Those who know it best have become outsiders in stablecoin payments.

Stablecoin payments are undergoing systemic expansion: issuance has exceeded $304 billion, the annualized scale of real payments has reached $118 billion, and the GENIUS Act, MiCA, and the Hong Kong framework have been implemented one after another.

Author: Will Awang , Investment and Financing Lawyer specializing in Web3 & Digital Assets; Independent Researcher specializing in Tokenization, RWA, Payments, and DeSci

Stablecoin payments are undergoing systemic expansion: issuance has exceeded $304 billion, and the annualized scale of real-world payments has reached $118 billion, with the GENIUS Act, MiCA, and the Hong Kong framework being implemented one after another. However, in this expansion, the type of institutions most familiar with stablecoins—crypto exchanges—are becoming outsiders in the consumer market.

Exchanges hold the largest on-chain stablecoin reserves (approximately $80 billion), yet they are separated from real-world consumption scenarios by the entire upper half of the payment stack. The liquidity layer is being eroded by AMMs, the ramp layer is being standardized by Stripe/Bridge, and the consumption gateway is being seized by Phantom and MetaMask. Issuer Circle is proactively shifting towards transaction volume scenarios under interest rate pressure—contracting on all three fronts simultaneously.

This article dissects the infrastructure structure of stablecoin payments, analyzes the true positioning of five exchanges—Coinbase, Binance, OKX, Robinhood, and Bitget—identifies five common strategic pitfalls, and deduces three end-game scenarios.

Key takeaway: Exchanges are not facing product competition, but rather a re-stratification of the infrastructure layer—whoever occupies an irreplaceable position will have pricing power; whoever is merely a middle layer that can be replaced at any time will be eliminated in this expansion.

01 Starting Point of the Problem: Where are the Exchanges Heading for Stablecoin Payments to Achieve Compliance?

1.1 A misinterpreted pattern, and an ongoing recurrence.

ATMs were invented to replace bank tellers. As a result, the number of tellers doubled in the following forty years.

In 1865, William Stanley Jevons discovered the same pattern in the coal economy: as steam engines became more efficient, coal consumption actually skyrocketed—efficiency made coal available in more scenarios, thus expanding aggregate demand. This pattern later became known as Jevons' paradox . It's not a paradox, but an ironclad rule: when the unit cost of a basic service falls low enough, the market won't shrink; it will reach everyone previously excluded by the cost structure.

Stablecoin payments are at the forefront of this trend.

Sling Money built a payment product covering 70 countries with 23 people and 3 licenses; JPMorgan Kinexys transformed daily internal transfers of $2 billion into second-level settlements using a shared ledger, eliminating $61 billion in reconciliation costs between banks annually. The numbers speak for themselves: Circle's revenue reached $2.7 billion in 2025, a 64% year-on-year increase; the total issuance of mainstream stablecoins exceeded $304 billion, a 49% increase; the GENIUS Act, MiCA, and the Hong Kong framework were all implemented in the same year. USD1 grew from zero to $5.1 billion, USDG expanded 52 times, and RLUSD grew by 1803%—this isn't just the growth of one company, but the systemic expansion of the entire ecosystem.

But Jevons' paradox never promises an equal distribution of profits. ATMs doubled the number of tellers, allowing large banks to expand their service reach, while smaller savings institutions began to lose deposits. Technology reduces costs while simultaneously redistributing winners. The expansion of stablecoin payments is doing the same thing.

The question is this: where do exchanges stand in this expansion?

1.2 Three core roles are being systematically eroded.

Stablecoins didn't grow up in DeFi, nor in Stripe's API—they grew up in exchange deposit and withdrawal systems.

USDT's first large-scale users were CEX traders, USDC's early circulation relied on Coinbase's distribution network, and the largest holder of stablecoins on-chain remains CEXs, holding approximately $80 billion. No other type of institution has been involved in stablecoins earlier or more deeply in their infrastructure development than exchanges.

But it is precisely this "familiarity" that makes the subsequent situation all the more glaring. Historically, exchanges have had three footholds in the stablecoin ecosystem: liquidity providers, fiat currency gateways, and the primary entry point for users to access crypto. Today, all three footholds are being eroded simultaneously.

• The erosion of the liquidity layer is the quietest and most thorough. AMM protocols like Uniswap handle a large amount of retail liquidity demand; Cumberland and Wintertermute directly provide institutional depth for DeFi protocols; and large transactions are increasingly being completed on-chain via RFQs. This process doesn't involve any declaration of war; market share simply shifts quietly to on-chain every quarter.
• The changes at the ramp layer are even more direct. Stripe acquired Bridge for $1.1 billion and launched an API that allows developers to integrate stablecoin deposits and withdrawals with just 10 lines of code; MoonPay and Transak are directly embedded in MetaMask and Phantom, allowing users to convert fiat currency to stablecoins without opening any exchange apps. The compliance infrastructure that was once the most difficult to replicate is now becoming a commodity or service that anyone can buy.
• The shift at the first point of contact is the hardest to reverse. Phantom's monthly active users have surpassed many second-tier centralized exchanges, and MetaMask boasts 14 million monthly active users, a significant proportion of whom are newcomers' first crypto accounts. If a user encounters stablecoins for the first time on Phantom, their cognitive framework is that of wallets and on-chain assets, not the deposit and withdrawal systems of exchanges. This doesn't change behavioral habits, but rather cognitive frameworks—the latter being much harder to reverse.

