2025 has passed. Looking back from the starting point of 2026, we can finally confirm that 2025 was not just a footnote to another bull and bear cycle, but a "declaration of independence" in the history of Stablecoin.
Article author: Cobo
Article source: MarsBit
The full text is as follows:
2025 has passed. Looking back from the starting point of 2026, we can finally confirm that 2025 was not just a footnote to another bull and bear cycle, but a "declaration of independence" in the history of Stablecoin.
If progress is measured by price fluctuations, 2025 might seem uneventful for cryptocurrencies, or even a step backward. But it was in this year that Stablecoin completed its most important transformation, officially moving away from the macro narrative of cryptocurrencies and settling into a more basic and important tool: a global clearing medium that can operate natively on the internet.
As we enter 2026, hundreds of millions of dollars are being transferred across borders on-chain in milliseconds, distributing employee salaries across multiple continents and orchestrating complex corporate treasury liquidity. And all of this is happening almost entirely behind the scenes, completely imperceptible to users. Stablecoin's greatest commercial success to date lies precisely in its complete invisibility; real-world adoption is quietly taking place in these tranquil yet high-frequency scenarios.
Based on these changes that have already occurred but are still generally underestimated, "Cobo 2025 Stablecoin Retrospective and Outlook: From Crypto Narrative to Real Adoption" (hereinafter referred to as "Cobo 2025 Stablecoin Retrospective and Outlook") chooses to focus on a frequently mentioned but rarely taken seriously keyword: "real adoption." It attempts to answer questions such as: What exactly is the real adoption of Stablecoin? How does it happen? Where does it happen? And what are the corresponding real and feasible PMF (Product-Market Fit) in different markets and different entrepreneurial paths?
Before answering these questions, it is first necessary to clarify: what is not true adoption?
It is not the same as an expansion of market capitalization, a surge in transaction volume, or short-term fluctuations in coin price. On the contrary, real adoption often happens quietly—hidden in the background of financial processes, settlement paths, and fund allocation.
Only by stripping away this noise can we delve into more monetaryly relevant, granular indicators: Has Stablecoin consistently entered repeatable and sustainable economic cycles such as payroll, B2B settlements, and high-frequency payments? Only through repeated use in these scenarios does Stablecoin truly begin to fulfill the functions of currency.
Real-world adoption is also reflected in the location and scenarios where it occurs. Real-world adoption of Stablecoins typically doesn't occur in the stereotypical retail consumption scenarios, but rather in areas extremely sensitive to speed, efficiency, and certainty, such as corporate treasury management, cross-border settlements, and internal fund transfers. These scenarios are almost unrelated to user experience; they only care about one thing: whether the funds are fast enough, stable enough, and controllable enough.
From a user demographic perspective, real adoption also requires us to confront a significant misalignment . The market often assumes that Stablecoin's target users will proactively embrace the ideal of decentralization, but Cobo's firsthand observations show that those who achieve large-scale implementation earliest are often risk-averse CFOs and finance teams. In their decision-making systems, auditability, controllability, and traceability of responsibility always take precedence over the technological concept itself. This also determines the dominant role of full custody and institutionalized processes in the real adoption of Stablecoin.
If we attempt to embrace real adoption, we inevitably must confront the realities of business. There is no single, universally applicable business model for Stablecoins; their Product-Market Fit (PMF) is often shaped by the local monetary environment, financial infrastructure, and regulatory conditions. The role and viable paths for Stablecoins differ significantly across markets, whether in the North or South, developed or emerging economies. For entrepreneurs, the real challenge is not replicating a successful paradigm, but finding a PMF that aligns with the constraints of the specific market.
This is why this report doesn't chase trends, but rather attempts to present a realistic picture, which is often counterintuitive. As Stablecoin enters its next cycle, understanding where and why real adoption is happening is often more important than predicting the next hot topic.
It should be noted that, to improve the reading experience and dissemination efficiency, this is a lightweight interpretation, aiming to provide core judgments on the real adoption of Stablecoin and changes in industry structure—essentially a longer "too long, don't read" version. For readers who wish to understand the complete background, data sources, and more systematic analysis (especially entrepreneurs in the Stablecoin sector and those interested in new finance), a more comprehensive, illustrated, and data-rich full-length research report can be downloaded at the end of this article.
The following is a lightweight version of the main text of "Cobo Stablecoin Retrospective and Outlook: From Crypto Narrative to Real Adoption":
Market Data: A Comprehensive Analysis of Stablecoin's Real-World Use
When we talk about the mass adoption of Stablecoin, the most common misconception is that it will be everyone buying coffee with USDC. But 2025 presents the opposite answer: Stablecoin will first conquer B2B enterprise users, not consumers.
