Scott Bessent says stablecoin firms could buy $1T in US debt

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has a plan to find new buyers for America’s ever-growing pile of government debt, and it runs through your crypto wallet. Bessent suggested this week that stablecoin companies could become trillion-dollar purchasers of US Treasury bills, a projection that would redefine who actually funds the American government’s borrowing habit.

The math, at least on paper, is straightforward. Standard Chartered analysts estimate that if the stablecoin market doubles to $2 trillion by the end of 2028, it could generate between $800 billion and $1 trillion in additional demand for T-bills. That’s roughly equivalent to adding an entirely new category of sovereign-scale buyer to the Treasury market.

Why the GENIUS Act changes everything

The legislative foundation for this vision is the GENIUS Act, signed into law on July 18, 2025. The law requires US-regulated stablecoin issuers to back their tokens 100% with highly liquid assets, specifically short-term Treasuries with maturities of 93 days or less.

This matters enormously for the Treasury’s debt management strategy. The department has been quietly shifting its borrowing mix toward shorter-duration securities while simultaneously repurchasing longer-dated bonds. Stablecoin issuers, under the GENIUS Act framework, would become structural buyers of exactly the instruments Treasury wants to sell more of.

Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer by market cap, already had over $141 billion in direct and indirect Treasury exposure in late 2025. Circle, the issuer behind USDC, also holds substantial Treasury reserves, meaning the two dominant players are already shaping demand at the margin.

A $310 billion market with $2 trillion ambitions

There’s a gap between the current reality and Bessent’s vision that deserves attention. The stablecoin market sits at roughly $300 billion to $310 billion as of September 2026, down from previous peaks and facing headwinds from a broader slowdown in crypto trading volumes.

Projections suggesting a $2 trillion to $4 trillion stablecoin market by 2030 under favorable conditions remain, for now, scenarios rather than forecasts.

For context, US foreign holders of Treasuries, including Japan and China, each hold multi-trillion-dollar positions built over decades. Stablecoin issuers reaching $1 trillion in T-bill exposure would put them in genuinely significant territory on the buyer rankings, not dominant, but consequential enough to influence pricing and yield dynamics at auction.

What this means for Treasury markets and crypto investors

If Bessent’s projection materializes, the implications ripple in two directions at once. For the Treasury market, a new class of price-insensitive, rules-based buyers would provide structural support for T-bill demand. Unlike sovereign funds or money market managers who rotate in and out based on yield curves and currency dynamics, stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act have no choice but to hold Treasuries.

The risk running through all of this is concentration. If stablecoin issuers become systemically important buyers of short-term government debt, a sudden contraction in stablecoin demand could create an unexpected void in T-bill demand — a feedback loop between crypto markets and sovereign debt markets that neither regulators nor investors have had to manage before.

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