Corridor economics and remittance cost
World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide
The authoritative source for what it actually costs to send money between two specific places. Prices a standardised $200 transfer per corridor, per channel, quarterly, going back to 2008.Use it for: the 6.49% global average, the 8.78% Sub-Saharan Africa average, and the bank-versus-digital channel split. Watch for: the headline is a simple average across corridors, not volume-weighted: the amount-weighted picture is cheaper, because high-volume corridors are more competitive.
World Bank: remittance cost indicators (SI.RMT.COST.IB.ZS)
The same data as machine-readable time series, by receiving and sending country. Better than the
PDF if you want to plot a specific corridor rather than a region.
Financial Stability Board: correspondent banking
The FSB’s long-running work on the decline in correspondent banking relationships. Use it for:
the de-risking argument: why fewer routes means wider spreads, and why Africa and small island
states were hit hardest.
Adoption and on-chain flows
Chainalysis, Sub-Saharan Africa crypto adoption
Regional on-chain value received, ranked by country, with a stablecoin share breakdown.Use it for: 92bn, stablecoins at roughly 43% of regional volume. Watch for: methodology is proprietary and attributes flows by heuristic clustering. It is the best available series and it is an estimate, not a measurement. Their commercial interest in the sector growing is worth holding in mind.
Monetary analysis and criticism
BIS, Annual Economic Report 2025, Chapter III
The single most important document on this list, and the strongest available argument against the thesis Arc simulates. Sets out the three tests of sound money, singleness, elasticity, integrity, and argues stablecoins fail all three.Use it for: the analytical frame in The case against, and for the emerging-market dollarisation argument. Watch for: the BIS is an institution of central banks assessing an instrument that competes with central bank money. The analysis is rigorous; the institutional interest is real. PDF · press release
BIS, 'Stablecoins: framing the debate' (April 2026)
A more recent and more concise statement of the same position, with updated market-size figures,
roughly $315bn total market cap as of early April 2026, approximately 99% dollar-denominated.
United States: GENIUS Act and rulemaking
S.1582: GENIUS Act, 119th Congress
The statute itself, enacted July 2025. Shorter than expected and heavily delegating, which is why
the rulemaking below matters more than the text.
Chapman and Cutler: GENIUS Act rulemaking tracker
The practical way to keep current. Tracks every agency’s proposed and final rules with comment
deadlines in one place. Use it as the entry point; follow through to the Federal Register for
anything you intend to rely on.
European Union: MiCA
Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA)
Fully applicable since 30 December 2024. Read: Title III for asset-referenced tokens, Title IV
for e-money tokens: the latter being the category a single-currency payment stablecoin falls
into, and the one with the strictest reserve and redemption rules. The EU-wide transitional period
ended 1 July 2026.
European Banking Authority
The supervisor for EMTs and ARTs, and the source for the technical standards that make MiCA
operational, including the RTS on EMT thresholds.
Africa: Kenya and Nigeria
Kenya: Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, 2025
The Act as enacted, from Kenya Law. Assented 15 October 2025; implementing regulations gazetted
July 2026. Note the dual-regulator split: CBK for custodial wallets, payment processors and
stablecoin issuance; CMA for exchanges and trading platforms.
Figures to treat with caution
Three numbers appear widely in 2026 coverage and come from secondary aggregators rather than primary bodies. They are cited on this site with that caveat and should not be relied on without checking the underlying methodology:
- **~315bn the BIS reported for early April 2026, which is the citation to prefer.
- ~$7.2 trillion settled in February 2026, surpassing US ACH. Raw on-chain transfer volume. It includes trading, bridging, arbitrage and bot activity, and is not a measure of payment activity.
- **28–62tn raw transfers. An estimate with a wide band and a contested methodology, but far closer to the number that matters. The gap between this and the headline is the single most important thing to understand about stablecoin volume statistics.
What is deliberately absent
No vendor whitepapers, no exchange research desks, and no project-published token economics. Not because they are worthless, but because on this specific subject the incentive to overstate is unusually strong and the primary sources above are sufficient.Back to the primer
Or jump to the architecture with the domain in hand.