U.S. stalls, Japan prints money: Stablecoins reshaping the financial landscape

The competition among stablecoins is entering an era of layered structures.

As major global economies develop institutional frameworks around stablecoins, a deeper change is occurring: competition is no longer a single-point policy adjustment but is unfolding synchronously across four levels—“rules—usage—regulation—supply.”

In other words, stablecoins are no longer just a matter of financial innovation but are being disassembled into different functional modules within various national systems, each reconstructed through institutional tools.

United States: Stuck in the “Rules Definition Layer” with Internal Conflicts

The core disagreement in the U.S. regarding stablecoins is not about technological pathways but whether they should be incorporated into a bank deposit-like system.

Disputes over yield mechanisms fundamentally answer a deeper question: can stablecoins participate in “deposit pricing”?

If yields are allowed, they will directly enter the alternative zone of bank liabilities; if yields are restricted, stablecoins will be confined to low-efficiency payment tool attributes.

The current compromise attempts to distinguish “static yields” from “behavioral yields,” meaning prohibiting interest on holding behavior but allowing incentives during transactions or usage. However, this design is highly susceptible to regulatory arbitrage in practice, and its long-term stability is questionable.

The divergence between the banking system and the crypto industry essentially revolves around the “financial attribute attribution” of the same asset.

More critically, there is a timing window issue: uncertainty at the rule level is prolonging, and the U.S.'s delays in institutional definitions are objectively allowing other regions to move into implementation phases.

Japan: Entering the “Usage Layer” with Policy-Driven Development

Unlike the U.S., which remains in rule disputes, Japan has shifted toward building actual use cases for stablecoins.

Tokyo has announced a “Promotion of Social Implementation of Stablecoins” subsidy program, encouraging the practical application of yen stablecoins in payment and remittance scenarios through financial subsidies, with individual projects receiving up to 40 million yen. The core of this policy is not technological support but direct intervention to address the structural bottleneck of “insufficient application.”

Its policy logic mainly manifests in three aspects:

• Reducing infrastructure costs to move stablecoins from “usable” to “testable” status;

• Incorporating innovation into the real-world regulatory framework to enable visualized experimental environments;

• Clearly aligning policy with the goal of currency internationalization, making stablecoins a tool for extending the yen system.

This approach indicates that Japan’s focus has shifted from “whether stablecoins exist” to “whether stablecoins have achieved real usage scale.”

South Korea and the UK: Building the “Regulatory Capability Layer”

The core of this layer is not about development or restriction but about “controllability.”

South Korea, through on-chain tracking systems, has lowered the flow of funds from account-level to address and behavior levels, gradually bringing on-chain transactions into a regulated state.

Essentially: without changing the asset form, reconstruct the boundaries of regulatory capability.

Meanwhile, the Bank of Korea is actively promoting CBDC and deposit token system development, maintaining a relatively cautious stance on stablecoins. The overall path points toward a blockchain-based monetary structure centered on the banking system, integrating financial innovation into a controllable financial framework.

The UK is taking a different route: by establishing a unified payment regulation framework, officially incorporating stablecoins into the payment system architecture, and attempting to cover future AI-driven payment scenarios.

Both paths point toward a common direction: stablecoins are shifting from “unregulated assets” to “regulatable financial infrastructure.”

Europe: Structural Supplementation of the “Money Supply Layer”

Compared to the above three layers, Europe’s actions occur at a more fundamental level—the structure of money supply.

Qivalis, a consortium of 12 major European banks, is advancing an euro stablecoin issuance plan under the supervision of the Dutch Central Bank and compliant with the MiCA framework. This development signifies that stablecoin issuers are shifting from crypto-native institutions to traditional banking systems.

The driving factors behind this are not product innovation but structural imbalances within the on-chain monetary system: USD stablecoins have effectively become the global pricing and liquidity foundation, long positioned at the periphery of the USD system.

This structure implies that as financial activities gradually migrate to on-chain environments, if the domestic currency lacks a stable value carrier, its role in pricing and settlement systems will be systematically weakened.

Therefore, the collective entry of European banks is essentially about reconstructing the monetary presence of the euro within the on-chain financial ecosystem. This move is more about extending the monetary system than about individual product innovation.

The True Structure of Stablecoin Competition

Placing these four levels side by side reveals a clearer picture of global division of labor:

• United States: Defining rule boundaries (Rules Layer)
• Japan: Promoting actual usage (Usage Layer)
• South Korea + UK: Building regulatory visibility (Regulatory Layer)
• Europe: Competing for monetary supply rights (Supply Layer)

This structure indicates that stablecoin competition is no longer a single-market issue but a process of cross-layer financial system reconstruction.

The Focus of Competition Is Moving Upward

The “interest-paying dispute” of stablecoins is merely a window into the rules layer; the real competition is migrating to deeper levels.

As rules, usage, regulation, and supply layers gradually separate and evolve independently, stablecoins are no longer just financial products but extensions of different countries’ financial systems into the on-chain world.

What will determine the future pattern is no longer a single policy choice but who can establish structural advantages within their layer and expand them into systemic presence.

The ultimate fate of stablecoins depends not on definitions but on the moment payments occur.