Stablecoins have spent most of their existence being treated as a crypto-native curiosity — useful for moving money between exchanges, but not something mainstream financial infrastructure needed to care about. That characterisation no longer holds.
PayPal's PYUSD crossed $5 billion in circulation in early 2026. Visa settled over $1 billion in transactions using USDC on Solana in Q4 2025. The BIS mBridge project processed its first live cross-border settlement in late 2025.
Previous stablecoin waves broke on regulatory uncertainty. What is different now is that major jurisdictions have published clear frameworks: MiCA in Europe, the Payment Stablecoin Act in the US, and equivalent legislation in Singapore and the UAE.
The efficiency case is hard to argue with. Correspondent banking involves chains of intermediaries and fees that can run to 5-7% for smaller transactions. A stablecoin transfer settles in seconds for fractions of a cent.