The most tangible adoption isn't happening at Starbucks counters, but rather quietly in corporate treasuries, cross-border settlements, and internal fund transfers. These scenarios are extremely sensitive to the speed and certainty of funds, yet almost entirely disregard user experience. For them, retail payments are not a priority, but rather the last mile after the financial infrastructure has matured.
This misalignment is also reflected in our understanding of data. Although the global stablecoin market capitalization surpassed $300 billion in 2025, and monthly on-chain transactions once reached $4 trillion, the most bustling areas are often furthest removed from real-world use. Denoising the data reveals that these trillion-dollar flows mostly involve the turnover and allocation of financial assets, rather than the actual exchange of goods and services.
Therefore, in this new cycle, issuance volume and transaction volume are no longer sufficient to measure the true value of Stablecoin. A more important indicator is usage density, that is, whether Stablecoin has truly entered repeatable economic cycles such as wage payments, B2B settlements, and high-frequency consumption. Only when it is continuously used in these scenarios does Stablecoin possess true monetary significance.
Based on this assessment, "Cobo 2025 Stablecoin Review and Outlook" will no longer focus on the superficial scale and prosperity, but will instead use a three-layer filtering model to strip away speculation and noise, reconstruct the real-world use case of Stablecoin, and answer the most crucial question: Where exactly is Stablecoin being used?
Crossroads of Competition: Sovereign Defense and Industry Breakthrough
Originally intended to be decentralized, encryption technology is taking an unexpected turn through Stablecoin, becoming a digital extension of the dollar's hegemony.
Tether and Circle have built a highly automated digital dollar cycle: global demand for crypto assets is directly translated into demand for the US dollar, Stablecoin, which in turn drives this demand back into long-term holdings of US Treasury bonds. The result is that, for the first time, the US dollar is embedded in the very bottom layer of the emerging blockchain settlement layer in the form of code, creating a highly efficient digital dollarization process that requires no diplomacy or military intervention.
Against this backdrop, non-US currencies are forced to accept the brutal 90/10 binary structure : 90% of their savings and asset attributes are spontaneously ceded to the US dollar stablecoin by the market; the native stablecoin is forced to retreat to the remaining 10% of the toll market, serving only as a transmission channel for tax payment, loan repayment, and last-mile monetization.
Faced with this disruptive impact, traditional banks will build a sophisticated three-layer defense architecture to protect their core net interest margin (NIM) : the core uses tokenized deposits for clearing to preserve credit creation capabilities; the middle layer achieves interoperability through a unified ledger; and the outermost layer only connects to external Stablecoin to a limited extent as a connecting contact point.
When the horizontal expansion of the dollar intersects with the vertical defense of banks, the competition ultimately converges on a bottleneck: access . Entering 2026, what will truly be scarce are entry points that can legally connect to the real monetary system. Those physical facilities once considered digital burdens (such as Western Union with its 500,000 branches or scarce crypto-friendly bank accounts) will be transformed into the most difficult-to-replicate strategic assets. For the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who lack bank accounts, these nodes constitute the only narrow gateway for cash to enter the digital economy.
Real Adoption in 2025: Counterintuitive Business Truths
In this chapter of "Cobo 2025 Stablecoin Retrospective and Outlook," we will re-examine the real-world adoption of Stablecoin from an entrepreneur's perspective. In hands-on practice, we've found a significant discrepancy between the actual implementation logic of Stablecoin and the prevailing technological narrative in the market. Understanding this is a prerequisite for entrepreneurs defining their product direction. This section aims to provide entrepreneurs in the Stablecoin sector with a more realistic frame of reference, helping them understand how and by whom Stablecoin is truly being used.
Who is actually using Stablecoin?
In our hands-on experience at Cobo, we've observed that the real adoption of Stablecoin stems largely from rational choices made by B2B companies to alleviate cash flow pressures and improve settlement speed and certainty. This is a typical financial statement-driven adoption. Consequently, the first group to achieve large-scale implementation are precisely those highly risk-averse CFOs and finance teams. In their decision-making systems, security, auditability, and traceability always take precedence over the decentralized concept.
This explains why enterprises are increasingly turning to fully managed and institutionalized processes: for modern financial systems, the irreversible losses from private key mishandling far outweigh the benefits of improved settlement efficiency. Whether the underlying blockchain is Solana or Tron is never the most important factor; what determines whether a product will be adopted is whether it can address the finance department's concerns in a risk language familiar to the enterprise (controllable, auditable, and accountable).