Contracting on three fronts simultaneously. In 2017, Binance relied on information asymmetry and infrastructure scarcity: if you wanted to buy altcoins, there were only a few places in the world where you could buy them. In stablecoin payments, infrastructure is becoming less scarce; what's scarce are real consumption scenarios and user habits. The window that was once open is now closing another.

1.3 Two mirror images of transformation: Circle and OSL

The most direct evidence of a shift in the value chain is not data, but behavior—who is actively abandoning their original identity.

Circle's pressure stems from interest rates; the transformation was forced upon it. The FY2025 full-year financial report released on February 25, 2026, revealed a structural vulnerability: Reserve Income of approximately $2.66 billion, accounting for the vast majority of the total revenue of $2.7 billion for the year—almost all of this money came from interest earned by placing USDC reserves in US Treasury bonds. The reserve return rate has already slipped from 4.49% in 2024 to 3.81% in Q4 of 2025, and FY2026 will continue to be under pressure—for every 100 basis point cut in interest rates, Circle will earn approximately $700 million less.

Relying on interest for a living is not fundamentally different from the bank's deposit-loan spread model: stable, but fragile.

This vulnerability explains the existence of Circle Payments Network (CPN)—not because payments are more profitable than holding government bonds, but because it needs to establish a second source of revenue that is not affected by interest rate fluctuations. Within 30 days of its launch, CPN connected with 55 institutions, processing $5.7 billion annually; the Circle Arc testnet mainnet is planned for launch in 2026. Circle is transforming from a "stablecoin issuer" into a "payment and settlement platform with its own public blockchain"—a transition that happens to take place right in the heart of traditional exchange territory.

OSL faces pressure from regulation. Hong Kong's strict restrictions on retail crypto trading clearly limit OSL's trading revenue. With Hong Kong's stablecoin regulatory framework set to be implemented in August 2025, OSL had already laid the groundwork before the window opened: raising $300 million, acquiring Banxa (a network supporting fiat currencies from 40+ countries), and launching USDGO. Stablecoin trading now accounts for nearly 70% of the platform's total trading volume, and its official positioning has changed from an "exchange" to "Asia's leading stablecoin payment platform."

This is a shrewd judgment: crypto exchanges price their services based on volatility revenue, while stablecoin payment infrastructure prices them based on Visa-style predictable fees. Changing the label isn't just about changing the name; it's about changing the entire valuation narrative.

Two cases side by side: issuers driven by interest rate pressures, and exchanges driven by regulatory constraints—different motives, same direction—both moving towards the infrastructure layer. But this path is not an empty runway. Stripe is on it, Visa is on it, and Phantom and MetaMask are also cutting into this layer.

The next chapter will dissect the ten-layered structure of this bottleneck—who is on which layer, and how far the $80 billion stablecoin reserves held by exchanges are from real-world consumption scenarios.

02 Payment Stack Structure: Which Layer is the Exchange Located On?

2.1 Let's break down "stablecoin payments"

The term "stablecoin payment" is widely used in the industry, but it masks a significant complexity: from the moment a user transfers stablecoins to the moment those coins are ultimately spent, the process involves not just one system, but rather a complex interplay of infrastructure layers. Each layer has its own players, licensing requirements, and revenue structures.

These ten layers, from bottom to top, are: Issuance Layer, Settlement Layer, Liquidity Layer, Ramp Layer, Compliance Layer, Custody Layer, Middleware/API Layer, Wallet Layer, Application Layer, and Consumer Contact Layer.

Examining the position of exchanges within this framework yields glaring conclusions. The liquidity layer (layer 3) is a natural stronghold for centralized exchanges (CEXs), while the ramp layer (layer 4) represents a traditional advantage that is being eroded. Further up—the custody layer (layer 6), the middleware API layer (layer 7), and the consumer access layer (layer 10)—exchanges are almost entirely absent.

This $80 billion is the problem, not the answer.

The Dune × SteakhouseFi dataset (January 2026) shows that CEXs are the largest identifiable stablecoin holders on-chain, holding approximately $80 billion, a 38% year-over-year increase. However, this $80 billion describes "liquidity reserves awaiting trading," not "consumer funds awaiting payment." From an on-chain behavior perspective, all deposit and withdrawal traffic on CEXs flows to transaction clearing, not consumer payments. Exchanges hold the largest amount of stablecoins in the entire ecosystem, but this money is separated from real-world consumption scenarios by the entire upper half of the payment stack.

