Stablecoins aren’t “crypto dollars”

Yeah, stablecoins did $33 Trillion in volume in 2025. Countries now adapt to transacting and storing money with stablecoins. Circle's USDC did $18.3 trillion last year, wallets like MetaMask introduced spending stablecoins with card, Visa getting at the top of stablecoin's game...

While many still think stablecoins are crypto dollars, it is obvious they are much more, they are payment rails, view them as infrastructure instead.

Understanding that will avoid bad product decisions, lazy regulation debates, and mispriced risk.

At the Capital Layer -- Stablecoins, RWA & Institutional Builders Day with RedStone, Nibiru, and others in Argentina, we discussed reasons stablecoins will replace/blend with existing traditional payments rails we are used to.

The truth is, banks and big instutions are taking actions behind the scene to retain their position & relevance when it comes to international payment system.

If we refer to stablecoins as just crypto dollars, then success will look like adoption as savings, long-term holding, and minimal velocity.

However, if we progress and really consider them as payment rails, then we'll measure success by high velocity, deep liquidity, reliability under stress, and low friction for integration.

Payments beat ideology every time.

Local users don’t care that a stablecoin is decentralized. They care that it clears faster than banks, doesn’t get frozen mid-transfer, and works on weekends.

That alone shows that the tech (i.e decentralization), or name (i.e crypto dollars), is not what people care about in reality, it is more about what they are able to achieve with it (i.e fast payment, less fees, etc).

Finally, if you are building stablecoin as a payment rail, then you should find yourself asking questions like can this rail handle stress, scale, and hostile conditions?

Because users don’t adopt stablecoins for what they are.

They adopt them for what they let them do.

Sources: Bloomberg, Artemis.