208 Annual Reports Mentioned Stablecoins. Last Year: 61.

In 2024, thirty-five American annual reports used the word stablecoin. This year, 208 have.

That is from a full-text search of every filing in the SEC's EDGAR system, run on 10 October. The same search across all form types returns 2,446 filings so far in 2026, against 1,955 in all of 2025 and 459 in 2024.

The shape of the curve

The series goes 25, 32, 222, 280, 289, 459, 1,955, and now 2,446 with two and a half months of the year left.

Two things stand out. The first is 2021, where the count jumps nearly sevenfold off a very small base, from 32 filings to 222. The search returns counts, not causes, and this article does not offer one.

The second is 2025. The GENIUS Act, the American law for dollar stablecoins, was enacted on 18 July that year. Of 2025's 1,955 filings, 574 came before that date and 1,381 after. Seventy-one per cent of the year's mentions landed in its last five and a half months.

It is not the same companies

A rising count could just mean crypto firms filing more. The form mix says otherwise.

In 2024 the single most common form carrying the word was the S-1, the registration statement a company files to sell securities, with 100 filings. That is the paperwork of arrival: new issuers describing a new business.

In 2026 the most common form is the 485BPOS, with 294. That is the annual update to a mutual fund's prospectus. Behind it come the 8-K at 253, the 10-K at 208, the S-1 at 206, the foreign issuer's 6-K at 166 and the 10-Q at 146.

Among the heaviest individual filers this year are fund families: State Street Institutional Investment Trust, BlackRock Funds, Goldman Sachs Trust, Dreyfus, Global X, Amplify. These are not crypto companies describing a product. They are fund complexes adding a line to a risk section across dozens of share classes.

The annual report is the clearest signal

Form 10-K is the most conservative document a US public company produces, and the slowest to change. The series there is 5, 23, 28, 35, 61, 208 across 2021 to 2026.

Because 10-Ks are filed overwhelmingly between February and April, the 2026 figure is effectively a complete season rather than a part-year. On that basis the jump is 61 to 208, a multiple of 3.4 in one reporting cycle.

The statutory phrase moves the same way. Filings using the exact term "payment stablecoin", the one the GENIUS Act defines, number 52 in 2024, 132 in 2025 and 299 so far in 2026.

Why a payments team should care

Disclosure language is a leading indicator of procurement. A risk factor is written because a lawyer believes the company's own auditors, insurers or investors will ask about the thing. By the time a word is in 208 annual reports, the conversations behind it have already happened.

It also tells you who to sell to. The count is no longer concentrated in firms whose business is the coin. It is in fund complexes, in foreign issuers filing 6-Ks, and in the 8-Ks that announce deals. If you supply payment infrastructure, the relevant buyer is now a treasury or product team at an incumbent that has started writing the word down.

What this is not

This counts filings, not companies. A fund family that files the same prospectus language for forty share classes produces forty hits. The entity facet EDGAR returns is capped at thirty names, so HaiPay cannot report a distinct-filer count from it and does not.

It counts the presence of a word, not a position. A filing that mentions stablecoins to say the company has no exposure is counted the same as one announcing an issuance.

EDGAR full-text search covers filings from 2001 onward, so the series has no earlier history to compare against, and 2026 is a partial year against full years.

HaiPay did not read the 2,446 filings and offers no explanation for any year's level beyond what the counts themselves show.

HaiPay did not contact the SEC or any filer.

What to watch

Whether the 2027 annual-report season holds at the 2026 level or keeps climbing. The GENIUS Act applies from 18 January 2027, which lands inside the drafting window for most 10-Ks.

Whether the fund prospectuses stay the largest block. If they do, the word has finished its journey into boilerplate, which is usually where terms go to stop being news.

And whether "payment stablecoin", the statutory term, overtakes the generic one in the filings of operating companies. That would be the point at which American firms are describing a regulated instrument rather than a market.