2.2 Velocity: The same word, two completely different assets

The best tool for quantifying this "structural distance" is Daily Velocity: the total amount of on-chain transactions in a day divided by the total circulating supply. A Velocity of 1 means that all stablecoins have changed hands completely within a day; a Velocity of 0.09 means that the vast majority of tokens remain almost completely unchanged.

The Dune dataset provides precise measurements of the Velocity of major stablecoins across various chains: USDC on Base has a daily average Velocity of 14x, USDC on Solana is approximately 1x; USDT on BNB Chain is 1.4x, USDT on Tron is 0.3x, USDT on Ethereum is only 0.2x (with over $100 billion in supply largely idle); USDe on Ethereum is 0.09x, and USDS is 0.5x.

The numbers are laid out, and the picture is very detailed.

This isn't just a question of "which chain is more active." The 70x difference between 14x and 0.09x reveals two stablecoins with fundamentally conflicting design logics:

• Payment-type stablecoins are designed for high-frequency circulation, and each transaction creates a payment scenario.
• Interest-bearing stablecoins are designed for accumulation through holding; funds remain within the protocol to earn returns, and circulation itself is not the goal.

USDC on Base is the extreme of the former, while USDe is the typical of the latter.

This 70-fold difference has a direct strategic implication for exchanges: you cannot use the same product to simultaneously serve both "storage-only" and "frequently traded" users. These two objectives correspond to two completely different token economics. Currently, no CEX has clearly distinguished between these two product lines, and none has achieved the Velocity level of USDC on Base in its payment line.

Competition in the interest-bearing stablecoin market is intensifying. The real competitors of USDG, USDS, and USDe aren't each other, but rather tokenized US Treasury bonds—BlackRock BUIDL (AUM $1.7 billion), Ondo Finance, and Franklin Templeton FOBXX offer more transparent yields and higher credit ratings for their underlying assets. For exchanges, providing custody and liquidity for RWA assets is far more straightforward than issuing their own interest-bearing stablecoin to squeeze into an already crowded market.

2.3 "Real payment" and "on-chain circulation" are two different issues.

Given that the monthly circulation of on-chain stablecoins has exceeded $10 trillion, why is it said that consumer payments are "almost absent"? There is a data trap here that is worth explaining.

Dune's 10.3 trillion (January 2026, EVM + Solana + Tron) is raw, unfiltered on-chain data. Let's break it down:

• The Base single chain contributes 5.9 trillion (but the supply is only 4.4 billion, driven by high Velocity).
• Ethereum 2.4 trillion
• Tron 682 billion,
• Solana: 544 billion.

The vast majority of traffic can be categorized into identifiable categories such as DEX liquidity, lending, and CEX deposits and withdrawals, with no single category explicitly corresponding to consumer payments. However, consumer payments do exist, but they are small in scale and growing rapidly.

A report released by Artemis in conjunction with Castle Island Ventures and Dragonfly collected data from 22 payment companies, tracking approximately $136 billion in real payment volume from January 2023 to August 2025, with an annualized operating rate reaching $118 billion by August 2025. By scenario: B2B cross-border payments accounted for approximately $76 billion annually (dominant), P2P remittances for approximately $19 billion annually, stablecoin card spending for approximately $18 billion annually (monthly volume grew from $100 million at the beginning of 2023 to $1.5 billion by August 2025, a CAGR of 106%), and B2C retail for approximately $3.3 billion.

"On-chain circulation" and "real payment volume" refer to two different issues, and both answers are accurate. The key is: the $80 billion held by centralized exchanges (CEXs) belongs to the former, circulating in layers three and four; the $136 billion in real payments occurs in layers seven to ten. Exchanges hold the largest share in the larger pool but participate almost entirely in the smaller, but faster-growing pool. This is the concrete figure for "structural distance."

2.4 The overlooked connection: Exchanges are influencing the payments market but are not benefiting from it.

There is one perspective that is often underestimated in discussions:

The connection between exchanges and stablecoin payments is more direct than it appears on the surface—but this connection remains at the traffic allocation level and does not translate into revenue for consumers.

Exchanges are the actual routing nodes for stablecoin retail payment traffic. Orbital's Q4 2025 Stablecoin Retail Payments Index shows that stablecoin payments in retail volume (less than $10,000 per transaction) grew more than tenfold in 2025, and the routing of this traffic is highly dependent on the infrastructure decisions of exchanges: Binance prioritizes BSC routing, Coinbase prioritizes Base, and OKX guides users along the neutral routes of Tron and Ethereum. While exchanges do not directly participate in consumer scenarios, their routing choices are shaping the geographic landscape of the payments market and stablecoin preferences.

