MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — After years of experimentation, today’s cryptocurrencies have boiled down to two core uses: transactions and payments.
Speaking during a fireside chat at Consensus 2026 in Miami, Dan Romero, Tempo’s head of marketing, said the industry is forming a “barbell” between speculative trading such as the Hyperliquid market on the one hand and the growing popularity of stablecoin-based payments on the other.
“What’s worked over the past five years is speculation and stablecoins,” he said. “There’s a bit of a wasteland in the middle,” he added, describing many projects that struggle to find product-market fit despite years of development and financing.
Romero speaks from experience. Prior to joining Tempo, he was the co-founder of Farcaster, a crypto social app that struggled to gain traction despite significant venture funding and years of hype.
Tempo, a payments-focused blockchain powered by Stripe and Paradigm, has firmly positioned itself on the payments side of this divide. The network is built as a purpose-built, first-layer blockchain focused on enterprise needs such as compliance and transaction control—features often lacking in public blockchains.
For example, companies can block interactions with certain wallet addresses, a feature designed to reduce regulatory risk, Romero said.
The design reflects a broader shift in how big companies approach cryptocurrencies. Instead of trying to use tokens, many people are adopting stablecoins as their backend infrastructure. “This is the pipeline,” the executive said. “But businesses like better, faster, cheaper ductwork.”
Stablecoins are already making headway in areas such as remittances. One example cited was cross-border payments between the United States and Mexico, where cryptocurrency rail now accounts for a growing share of flows.
The next wave may come from internet-native companies. He said startups, especially those built around artificial intelligence agents, may default to stablecoins as the easiest way to move money around the world — much like Stripe simplified online payments more than a decade ago.