Bitcoin may dominate the crypto headlines, but the real growth story of the next five years will be stablecoins, the digital dollars that are modernizing the way money moves around the globe.
Yes, the original cryptocurrency is fast becoming an ideal non-sovereign global store of value with a market cap of $2.3 trillion, but stablecoins serve a transactional purpose and have therefore already surpassed bitcoin in daily transactions. As of October 6, bitcoin’s 24-hour volume was $63.8 billion, compared to stablecoins’ $146 billion — more than double the transaction volume.
There is a simple reason for this. Stablecoins are not just an investable asset to hold, they have real values. Stablecoins drive much more than just DeFi. They are increasingly used as a global currency that drives payments and cross-border money flows. Furthermore, with artificial intelligence integrated into everyday life and soon into commerce, stablecoins will likely be the currency for machine-to-machine transactions by AI agents.
Bitcoin’s uses are growing as wrapped BTC and new Bitcoin Layer 2 networks seek to integrate it into DeFi and enable dApps to be built on top of it – but fundamentally, bitcoin will remain a store of value. Other blockchains do a much better job of providing a decentralized, smart-contract-programmable platform on which to build the economy of the future. Stablecoins are purpose-built to offer a better solution for global payments than the traditional, centralized status quo (SWIFT, ACH and credit card payments). As mainstream adoption grows, stablecoins will capture the majority of daily payment usage.
Chart: Chainalysis 2025 Global Adoption Index
Look at Venezuela, where USDT has become the backbone of daily economic activity. With rampant inflation – the IMF estimates it at 180% – and a shortage of physical dollars, this is certainly an extreme example, but it provides a direct use case showing how easy it is to pay for groceries or a clip in stablecoins.
Stablecoins are quickly gaining traction because they do what bitcoin never could at scale – facilitate instant peer-to-peer payments. Bitcoin’s ten-minute block times, network fees, and volatility make it unsuitable for daily transactions, while stablecoins settle in seconds, cost pennies (in some cases, less than a cent), and maintain value stability.
It’s all about utility
Stablecoins’ success is not about speculation, but about effective utility – they are quietly becoming the most widely used form of digital currency around the world. Stablecoins are rapidly disrupting the global money transfer market, a sector worth around $780 billion annually, by offering faster and cheaper cross-border transfers.
They are also starting to disrupt the payments market as giants like Stripe, Visa, PayPal and other fintechs incorporate stablecoin payments that are faster, cheaper, usable 24/7 and globally available. And since stablecoins are incorporated by fintechs and payment processors, most people will have no idea that behind the scenes they are using blockchain rails.
The current US administration has made it very clear that it sees stablecoins as a financial innovation essential to keeping the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It has put its weight behind them, as evidenced by the passage of the GENIUS Act as the first step in this process.
As agencies draft the regulatory ‘rules of the road’ for stablecoins under the GENIUS Act, the devil will be in the details; how reserve assets are defined, which entities are permitted to issue dollar-backed tokens, what redemption rights users are guaranteed, and whether these digital dollars can move freely across public and private blockchains. These choices will determine whether US-regulated stablecoins can compete globally or be buried under adversarial oversight. This administration must ensure that it enables dollar-backed stablecoins to dominate the world stage or risk losing control of the money of the future.
I believe that in the short term, for all the above reasons, the total minted value of stablecoins may exceed the market value of bitcoin.
