Who is paying for Stablecoin?

Comment by: Jeff Handler, Co-Founder at OpenTrade

The technology is solved. The digital dollar is flowing. In 2026, the only variable will be understanding who exactly collects and enjoys the fare.

In the year 2025 was not the year that stablecoins “went mainstream,” at least not how crypto pundits thought. There was no specific app that dominated the download charts, nor was there a time when stablecoins suddenly clicked for regulars. Instead, by deliberate design, digital dollars have quietly and efficiently become capital, flowing cleanly into the world's financial pipeline.

Now, like many advanced technologies, stablecoins are invisible infrastructure.

This marks the beginning of a new era, not to promote their use, but to capture the value of their activity.

The importance of speed

In hindsight, the crypto industry is largely preoccupied with the wrong metrics. While tribal investors argue about “Ethereum Killers” and coins that will “only go up”, the old thinking focused on market capitalization and coin wars. No coin is ever slated for pure appreciation, so total market value can be considered a useless measure of statistical assets. Speed ​​is a more interesting data point for promising infrastructure.

According to Onchain data, the total stablecoin transaction volume will exceed $33tn in 2025, a 72% increase from 2024. Considering that the supply is kept at a low level of hundreds of billions, this gap tells us that the same dollar is recycled between wallets, exchanges and routes between settlements, payments, treasuries and other contexts. Transfer volumes outpace market expansion, while stablecoins are finally separated from spot trading.

Then, as the movement became more marked, the quantity theory of money became useful. This theory shows that the money that circulates quickly reduces the amount of supply needed to support a certain economic activity. In short, the number and speed of stablecoins have reached sufficient levels to be considered a proven and important technology. This was especially felt in Latin America.

LatAm is the best utility model.

In terms of usage, the US and Europe view stablecoins as a profit play or trade settlement tool (at least for now), investors can hold them or deploy them to earn interest or move between assets. In Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela, however, they are tools to avoid high inflation, local currency volatility, and economic instability.

In Latin America, local currencies must move quickly to maintain their purchasing power. This places the Argentinians for 61.8% of the chain activity, providing a fertile environment for a stable coin, just like Brazil's 59.8% figure before.

While developed markets in the West are busy debating regulatory frameworks and tax structures, the Latin world has replaced it with a stable coin to avoid local currency risks. The former see them as “good to be alive.” The latter see them as necessary.

Related: AI and stablecoins are winning despite the 2026 crypto market crash.

At the macro level, financial instruments that show clear benefits (with the promise of large returns) are more likely to be infrastructure. So, Latin America is not far from the truth, but simply the first region to realize a stable currency that can maintain value in a way that local currencies cannot. It is not hard to imagine similar economic conditions on other continents driving a more stable coin.

The ongoing struggle for rent collection

Users who get rid of local FX tips overnight are not the only winners here. Major parties are enjoying a quiet return to the pyramid-like structure of issuers, exchanges and escrow services as Statcoin recycles.

Stablecoin issuer income comes from intelligent reserve management and distribution relationships. Tether, the issuer of USDT stablecoins, is now the world's second most profitable company per employee. You are profiting from the float.

Transactions are next online, payments from settlement and inline services. After them, traditional banks and neobanks adopted stablecoins to allow token deposits or on-chain settlement services, generating additional revenue streams.

At the bottom of the pyramid are regulators, who may not directly profit from statcoins, but ultimately influence who does. Through licensing and compliance frameworks, they implicitly shape who actually benefits from facilitating stablecoin transfers and under what conditions.

To refer back to Latin America, this region could already see a rent-seeking battle. New on-ramps and off-ramps, stablecoin-friendly wallets and crypto exchanges all compete for attention to capture payment margins. These services do not need to see market growth. They simply have to drive speed so that everyone can win.

However, for the momentum to be sustainable, the incentives must match. Instead of outsourcing production to middlemen, the industry needs to shift its focus back directly to consumer revenue. The people who drive this economic activity are the ones who should be the ones who share the rewards.

Infrastructure is the end game.

Until people stop talking about them as “promising technology” when stablecoins are widely used around the world, then they will already be an invisible infrastructure.

If you don't already have a stable coin, then they should be close. In the year By 2025, the stablecoin has managed to handle tens of trillions of value flows, becoming a popular settlement tool and gaining widespread validation in the process. Time will tell who owns and manages the infrastructure as their momentum is established.

The experiment is over. The business can now really begin.

Comment by: Jeff Handler, Co-Founder at OpenTrade