Bitcoin may dominate 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 world.
Yes, the original cryptocurrency is quickly becoming an ideal non-sovereign global store of value, with a market capitalization of $2.3 trillion, but stablecoins have a transactional purpose and therefore have already far surpassed bitcoin in daily transactions. On October 6, Bitcoin’s 24-hour volume was $63.8 billion, compared to stablecoins’ $146 billion, more than double the trading volume.
There is a simple reason for this. Stablecoins are not just an asset to invest in, they have real utility. Stablecoins power more than just DeFi. They are increasingly used as a global currency enabling cross-border payments and money flows. Moreover, with the integration of artificial intelligence into daily life and soon commerce, stablecoins are likely to become the currency of machine-to-machine transactions of AI agents.
Uses for Bitcoin are growing as wrapped BTC and emerging Layer 2 Bitcoin networks seek to integrate it into DeFi and allow 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 future of finance. Stablecoins are specifically designed to provide a better solution for global payments than the traditional, centralized status quo (SWIFT, ACH and credit card payments). As adoption grows, stablecoins will then capture the majority of daily payments usage.
Chart: Chainalysis Global Adoption Index 2025
Look at Venezuela, where USDT has become the backbone of daily economic activity. With inflation soaring – the IMF puts it at 180% – and a shortage of physical dollars, this is certainly an extreme example, but it provides a direct use case of how easy it is to pay for groceries or a haircut in stablecoins.
Stablecoins are quickly gaining traction because they do what Bitcoin has never been able to do at scale: facilitate instant peer-to-peer payments. Bitcoin’s ten-minute block times, network fees, and volatility make it unsuitable for everyday transactions, while stablecoins settle in seconds, cost pennies (in some cases less than a penny), and maintain the stability of their value.
It’s all about utility
The success of stablecoins is not a matter of speculation but a matter of effective utility: they are quietly becoming the most widely used form of digital currency in the world. Stablecoins are rapidly disrupting the global remittance market, an industry worth around $780 billion a year, by providing faster and cheaper cross-border transfers.
They’re also starting to disrupt the payments market, as giants like Stripe, Visa, PayPal, and other fintechs integrate stablecoin payments that are faster, cheaper, usable 24/7, and accessible globally. And as 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 clear that it views stablecoins as a financial innovation, essential to maintaining the dollar as the global reserve currency. He threw his weight behind them, as evidenced by the passage of the GENIUS Act, the first step in this process.
As agencies draft regulatory “rules of conduct” for stablecoins under the GENIUS Act, the devil is in the details; how reserve assets are defined, which entities are allowed to issue dollar-backed tokens, what redemption rights are guaranteed to users, and whether these digital dollars can flow freely between public and private blockchains. These choices will determine whether U.S.-regulated stablecoins can compete globally or be buried under adversarial oversight. This administration must ensure that dollar-backed stablecoins can dominate on the global stage or risk losing control of the future of the currency.
I believe that in the short term, for all the reasons listed above, the total issued value of stablecoins could exceed the market capitalization of bitcoin.
