The honest price of stablecoin FX
Orbital Research collected 27,057 quotes from 20 stablecoin liquidity providers over six months, priced every one against the fiat FX market, and compared them with two leading fintechs in cross-border payments and FX, and an institutional FX desk. Stablecoins don’t always mean cheaper FX. Often they just move the cost around: into the weekend, into the token itself, and into the direction your money flows.
Cheaper than a fintech. Level with an FX desk. Expensive in the wrong direction.
We compared the full door-to-door cost of moving $100,000 through stablecoins with what two leading fintechs in cross-border payments and FX, and an institutional FX desk, charged for the same conversion at the same time. The stablecoin side of every comparison comes from the eight institutional desks we polled on a fixed schedule.
Key takeaways
How we did this →Are stablecoins cheaper than traditional FX?
It depends on the alternative. Against two leading fintechs, stablecoins were cheaper in 30 of 32 comparisons. Against an institutional FX desk, they were cheaper in only 6 of 22, with little difference (within 5 bps) in the other 16.
Does the direction of payment matter?
Yes. For a business already holding USDT, paying out cost 10 to 21 bps more than collecting in 15 of 17 currencies. Brazil and Argentina bucked the trend, with collecting money significantly more expensive than paying it out.
Are stablecoins just as cheap at weekends?
Not necessarily. At weekends, some stablecoin providers doubled their charges or stopped offering exchange rates altogether, despite stablecoins operating 24/7. Fiat was no better: one leading fintech tripled its FX fee.
Are stablecoins cheaper in every market?
No. Limited competition contributed to high quoted prices in some Southeast Asian markets. In one currency, the dearest desk charged twenty times as much as the cheapest.
Is one USDT really worth one dollar?
Rarely. USDT traded at a median discount of around 0.08%. A business holding $1 million of USDT and valuing the tokens at $1 each could therefore receive around $800 less than it expected when converting back to dollars, before any fees.
A basis point (bp) is a hundredth of a percent: 10 bps on $100,000 is $100.
corridors and directions where stablecoins were cheaper, mostly by 10 to 40 bps. The exceptions: collecting from Brazil, where a fintech was 24 bps cheaper, and collecting from Singapore, which was a draw.
where stablecoins were cheaper: Mexico, and Turkey and Hong Kong, where the desk itself quoted wide. Every other corridor we could compare was a draw, within 5 bps.
between paying into Brazil and collecting from it, on the same stablecoin corridor. The direction of your flow, the weekend and the token’s own discount to the dollar can each outweigh the saving.
Where the business case is, and where it isn’t
Every corridor →One side of the trade, dollars to dollars
Every number here is the cost of one direction of a trade, in basis points from the fiat FX mid for the same pair at the same moment. A basis point is a hundredth of a percent: 10 bps on $100,000 is $100.
We do not report bid/ask spread. Spread is the market maker’s number: what a desk earns if one client buys and another sells. A treasurer paying suppliers in Mexico, or a marketplace collecting revenue in Brazil, does one of those things, not both, and knows what it pays as a number of basis points over mid.
Stablecoins settle 24/7. Their FX doesn’t always.
The blockchain doesn’t close on Friday. The foreign exchange market does. A desk that turns your USDT into pesos on a Saturday can’t hedge the pesos until markets reopen, so it either charges for the risk or stops quoting.
We polled each of the eight institutional desks in the study four times a day, seven days a week. Laid out across the week, the weekend shows up in the prices of some desks and not others.
LP A quoted reliably on weekdays but returned no two-sided price for any fiat currency at weekends, in any week we measured. LP B stayed open and doubled its margin: 2.5 times on euros and 2.8 times on sterling and Swiss francs. LP G did the same on Mexican pesos. Most of the others held their weekday prices.
Pool the desks together and the weekend lands on the currencies people actually pay out at weekends.
Fiat is no better. One of the two leading fintechs charged 0.48% from Monday to Friday and 1.48% on Saturdays and Sundays, every week we measured. The institutional desk widened by about 5 bps a side. The other fintech held its price.
A stablecoin can move on a Saturday. Whether anyone will give you a fair price for the other currency is a different question.
USDT is not a dollar. That is the fee nobody books.
Every stablecoin FX comparison starts from the same assumption: one USDT is worth one US dollar. For six months we also asked the institutional desks in the study what they would actually pay.
