Stablecoins earn on velocity, not float, and issuer economics tilt to distributors

The thesis already has strong backing. Circle's filings show about 61 percent of its revenue going to partners, the Coinbase deal was renewed through 2029, and the Open USD consortium is built to pass yield through to distributors. The two product ideas are in very different positions. The Flow Take-Rate Benchmark looks like the more open of the two. Allium, Dune, Artemis and Visa all sell or publish stablecoin flow data by corridor and issuer, but none of them appear to benchmark effective take rates or revenue-share terms. The catch is that the most valuable data, the revenue-share contracts between issuers and distributors and the off-chain FX spreads, cannot be seen on-chain. A benchmark built only from on-chain flows would be easy for these vendors to copy. A new entrant would win by adding sources the data vendors don't have: issuer filings (Circle, and Coinbase disclosures), anonymized deal terms gathered from payment firms in exchange for access to the benchmark, and quoted versus achieved costs by corridor. The pitch would be negotiation intelligence, not another dashboard. The most likely threat is Artemis or Allium adding a fees module. The Deposit-Token Interop Desk is much more crowded and has stronger players. Ubyx, backed by Barclays, is already building par clearing across stablecoins and tokenized deposits. JPMorgan's Kinexys is building interop itself with DBS, on Canton and with atomic cross-chain settlement. Ripple Treasury and Trovata are adding stablecoin positions to treasury software. Any space left is narrow: accounting-grade reconciliation and reporting that sits on top of these rails, matching JPMD and USDC movements on Base to ERP and general-ledger entries. That is a feature, not a clearing business, and the treasury management system vendors could absorb it. Meanwhile, corporate use of deposit tokens is still small and I found no independent data on it, so the market may be too early to support a standalone desk.

• Allium (stablecoin payments analytics)

  Sells corridor and payment-flow analytics that split B2B, consumer and remittance flows and strip out bridge and automated transfers. It covers volume and flow mix but does not appear to publish fee or revenue-share benchmarks.

• Dune stablecoin issuer solutions

  Offers stablecoin data by issuer, chain, venue and holder type, with cross-chain corridor and net-flow views delivered through SQL, API or warehouse feeds. This is the raw material a take-rate benchmark would be built from, which makes Dune both a possible supplier and a possible competitor.

• Artemis stablecoin analytics

  Tracks stablecoin supply and transfers for more than 50 stablecoins, co-published a stablecoin payments report with Visa and Castle Island, and is cited as a data source by Visa. It reports a fees metric (fees paid by users) but not issuer-to-distributor economics.

• Visa Onchain Analytics Dashboard

  A free Visa dashboard that tracks bot-filtered stablecoin supply, volume and users. It shows a big payments network already publishing flow data, but nothing on take rates.

• Spark / The Big Whale issuer-economics research

  Analyst write-ups on how issuer reserve income is shifting to distributors. They use Circle filings (Circle keeps about 38 to 39 percent of reserve income after distribution costs) and the Coinbase deal. This is one-off research, not a recurring data product.

• Open USD consortium

  A stablecoin backed by more than 140 companies, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Coinbase, that passes nearly all reserve yield to distributors. It confirms the shift in the thesis and pushes revenue-share terms toward being openly published and standardized.

• Ubyx

  A many-to-many clearing system that redeems tokenized deposits and regulated stablecoins at par into bank and fintech accounts. Founded by former Citi executive Tony McLaughlin and backed by Barclays. It is the closest direct competitor to the Interop Desk.

• Kinexys by J.P. Morgan (JPMD, DBS interop, Canton)

  JPMD has been live on Base since November 2025 and is moving onto Canton. Kinexys is also working on an interbank deposit-token framework with DBS and has done atomic cross-chain settlement using Chainlink. The issuing banks are building interop themselves.

• Ripple Treasury

  A corporate treasury platform that shows digital-asset balances, RLUSD and tokenized money-market funds next to bank account data. It overlaps with the reconciliation side of the Interop Desk.

• Trovata CORP$

  A treasury management system vendor running a USDP-based service for intercompany settlement with Paxos. This shows that existing treasury vendors are adding stablecoin reconciliation.

Checked 2026-10-19