Survival rules adapted to local conditions
Stablecoin does not have a universally applicable template; its survival is entirely shaped by the local monetary environment. In New York, it is an efficient tool for compressing the T+2 settlement cycle and improving capital turnover; in Buenos Aires, it is a survival tool for combating high inflation and maintaining purchasing power.
In developed markets, Stablecoin is embedded in existing systems to improve efficiency; in emerging markets, it bypasses failing systems to serve as a replacement. This layered usage, shaped by real-world constraints, constitutes Stablecoin's strongest adaptability boundary. For entrepreneurs, competition in European and American markets hinges on clearing efficiency, while in Latin American markets it's about financial accessibility. Without considering the specific financial realities of each market, large-scale adoption is impossible.
Development stages: From asset ownership to capability utilization
2025 will be a year of qualitative change for Stablecoin. We will see Stablecoin evolve from a static balance-based model to a dynamic capability-based model. Enterprises will no longer connect to Stablecoin simply to hold assets, but to utilize its payment, clearing, and interest-earning modules to restructure their cash flow.
Cobo's firsthand experience shows that enterprises' core needs for adopting Stablecoin focus on the access and orchestration of their financial capabilities to restructure their settlement paths and cash flow structures. In this process, Stablecoin becomes more like a programmable financial infrastructure layer, with its value reflected in its functional composability and system embeddability.
For entrepreneurs, the metrics for measuring growth are also changing: API call depth is more interpretive than asset size. The next opportunity lies in abstracting complex financial capabilities into stable, easy-to-use interfaces, delivering a set of ready-to-use financial functions to businesses.
The greatest success is invisibility.
The market in 2025 proved one thing: Stablecoin did not disrupt fiat currency. Instead, it chose to take a backseat, taking over the most arduous and core clearing process in traditional finance. This technology will only truly mature when institutions like Visa and Revolut encapsulate Stablecoin at the underlying level, allowing users to maintain a familiar fiat currency experience on the front end.
Driven by a simple efficiency gap: competitors have achieved T+0 fund collection, while traditional banks remain stuck with T+2. This efficiency advantage makes Stablecoin the TCP/IP of the financial world, supporting everything without needing to be seen. Front-end experience and compliance belong to banks, while the opportunities for entrepreneurs lie deep in the back-end, in the unseen yet most profitable areas of clearing, routing, and fund allocation.
Business opportunities
As an entrepreneur, if your business plan still focuses on cheaper transfers as the core selling point of Stablecoin, you may be missing out on the real battleground. The market landscape has shifted in 2026: the era of reinventing the wheel for infrastructure is over, and the easy profits from issuing tokens are fading. Real business opportunities are rapidly shifting from the underlying power of printing money to the upper-level power of distribution and connectivity.
In the chapter "Cobo 2025 Stablecoin Retrospective and Outlook," we will peel back the surface of the technical narrative and delve into the fabric of business logic to find the answers that truly generate profits in this cycle: Why are companies willing to pay a premium? Why are giants starting to besiege issuers? And, when the growth of the human market hits its ceiling, how can Stablecoin become the lifeblood of the trillion-dollar machine economy (AI Agent)?
Stablecoin 2026 and Future Outlook
From deglobalization and the rise of "non-human accounts" to the invisibility of Stablecoin and its banking applications, the final chapter will systematically analyze how Stablecoin will reshape the entry conditions of the financial system, change the way funds flow, and where its value will ultimately be deposited after 2026.
1) Deglobalization: Stablecoin is personally ending the era of borderless finance.
After Stablecoin becomes more widespread, will the financial world truly become more unified, or will it simply be fragmented in a different way?
Contrary to mainstream narratives, we believe the next phase of Stablecoin will not be freer global liquidity, but rather an acceleration of structural fragmentation in the financial world. By 2026, the Stablecoin market will no longer be a unified liquidity network, but will be fragmented by regulation and technology into two parallel systems: a compliant clearing island and an offshore gray island.
Against this backdrop, "crypto-friendly bank accounts" will become a scarcer resource than licenses. Rising compliance costs are forcing small and medium-sized banks out of the crypto business, and pricing power for fiat currency deposits and withdrawals is concentrating on a few node banks with full-stack compliance capabilities. For institutions without OCC licenses, stable and sustainable USD clearing accounts are becoming the most stringent, yet most easily overlooked, barrier to entry in the industry.
