Gray Beasts vs Allowlist Players, Insights into the "Fork Moment" Brought by Compliance Stablecoins

Author: imToken

From a macro perspective, stablecoins are entering an unprecedented reshuffling phase.

In July, U.S. President Trump officially signed the "GENIUS Act", marking the long-awaited implementation of stablecoin legislation; in August, Hong Kong's "Stablecoin Regulation" also came into effect, becoming the world's first regional regulatory framework; meanwhile, major economies such as Japan and South Korea are also accelerating the follow-up regulatory details, intending to allow compliant entities to issue stablecoins.

In other words, the stablecoin sector has entered a real "regulatory window period" - gradually evolving from liquidity tools that grew in a gray area to a financial infrastructure that balances compliance and experimentation.

Why should we pay attention to "compliant stablecoins"?

In the classification system of stablecoins, regulated stablecoins hold a unique and critical position.

First of all, from the perspective of market demand, stablecoins are no longer just the "general equivalent" of on-chain transactions. For crypto-native users, it is the core asset for hedging and liquidity; for traditional institutions, it may be a new tool for cross-border settlement, treasury management, and payment clearing.

However, in the past, stablecoins like USDT naturally expanded due to market demand. Although their scale is huge, they have long operated in a gray regulatory area, facing doubts due to insufficient transparency and compliance risks. Compliance stablecoins, on the other hand, have aimed for "compliance and usability" as their primary goal since their inception, issued by regulated entities, meeting the licensing requirements of their respective jurisdictions, and backed by clear asset reserves and legal responsibilities.

In simple terms, the main characteristics of compliant stablecoins are regulated issuers + compliance with the licensing requirements of the jurisdiction they operate in. Each token is backed by clear asset reserves and legal responsibilities, and users and institutions can clearly trace back to the regulatory entities and asset custody arrangements when using them.

This allows them not only to circulate on the chain but also to have the opportunity to be included in corporate financial statements and compliance reports, becoming the "official channel" between traditional finance and the crypto world.

Source: Compliant stablecoin from imToken Web (web.token.im)

From the perspective of imToken, stablecoins are no longer a tool that can be summarized by a single narrative, but rather a multidimensional "asset collection"—different users and different needs correspond to different stablecoin choices.

In this classification, compliant stablecoins (such as USDC, FDUSD, PYUSD, GUSD, USD1, etc.) are not intended to replace USDT, but rather to serve as a parallel track, providing a legitimate and secure option for cross-border payments, institutional applications, and financial compliance.

If the significance of USDT lies in "promoting global liquidity in the crypto market," then the significance of compliant stablecoins lies in "truly integrating stablecoins into daily finance and life."

Main Compliance Stablecoin Overview

From this perspective, the global path of compliant stablecoins is not consistent, but the direction is converging— they are transitioning from gray liquidity to compliant financial interfaces. Future application scenarios may no longer be limited to exchange matching and arbitrage, but may extend to cross-border payments, corporate treasury management, and even personal daily payments.

From a global perspective, compliant stablecoins have formed several different development paths.

In the United States, USDC is the most representative compliant stablecoin, issued by Circle, backed by cash and highly liquid short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, and subject to regular audits to ensure the safety of its 1:1 peg to the dollar. This makes it the most widely adopted dollar stablecoin among institutions and one of the few stablecoins that can be "written into financial statements."

Alongside it is USDP, which is issued by Paxos Trust Company and holds a trust license from the New York Department of Financial Services. Although it is not as widely circulated in the market as USDC, its compliance attributes are clear, mainly targeting institutional payment and clearing scenarios.

At the same time, the PYUSD launched by PayPal is more symbolic; it is not born for the trading market but directly cuts into the retail payment sector, attempting to truly bring stablecoins into daily consumption and cross-border transfers.

In Hong Kong, the "Stablecoin Regulation" that will come into effect in August 2025 makes it the first region in the world to propose a complete regulatory framework for the issuance, reserves, and custody of stablecoins. This means that stablecoins issued in Hong Kong are no longer tokens in a gray area but are truly recognized as tools by financial regulators. The FDUSD issued by First Digital is a representative of this context.