Exchange cards represent the largest direct consumer contact at present, but the economic returns do not originate from the exchanges. Among existing mainstream stablecoin card projects, exchange brands occupy the most visible position to consumers—Coinbase Visa Debit, Binance Card, Crypto.com Visa, and Gemini Mastercard are all at this level. However, the actual profits of these projects flow to the underlying full-stack issuers (Rain, Reap, etc.), while exchanges receive only a small profit from the distribution layer. Cards are essentially user retention tools, not profit centers. The valuation of this layer is being repriced by the market: Rain completed a $250 million Series C funding round in January 2026 with a valuation of approximately $1.95 billion, primarily based on the complete economic benefits of the issuance and settlement layers, not the rebates from the exchange's distribution layer.

Chain preference is a kind of unrealized user asset. Through years of fee design and default deposit and withdrawal paths, each exchange has effectively defined users' on-chain habits: Binance users' stablecoins are concentrated on BSC, and Coinbase users' funds tend to flow to Base. This "chain preference" itself has value—users already have funds, habits, and migration costs on that chain. Whoever first establishes a consumption scenario on the chain where their existing users are located will not need to re-educate users; they only need to give them a place to spend money. Coinbase is closest to this: USDC Velocity 14x on Base, Base Pay is integrated with Shopify, and the existing funds and infrastructure are there. But consumption habits have not yet been formed, and the closed loop has not yet been completed—this is the current state of the entire industry, not just Coinbase.

The other side of this logic is the risk: if exchanges fail to close this loop, these link preferences will become a battleground for others. Stripe, third-party merchant tools, and even independent DApps on Coinbase can directly reach users who already hold USDC on Coinbase, without going through Coinbase's consumption products. Existing users' on-chain assets have a window of opportunity advantage, but it's not a permanent moat—the window closes not because users leave, but because someone else has already created a consumption scenario for them.

03 A Panoramic View of Consumption Scenarios: Who is Really Using Stablecoins for Consumption?

3.1 A Five-Layer Payment Stack for an African Exporter

Three years ago this was just a PowerPoint presentation; today, every layer exists. —Noah Levine, February 2026

A typical day for an exporter in Nairobi: receiving payments from US importers through a virtual USD account, depositing stablecoins into an on-chain lending pool to earn 4%–7% annualized returns, using stablecoin cards to swipe at 150 million merchants worldwide, transferring funds to Nigerian suppliers without any bank involvement and with near-zero fees. No SWIFT, no foreign exchange controls, no bank accounts.

The real value of this scenario is not that it describes emerging markets, but that it lays out the "full stack of stablecoin payments" on the table: receiving payments, depositing interest, spending, transferring funds, and settling accounts—five functional layers provided by five different companies, pieced together through on-chain composability, resulting in a near-seamless user experience.

Each of these five layers has its own dedicated players—but no general-purpose platform integrates them into a product that ordinary people can use seamlessly. Import and export trade scenarios have their own unique characteristics: both buyers and sellers are institutions, have a high acceptance of stablecoins, and tolerate slightly higher operational complexity.

Just because this stack can be assembled in a trade scenario doesn't mean it can be easily transferred to a consumer scenario: convenience store checkouts, payroll payments, P2P remittances—users in these scenarios are unwilling to traverse multiple apps and protocols. The core question explored throughout this chapter—and the blank we'll repeatedly return to later—is who can truly encapsulate these five layers of capabilities into a product whose complexity is imperceptible to the average user.

3.2 Cross-border and remittance: Where does the real demand lie?

B2B cross-border payments represent the largest and most stable-growing sub-market within the entire stablecoin consumption scenario—approximately $76 billion annualized in the Artemis report, accounting for 62% of total real payments. The driving logic is simple: SWIFT transfers take 2–5 business days and incur fees of $25–45, while stablecoin versions offer instant settlement, lower costs, and 24/7 availability. For SMEs frequently making cross-border payments, this cost-effectiveness difference is overwhelming.

The middleware layer already has established players: BVNK serves mid-sized enterprises, Thunes covers emerging market corridors, and dLocal focuses on Latin America. Coinbase and Mastercard have both been in talks to acquire BVNK, with rumors suggesting a valuation of $1.5-2.5 billion—this acquisition intention illustrates one thing: major players have determined that building their own infrastructure is slower than acquiring it, and the window for this asset layer is closing.

P2P remittances amount to approximately 19 billion annually, operating on the same logic but reaching individuals. Sling Money, running on Solana and holding a MiCA license, positions itself as a "global version of Venmo"—averaging $47 per transfer, compared to $20-30 in fees for the same amount in traditional remittances. Sling users don't care about on-chain or off-chain transactions; they only know that "that app makes transferring money cheap." This user mindset is completely different from the "I trade assets on the platform" mentality of CEXs.

