Why Stablecoins, Not Bitcoin, Will Dominate Global Transactions

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 rapidly becoming an ideal non-sovereign global store of value, with a market capitalization of $2.3 trillion, but stablecoins serve a transactional purpose and thus have already vastly 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 transaction volume.

There’s a simple reason for this. Stablecoins aren’t just an investible asset to hold, they have real-world utility. Stablecoins are powering a lot more than just DeFi. They are increasingly being used as a global currency powering payments and cross-border money flows. Moreover, with artificial intelligence integrating into everyday life and soon into commerce, stablecoins are likely to be the currency of machine-to-machine transactions by AI agents.

Bitcoin’s uses are growing as wrapped BTC and emerging 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 future of finance. 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 then capture the bulk of day-to-day payment use.

Chart: Chainalysis 2025 Global Adoption Index

Look at Venezuela, where USDT has become the backbone of daily economic activity. With rampant inflation — the IMF puts it at 180% — and a short supply of physical dollars, this certainly is an extreme example, but it provides a direct use case showing how easy it is to pay for groceries or a haircut in stablecoins.

Stablecoins are rapidly 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 ill-suited for everyday transactions, while stablecoins settle in seconds, cost pennies (in some cases under a cent), and preserve value stability.

It’s all about utility

The success of stablecoins isn’t about speculation but about efficient utility — they are quietly becoming the most-used form of digital currency around the world. Stablecoins are quickly disrupting the global remittance market, a sector worth around $780 billion annually, by offering faster, lower-cost 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 accessible. And as stablecoins are incorporated by fintechs and payments processors, most people will have no idea that behind the scenes, they are using blockchain rails.

The current U.S. administration has made very clear that it sees stablecoins as a financial innovation, vital to keeping the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It has put its weight behind them, evidenced by the passage of the GENIUS Act as the first step in this process.

While 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 U.S.-regulated stablecoins can compete globally or be buried under conflicting oversight. This administration must ensure it enables dollar-backed stablecoins to dominate on the world stage, or risk losing control of the future of money.

I think that in the short-term, for all the reasons listed above, the total minted value of stablecoins could exceed the market cap of bitcoin.