Stablescape Maps More Than 6,000 Stablecoin Companies and Charges Nothing for It

Why a map was needed

Alex Witt calls stablecoins "the number one killer use case for Web three." When he started Verda Ventures over two years ago, he counts maybe 1,500 stablecoin companies; now there are about 6,000, and he expects 10,000 or more by next year. Over two thirds were created in the last year and a half, he says.

Founders can claim their own profiles on Stablescape. Witt says the founder of Dakota submitted its information the day after launch, and the page now shows a claimed profile.

Regional champions

Witt says over 80% of Verda Ventures capital goes between seed and pre-A. His thesis is that the blockchain is a universal protocol while the application layer is "hyper localized," so he focuses largely outside the US, where he expects incumbents such as JPMorgan, BlackRock and the OpenUSD consortium to take share. He says Tether USDt became an LP, making Verda the first fund Tether invested in, because it holds an aligned view.

Co-host Zach Fowler noted that Nigeria is 60% of Africa's stablecoin universe, the UAE is 68% of MENA's, and Singapore anchors APAC at 25%. Witt pointed to Nigeria's population of over 200,000,000.

Distribution over code

Witt says more agentic stablecoin payment companies were created year to date in 2026 than in all previous years combined, yet Verda has not deployed to one. "The tech is not the hard part," he says, noting the original USDT contract was maybe 300 lines of code and that Robinhood forked Arbitrum and Coinbase forked Optimism because they own distribution. He adds that B2B relationships are stickier than consumer ones.

Exits and licenses

Witt counts 25 or 26 relatively large stablecoin acquisitions or exits in the past few years, at least three related to Stripe. He expects M&A rather than IPOs, with acquirers like Stripe driving exit liquidity, and says at least 10 portfolio companies have been approached. He also expects more firms to buy banking licenses, saving 40 to 60 basis points in many cases.