3.3 Card: Currently the only consumption scenario with large-scale validation.

Among all stablecoin consumption scenarios, Card is the only one that has truly achieved large-scale validation today. It has an annualized market capitalization of approximately $18 billion, with a projected growth rate of about 100% by 2025, and Visa holds over 90% of the network share.

The reason Card was able to be the first to succeed is simple: zero cost for users to change their habits.

Consumers still swipe their cards, still use POS machines, and the receipts are still in the local currency—stablecoin settlements happen in the background and are completely transparent to users.

Rain and RedotPay's business models reveal the true unit economy of this scenario. Rain's valuation jumped from $500 million to $1.95 billion in five months in 2025, primarily due to its status as a direct Visa network principal member, bypassing the sponsor bank. Each transaction simultaneously contributes to three revenue streams: Interchange, FX spreads, and stablecoin reserves (Float).

RedotPay's official website reports an annualized TPV of approximately $10 billion, with payment volume projected to triple by 2025 and over 6 million registered users. It is currently discussing a US IPO with a valuation exceeding $4 billion, with JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Jefferies serving as underwriters. Analysts discussing this pricing are referencing the volume multiple of payment processing companies, rather than the volatility pricing framework of cryptocurrency exchanges.

The implications of this valuation framework shift for the entire industry are: once stablecoin payment companies successfully go public and obtain pricing logic from payment processing companies, the story of exchange transformation will have a public market benchmark.

A case study worth highlighting separately is Revolut . It's neither an exchange nor a pure wallet; it represents a third path for traditional Neobanks to enter the crypto consumer market—with crypto card transaction volume exceeding $10 billion by 2025, making it one of the largest crypto consumer gateways in Europe.

Revolut's logic is reversed: starting with a bank account, it integrates crypto spending as a value-added feature, so users' first perception is "my bank app," not "my exchange." This brand starting point determines that its transaction costs in the consumption scenario are naturally lower than any native crypto exchange. For exchanges, Revolut's existence illustrates one thing: in the card consumption scenario, the most dangerous competitors are not necessarily those in the same industry, but rather those who have switched from a financial portal that users already trust.

3.4 Online payment processing: Scenarios where merchants proactively reduce costs

Card payment addresses the consumer's habit issue, while online payment addresses the merchant's cost issue. These are two different driving logics and should not be confused.

In June 2025, Shopify, Coinbase, and Stripe jointly launched a stablecoin payment solution: millions of merchants could accept USDC payments on the Coinbase network without additional configuration. Merchant fees were approximately 1%, compared to 2-3% for traditional credit cards; settlement was real-time with no cross-border fees. The core technology was an open-source smart contract that replicated the "authorization-capture" mechanism of traditional payments—funds entered into an on-chain escrow contract when a buyer placed an order, and settlement was completed after the merchant confirmed shipment, supporting refunds and tax processing. This solved the biggest commercial pain point of on-chain payments previously: the lack of support for delayed capture, making it incompatible with normal e-commerce workflows.

For merchants, the logic driving the switch is straightforward: for the same sale, the cost of receiving payments drops from 2-3% to 1%, with no foreign exchange required and funds arriving instantly. It's not a new payment method, but a cheaper version of the same one. Habits don't need to change; only costs are.

3.5 Offline POS: The most challenging scenario in the industry, and two conflicting sets of logic

Users in developed markets have no reason to switch willingly, and users in emerging markets have no reason not to switch. — These are not the same issue.

Stablecoin payments have virtually zero penetration at physical POS terminals—in developed markets. The reason isn't technology, but the incentive structure: In the US or Germany, consumers get 1-2% cashback, airline miles, and shopping protection with credit cards; what do they get with stablecoins? There's no answer yet.

In a July 2025 analyst call, Mastercard's Chief Product Officer, Jorn Lambert, explicitly stated that approximately 90% of stablecoin circulation remains tied to crypto transactions and is "not currently used as a general-purpose payment tool." Visa CEO Ryan McInerny added in a January 2026 earnings call, "We haven't seen much product-market fit in stablecoin consumer payments in digitally advanced markets." Both networks are stating the same thing, just from different perspectives.

The logic in emerging markets is entirely different: inflation is the best sales team. Binance Pay successfully integrated with Argentina's nationwide QR code network for offline use; Lemon Cash's Lemon Card is actually used in convenience stores—monthly salaries are converted into stablecoins, effectively hedging against local currency depreciation. However, the replicability of this model depends on local inflationary pressures, not on a transferable product model. Using fiat currency is something emerging market users are currently fleeing; developed markets lack this trigger—two driving logics, two stages of the same story.

Beyond Card, here are a few early but worthwhile directions to follow: payroll (Deel × BVNK, approximately 3.6 billion), digital product subscriptions (Whop 18.4 million users + Tether WDK integration), and cross-border payments for creators (the clearest initial use case for the Meta stablecoin program is cross-border tipping on Instagram).