The discount travels with the token
The discount doesn’t stay in the USDT/USD market. Every major currency we tracked, from the euro to the Singapore dollar, was priced 6 to 10 bps “below interbank” against USDT, and the number sits almost exactly on the token’s own discount. At least one industry benchmark reports that stablecoin FX now prices below the interbank mid, and reads it as competition squeezing out the middleman. Our data points to a simpler explanation: the token itself trades below a dollar.
This dataset is USDT. We didn’t collect enough USDC quotes to say whether the same discount applies, and nothing here should be read as if it does.
Nobody pays the spread. You pay one side.
Treasurers move money in one direction at a time. Put the two directions side by side and a pattern appears that bid/ask spreads hide completely.
Starting and ending in dollars, the two directions sit within about 5 bps of each other almost everywhere, from euros to Mexican pesos. Brazil is different. Paying into Brazil cost 7 bps less than mid at a typical provider. Collecting from Brazil cost 83 bps. Same corridor, same desks, 90 bps apart. That isn’t a tax: Brazil’s FX tax, IOF, wasn’t charged on stablecoin trades while we measured. It’s the local price of USDT. Brazilians use it to hold and move dollars without paying IOF at a bank, and supply tightened in late June when the central bank moved against funds that imported stablecoins. So USDT trades at a premium in Brazil, and desks pay you for it on the way in and charge you for it on the way out. Before late June, the gap was nearer 25 bps. Argentina is the same story at eleven percentage points.
Now flip the switch to a business that already holds USDT.Now take a business that already holds USDT. Paying out becomes 10 to 21 bps dearer than collecting in 15 of the 17 currencies, because every payout sells the token at its discount. Brazil still tilts hard against collection.
A corridor isn’t cheap or expensive. A direction is.
Where stablecoins actually win
Every corridor we could price on both rails, in both directions, door to door. Teal means stablecoins were cheaper. Red means fiat was. Select any cell for the full price ladder.The panel shows the full price ladder for one corridor.
Weekdays, 29 July to 6 October 2026, $100,000 notional. Stablecoin costs include both legs at the same poll. “Typical” is the median quote; “best” is the best quote at each poll, which assumes you can ask every desk in the study every time. The fintech column is the cheaper of the two for each corridor. The institutional desk was sampled for three weeks in August, and its sample covered no Latin American currency other than the Mexican peso. Argentina’s stablecoin desks price the parallel-market rate (see finding 5), so it isn’t scored. The value of speed is illustrative: the cost of capital times the days saved, divided by 365.
Where there is no competition, there is no saving
There is no consolidated tape in stablecoin FX: no single feed that shows every desk’s price. Two desks asked for a price at the same minute quote different numbers, and the gap between them is the cost of not asking the second one.
On euros and sterling the best and worst desk at the same poll were about 6 bps apart. On Mexican pesos, 19. On Brazilian reais, 44. In early October, the widest desk on reais quoted more than three times the width of the narrowest, on the same days.
Where few desks compete, a price can stop behaving like a price.
One provider quoted one currency at exactly 44.0 bps of width on every quote for six months, through every move in the currency. It quoted a second currency at the same 44.0 on three polls in four. That is a fee schedule expressed as an exchange rate.
Southeast Asia shows the same thing in sharper focus. In one currency in the region, one regional desk quoted a round trip, in and straight back out, at 16 bps. Another quoted 322: twenty times the price for the same currency. In other currencies in the region, where competition was thinner, a round trip cost 138 to 286 bps.
Competition is the product. The chain is just the pipe.
In Argentina, stablecoins reveal the price. They don’t beat it.
Throughout the six months, the desks quoting Argentine pesos paid about 5.4% more pesos per dollar than the XE reference rate.
for 100,000 USDT on 6 October.
for $100,000 on the same day.
This isn’t a stablecoin saving, and it shouldn’t be sold as one. It’s the rate at which dollars actually clear for anyone who needs pesos today. The desks agreed with each other to within about 19 bps. They disagreed with the reference rate by 3.4% to 6.6%.
So the trade cuts both ways. Paying into Argentina through stablecoins delivered about 5.5% more pesos than the screen rate. Collecting from Argentina cost about 5.8% more. Neither number appears in a benchmark that quotes the official rate. An independent industry dataset put the second-quarter premium at 538 bps. Ours, over six months, is 537.
