Stablecoins are ‘meaningfully disrupting’ payments landscape: Coinbase

Stablecoins have emerged as crypto’s killer app, and the data shows that they still have room to run

January 29, 2025 11:00 am

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Let me introduce crypto’s killer app: stablecoins.

I know we just talked about stablecoins, but I wanted to, well, circle back. Duong said he’s frequently being asked by institutional investors if some of the forecasts for stablecoins (like Jeremy Allaire of Circle saying that stablecoins will hit $3 trillion by 2030) are realistic.

“You think about the level of M2 money supply in the United States, and it’s $21 trillion. So we’re just at around 1% of that if we go to $3 trillion, that’s still only less than 15% of the entire M2 mining supply as it is so I really don’t think that’s far off. I think that the opportunity on that side of things is still huge,” Duong explained.

He also thinks that Cicle’s recent acquisition of Hashnote shows its interest in yield-bearing stablecoins, given that Hashnote already has one. Institutions, at least, are very interested in the potential yield-bearing offering due to the macro environment. Basically, high rates lead to more folks sniffing around to see where they can make or save some extra money.

Even with the Fed currently going into an easing cycle, Duong thinks that the interest will remain, backing up some of the points made by Marc Boiron of Polygon Labs last week.

“In terms of utility, stablecoins are meaningfully disrupting the payments landscape, bringing crypto and fiat banking solutions closer together,” Duong wrote in the report.

Stablecoins really seem to be in the can’t stop, won’t stop stage of growth.

“Behind this growth lies a simple but powerful fact: Stablecoins can make it faster and cheaper for both businesses and individuals to move money around the globe,” Coinbase wrote.

And that, dear readers, is exactly what we want from a potential killer app.

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