The common feature is that the target users already have cross-border payment needs, and stablecoins solve real pain points rather than creating new habits in places where there are no pain points.

The current structure of the real payment market is as follows: B2B cross-border transactions form the foundation; Card payments are the first consumer-end scenario to be successfully implemented; remittances represent the most tangible and essential need; online acquiring is the silent battleground for merchants to reduce costs; and offline POS systems remain an unsolved problem in developed markets. No one has yet emerged to integrate these five layers—but whoever does will capture the largest structural share.

04 Player Positioning Analysis: Five Players in Developed Markets + Another Logic in Emerging Markets

4.1 Coinbase: Infrastructure Vendor + A Bigger Bet

To understand Coinbase's stablecoin strategy, start with an often overlooked figure: Coinbase holds approximately 22% of the circulating supply of USDC, and with a reserve return rate of 3.8%, about $600 million in seigniorage revenue goes directly to Coinbase annually—without any product development or user education.

This figure explains a phenomenon that has puzzled outside observers: Coinbase possesses the strongest compliance moat, yet it's not in a hurry to enter the consumer market. The reason is simple—it passively earns 600 million annually at the issuance layer, more than any consumer-side product on the Base App. If you're passively earning 600 million annually, wouldn't you be eager to start a new business that "might earn 100 million but requires 3 years to validate"?

So what Coinbase is really doing are two parallel things.

• One approach is to sell infrastructure to everyone: the Base chain is positioned as "the cheapest Ethereum L2", USDC is the default settlement currency, and the developer platform is open to third parties—regardless of who wins in stablecoin payments, Coinbase earns infrastructure fees.
• Another big bet is to use Base App to integrate wallet + transaction + payment + social + mini app, with 4.1% APY and 1% cashback on purchases. Base Pay is already integrated with Shopify.

Data confirms that genuine high-frequency activity is indeed occurring on Base: USDC on Base has a daily average Velocity of 14x, the highest among all major stablecoins on all major public chains, in stark contrast to USDT on ETH's 0.2x. Of course, there is currently no publicly available data on how much of this 14x comes from DeFi bots and how much from real consumption.

The core constraint facing Coinbase is not compliance or funding, but a historical pattern: SuperApps have an extremely high failure rate in Western markets.

Meta has tried, X is trying, and so far there have been no successful examples. The success of the Base App requires Coinbase to complete a brand leap—from a "professional crypto trading platform" to a "consumer application used by ordinary people every day." This leap is more difficult than any technical problem.

4.2 Binance: The Most Contradictory Player

Binance's stablecoin portfolio is the most extensive among the five, but it also contains the most internal contradictions.

The circulating supply of USD1 has reached $5.1 billion, a considerable sum. However, analyzing its holder distribution using the HHI (Hirschman Index) framework yields conclusions contrary to intuition:

HHI is a standard tool for measuring market concentration; 0 represents complete decentralization, and 1 represents a single holder. Stablecoins with an HHI > 0.1 can generally be identified as inter-institutional instruments rather than consumer-grade stablecoins.

Issuance volume ≠ Decentralization ≠ Consumer-side readiness – this logic chain is the easiest to skip in stablecoin analysis.

But this conflict took a new turn at the end of 2025—Binance did not attempt to resolve it, but instead chose a more direct path: deep pegging to USD1.

In December 2025, Binance announced a 1:1 conversion of all its BUSD reserves (approximately $2 billion) to USD1, simultaneously launching three trading pairs: BNB/USD1, ETH/USD1, and SOL/USD1, and introducing a $40 million WLFI token reward program to incentivize users to hold USD1. As a result, as of February 2026, Binance held approximately 87% of the total USD1 supply, and USD1 became part of Binance's internal collateral structure, embedded in margin trading and internal liquidity operations. This is not a distribution partnership, but a structural binding.

This synergy reveals Binance's true strategic intent: rather than issuing its own consumer-grade stablecoin, it's better to bet on a politically backed, fastest-growing external stablecoin and become its largest distribution node. The USD1 float yields go to World Liberty Financial, while Binance gains platform liquidity, trading volume, and political ties to the Trump family. Given Binance's current situation, this exchange isn't a loss.

Binance Pay's 2025 figures are equally impressive: the number of merchants increased from 12,000 to over 20 million (+1700 times), processing a cumulative $250 billion, with over 45 million users, covering JW Marriott, KFC, and Argentina's nationwide QR code network. However, a crucial statistic behind these numbers remains undisclosed: the ratio of actually activated (with actual transactions) merchants to those that "never transacted after zero-cost integration." The cost of integrating with Binance Pay is virtually zero; the number of merchants is not an indicator of penetration depth—the activation rate is, and Binance does not disclose this figure.

