Research

IMF Working Paper Cites Allium on the Share of Genuine Stablecoin Activity

The IMF's 2026 working paper Stablecoins and the Future of Payments cites Allium data to establish that fewer than 10% of on-chain stablecoin transactions reflect activity between genuine users.

The International Monetary Fund cited Allium in Stablecoins and the Future of Payments: Evidence from Financial Markets (Copestake, Englander, Martinez Peria, and Villegas-Bauer), an IMF Working Paper published in March 2026.

What it is

The paper is an IMF Research Department working paper (WP/26/52) examining how stablecoins interact with payments and financial markets. In setting up its empirical premise, the authors draw on Allium's stablecoin data to characterize how much on-chain stablecoin volume comes from real end users versus bots and internal rebalancing.

Why it matters

Raw on-chain transaction counts overstate real stablecoin usage, because a large share of activity is automated or internal to exchanges and market makers. Filtering that noise out is exactly what Allium's stablecoin-adjusted metrics are built to do. When an institution like the IMF anchors a foundational claim to those metrics, it signals that Allium's view of genuine stablecoin activity is being treated as a reference point in top-tier economic research.

The citation

Second, fewer than 10% of stablecoin transactions recorded on blockchains reflect transactions between genuine users (Allium Labs, 2025).

Reference

Copestake, A., Englander, C., Martinez Peria, M. S., & Villegas-Bauer, G. (2026). Stablecoins and the Future of Payments: Evidence from Financial Markets. International Monetary Fund; IMF Working Papers, WP/26/52.

Read the paper (PDF): imf.org

Publication page: imf.org/en/Publications/WP

The Polymarket API: What It Shows and Hides

The Polymarket API is excellent at telling you what a market looks like right now. It is far weaker at telling you what happened, resolved, and settled across markets over time.

The Four Rules That Bind Crypto Compliance

Crypto compliance is not one rule but four binding obligations. Here is what each demands, the onchain evidence that satisfies it, and where the data breaks down.

Tempo: The Stripe-Backed Stablecoin Blockchain

Tempo is a payments-focused Layer 1 built around stablecoins and backed by Stripe and Paradigm. Here is what primary sources confirm, and what remains unannounced.

CLARITY Act: Will the SEC or CFTC Rule Crypto?

The CLARITY Act tries to settle the one question institutions still cannot answer: is a given digital asset a security under the SEC, or a commodity under the CFTC. Here is what the bill proposes and what has not yet become law.