Stablecoin supply has stalled, and the Williams-Sonoma assistant converts at three times the rate of an ordinary visit

Stablecoin supply has stopped growing. Bloomberg reported on 4 September 2026 that growth has stalled after a two-year climb, with weaker crypto trading cutting demand for the tokens traders use to park cash, and that the pause lands just as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been selling stablecoin issuers as a new source of demand for Treasury bills [1].

Circle’s own quarterly releases carry the same story in two numbers. USDC in circulation was $77.0 billion at the end of March 2026 and $73.3 billion at the end of June [2][3]. This morning DefiLlama reads USDC at $74.7 billion and Tether’s USDT at $183.4 billion, and CoinGecko reads $74.6 billion and $183.4 billion, so the two aggregators agree on the two coins that carry most of the market [4][5]. They disagree on the total, DefiLlama counting $311 billion of dollar-pegged supply against $291 billion in CoinGecko’s stablecoin category, because each counts a different set of tokens [4][5]. PYMNTS, citing CoinDesk and RWA.xyz, put the fall from the May peak at about $10 billion by mid-July, roughly 3 per cent and the biggest such decline since 2023 [6].

At Jackson Hole on 27 August, Pablo Hernández de Cos of the Bank for International Settlements said tokenised deposits keep the tight link to deposit-taking that stablecoins do not, and that the same stablecoin on two different chains is not interoperable without risky or costly workarounds, per Payments Dive [7].

If you settle in stablecoins, the supply chart is the least of it. The working question is which chain your counterparty’s USDC sits on, and the BIS has now said so at a Federal Reserve symposium.

Williams-Sonoma’s assistant converts at three times the rate

Sameer Hassan, chief technology and digital officer at Williams-Sonoma, told the company’s second quarter earnings call on 26 August 2026 that customers who use Olive, the assistant on the Williams Sonoma site, convert at three times the rate of those who do not [8][9]. Engagement with Olive is up 700 per cent since the start of the year and revenue attributed to it is up 620 per cent [8][10]. Otto, the Pottery Barn assistant that rolled out in August, resolves over 70 per cent of engagements without handing the customer to a person [9][10]. A personalised visit now generates roughly nine times the revenue of an average visit, against two times a year ago [9][10].

The percentages start from a base the company does not print. Olive lives on the merchant’s site, the merchant keeps the checkout, and the model never holds a card. That is the version of agentic commerce producing numbers on an earnings call.

Stripe hires for stablecoin cards

Stripe has hired Drew Turchin to lead its stablecoin-based card business, Payments Dive reported on 3 September [11]. He arrives from Native Markets, the startup that issued the USDH stablecoin with Hyperliquid, and before that ran business development, partnerships and ventures at Uniswap Labs in New York [11]. Coingape had the appointment on 27 August, placing him with Henri Stern and Max Segall on Stripe’s stablecoin card team [12]. In the LinkedIn post announcing the role, Turchin wrote that cards are “making those balances instantly spendable in everyday life” [11].

PicPay lets Claude read the ledger and not touch it

PicPay, the Brazilian payments app, announced on 3 September 2026 that customers can ask Claude about their accounts after authenticating in PicPay: balances, outstanding bills, investments, active cards, favourite Pix contacts, recent transactions and card statements [13]. It is free on Android and iOS, rolls out through an early-access list, works on any Claude tier, and follows a ChatGPT plugin the company shipped earlier [13][14]. The experience does not support financial transactions through Claude [14]. The model reads the ledger, and nothing it says moves money.

The Global Fintech Fest opens at the Jio World Centre in Mumbai on 8 September and runs to 11 September [15]. Reuters, via Deccan Chronicle, reports that NPCI plans to use it to unveil the Unified Agent Protocol, which would let an AI agent pay on UPI inside limits the user sets in advance, built on UPI Circle and Reserve Pay [16][17].