2) The Rise of the "Machine Economy": From Serving Humans to Identifying Non-Human Accounts
In the past, we discussed how Stablecoin serves people. By 2026, if the most active and frequently transacting accounts are no longer human, will KYC still be valid? And how will financial identity transition to KYA (Know Your Agent)?
As AI agents enter real-world economic activities, the identity, compliance, and risk control logic upon which Stablecoin relies is shifting from a human-centric approach to one focused on behavior and code. How will this change affect Stablecoin's design, compliance path, and its truly scalable future applications?
3) "Brand Suicide Theory": Stablecoin's success lies in its stealth.
Intuitively, stablecoin issuers should compete for brand recognition and user loyalty, much like Visa or PayPal. However, by 2026, projects still emphasizing brand recognition are most likely to become mediocre.
As Stablecoin's neutrality gradually becomes a consensus, users don't care whether the underlying mechanism is USDC, PYUSD, or some kind of compliant RWA. For most use cases, the value of Stablecoin lies in its imperceptibility. The best Stablecoins are usually transparent.
In this shift, the power to set premiums will move from minters to scenario builders. If issuers remain obsessed with brand premiums, they will ultimately be reduced to low-margin, replaceable clearing channels at the application layer.
4) "The end of an app is a bank": Traffic is no longer important; turnover rate is the key.
In the past, internet companies entered the financial sector to monetize their user base—by selling wealth management products and offering lending services. By 2026, truly successful apps will no longer be integrated with banks, but will evolve directly into banks disguised as products, without even needing a banking license.
The metrics are changing accordingly. Previously, the focus was on user dwell time; in the future, the competition will be about how long funds remain within the ecosystem. Through CaaS (Card as a Service) and RWA (Resource-Based Application), more and more apps are taking on bank-like functions and systematically separating the traditional banking functions of "deposits, loans, and remittances." The deciding factor will not be the number of users, but whether funds can remain within the app's ecosystem in the long term.
5) Financial capabilities will become a basic function of the app.
By 2026, Stablecoin-powered consumer cards will become a basic feature for fintech companies, creator platforms, and global apps.
The core driving force behind this change is the continuous compression of capital efficiency by brands. As card issuance has evolved from an engineering process heavily reliant on licenses and compliance personnel to a technical module accessible via APIs, financial capabilities are shifting from being the exclusive domain of financial institutions to becoming the infrastructure of applications. In this process, more and more apps will assume bank-like functions in their respective vertical scenarios, without needing to appear in the form of a bank.
6) From available tools to everyday currency
If 2025 marked Stablecoin's transition from a speculative asset to a usable tool, then 2026 will see changes at a more concrete level of application.
Stablecoin is continuously shrinking the boundaries of traditional finance by focusing on the two most fundamental functions of currency (the transfer and exchange of value). On the value transfer side, Circle, through CPN and StableFX, reduces the reliance on pre-positioned funds for cross-border clearing, frees up idle capital in the Nostro account, and improves overall capital turnover efficiency.
On the value exchange side, a significant change is the gradual reduction in the need for withdrawals . As Visa and Mastercard gradually introduce on-chain settlements while maintaining their existing merchant networks and user habits, Stablecoin will gain direct spending power. For users, spending will no longer require explicitly converting assets into fiat currency; on-chain assets will be naturally routed to real-world payment scenarios. As Stablecoin gradually forms a closed loop in payments, salaries, and remittances, the widespread adoption of crypto spending cards will make on-chain spending the norm. Stablecoin will thus evolve into a digital dollar that can be directly used for daily expenses, circulating more within the digital ecosystem rather than being frequently exchanged back to the fiat currency system.
7) On-chain anti-money laundering data will be integrated with off-chain real data.
Compliance is shifting from risk scoring to actionable decision-making. Enterprises neither need nor can easily build complete on-chain anti-money laundering capabilities on their own. The real need lies in a practical and accountable operational system—clearly defining what to investigate, how to determine it, and who makes the decisions and signs off. As Stablecoin enters high-frequency, low-fault-tolerance real-world financial scenarios, the focus of compliance will shift from single-point risk identification to standardized, process-oriented decision-making mechanisms.
In the medium to long term, on-chain anti-money laundering data will be fully mapped to off-chain real identities, and the Stablecoin infrastructure will move towards professional specialization. Taking Cobo as an example, by encapsulating risk control, compliance, and clearing capabilities into standardized APIs, enterprises can complete settlement and compliance mapping in the background without directly processing on-chain data or accessing private keys. When users only perceive the arrival of funds, while verification and accountability are already completed in the background, Stablecoin will truly evolve from a front-end tool into a financial-grade back-end infrastructure.
