Research firm Sacra suggests that stablecoins could surpass payment giant Visa in total payment volume for this quarter.
In a blog post by Sacra co-founder Jan-Erik Asplund, it is argued that stablecoins possess an “extreme product-market fit for cross-border money movement,” potentially leading to a total payments volume exceeding $4 trillion, outpacing Visa.
Asplund highlights stablecoins’ advantages in convenience, speed, and cost over traditional payment methods. Stablecoins enable cross-border payments to occur any day of the week, in minutes, and at a significantly lower cost compared to traditional methods.
Visa’s head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, disagrees with Sacra’s assessment, citing “noise” in stablecoin data. Sheffield argues that on-chain transactions, influenced by bots and automated programs, do not reflect settlement in the traditional sense.
Visa’s recently launched dashboard reveals that as much as 90% of stablecoin transactions in the last 30 days were not initiated by genuine users. Most of the volume is attributed to bot activity and automated transactions by entities like centralized exchanges.
Visa collaborated with Allium Labs to develop an adjusted stablecoin transaction metric aimed at removing distortions from inorganic activity and artificial inflationary practices.
Despite Visa’s skepticism, stablecoin transaction volume has nearly doubled since the beginning of 2024, with significant activity in leading stablecoins like Tether (USDT) and Circle’s USD Coin (USDC).
Other payment giants are entering the stablecoin arena, with PayPal launching its PYUSD stablecoin in 2023 and Stripe allowing merchants to accept stablecoins for online transactions.
Ripple announced plans to introduce a United States dollar-backed stablecoin to compete with market leaders. The current stablecoin market capitalization stands at around $161 billion, with a daily trading volume of $37 billion, according to CoinGecko.
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