Could the stablecoin market someday surpass the larger cryptocurrency ecosystem?<\/p>\n
New regulatory efforts promoting the integration of the dollar-pegged coins into the mainstream economy might soon make that happen, CoinDesk reported<\/a> Monday (May 12), citing predictions by Citi<\/a>.<\/p>\n Already moving into the payments\/remittances space<\/a>, stablecoins will likely replace some overseas and domestic U.S. currency holdings, the report said, pointing to a recent report from Citi Institute\u2019s Future Finance think-tank<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re looking at the integration of stablecoins into what you call the mainstream economy,\u201d Ronit Ghose<\/a>, the global head of the think tank, told CoinDesk. \u201cFor example, stablecoins could be the cash leg for tokenized financial assets, or for payments by SMEs<\/a> and large corporates. The dollar, and to a lesser extent the euro, has this kind of international currency status. Stablecoins allow people all over the world to hold dollars or euros in an easy, low-cost way.\u201d<\/p>\n The report noted that the current stablecoin market is around $240 billion, most of it from two coins: Tether\u2019s $145 billion USDT and Circle\u2019s $60 billion USDC. Citi\u2019s baseline projection shows the market jumping to $1.6 trillion by 2030, assuming regulatory support<\/a> and institutional integration continue apace.<\/p>\n A more optimistic scenario would push the market to $3.7 trillion, a figure that surpasses the current global cryptocurrency market cap of $3.45 trillion.<\/p>\n The report also includes comments from Michael Shaulov<\/a>, CEO of crypto firm Fireblocks<\/a>, who has witnessed a shift away from the use of stablecoins as a settlement and on\/off ramp trading tool and toward payments.<\/p>\n \u201cPayment companies represent 11% of all of our clients, but 16% of the overall stablecoin transactions with over 30% growth of Q\/Q in volumes. This growth will likely continue, and they will represent 50% of the stablecoin volume within 12 months,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In related news, PYMNTS spoke Monday with Konstantin Anissimov<\/a>, newly appointed CEO at Currency.com<\/a>, about the changing stablecoin landscape.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s been a big shift in terms of adoption of stablecoin payments<\/a> that is being driven by uncertainty in geopolitics,\u201d Anissimov told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster<\/a>. \u201cI am personally seeing a big increase of small to medium enterprises utilizing stablecoin payments because banking rails are harder and harder to use.\u201d<\/p>\n Digital assets are no longer a speculative play for those people who embrace risk, but a tool to navigate a fragmented financial world, he added.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the payment gets there quicker, faster, in a more definitive way, then a lot of these businesses are limited less in their working capital requirements,\u201d Anissimov said. \u201cThe faster the payment, the more goods they can buy.\u201d<\/p>\n See More In: Blockchain<\/a>, Citi<\/a>, crypto<\/a>, Cryptocurrency<\/a>, digital assets<\/a>, Digital Payments<\/a>, digital transformation<\/a>, News<\/a>, Payment Methods<\/a>, payments innovation<\/a>, PYMNTS News<\/a>, Stablecoin<\/a>, stablecoin payments<\/a>, stablecoins<\/a>, What’s Hot<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Could the stablecoin market someday surpass the larger cryptocurrency ecosystem? New regulatory efforts promoting the integration of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3091],"tags":[3210,51,44976,2259,31212,44703,3269,10443,2441,12,3277,44977,3279,16137,44978,34950,16,15,3281],"class_list":{"0":"post-96050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-blockchain","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-citi","11":"tag-crypto","12":"tag-cryptocurrency","13":"tag-digital-assets","14":"tag-digital-payments","15":"tag-digital-transformation","16":"tag-markets","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-payment-methods","19":"tag-payments-innovation","20":"tag-pymnts-news","21":"tag-stablecoin","22":"tag-stablecoin-payments","23":"tag-stablecoins","24":"tag-uk","25":"tag-united-kingdom","26":"tag-whats-hot"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114496407318180293","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}