Visa is entering the stablecoin space directly by launching a stablecoin platform. The goal is to make it easier for banks, financial institutions, and fintech companies to issue and manage stablecoins, while seamlessly integrating them into Visa’s existing payment ecosystem. Specifically, Visa’s stablecoin platform offers the following capabilities: • Minting, movement, and management of stablecoins; • Assistance for banks and financial firms in integrating stablecoins into their existing payment, settlement, and funds transfer systems. The platform targets over 200 million merchants and 15,000 financial institutions. As a traditional payments giant, Visa is now actively building stablecoin infrastructure—immersing itself directly in the space. Its strategy is to embrace and enhance stablecoins, not eliminate them. The larger the stablecoin market grows, the more transactions Visa’s network processes—and it is already generating real revenue from these activities. This development is highly favorable for the next phase of stablecoin adoption, expanding the overall market through new use cases. However, market concentration among top issuers may decline, with competition shifting toward distribution capabilities, merchant onboarding, and compliance. What does this mean for Tether and Circle? For USDC (Circle), this is a short-term positive: Visa’s platform directly supports USDC settlement and integration, giving USDC a first-mover advantage. In the medium to long term, however, intense competition will emerge as alliance-based stablecoins like OUSD and bank-issued stablecoins capture portions of institutional and payment business. Circle’s strengths lie in compliance and existing integrations, but its model of single-issuer reserve interest income may be challenged as alliance models distribute revenue to distribution partners. For USDT (Tether), the impact is relatively greater. USDT has dominated through transaction volume and emerging markets. Traditional finance players like Visa favor compliant, transparent options such as USDC or OUSD. While USDT remains strong in pure crypto use cases, its share in merchant payments and institutional settlement could gradually erode. In summary: Visa is not here to “kill” USDC or USDT—it’s here to “collect rent” and expand the overall pie. This is positive for long-term stakeholders in the stablecoin ecosystem, but the model of earning income solely from reserve interest will face increasing pressure. What about Ethereum? The impact on ETH is neutral to slightly positive, primarily through indirect benefits from accelerated stablecoin adoption. Visa has strong ties with the Ethereum ecosystem. Its stablecoin platform will channel more traditional capital into the Ethereum network in the form of stablecoins. In the long term, mainstream adoption of stablecoins will attract more institutions and merchants onto the chain, increasing demand for Ethereum as a settlement layer/L1—especially as L2 scaling reduces gas fees and boosts MEV revenue. Visa’s own data has shown that stablecoin transaction volumes are driving increased on-chain activity. Of course, Visa’s stablecoin platform will support multiple blockchains—not just Ethereum. However, as the most mature and decentralized chain, Ethereum is likely to remain the preferred choice for institutional-grade compliant stablecoins.