UBS has initiated coverage of digital asset strategy for the first time, publishing a roughly 50-page report on Sept. 28, 2026. The bank said the clearest near-term applications for digital assets are concentrated in infrastructure, specifically settlement, collateral mobility and machine-native payments.
According to the report summary cited by Rita, UBS spoke with more than 30 industry participants, including crypto-native firms, traditional financial institutions and native fintech companies. Analyst Justin Forsythe framed the report around five core themes: stablecoins as real-world payment rails, tokenization in capital markets, blockchain rails for the agent economy, blockchain security and compliance, and the “invisibilization” of infrastructure.
UBS sees stablecoin market cap at about $1.2 trillion by 2031
UBS said stablecoin market capitalization could reach about $1.2 trillion by 2031, with real-world payment volume rising to about $3 trillion. The market is currently worth about $300 billion, and the bank’s model suggests roughly half of future growth would come from capital markets activity, including real-world assets, with the rest tied to payments and transaction margin storage.
The report also said stablecoin issuers have become one of the largest holders of short-term U.S. Treasuries, with around $175 billion in Treasury-related exposure. UBS described the impact on the broader financial sector as neutral to modestly positive.
Citing estimates from the Bank for International Settlements, UBS said $3.5 billion in stablecoin inflows would lower the 3-month Treasury yield by about 0.7 basis points and by about 4 basis points within 10 days. The bank argued that stablecoin issuers matter more than their size alone would suggest because reserves are concentrated at the very front end of the yield curve, giving them a measurable effect on near-term funding rates. It added that the GENIUS Act would allow reserves to be limited to highly liquid assets, making that demand more structural.
UBS said transaction volume is a more meaningful adoption metric than market capitalization because it better reflects actual blockchain usage.
Cross-border money movement stands out, especially in emerging markets
UBS said stablecoins deliver the most value in money-movement use cases, with the strongest case in emerging markets. The report said corridors involving emerging economies have traditionally required 3 to 4 times more pre-funding than corridors in developed markets because settlement windows are longer, financial infrastructure is more fragmented, and capital controls and foreign-exchange risk remain in place.
Stablecoins can provide instant funding, though UBS said local payment functionality is still needed for practical deployment.
Tokenization is framed as a capital-efficiency tool
UBS identified capital markets tokenization as another major theme. It said the securities repo market handles about $8 trillion in daily trading volume. If 20% of securities were used twice a day, that could unlock about $2.46 trillion in annualized trading volume. In UBS’s view, the main benefit of tokenization in capital markets is faster collateral mobility and greater speed.
The report said tokenization can compress several layers of the process, including issuance, transfer agency, custody, settlement, collateral movement and reporting.
Regulatory capital ratios could also benefit. UBS said the world’s 32 largest banks hold about $2.4 trillion in high-quality liquid asset buffers, roughly 30% above regulatory requirements. Instant settlement could improve substitutability among individual assets inside those HQLA portfolios and free up higher returns.
UBS also pointed to 24/7 markets and prediction markets as another pillar of tokenization. Tokenized equities could offer lower-fee access for international investors, while foreign holdings of U.S. equities stand at about $17 trillion. Perpetual contracts trade on both centralized and decentralized exchanges, and prediction markets now exceed $2 billion in daily volume. UBS said these markets may look niche, but they have institutional use cases, including large-scale hedging around election outcomes and hedging weekend trading volume.
Agent commerce could open a new payment lane for stablecoins
UBS estimated that by 2030, AI agents could facilitate about $2 trillion in global consumer-to-business e-commerce, or about 15% of the total. The bank said agent commerce could expand the total addressable market for e-commerce, with AI agents discovering, evaluating and purchasing goods or services on behalf of consumers or businesses.
Within that market, UBS expects stablecoins to be used for about $56 billion, or roughly 3%. It said stablecoins are most differentiated in open, machine-native commerce, especially when agents transact with unfamiliar counterparties, make high-frequency micropayments, or need programmable instant settlement.
In closed ecosystems, UBS said existing card rails can be adapted for agent commerce through tokenized credentials, delegated spending controls and verifiable consumer intent. The bank expects open and closed models to coexist: cards remain relevant in selected consumer ecosystems, while stablecoins capture the subset of agent commerce where traditional rails are less efficient.
The report cited x402, an open internet-native payment standard launched by Coinbase, which allows apps, APIs and AI agents to automatically negotiate and settle pay-per-use transactions. UBS said agent payments remain early, and B2B may be the first use case.
Across the broader AI software market, UBS estimated AI subscriptions and application ARR could reach $1 trillion to $2 trillion by 2030. About 30% of that could be supported by stablecoins, implying a $300 billion to $600 billion addressable market.
Clearer rules may favor licensed infrastructure operators
UBS said regulatory clarity is pushing digital assets toward licensed financial infrastructure. The report noted that the GENIUS Act was signed on July 18, 2025, creating a federal framework for payment stablecoins and requiring 1:1 reserves.
The CLARITY Act, by contrast, failed to advance in the Senate on Sept. 15, 2026. Two days later, on Sept. 17, 2026, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued an innovation exemption allowing approved tokenized securities to trade on blockchain platforms without registering as traditional exchanges.
UBS also said financial-crime compliance costs exceed $200 billion a year. Blockchain does not remove compliance obligations and, in the near term, adds incremental cost. Still, the bank said rising compliance requirements could benefit scaled operators because compliance-stack costs are more fixed in nature and support durable demand for blockchain analytics and identity infrastructure.
On security, the report said infrastructure and operational vulnerabilities accounted for about 15% of incidents in the first half of 2026 but about 76% of losses. UBS said capital is likely to move toward platforms that are secure, supervisable and capable of controlled intervention. It also said AI should reduce smart-contract code vulnerabilities and shift key institutional risk more toward personnel and control systems.
Invisible infrastructure becomes a theme in a multi-chain market
UBS said there are now more than 5,000 blockchains in the market, including more than 15 economically significant layer-1 and layer-2 networks. Because assets cannot interact natively across them, capital efficiency suffers and user friction rises. Financial institutions therefore need orchestration providers that connect networks while hiding routing, conversion and settlement complexity.
UBS argued that multi-chain architecture is structural because blockchains are used in different ways. As one example, it said the Ethereum network generated more than twice the total fees of Solana and Tron over the past three years, suggesting users are willing to pay a premium for certain use cases.
Liquidity, in UBS’s view, will concentrate, but not necessarily on a single network, because settlement, trading and distribution may be integrated in different venues.
Three portfolio directions highlighted by UBS
UBS’s allocation view centered on three directions. First, stablecoin market capitalization could reach $1.2 trillion by 2031, and issuers have already become important holders of short-term Treasuries. Second, tokenization can improve collateral mobility and capital efficiency in capital markets, with repo identified as the largest use case. Third, agent commerce creates a new payment opportunity for stablecoins, while card rails remain dominant in mainstream consumer commerce.
The article said it was a summary and interpretation by Chaoxiang Research of a third-party brokerage report from UBS Group dated Sept. 28, 2026, combined with public market information. Any ratings, target prices, earnings forecasts and related judgments cited in the piece reflect the views of the brokerage analyst and that institution alone, not the views of Chaoxiang Research, and do not constitute investment advice.
The piece also stated that markets carry risk, decisions should be made independently, and the article should not be used as a basis for buying or selling any security.
