I think we can say, in the crypto world, 2025 was the Year of the Stablecoin. The United States passed the GENIUS Act, which signed into law stablecoin legislation. This is likely to open the floodgates.
Since the signing of that bill, the number of total stablecoins issued went from $240 billion to $310 billion. That is a significant jump in a bit over half a year.
Adoption is still lagging as infrastructure is being built. My guess is we see massive acceleration once the major banks start to enter the market. Many have dropped announcements regarding their intentions. That will probably come in 2026.
There are trillions in bank deposits in the United States alone. If even a fraction of these are tokenized, we are looking at the market cap, from the US alone, entering the trillions.
Having availability is one component. The other is finding places to use stablecoins. Here is where the ongoing development emerges.
Stablecoins are the future. To me, this is all part of the tokenization of everything.
We are seeing a massive push towards this new mechanism, especially via US dollar denomination. This actually feeds into Brent Johnson's milkshake theory where the USD sucks the value from other currencies.
Opera and Celo are looking to bring this to a billion people by 2030. That would be more than 10% of the global population.
The announcement includes plans for stablecoin-backed payment cards, expanded real-world asset offerings, and a joint Mini App Roadshow across Asia and South America, according to a Wednesday statement by Opera.
Their goal is to give people “a reliable stablecoin wallet that allows them to receive payments, save, and send payments—no matter where they are,” Jørgen Arnesen, EVP Mobile at Opera, said in the statement.
Much of the focus is on the developed world. What the United States is doing is always headline news.
That said, we cannot overlook the developing nations as an epicenter for newer technologies. Their banking and monetary systems are often in chaos. Many countries in the world cannot even guarantee banks deposits will remain due to corruption.
Stablecoins can address this with a digital wallet. It is something that holds great appeal to those in developing nations.
Latin America has recorded nearly $1.5 trillion in crypto transaction volume between July 2022 and this June, according to a Chainalysis report, with Brazil leading the region with $318.8 billion in crypto value received, representing 109.9% period-over-period growth.
Over 90% of Brazilian crypto flows are now stablecoin-related, with stablecoin purchases making up more than half of all exchange activity in Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia.
The numbers reflect adoption in these regions is growing.
What is taking place with the monetary system?
This is an interesting question that we don't have a clear answer. The Bitcoin maxis claim we are dealing with a new system based upon that coin. I do not think this is realistic. Actually, many of the "Bitcoin will be everything" crowd such as Michael Saylor pulled back from that.
We cannot deny the projection of stablecoins. This means we are likely dealing with some type of overlay to the existing financial system. The fact that banks and other established financial institutions are diving in should tell us what we need to know.
Is this the eventual outcome or just a step in the process? Here we also have uncertainty. My view is we are going to have a hybrid system for a period of time. The legacy financial behemoths are not going to give up easily. They are taking steps to ensure their continued success.
Nevertheless, technology changes a lot of things. We could end up with a system that is based upon something completely different than what we have now. Decentralized finance is in keeping with concepts such as distributed computing. Will that be reflected by a monetary or financial system that incorporates these principles?
We could reach the eventuality that money is no longer in the form it is now. Perhaps we might end up with tokenized energy as the medium of exchange. Of course, many will point to Bitcoin as the claim this already exists. While that might be true from the technical sense, we can see the limitations. Actually, since most of the USD transactions are also digital, a case could be made we are already dealing with this.
How all of this unfolds will be interesting to watch. For now, we see Opera and Celo making a move to try and position themselves for billions of transactions. With AI agents around the corner, this could be a very profitable venture.
