Coinbase Stock Soars 16 % as Stablecoin Bill Passes and Payments Expansion Launches

Wall Street shows turned green on 18 June with Coinbase Global (COIN) closing at $295.29, up 16.3% on the day. There were two drivers behind the boost: the U.S. Senate approved the GENIUS Act, the first bipartisan stablecoin bill to clear the chamber, and Coinbase rolled out a merchant-payments stack on its Base network that can plug directly into platforms like Shopify.

One-two punch gave crypto equities their strongest session in months and fanned controversy regarding which players will dominate dollar-pegged commerce.

Senate Gives Stablecoins a Rulebook

The GENIUS Act sailed through the Senate in a 68-30 vote, requiring issuers to back tokens with cash or short-term Treasurys and publish monthly reserve reports. The bill now heads to the House, where key members say a companion measure could hit the floor before the August recess.

Policy lawyers expect the Act’s disclosure rules to pull more capital into on-chain dollars by removing doubts about backing. The stablecoin market already tops $256 billion; a formal rulebook could lift that figure toward $400 billion by 2026, says a Cowen research note circulated minutes after the vote.

Coinbase Turns to Everyday Payments

Hours after the bill advanced, Coinbase introduced “Coinbase Payments,” a checkout system that lets merchants accept USDC 24/7 and settle to a bank account without touching private keys. The service runs on Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 and charges a flat 1% fee, undercutting PayPal’s 2.9% card rate.

Shopify is the first major integration; early testers say cross-border settlements drop from three days to minutes. Visa, Mastercard and PayPal shares lagged the market on the headline, shedding 1-3% in trading.

Early adopters can auto-convert deposits to fiat or choose to keep balances in USDC for yield protocols. The company plans to add instant checkout links inside Coinbase Wallet next quarter, blurring lines between consumer spending and DeFi.

How the Tape Reads

COIN’s gap-up delivered its first decisive break above the $260 ceiling since March. Volume hit 38 million shares nearly triple the 50-day average, signalling conviction buying.

Away from equities, Bitcoin pushed to $68,400, while ETH reclaimed $2,650. Stablecoin supply grew by $1.4 billion in 24 hours, led by USDC Circle’s treasury wallet minted $840 million in new tokens, the largest single-day print since January.

Liquidity desks say much of that fresh USDC headed straight into Coinbase-linked deposits, likely merchants and arbitrage desks positioning for payment flows.

A Quiet but Growing Rival: Remittix

One small cap also caught side chatter: Remittix, a PayFi project that routes crypto deposits into instant fiat across 30 currencies, reported 28% week-over-week wallet-install growth and cracked $15.8 million in total raises on 13 June.

Unlike Coinbase’s merchant play, Remittix targets freelancers and cross-border micro-merchants, taking a slice of each on-ramp instead of charging setup fees. If Coinbase is building the freeway for big-box commerce, Remittix aims to own the alley ways, an angle some analysts believe could scale faster in emerging markets once the stablecoin rulebook becomes law.