Five questions before you route a corridor through stablecoins
What does it cost door to door, in my direction?
Not the spread. Both legs, one way. In Brazil the two directions are 90 bps apart. In Argentina, eleven percentage points.
What’s the weekend price, and is there one?
Ask for Saturday quotes separately. Among the desks quoting G10 currencies, one didn’t quote fiat at weekends, one doubled its margin and the rest held. The weekday rate card won’t tell you which you have.
What price am I booking the token at?
If the answer is $1.00, your FX cost line is missing around 7.8 bps on everything you hold or sell. Mark USDT at what an institutional desk would pay for it.
What am I comparing against?
Against the cheaper of two leading fintechs, stablecoins won 30 of 32 corridor-directions. Against an institutional FX desk, 6 of 22. Ask which one any comparison uses before you rely on it.
How many desks am I asking, and how far apart are they?
On euros a second desk saves about 6 bps. On Mexican pesos, 19. On reais, 44. Below three competing desks, the price you see is a policy, not a market.
None of this argues against stablecoin payments, which Orbital’s business depends on. It argues against buying them on the pitch. Where stablecoins win, they win by a wide margin, in a direction you can name.
Want this for your own corridors?
Orbital can run this analysis on your own flows, in your directions.
How we did this
The data
From 28 April 2026 to 6 October 2026 Orbital Research requested two-sided indicative quotes for USDT against local currencies from 20 stablecoin liquidity providers at a notional of $100,000. Eight institutional desks were polled four times a day, at 00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00 UTC, seven days a week. They are the basis of every corridor figure in this report. Five regional desks appear only in the Southeast Asia comparison. The other seven sources were left out, because they quoted for only a few days or their prices were stale or clearly not tradeable. In total we collected 27,057 quotes across 52 currencies.
Over the same schedule, from 29 July to 6 October 2026, we captured published customer rates and fees from two leading fintechs in cross-border payments and FX, at the same $100,000 notional, and two-sided quotes from an institutional FX desk for three weeks in August.
The benchmark
Each quote is compared with the XE mid rate for the equivalent fiat pair at the time of the quote. XE is a consistent benchmark for measuring cost, not a rate a business can trade at. One-way cost is the distance between the price you would trade at and that mid, in basis points. Positive is a cost to you.
A second reference feed was captured alongside. For every currency in the business case map it agrees with XE to within 1.5 bps, except the Colombian peso, where the two differ by about 10 bps. Because both rails are measured against the same XE rate, that difference doesn’t affect the head-to-head comparison. The Bahraini dinar, where the feeds disagree by about 29 bps, is left out of every cost figure.
Door to door, typical and best
Paying out is US dollars to local currency: buy USDT with dollars, then sell USDT for local currency. Collecting is the reverse. Door-to-door figures add the dollar leg, priced at the same poll, so they compare directly with a single fiat conversion. The “USDT you already hold” view leaves the dollar leg out and treats the token at $1.00.
Typical is the median quote across desks and polls. Best takes the best available quote on each leg at each poll and reports the median of those, which assumes you can ask every desk in the study every time.
Head-to-head comparisons with fiat, and the corridor costs in findings 3 and 5, use 29 July to 6 October 2026, the period in which fiat prices were also captured. The token, weekend and competition findings use the full six months.
Weekends
Reference FX rates stop updating from Friday close to Sunday evening, so the weekend analysis for stablecoin desks uses half of each desk’s own quoted bid/ask width, which doesn’t depend on a benchmark. Fiat providers are measured on their all-in customer rate.
What we left out
Sources that appeared for only a few days, quotes that were stale or clearly indicative rather than tradeable, repeated copies of the same quote, and fiat quotes captured below $100,000 are excluded from every statistic.
What this data can’t tell you
These are indicative quotes, not executed trades. Fill rates, slippage and rejected quotes aren’t captured. Real execution is unlikely to be better than the quotes and may be worse. On-chain fees and the time money spends in USDT are not included.
Some currencies are quoted by more desks than others. To keep providers anonymous, we don’t publish how many desks quote each currency, so figures for thinly quoted currencies may reflect one or two providers’ pricing.