The core contradiction lies with Trust Wallet: with 200 million downloads and a relatively independent brand, it is theoretically the strongest entry point for consumers. However, Trust Wallet is owned by Binance—the more you want to succeed on the consumer side, the more you need to distance yourself from Binance; but Binance is its owner, and the upper limit of that distance is finite. There is no simple solution to this contradiction.

4.3 OKX: Affiliate Program with the Clearest Compliance Path

Among the five companies, OKX has taken the clearest path to compliance, and this is no coincidence.

OKX obtained a separate MAS MPI (Major Payment Institution) license in Singapore—this wasn't automatically covered by the VASP license, but rather acquired through additional investment by OKX. It forms the legal basis for OKX's compliant operation of OKX Pay in Singapore and is the direct reason why it's ahead of other CEXs in Southeast Asian consumer scenarios.

OKX Card is currently the most concrete consumer-side product: covering Europe, using the Mastercard network, allowing direct spending from a self-custodied wallet, with a 0.4% spread, and Standard Chartered acting as the custodian. The collaboration between OKX Pay, Grab, and StraitsX has created a complete pipeline in Singapore: stablecoin account → daily spending → deposits and withdrawals, all three seamlessly integrated.

Pipeline readiness does not equate to user readiness.

DeFi users are driven by the mindset of "I want to earn yield," while consumers are driven by the mindset of "I want to make payments." The gap between these two mindsets cannot be bridged simply by connecting an API. The OKX Pay × Grab pipeline already exists, but there is still no publicly available data on actual transaction volume—this lack in itself is a signal.

4.4 Robinhood: The most complete structure, lacking the "final leap"

Of the five, Robinhood has the most complete consumer-side layout structure—although it is still missing the "last hop".

The Gold Card is the core product: 3% cashback on all categories, points automatically converted into crypto asset investments, 300,000 cards already issued, and over 2 million on the waiting list. However, it's crucial to clarify its essence: daily use of the Gold Card still involves fiat currency transactions → points → cryptocurrency purchases, failing to complete the on-chain closed loop of "direct stablecoin spending." Users experience a convenient credit card, not a stablecoin payment product.

Under this premise, as a founding member of USDG GDN (Global Dollar Network), Robinhood transfers 97% of its USDG reserve returns to Gold members—forming the most complete closed loop in the market: earn returns by holding stablecoins, receive cashback on purchases, and then reinvest the cashback in crypto assets. These three stages are interconnected, but the final purchase transaction still follows the fiat credit card model, rather than direct on-chain stablecoin payment.

Robinhood's biggest differentiator actually comes from its regulatory structure: holding both a Broker-Dealer license (SEC registered) and a money sender license, it can integrate investment accounts and payment accounts on the same platform. This combination is almost impossible to replicate in pure crypto exchanges, allowing it to naturally extend from the "investment" side to the "consumption" side without needing to convince users that "an exchange can handle consumption well."

4.5 Bitget: The most thoroughly decoupled executor

Of the five companies, Bitget has implemented the most thorough brand decoupling.

Bitget Wallet has largely decoupled its visual identity and positioning from the main brand, boasting over 40 million users. One of its strategies is the Telegram ecosystem: its Bitget Wallet Lite is a multi-chain native wallet within Telegram, and the OmniConnect SDK allows Telegram Mini-App developers to seamlessly integrate into the multi-chain ecosystem, with its main market covering Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

However, this direction is still in the early stages of validation. Whether Telegram can become a real consumer gateway in emerging markets depends on the development speed of the TON ecosystem itself.

This choice itself is a strategic judgment: instead of competing head-on with Coinbase and OKX in developed markets, it focuses resources on emerging markets where the habit has not yet been formed and stablecoins have real value for users.

Bitget Card × Mastercard provided the most authentic consumer-side data from five sources: a 28-fold increase in transaction volume and over 1.5 million merchants. This data is more credible than Binance Pay's 20 million merchants—because it's based on genuine Mastercard network access, not a zero-cost cooperation agreement.

The core issue is the integrity of the business model: Bitget Wallet's user growth currently contributes little to Bitget exchange's core revenue. Wallet users are not automatically trading users, and there is currently no clear publicly available data on the conversion path between the two. The direction of growth is correct, but whether this growth is correctly translating into profit remains to be seen.

4.6 Tether: The most profitable bystander, entering the market with capital rather than products.

The most profitable stablecoin issuers have long voluntarily abandoned building their own consumer scenarios. This is not a matter of capability, but a strategic choice.

Tether is an entity that must be analyzed separately in this article, even though it is not an exchange. USDT has a circulating supply of $197 billion and a net profit of over $13 billion in 2025, mainly from the reserve income of its $122 billion holdings of US Treasury bonds, which it retains entirely and does not share with any ecosystem partners.

