Stablecoins are now a $308 billion market, and the listed ways in have been Coinbase (COIN) and Circle (CRCL) . Solowin Holdings (AXG) wants a third: in June it became the first issuer licensed under the Central Bank of Bahrain's stablecoin framework. It has not issued a coin yet. Director Thomas Zhu targets institutions: stablecoins as “compliant, programmable on-chain settlement instruments.”
Stablecoin supply reached about $308 billion in August, up roughly 14% from a year earlier, according to Reap's 2026 stablecoin data. The listed ways to own that growth have been Coinbase @COIN, which takes a share of USDC revenue under a long-running agreement with Circle (CRCL) , and Circle itself.
"I think in the past 12 months, there's been over 300 million unique users of stablecoins, which is an absurdly high number," said Patrick Kim, a researcher at the crypto data firm Artemis, on On The Margin. "I think cards will likely be the number one retail payment use case for stable coins by the end of this year."
Solowin Holdings (AXG) spent the first half of 2026 collecting the paperwork to add a third. It still has to issue a coin. The company's Bahrain subsidiary, AX Coin Bahrain B.S.C. (c), was licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain on June 3 to carry out stablecoin issuer activities, the first granted under that regulator's stablecoin framework. In-principle approval came in January, and Solowin also claims the world's first Sharia-compliant stablecoin certification.
"the only thing that has succeeded, well, at scale seems to be stable coins," Will Harborne, chief executive and co-founder of Rhino.fi, said on the On The Margin podcast. "we describe what we offer as stablecoin activation stack. there's kind of a guarantee with settlement that once the merchant can see they've got those stable coins, no one's coming to kind of claim that... they didn't make that payment. all of the top fintech players, whether that's Revolut or Robinhood or Wise or Stripe... instead adopting the best parts of the technology and using the fact that they've already got great distribution and lots of customers to just improve their own products. Their teams operate like highly well-run FinTech companies and they have basically B2B sales teams."
Solowin bought AlloyX for $350 million in stock in September 2025 to move into the UAE, ASEAN and Africa, and has a cooperation agreement with Yellow Card, an African payments platform covering more than 20 countries.
"Today we actually connect with 1.8 billion wallet users. That is, you know, I will see it as our key competence," Clara Shi, chief executive of WorldFirst and a vice president at Ant International, said on On The Margin. "No matter you are US merchants or you're European merchants, when you go to Asia, we are definitely the one on the table to talk with you."
"It's one thing to do $10,000 of volumes in a particular corridor. It's a totally different thing to do 10 million dollars of volumes in a corridor, or tens of millions, which we do today," Raj Kamal, co-founder and chief executive of the payments firm TransFi, said on On The Margin. "The on-chain leg has to synchronize with the off-chain leg, which is the fiat part where payouts are happening. we're just scratching at the surface of what is possible."
In written answers to questions, Zhu said the Middle East "holds substantial sovereign capital and treasury-management demand," while Latin America is a retail story where "local-currency volatility fuels strong retail-level demand."
"Building in Brazil really allows you to have all the toughest challenges possible fixed in Brazil," Bernardo Brites, co-founder and chief executive of Trace Finance, said on On The Margin. "They might not even know what's behind the scenes there, right? if you're sending money out of Brazil with stable coins, you need to follow the same capital control rules that you would have to do if you were sending BRL into dollars. we actually need to have the banks and the financial infrastructure, including the regulators, comfortable with that."
Why A Bank-Licensed Coin
Solowin also sells Know-Your-Agent, an audit layer for AI agents, and in April signed a non-binding memorandum with SC Ventures, Standard Chartered's venture arm, to incubate an AI payments project called AGENPAY.
"Is an agent gonna be able to open a bank account?" Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, said on On The Margin. "Probably not gonna happen, right? So how do they do that? They have a wallet. We actually think you know agents with wallets essentially become autonomous economic actors who then basically do not just trade but buy and do stuff. They can use a stablecoin, right? We already have agents that are trading on hyperliquid. I have two hundred and eighty agents now doing all sorts of stuff."
Solowin runs Ferion, a real-world-asset platform, and its venture arm joined a funding round for Libeara in April, a Singapore platform SC Ventures backs. Zhu, in written answers, added a caveat: "Without compliant governance, AI-stablecoin integration will remain experimental."
The Case Against
"Everyone's taking the easy way out in Web 3, Web 2 world today. Easy USDC stable coins, you issue a card, suddenly you're a neobank and you can spend, and it's very cool," Neo, chief executive of the onchain neobank UR, said on On The Margin. "But structurally at its core, nothing's really changing."
Revenue for the year to March 31 hit $28.05 million, an 895% jump, according to its 6-K, of which $22.2 million was AI infrastructure fees and $5.6 million digital assets. Operating expenses were $40.14 million against a $13.29 million net loss. AlloyX was called pre-revenue in an SEC exhibit.
"Realistically the risk reward just has not been there," Nic Roberts-Huntley, chief executive of Blueprint Finance, said on On The Margin. "I think what we've asked a lot of like institutional finance people who sit in their traditional roles and have very, very fixed practices is to say, you must change fundamentally what you do to get exposure to something that is just a fraction of the size of what you have. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It's one of the reasons that rates are compressed at the moment. Flows on chain are really thin."
Where The Money Goes
- Solowin Holdings (AXG) . Market cap near $434 million. Lossmaking, coin unissued.
- Circle (CRCL) . The listed regulated issuer to benchmark against; its quote page is the sector reference.
- Standard Chartered (SCBFF) . SC Ventures backs both Libeara and AGENPAY.
- Coinbase (COIN) . Custody and exchange rails, plus a cut of USDC economics.
- Strategy (MSTR) . Michael Saylor's bitcoin treasury vehicle, the corporate-treasury proxy.
The Bottom Line
"I think that just marketing on top of a nothing burger is just vaporware, right?" Brites said. "we actually need to have the banks and the financial infrastructure, including the regulators, comfortable with that."
Solowin has the central bank. The coin, the corridors and the revenue are not in the AXG numbers yet.