The institutional FX desk was sampled for three weeks. That is enough to compare price levels, not trends.
This is a USDT dataset. The token findings shouldn’t be generalised to USDC.
Orbital’s interest. Orbital builds stablecoin payments infrastructure, so it has a commercial interest in this market. We anonymised every provider, polled each on identical terms, and didn’t remove findings that are unflattering to the rail we sell.
This report is published for information. It is not investment, legal or tax advice, not an offer to deal, and not a recommendation of any provider, asset or route. Figures are indicative quotes at a stated notional over a stated period and won’t match the price any particular client receives. Providers are anonymised and shouldn’t be inferred. Stablecoins carry risks related to issuer solvency, reserve adequacy and evolving regulation. Data collected 28 April 2026 to 6 October 2026. Published October 2026 by Orbital Research. Reproduction with attribution is welcome.
Stablecoin FX costs: common questions
Short answers from the data in this report. Unless stated, figures are one-way costs in basis points against the fiat mid on a $100,000 payment, and a basis point is a hundredth of a percent.
Are stablecoins cheaper than traditional FX for cross-border payments?
It depends on what you compare them with, and on the direction your money moves. Orbital Research priced the full door-to-door cost of a $100,000 payment on both rails. Stablecoins were cheaper than the cheaper of two leading fintechs in cross-border payments and FX in 30 of 32 corridor-directions, mostly by 10 to 40 bps. Of the other two, a fintech was cheaper for collecting from Brazil, and collecting from Singapore was a draw. Against an institutional FX desk they were cheaper in 6 of 22 and within 5 bps in the other 16. The comparison covers weekdays from 29 July to 6 October 2026.
Which currency corridors are cheaper through stablecoins?
Against the cheaper fintech, the biggest savings were paying out to Brazil (69 bps, about $694 per $100,000), Peru in both directions (37 to 39 bps), Mexico (35 to 39 bps), Colombia (28 to 29 bps), and euros and sterling (18 to 33 bps). Against an institutional FX desk, stablecoins were cheaper only in Mexico, and in Turkey and Hong Kong, where the desk itself quoted wide. The one corridor-direction where fiat won outright was collecting from Brazil, where a fintech was 24 bps cheaper.
How much does a stablecoin cross-border payment cost?
Priced door to door, which means US dollars to USDT and USDT to local currency at the same moment, the typical quote for a $100,000 payment cost between about 4 and 26 bps one way in most corridors on weekdays. Euros and sterling cost about 4 to 6 bps, Mexican pesos about 9, and the Peruvian sol and Colombian peso about 18 to 26. Brazil and Argentina are the exceptions, because USDT trades away from the official rate there. Weekends and the direction of the payment can change the cost a lot.
How much is faster stablecoin settlement worth?
Less than most of the price differences in this report. If a stablecoin payment settles two days sooner, the business needs two fewer days of pre-funding. At a 5% cost of capital that is worth about 2.7 bps on the payment, and three days is worth about 4.1 bps. Against the cheaper of two leading fintechs, stablecoins usually saved 10 to 40 bps on price. The speed figures are illustrative: the cost of capital multiplied by the days saved, divided by 365.
Is USDT worth exactly one US dollar?
No. Across the institutional desks in the study, polled four times a day from 28 April to 6 October 2026, the median price of one USDT was $0.99922, a discount of about 7.8 bps. It traded below $0.999 on 28% of polls, and the daily median was below $1.00 on all but one day we measured. Selling USDT for dollars cost 10.1 bps. Buying it earned 5.3 bps.
Why do stablecoin FX rates sometimes look better than the interbank rate?
Because the token itself trades below a dollar. Every major currency we tracked, from the euro to the Singapore dollar, was priced 6 to 10 bps below the XE mid against USDT, almost exactly USDT’s own discount to the dollar. A USDT exchange rate is in effect the dollar rate multiplied by the price of USDT, so the discount carries into every pair. It reflects the price of the token, not cheaper FX.
Are stablecoin FX prices higher at weekends?
Often. Stablecoins settle every day, but the foreign exchange market closes at weekends, so a desk turning USDT into local currency on a Saturday either charges for the risk or stops quoting. Among the desks quoting G10 currencies, one returned no two-sided price at weekends, one doubled its margin (2.5 times on euros and 2.8 times on sterling and Swiss francs) and the rest held their prices. Converting into Mexican pesos cost 2.6 times as much at the weekend across all institutional desks. One of two leading fintechs charged 0.48% on weekdays and 1.48% at weekends.