In Japan, JPYC has become the first approved yen stablecoin, issued by JPYC Inc. and regulated by the remittance service provider license. It will be backed by liquid assets such as government bonds. The Financial Services Agency (FSA) plans to approve it as early as this autumn. The registration of remittance business operators has been completed, and there are plans to deploy its yen stablecoin on the Ethereum, Avalanche, and Polygon networks.

Similarly, South Korea is currently exploring the application of the Korean won stablecoin through a "regulatory sandbox", focusing on cross-border payments and B2B settlement.

These attempts point to a trend where compliant stablecoins are not meant to challenge the market positions of USDT or USDC, but rather to carve out a new lane to serve real-world scenarios that require compliance and transparency. Their emergence signifies that the narrative around stablecoins is shifting from "gray liquidity in trading markets" to "legitimate interfaces in global finance."

Although the paths of the three are different, their directions are highly consistent: compliant stablecoins are becoming a parallel track to USDT, and their significance lies not in competing for liquidity dominance, but in providing financial institutions, cross-border payments, and everyday applications with legitimate, transparent, and regulatory-compliant new options.

What is the next step?

Overall, the biggest structural change in TradFi in 2025 is the comprehensive emergence of compliant stablecoins, and the focus of competition is shifting from size and volume to compliance capability and scenario penetration.

Whether it is Hong Kong's pioneering "Stablecoin Regulation" or the strengthening of regulation on USDC, PYUSD, etc. in the US market, both convey the same signal: Stablecoins that can truly serve global users and traditional capital in the future must move towards a deep integration of off-chain compliance and on-chain structure.

This also means that the competitive logic of stablecoins has shifted from "who has more dollar reserves" to "who can enter the most authentic user scenarios faster," including cross-border settlements, corporate treasuries, as well as retail payments and daily consumption. In this trend, new compliant attempts are continuously emerging.

For emerging stablecoin projects like USD1, which rely on strong traditional capital and policy resources, compliance pathways and global use case integration have been emphasized from the very beginning—backed by the political endorsement of the Trump family, USD1 achieved what can be described as a phenomenal "0 to 1" growth and top exchange coverage in just six months.

Since March, the issuance has skyrocketed to 2.1 billion USD, surpassing FDUSD and PYUSD to become the fifth largest stablecoin globally (according to CoinMarketCap data), sweeping past leading centralized exchanges like HTX, Bitget, and Binance. In contrast, PYUSD, which has been supported by PayPal for the past two years, is still struggling to gain traction.

At the same time, the infrastructure surrounding Liquidity-as-a-Service is also emerging, aiming to make stablecoins not just a token symbol on the chain, but capable of being directly called as a settlement API on a global scale.

This also gives rise to a foreseeable future scenario where cross-border payments, corporate treasury, and even personal daily payments may gradually find a new balance between the gray liquidity of USDT and the whitelist system of compliant stablecoins.

From a more macro perspective, stablecoins are beginning to "fork," and the future landscape is destined to be diverse and parallel:

• USDT continues to serve as the liquidity engine of the global crypto market;
• Yield-bearing stablecoins meet the demand for capital appreciation;
• Non-US dollar stablecoins open up a narrative of diversification;
• Compliant stablecoins are gradually being embedded in the real financial world;

In the past decade, USDT has represented the "self-generating" gray power that has driven global liquidity in the crypto market; semi-compliant products like USDC have built a transitional bridge between gray and white. Now, with the implementation of the U.S. "GENIUS Act," the effectiveness of Hong Kong's "Stablecoin Regulations," and the pilot programs being successively launched in Japan and South Korea, compliant stablecoins are entering a true window of opportunity.

This time, stablecoins are no longer just a tool for on-chain users, but will become a financial medium that is ubiquitous in cross-border settlements, corporate treasury management, and even daily consumption.

This is the significance of compliant stablecoins: to truly bring stablecoins out of the crypto world and into the daily financial and life routines.