In today’s newsletter, Fintech Wrap Up’s Sam Boboev explains how stablecoins can become a payment rail in the digital economy.
Then, in Ask the Experts, we provide advisors with takeaways from last week’s Consensus Conference in Miami—the key themes: Wall Street agrees.
Stablecoins are becoming payments infrastructure, not cryptoassets
Stablecoins started out as a narrow solution for cryptocurrency traders who needed a reliable way to move between volatile assets without exiting the market, but that initial use case no longer defines their role in today’s financial system.
What’s happening now is a tectonic shift in how stablecoins are used, who is using them, and their place in the broader financial system.
Stablecoins have gone through three distinct phases over the past decade. In their early years, they served primarily as liquidity vehicles for trading, allowing capital to move faster between exchanges. As decentralized finance expands, they become core collateral tools, supporting lending and yield generation strategies across the crypto-native ecosystem. Today, however, they are entering their third phase, where their main role is no longer related to the cryptocurrency market, but to real-world financial operations, especially in payments and financial management.
This shift is important because it fundamentally changes the economic purpose of stablecoins. They no longer just facilitate activity in the cryptocurrency space; they are increasingly used to move funds across borders, between institutions, and within corporate financial workflows.
From an operational efficiency perspective, the reasons behind this shift are not difficult to understand. Traditional cross-border payments rely on correspondent banking networks, which introduce multiple layers of intermediaries, each adding to the cost, delay and complexity of transactions. Settlement can take days, visibility is limited, and liquidity tends to become fragmented across jurisdictions.
Stablecoins compress most of the complexity into a single programmable layer. Transactions can be settled in near real-time, run continuously and are not affected by banking hours, and value can be transferred across borders without the need for multiple agency relationships. For finance teams managing global operations, this is not a marginal improvement, but a meaningful change in how liquidity is deployed and controlled.
What’s especially important is that this shift is being driven by institutions rather than retail users. Stablecoin activity is increasingly concentrated in business-to-business flows, with businesses using them for cross-border supplier payments, internal fund transfers and liquidity management across different markets. This shows that stablecoins are no longer being used as a speculative tool, but as an operational financial tool.
At the same time, the structure of the market itself continues to evolve. The early growth of stablecoins was driven by relatively unregulated liquidity, where speed of adoption was often prioritized over transparency and compliance. This dynamic is now reversing as institutional involvement increases. Financial institutions need clear provisioning support, auditable structures and regulatory coordination before integrating any new assets into their operations.
As a result, there is a clear shift towards regulated and fully compliant stablecoins that can meet these standards and integrate more seamlessly with existing banking infrastructure. This has led to a degree of consolidation in the market, with trust, transparency and regulatory positioning becoming as important as scale.
This also redefines how stablecoins are understood from a competitive perspective. They are often grouped with other cryptoassets, but their real point of comparison lies elsewhere. Stablecoins are increasingly competing with traditional financial infrastructure such as agent banking networks, card payment systems and foreign exchange mechanisms, particularly in areas where speed, cost efficiency and programmability offer clear advantages.
This does not mean that existing systems will be completely replaced, but it does suggest that stablecoins will begin to capture specific parts of financial activity where their structural advantages are most evident. Over time, this could lead to a reallocation of value across the financial ecosystem rather than a complete replacement of legacy systems.
The strategic implication is that the value of stablecoins will not be determined solely by their market cap or trading volume, but by how deeply they are embedded in real financial workflows. The most meaningful opportunities lie in their integration into treasury operations, cross-border payment systems, capital markets infrastructure and custody solutions, where they can act as a connectivity layer between different parts of the financial stack.
What follows is a broader pattern that recurs in financial innovation. New infrastructure often emerges in less regulated environments, expands rapidly due to its efficiency, and is then reshaped through institutional adoption and regulatory frameworks. Stablecoins are now entering the latter phase, where their future will be defined less by experimentation and more by integration and standardization.
The next phase of development will depend on how effectively stablecoins can be integrated into existing financial systems without undermining the trust, compliance and stability these systems require. Banks, fintechs and payments providers will play a central role in determining how this integration unfolds and which models gain mass traction.
Stablecoins are no longer a peripheral development in the cryptocurrency market. They are becoming part of the infrastructure through which money flows, and their impact will be determined by how they reshape the fundamental mechanics of global finance rather than their origins in the crypto ecosystem.
– Sam Boboev, FinTech CEO
Ask the experts
Last week’s Consensus conference hosted by CoinDesk was a huge event, with 15,000 registered attendees from over 110 countries, over 300 media, over 180 sponsors and distinguished speakers. While onsite, I had the opportunity to interact with multiple thought leaders and consultants, and I review some of my observations below.
Q: What stood out to a room full of consultants this year?
The change is not in the topic, but in the people in the room. While the focus in past years has been client curiosity about cryptocurrencies, this year the conversation is led by representatives from some of Wall Street’s biggest institutions. The message is clear: the demand is real, the launch of ETFs has proven this, and the pressure is growing to offer more products.
“In the past, having cryptocurrencies in a portfolio was an asymmetric risk. Now, the asymmetric risk is not having cryptocurrencies.”
Q: What obstacles are large enterprises overcoming?
There are two main themes: education and guardianship.
Advisor education: Major institutions are launching massive internal programs to keep tens of thousands of advisors up to date on digital assets—what the products are, where they fit in portfolios, and which clients are suitable.
Custody: Ensuring client assets are safe, protected and trading liquidity remains a key issue. Institutional-grade hosting infrastructure is a prerequisite before wider rollout.
Q: How do different agencies address this issue?
Panelists noted that this journey takes about five years for large institutions — and the path forward varies from company to company.
A “vertical-first” approach: A major bank’s digital assets unit digs deep before going broad – building expertise and governance in focused verticals before integrating crypto into the overall portfolio conversation. The process requires CIO-level support and spans compliance, risk and financial crime teams.
A “getting everyone on board” approach: Others focus on broad internal coordination—getting all stakeholders, from risk committees to individual advisors, on the same page before expanding client access. The focus is on suitability: which clients are ready, how to allocate alongside traditional assets, and how to handle RIA relationships.
Consultant’s gains
The institution that shapes the way most Americans invest is now actively offering clients access to cryptocurrencies. The question has shifted from “if” to “how”—and the answers increasingly involve advisor education, institutional custody, and portfolio integration frameworks. The foundation laid today will determine the speed of mainstream access.
– Sarah Morton
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