Why does collecting money from Brazil through stablecoins cost more than paying in?
Because USDT trades at a premium in Brazil. From 29 July to 6 October 2026, paying into Brazil cost 7 bps less than mid at a typical provider, while collecting from Brazil cost 83 bps, a gap of 90 bps on the same corridor. It isn’t a tax: Brazil’s FX tax, IOF, wasn’t charged on stablecoin trades in that period. Brazilians use USDT to hold and move dollars without paying IOF at a bank, and supply tightened in late June 2026 when the central bank moved against funds that imported stablecoins. Before late June the gap was nearer 25 bps.
Do stablecoins get a better rate for payments into Argentina?
They deliver more pesos, but not because the FX is cheaper. Desks quoting Argentine pesos price the parallel-market rate, and over six months they paid about 5.4% more pesos per dollar than the XE reference rate. Paying into Argentina through stablecoins delivered about 5.5% more pesos than the screen rate, and collecting from Argentina cost about 5.8% more. It is the rate at which dollars clear in Argentina, not a stablecoin saving.
How much do stablecoin FX quotes differ between providers?
A lot where few desks compete. At the same poll, the best and worst desk were about 6 bps apart on euros and sterling, 19 bps apart on Mexican pesos and 44 bps apart on Brazilian reais. One provider quoted one currency at exactly 44.0 bps of width on every quote for six months. In one Southeast Asian currency, one regional desk quoted a round trip at 16 bps and another at 322. Below three competing desks, the price you see is closer to a policy than a market.
What should a business ask before routing payments through stablecoins?
Five things. What the door-to-door cost is in its own direction, not the spread. What the weekend price is, and whether there is one. What price it books the token at, since marking USDT at $1.00 misses around 7.8 bps on everything held or sold. Which comparator a provider’s savings claim uses. And how many desks are competing for the trade.
How did Orbital Research collect this data?
From 28 April to 6 October 2026, Orbital Research requested two-sided indicative quotes for USDT against local currencies from 20 stablecoin liquidity providers at a notional of $100,000, collecting 27,057 quotes across 52 currencies. Eight institutional desks were polled four times a day, seven days a week, and are the basis of every corridor figure. Five regional desks appear only in the Southeast Asia comparison, and the other seven sources were left out because they quoted for only a few days or their prices were stale or clearly not tradeable. Every quote was compared with the XE mid rate for the same pair at the same moment. XE is a benchmark for measuring cost, not a rate a business can trade at. From 29 July to 6 October 2026, published rates and fees from two leading fintechs were captured on the same schedule, along with quotes from an institutional FX desk for three weeks in August. Providers are anonymised, and to keep them anonymous the number of desks quoting each currency isn’t published.
The numbers behind the charts
Every chart in this report as a table. Costs are one way, in basis points against the XE mid for the same pair at the same moment. Positive is a cost to you.
