motivated by three factors:

• Economic benefits: Retaining more customer funds and balances, and expanding ancillary revenue streams (fund management, payments, lending, card services).
• Behavior control: Embedding customized rules and incentive mechanisms (e.g., loyalty programs), and deciding on settlement paths and interoperability to match their product forms.
• Accelerating deployment: Stablecoins allow teams to launch new financial experiences globally without rebuilding a full banking system.

It’s worth noting that most branded stablecoins do not need to grow to USDC levels to be considered successful. In closed or semi-open ecosystems, the key metric is not necessarily market cap, but ARPU (average revenue per user) or improvements in unit economics—i.e., how much additional revenue, retention, or efficiency the stablecoin functionality brings to the business.

How does white-label issuance work? Dissecting the technology and operational stack

To determine whether issuance is “commodified,” first clarify the specific division of responsibilities: reserve management, on-chain smart contracts and operations, and distribution channels.

Issuers typically control reserves and on-chain operations; brand owners control demand and distribution. The real differences lie in the details.

The white-label issuance model allows brands to launch and distribute their own stablecoins while outsourcing the first two layers to an “issuer-of-record.”

In practice, responsibilities are roughly divided into two categories:

• Mainly controlled by the brand: distribution and usage scenarios (distribution channels)—including where the stablecoin is used, default user experience, wallet entry points, and which partners or platforms support it.
• Mainly controlled by the issuer: issuance operations. The smart contract layer (token rules, admin permissions, mint/burn execution) and the reserve layer (asset composition, custody, redemption process).

From an operational perspective, these capabilities are now mostly productized via APIs and dashboards, with deployment times ranging from a few days to several weeks depending on complexity. Not all projects today require US regulatory compliance, but for institutions serving US enterprise clients, compliance capabilities have already become part of the product even before the full implementation of the GENIUS Act.

Distribution is the most challenging part. In closed ecosystems, making stablecoins usable is mainly a product decision; in open markets, integration and liquidity are the bottlenecks. At this stage, issuers often intervene in secondary liquidity support (exchange/market maker relationships, incentive design, initial liquidity injection). Although demand is still controlled by the brand, this “market entry support” is precisely where issuers can significantly influence outcomes.

Different buyers assign different weights to these responsibilities, so the issuer market naturally fragments into several clusters.

Market stratification: whether it’s commodified depends on who the buyers are

“Commodification” refers to a service being sufficiently standardized so that switching suppliers does not change the outcome, and competition shifts to price rather than differentiation.

If changing the issuer alters the results you care about, then issuance is not yet commodified for you.

At the token core level, switching issuers often does not significantly affect outcomes, making them increasingly interchangeable: most institutions can hold similar treasury-style reserves, deploy audited mint/burn contracts, provide basic controls like freeze/pause, support main chains, and expose similar APIs.

However, brands rarely just buy a “simple token deployment.” They buy results, and the desired results largely depend on the buyer type. Overall, the market roughly splits into several clusters, each with a “key point where substitution begins to fail.” Within each cluster, in practice, only a few truly feasible options remain.

Enterprises and financial institutions are driven by procurement processes and focus on trust as the core optimization goal. Substitutability fails in areas like compliance credibility, custody standards, governance structures, and the reliability of 24/7 redemption at large scales (potentially hundreds of millions of dollars). In practice, this is a “risk committee-style” procurement: issuers must stand firm in written documentation and operate in a stable, predictable manner in production—sometimes even “dull.”

• Representative institutions: Paxos, Anchorage, BitGo, SoFi.

Fintech companies and consumer wallets are product-oriented, emphasizing delivery and distribution capabilities. Substitutes fail in areas like launch time, integration depth, and value-added features that enable stablecoins to be used in real business processes (e.g., deposit/withdrawal channels). In practice, this is a “delivery within this iteration cycle” procurement: the winning issuer is the one that can minimize KYC, deposit/withdrawal, and fund flow coordination work, and get the entire functionality (not just the stablecoin itself) into use as quickly as possible.

• Representative institutions: Bridge, Brale (MoonPay / Coinbase may also fall into this category, but public info is limited).

DeFi and investment platforms are native on-chain applications, focusing on optimizing composability and programmability, including structures designed for different risk trade-offs and aimed at maximizing yields. Substitutability has some influence in reserve model design, liquidity dynamics, and on-chain integration. In practice, this is a “design constraint-based” compromise: as long as it enhances composability or yields, teams are willing to accept different reserve mechanisms.

• Representative institutions: Ethena Labs, M0 Protocol.

Issuers tend to form clusters based on enterprise compliance posture and client access methods: enterprises and financial institutions are in the lower right, fintech/wallets in the middle, and DeFi in the upper left.

Differentiation is moving up the tech stack, especially in fintech/wallet domains. As issuance itself gradually becomes a feature, issuers start competing through bundled comprehensive services to complete the overall task and facilitate distribution. These services include compliant deposit/withdrawal channels and virtual accounts, payment orchestration, custody, and card issuance. This approach can maintain pricing power by changing listing times and operational results.

Within this framework, the question of “whether it’s commodified” becomes clearer.

Stablecoin issuance at the token level has already been commodified, but at the result level it has not, because buyer constraints make supplier replacement difficult.

As the market develops, issuers serving different clusters may gradually converge in capabilities needed to meet market demands, but we are not there yet.

Where might lasting advantages come from?

If the token core has become an entry barrier and peripheral differentiation is slowly diminishing, a clear question arises: Can any issuer establish a durable moat? Currently, this looks more like a customer acquisition race—retention through switching costs. Replacing an issuer involves changing reserve and custody operations, compliance processes, redemption mechanisms, and downstream system integrations, so issuers are not “just a click away from being replaced.”

Besides bundled services, the most likely long-term moat is network effects. If branded stablecoins increasingly require seamless 1:1 convertibility and shared liquidity, value may accumulate in becoming the default interoperability network or protocol layer. What remains uncertain is whether this network is controlled by issuers (capturing strong value) or evolves into a neutral standard (wider adoption but weaker value capture).

A noteworthy trend: Will interoperability become a commodified feature, or will it be the main source of pricing power?

Conclusion

• Currently, core token issuance is commodified, with differentiation at the edge. Token deployment and basic controls are converging, but in operations, liquidity support, and system integration, outcomes still vary.
• For any buyer, the market is not as crowded as it appears. Constraints quickly narrow the candidate list, and “trustworthy options” are often only a few, not dozens.
• Pricing power comes from bundled sales, regulatory environment, and liquidity constraints. The value lies not in “creating the token” itself but in the entire infrastructure orbiting stablecoins.
• Which moats can last long-term remains uncertain. Sharing liquidity and exchange standards to form network effects is a plausible path, but as interoperability matures, who captures the value remains unclear.

Next, it’s worth watching whether branded stablecoins will converge into a few exchange networks or if interoperability will ultimately evolve into a neutral standard. Regardless of the outcome, the conclusion remains the same: tokens are just the foundation; business models are the core.