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 world.
Yes, the native cryptocurrency is fast 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 significantly overtaken Bitcoin in daily transactions. On October 6, Bitcoin’s 24-hour volume was $63.8 billion, while that of stablecoins was $146 billion – more than double the transaction volume.
There is a simple reason for this. Stablecoins are not just investable assets, they have real-world utility. Stablecoins are powering much more than just DeFi. They are increasingly being used as a global currency powering payments and cross-border money flows. Furthermore, with artificial intelligence becoming integrated into everyday life and soon into commerce, stablecoins are likely to become the currency for machine-to-machine transactions by AI agents.
Bitcoin usage is increasing as wrapped BTC and the emerging Bitcoin Layer 2 network seek to integrate it into DeFi and enable the creation of DApps on top of it – but fundamentally, Bitcoin will remain a store of value. Other blockchains do a better job of providing a decentralized, smart-contract-programmable platform on which the future of finance can be built. Stablecoins are created with the aim of providing a better solution for global payments than the traditional, centralized status quo (SWIFT, ACH and credit card payments). As mainstream acceptance increases, stablecoins will capture a larger share of day-to-day payment usage.
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 low supply of physical dollars, this is certainly an extreme example, but it provides a direct use case that shows how easy it is to pay for groceries or cut stablecoins.
Stable coins are rapidly gaining popularity because they do what Bitcoin could never do at scale – facilitate instant, peer-to-peer payments. Bitcoin’s ten-minute block time, network fees, and volatility make it unsuitable for everyday transactions, whereas stablecoins settle in seconds, cost pennies (less than a cent in some cases), and maintain price stability.
It’s all about utility
The success of stablecoins is not about speculation but about efficient utility – they are quietly becoming the most used form of digital currency around the world. By offering fast, low-cost cross-border transfers, stablecoins are rapidly disrupting the global remittance market, which is worth an estimated $780 billion annually.
They are also beginning to disrupt the payments market, as fintech giants like Stripe, Visa, PayPal and other fintechs incorporate stablecoin payments that are faster, cheaper, usable 24/7, and globally accessible. And since stablecoins have been incorporated by fintechs and payment processors, most people may not know that behind the scenes, they are using blockchain rails.
The current US administration has made it clear that it sees stablecoins as a financial innovation that is vital to maintaining the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It has put its importance behind them, as evidenced by the passage of the Genius Act as a first step in this process.
While agencies draft regulatory ‘rules of the road’ for stablecoins under the GENUINE Act, the devil will be in the details; How are reserved assets defined, which entities are allowed to issue dollar-backed tokens, what redemption rights are guaranteed to users and whether these digital dollars can move freely across public and private blockchains. These choices will determine whether US-regulated stablecoins can compete on a global scale or remain buried under conflicting oversight. This administration must ensure that it enables dollar-backed stablecoins to dominate the world stage, or risk losing control over the future of money.
I think that in the short term, for all the reasons listed above, the total value of stablecoins could exceed the market capitalization of Bitcoin.