Door-to-door cost by corridor: paying out
| Currency | Stablecoin, typical | Stablecoin, best | Cheaper of two leading fintechs | Institutional FX desk | Stablecoins cheaper by | Result against the fintech |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mexican peso (MXN) | 8.8 | −1.0 | 43.3 | 16.0 | 34.6 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Brazilian real (BRL) | −7.3 | −22.5 | 62.0 | no price | 69.4 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Colombian peso (COP) | 26.3 | 25.0 | 54.7 | no price | 28.5 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Peruvian sol (PEN) | 21.3 | 20.9 | 58.6 | no price | 37.3 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Euro (EUR) | 4.4 | 1.2 | 22.6 | 5.5 | 18.2 | stablecoins cheaper |
| British pound (GBP) | 4.5 | 1.6 | 26.2 | 6.7 | 21.7 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Swiss franc (CHF) | 8.0 | 6.5 | 22.2 | 7.0 | 14.3 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Polish zloty (PLN) | 14.4 | 12.9 | 28.4 | no price | 14.1 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Turkish lira (TRY) | 9.9 | 8.7 | 22.1 | 34.6 | 12.2 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Canadian dollar (CAD) | 8.9 | 7.3 | 21.4 | 8.4 | 12.5 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Australian dollar (AUD) | 8.0 | 2.6 | 21.5 | 7.8 | 13.6 | stablecoins cheaper |
| New Zealand dollar (NZD) | 12.7 | 11.3 | 24.4 | no price | 11.7 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Japanese yen (JPY) | 10.9 | 9.1 | 29.7 | 10.2 | 18.8 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Singapore dollar (SGD) | 13.9 | 9.8 | 23.5 | 15.0 | 9.6 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Hong Kong dollar (HKD) | 9.6 | 8.7 | 25.2 | 39.7 | 15.6 | stablecoins cheaper |
| UAE dirham (AED) | 6.0 | 4.1 | 23.1 | 5.5 | 17.1 | stablecoins cheaper |
Door-to-door cost by corridor: collecting
| Currency | Stablecoin, typical | Stablecoin, best | Cheaper of two leading fintechs | Institutional FX desk | Stablecoins cheaper by | Result against the fintech |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mexican peso (MXN) | 9.3 | 3.9 | 47.8 | 14.7 | 38.6 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Brazilian real (BRL) | 83.0 | 48.0 | 59.0 | no price | −24.0 | fiat cheaper |
| Colombian peso (COP) | 21.8 | 21.0 | 51.3 | no price | 29.4 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Peruvian sol (PEN) | 17.8 | 17.1 | 57.0 | no price | 39.3 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Euro (EUR) | 6.0 | 3.6 | 39.3 | 6.3 | 33.3 | stablecoins cheaper |
| British pound (GBP) | 6.3 | 4.3 | 28.6 | 7.2 | 22.3 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Swiss franc (CHF) | 10.8 | 8.3 | 17.7 | 6.3 | 6.9 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Polish zloty (PLN) | 14.2 | 13.3 | 50.8 | no price | 36.6 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Turkish lira (TRY) | 12.0 | 11.3 | 23.4 | 36.6 | 11.4 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Canadian dollar (CAD) | 9.6 | 8.2 | 40.5 | 7.6 | 30.9 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Australian dollar (AUD) | 8.0 | 5.3 | 27.6 | 7.4 | 19.6 | stablecoins cheaper |
| New Zealand dollar (NZD) | 13.2 | 11.6 | 21.4 | no price | 8.3 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Japanese yen (JPY) | 9.3 | 8.4 | 48.6 | 9.6 | 39.3 | stablecoins cheaper |
| Singapore dollar (SGD) | 13.5 | 11.8 | 15.3 | 14.9 | 1.8 | draw |
| Hong Kong dollar (HKD) | 11.6 | 10.9 | 35.6 | 39.4 | 24.0 | stablecoins cheaper |
| UAE dirham (AED) | 10.3 | 7.0 | 50.3 | 7.9 | 40.0 | stablecoins cheaper |
USDT against the US dollar
| Measure | Price | bps against $1.00 |
|---|---|---|
| Median price, 28 April to 6 October 2026 | $0.99922 | −7.8 |
| Lowest single quote | $0.99821 | −17.9 |
| Lowest daily median | $0.99853 | −14.7 |
| Daily median in early October | $0.99976 | −2.4 |
| Share of polls below $0.999 | 28% | |
| Days with a daily median at or above $1.00 | 1 | |
| Cost of selling USDT for dollars | 10.1 | |
| Cost of buying USDT with dollars (negative is a gain) | −5.3 |
Stablecoin mid against XE mid, major currencies
| Currency | Stablecoin mid minus XE mid |
|---|---|
| Norwegian krone (NOK) | −10.2 |
| Japanese yen (JPY) | −10.2 |
