Despite stablecoin transactions exceeding $28 trillion in 2025—surpassing Visa and Mastercard combined—venture capital remains overwhelmingly concentrated in the U.S. and Europe, far from the emerging markets that generate the vast majority of real-world volume. This geographic mismatch is detailed in a new analysis from Verda Ventures, which notes that only 32% of over 3,000 tracked stablecoin and crypto-fintech companies are based in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, or the Middle East, regions that drive the bulk of usage. Nigeria alone has over 26 million crypto users, with 59% holding USDT, while in Argentina, stablecoin purchases account for more than half of all exchange trades, fueled by triple-digit inflation and currency controls. Brazil registered $318.8 billion in crypto inflows through mid-2025, over 90% of which were stablecoins, and sub-Saharan Africa saw $205 billion in on-chain value, growing 52% year-over-year.
As stablecoins become financial lifelines in unstable monetary systems, cross-border business-to-business (B2B) payments in Latin America grew from less than $100 million per month in early 2023 to over $6 billion per month by mid-2025—a 60x increase. Yet, VC funding patterns remain anchored in a Western institutional narrative that treats stablecoins as infrastructure for DeFi and treasury management, rather than as a tool for dollar access. Firms like OPay and El Dorado are thriving without early Western backing, and the report argues that the next generation of stablecoin winners will emerge from founders in Lagos, São Paulo, and Manila.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England has removed the controversial £20,000 individual and £10 million corporate holding limits for sterling stablecoins, replacing them with a £40 billion cap on how large each systemic sterling stablecoin can become. The central bank also eased reserve requirements, allowing issuers to hold up to 70% of backing in short-dated UK government debt—improving yield potential against dollar rivals. However, a hard cap on a coin denominated in its own currency puts the UK in an unusual position; the US and EU regulate stablecoins heavily but impose no per-issuer ceiling. Industry figures from Coinbase and ClearBank warned that the cap, coupled with a 30% non-yielding deposit requirement, may leave sterling stablecoins commercially uncompetitive against dollar stablecoins, which already dominate 98% of the global stablecoin supply.
The Bank of England’s stated concern is deposit flight from commercial banks, and it views the £40 billion cap as a temporary brake to be lifted once risks to credit provision are managed. For now, the UK has traded user-level caps for a market size ceiling, a move that softens the immediate friction but may still cap the market’s growth potential—while dollar stablecoins like USDT and USDC continue to scale without such limits in their home jurisdictions.
