Who counted the $1 billion of stablecoin card spending?

The Kobeissi Letter reported that stablecoin card spending hit a record $1.03 billion in July. An independent tracker counting the same month came to $748.7 million.

Crypto card volume hits $748.7M in July, a fifth straight monthly gain (The Defiant, 2026-08-03)

출처: thedefiant.io

Where the two numbers separate

The two counts also disagree on growth. Kobeissi wrote +16% month over month and +200% year over year. Paymentscan put the same month at +19.1% and +144.7%. The gap comes from what gets counted. a16z, working through the same dataset, left one clue. Among the tracked programs, RedotPay's figures are self-reported by the issuer rather than verified independently on the blockchain.

5 charts: How crypto cards are driving stablecoin spend (a16z crypto, 2026-08-07)

출처: a16zcrypto.com

Include one program and exclude another and the same July lands anywhere between $700 million and $1 billion. The Kobeissi post also credits a single onchain platform for the growth and lists that company's integrations, which hints at whose count it was copying.

Is $1 billion a large number

To size something you need a ruler beside it. Visa reported more than $4 trillion of payments volume in its fiscal third quarter of 2026. Averaged out, that is $1.33 trillion a month.

Put the two side by side and the shape of the market appears. There were roughly 8.8 million purchases in July, averaging about $86 each. That is the size of buying coffee and groceries with a card, not of moving money between companies. The coins used are concentrated too: 58% of July spending was in USDC and 26% in USDT. Stablecoin card, in practice, means two dollar-pegged coins.

Kobeissi's $1.5 billion by December

So where this news belongs depends on which end you stand at. On speed alone it started below $1 million a month three years ago, reached the $700 million range, and has risen five months running. There is enough there to read it as a payment method that people have actually started using. Stand it next to Visa instead and this is still a niche rather than a force reshaping the payment rails. Kobeissi expects volumes above $1.5 billion a month by year end. If the December count clears $1.5 billion the call was right; below that, the five-month climb has slowed.