Varys, Verda report: only 16 of 494 LATAM stablecoin firms focus on liquidity
In brief
- Varys Capital and Verda Ventures mapped 494 companies in Latin America's stablecoin ecosystem.
- Only 16 firms focus primarily on wholesale liquidity, corporate treasury and credit.
- Wallets, payment apps and consumer-facing platforms make up most of the mapped firms.
- Verda partner Amit Chu said one major provider's failure could slow cash-outs and widen spreads.
A wide front end, a narrow back end
The research draws on Verda's Stablescape database. Most of the 494 firms are wallets, payment apps and consumer-facing platforms (the parts of the stack that users actually see and touch).
The firms underneath them are a different story. Companies that convert stablecoins to local fiat at scale, manage corporate treasuries or extend credit account for fewer than one in thirty firms in the dataset.
That's the bottleneck.
Fragility in the system is concentrated in its thinnest layer.
The report's authors argue that wholesale liquidity, treasury and credit are where the system's weak point sits, since those three functions are what keep the rest of the machine moving.
Who actually holds the risk
Verda Ventures partner Amit Chu said many firms in the ecosystem trade liquidity, but only a small number hold and manage the underlying risk on their own books. Instead, he said, many companies pass their currency risk along to a select group of trading desks and exchanges.
According to Chu, a failure at a single major provider could cause real operational damage, including slower cash-outs to local bank accounts and wider spreads. Spreading activity across apps doesn't necessarily help. Crypto Briefing noted that a company using one app for collections and another for payouts could still be exposed to the same liquidity desk through both.
Why it matters for the region
Businesses and individuals across Latin America have turned to dollar-pegged tokens for payments, savings and cross-border transfers, driven largely by local currency volatility. Business-to-business payments make up a particularly large share of that activity. Crypto Briefing reported, without citing a source, that annual stablecoin transaction volumes in the region reach into the hundreds of billions.
On-ramps and off-ramps between bank accounts and stablecoins remain a persistent bottleneck. If the report's mapping holds, it's a small slice of a 494-company market that does the heavy lifting of converting that volume at scale.
Frequently asked questions
How many Latin American stablecoin firms focus on liquidity, according to the Varys and Verda report?
The Varys Capital and Verda Ventures report mapped 494 companies in Latin America's stablecoin ecosystem. Only 16 focus primarily on wholesale liquidity, corporate treasury and credit. Most of the rest are wallets, payment apps and consumer-facing platforms.
What happens if a major stablecoin liquidity provider in Latin America fails?
Verda Ventures partner Amit Chu said a failure at a single major provider could cause operational damage, including slower cash-outs to local bank accounts and wider spreads. He said many companies pass their currency risk to a select group of trading desks and exchanges.
Why doesn't using several payment apps reduce a company's exposure?
Crypto Briefing noted that a company using one app for collections and another for payouts could still be exposed to the same liquidity desk through both. Using different apps on the surface doesn't change which few firms handle the underlying liquidity.
