ProShares launches first stablecoin-ready money market ETF under GENIUS Act

ProShares on Thursday launched a money market exchange-traded fund designed to hold assets that qualify as reserves for dollar-backed stablecoins under U.S. law.

The ProShares GENIUS Money Market ETF (NYSE Arca: IQMM) is structured to comply with the GENIUS Act, signed into law last July, which requires stablecoin issuers to back tokens 1:1 with safe, liquid assets such as U.S. Treasury bills.

The law limits eligible reserve assets to highly liquid instruments, including Treasury bills with maturities of 93 days or less. IQMM is structured around that requirement, investing only in cash and short-dated U.S. government securities that meet the statute’s reserve criteria.

By capping maturities at roughly three months, the fund aims to help issuers meet daily redemption requests without having to sell longer-dated bonds at a loss during periods of market stress.

The launch comes as the stablecoin market sits just under $300 billion in circulation according to The Block data, led by Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC. But policymakers and analysts expect this number could grow as much as tenfold in the next four to five years.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has previously said the market could surpass $2 trillion by 2028 and later suggested it could reach as much as $3 trillion by 2030.

Wall Street forecasts span an even wider range. In a September report, Citi raised its base-case projection for stablecoin issuance to $1.9 trillion by 2030 and outlined a bull case of $4 trillion, citing accelerating institutional adoption and regulatory clarity.

Standard Chartered, meanwhile, has projected a roughly $2 trillion market by the end of the decade and warned that as much as $500 billion could migrate out of U.S. bank deposits into stablecoins by 2028.