Interactive Brokers has unleashed a new feature that lets eligible US clients fund their brokerage accounts using stablecoins. The firm claims the process is near-instant, operates 24/7 (yes, even on weekends and holidays), and allows users to start trading across 170 global markets within minutes of initiating a transfer. This is the financial equivalent of getting a pizza delivered before the dough even hits the oven, a concept that likely makes traditional bankers break out in a cold sweat.
This move follows an update from last year where Interactive Brokers hinted at exploring stablecoin support for round-the-clock funding. The feature aims to tackle the slowness and high costs of traditional cross-border transfers, especially in regions where USD wire transfers bounce between multiple correspondent banks like a pinball in a machine that’s been tilted. Stablecoins, being crypto’s answer to "I need this done now," settle almost instantly and outside normal banking hours, proving that money doesn’t actually need to sleep.
Here’s how it works: Clients send USD Coin (USDC) from their crypto wallet to a secure wallet provided through a collaboration with zerohash. Once received, the stablecoin is automatically converted into US dollars and credited to the brokerage account. Interactive Brokers plans to add support for Ripple’s stablecoin (RLUSD) and PayPal’s stablecoin (PYUSD) next week, because nothing says "we’re serious" like offering a buffet of digital dollars for the degen crowd.
Alongside the stablecoin news, Interactive Brokers reported that its clients outperformed the S&P 500 in 2025. Individual clients saw an average return of 19.2%, compared to the S&P 500’s 17.9%. Retail client activity remained robust, with daily average revenue trades hitting 3.384 million in December and 4.399 million client accounts by year-end, holding $779.9 billion in equity. Hedge fund clients posted an even higher average return of 28.91%, proving that while retail is busy, the big fish are still swimming in a different ocean. The company credited the performance to lower trading costs, execution quality, and global market access, along with interest on uninvested cash and margin rates below industry averages, a combination that suggests they’ve finally figured out how to make the house edge slightly less terrifying.