| Canadian dollar (CAD) | −8.2 |
| Australian dollar (AUD) | −7.9 |
| Singapore dollar (SGD) | −7.8 |
| Polish zloty (PLN) | −7.8 |
| New Zealand dollar (NZD) | −7.8 |
| British pound (GBP) | −7.7 |
| Swiss franc (CHF) | −7.5 |
| Euro (EUR) | −7.2 |
| Hong Kong dollar (HKD) | −6.8 |
| UAE dirham (AED) | −5.6 |
Weekday and weekend cost by currency
| Currency | Weekday | Weekend | Weekend ÷ weekday |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mexican peso (MXN) | 5.7 | 15.0 | 2.61 |
| Japanese yen (JPY) | 7.9 | 17.8 | 2.26 |
| Norwegian krone (NOK) | 8.8 | 18.8 | 2.14 |
| Canadian dollar (CAD) | 6.8 | 14.3 | 2.12 |
| Swiss franc (CHF) | 7.0 | 13.2 | 1.88 |
| Brazilian real (BRL) | 30.3 | 50.3 | 1.66 |
| New Zealand dollar (NZD) | 9.6 | 15.5 | 1.61 |
| Singapore dollar (SGD) | 12.8 | 18.4 | 1.44 |
| Argentine peso (ARS) | 10.3 | 13.3 | 1.30 |
| British pound (GBP) | 3.4 | 3.4 | 1.00 |
| USDT/USD, the token | 2.0 | 2.0 | 1.00 |
| UAE dirham (AED) | 6.5 | 5.5 | 0.85 |
| Euro (EUR) | 3.5 | 3.0 | 0.85 |
| Australian dollar (AUD) | 6.0 | 4.0 | 0.67 |
Weekday and weekend cost by provider
| Provider | Weekday | Weekend |
|---|---|---|
| LP A | 8.4 | no weekend price |
| LP B | 7.7 | 15.8 |
| LP C | 3.0 | 4.0 |
| LP E | 2.0 | 2.0 |
| LP D | 22.0 | 22.0 |
| LP F | 12.9 | 14.4 |
| LP G | 8.0 | 15.2 |
| LP H | 50.5 | 51.3 |
| Fintech A | 22.6 | 20.9 |
| Fintech B | 48.6 | 142.5 |
| Institutional FX desk | 5.5 | 8.3 |
Best, median and worst desk at the same poll
| Currency | Best desk | Median desk | Worst desk | Best to worst |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Euro (EUR) | 7.1 | 9.3 | 12.8 | 5.7 |
| British pound (GBP) | 8.2 | 10.2 | 13.7 | 5.5 |
| Australian dollar (AUD) | 8.7 | 14.0 | 16.6 | 7.8 |
| Canadian dollar (CAD) | 14.8 | 15.9 | 16.6 | 1.8 |
| Mexican peso (MXN) | 5.3 | 12.8 | 24.4 | 19.1 |
| Brazilian real (BRL) | −23.4 | −12.8 | 20.8 | 44.1 |
Argentine pesos per dollar
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Median gap, stablecoin desk bid against the XE reference rate, six months | 5.4% |
| Range of the gap | 3.4% to 6.6% |
| Paying into Argentina through stablecoins | about 5.5% more pesos than the screen rate |
| Collecting from Argentina through stablecoins | about 5.8% dearer than the screen rate |
| Pesos for 100,000 USDT through a stablecoin desk, 6 October 2026 | 159.9m |
| Pesos for $100,000 at the XE reference rate, same day | 152.0m |
| Difference between the desks quoting pesos | about 19 bps |
How to cite this report. Orbital Research (2026). The honest price of stablecoin FX: 27,057 stablecoin FX quotes from 20 stablecoin liquidity providers, priced against fiat rails, 28 April to 6 October 2026. https://www.getorbital.com/the-honest-price-of-stablecoin-fx. Charts and figures may be reproduced with attribution to Orbital Research.
Disclaimer:
This report is produced by Pay Perform Technologies Ltd.
Important: The views and information shared here are for general informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, legal, or other professional advice. No representations or warranties are made as to the accuracy, reliability, completeness, or timeliness of the data or content provided. The analysis is subject to known limitations, assumptions, and estimation methods including but not limited as outlined in the Methodology & Limitations section. Readers should conduct their own due diligence and consult with a qualified advisor before making any financial decisions. Mentions of specific digital assets, protocols, or platforms are for analytical purposes only and do not constitute endorsements or evaluations of their quality, stability, legality, or regulatory status. Orbital does not recommend buying, selling, or holding any particular digital asset and makes no representations regarding the suitability of any such asset for any use.
Orbital is the trading name representing the Pay Perform group of traditional financial and digital asset service providers. Regulatory status of Orbital’s services differs per jurisdiction, and you may not be protected by government or regulatory protection schemes. Please see Legal Disclosures for more information or reach out to us at: hello@getorbital.com.
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