This reverse signal is worth taking seriously by all exchanges that want to enter the consumer market: if Tether earns 13 billion a year by "not engaging in consumer scenarios", it shows that accumulating sufficient scale at the issuance level is a business in itself, and does not necessarily require consumer scenarios to realize value.

However, Tether's consumer entry strategy is emerging—using capital, not products. It has already invested in about 120 companies, with the logic of entering "entities with existing user bases and consumption scenarios" through equity, allowing USDT to naturally penetrate through these entities.

Two recent cases:

• Juventus , holding a 10.7% stake, proposed in December to acquire a 65.4% stake in its controlling shareholder, Exor. Hundreds of millions of fans worldwide represent a huge consumption scenario, and integrating USDT into the fan economy is a potential path.
• Whop , which received a strategic investment of $200 million in February 2026 (valuing the company at $1.6 billion), has 18.4 million users, an annualized GMV of $3 billion, and a monthly growth rate of approximately 25%. It will integrate Tether WDK (Wallet Development Kit, a USDT integration SDK for third-party developers) to support USDT self-custodied payments, bypassing traditional bank card networks.

Lower costs and less regulatory risk—these are the unique options that its 13 billion annual profit gives it, and no other player has the same option to bet in the same way.

4.7 Emerging Markets: A Completely Different Logic

The analytical frameworks of the five companies above are highly focused on the North American, European, and Singaporean perspectives. However, the real battleground for stablecoin payments to penetrate consumer markets lies in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa—where the nature of the issues is fundamentally different.

The challenge in developed markets: How to persuade users with existing payment habits to switch to stablecoins.

The problem in emerging markets: stablecoins are the only affordable financial infrastructure, and they have been the answer from the start.

Lemon Cash is the best example to understand this logic: 78% of deposits are in stablecoins, and the Lemon Card backend handles real-time USDC to peso conversions, embedding on-chain rewards through Aave (130,000 users, $40 million in deposits). Its users aren't just "trying out stablecoin payments," but rather using stablecoins to combat inflation—converting monthly salaries to USDT is common sense for ordinary Argentinians, and using Lemon Cards at convenience stores is a natural extension of this logic. Across Latin America, on-chain value received in 2024 reached $415 billion (+42% YoY), with over 60% settled in stablecoins.

The logic is different in Southeast Asia. GCash (Philippines, 77 million users), Grab Financial, and Sea Group—these super apps have already established consumption habits. For them, stablecoins are candidates for backend infrastructure , not frontend products. The issue here isn't "how to get users to accept stablecoins," but rather "which stablecoin will GCash and similar platforms choose as their backend settlement layer, and who will provide liquidity?" This presents a B2B cooperation opportunity for exchanges, not a direct competitive opportunity on the consumer side.

Key takeaway: In emerging markets, "stablecoin payments" are not an additional scenario for exchanges to enter, but rather the very reason for the platforms' existence. Lemon Cash, Sling Money, and Ripio are not "exchanges transforming into consumer services"; they have been "stablecoin-based digital banks" from day one. Confusing these two issues is one of the most common cognitive errors in this field—and the cost of this error is using emerging market narratives to explain logic in developed markets and using developed market frameworks to find opportunities in emerging markets.

05 Triple Obstacles: Internal Troubles and External Threats

Before listing all the obstacles, make a tiered assessment first—otherwise, after reading it, you'll only feel that there are "many threats," but you won't know which ones are fatal and which ones can be overcome.

The three internal challenges are fundamentally different: the business model obstacle is structural , as exchanges make money by retaining assets and charging fees, while consumption scenarios encourage spending money. These two logics are fundamentally opposed and cannot be overcome by execution and determination alone; the identity recognition obstacle is brand-related , which can be overcome by product decoupling, as Bitget Wallet is attempting and has a successful path; the compliance obstacle is capital-related , which can be resolved with enough money and time, and is not a fundamental obstacle.

The three external threats are also at different levels: Meta/Stripe is a threat at the user entry layer, while Circle CPN is a threat at the infrastructure layer. The combination of the two constitutes the complete pincer movement—the entry point above is locked by Meta, the pipeline below is standardized by Circle, and the exchange is squeezed into an increasingly narrow middle layer.

Internal concern 1: Obstacles to identity recognition

When a user opens an exchange app, their expectation is to "trade." This isn't a UX issue; it's a brand perception issue—no matter how much you change Coinbase's interface to resemble Venmo, users' mental expectations won't change.

PayPal's PYUSD serves as a compelling counterexample: 430 million users, a 45% market share in the US online payments market, and 100,000 direct merchants. Despite being launched two years ago, PYUSD received no support for stablecoin settlements from Braintree or Zettle POS, and 360,000 PayPal merchants never actually "saw" PYUSD – because it was automatically converted back to fiat currency before settlement. PayPal's CEO directly admitted in the 2025 earnings call: "There are currently no real incentives driving stablecoin adoption."

PayPal, with its brand recognition in the payments field being closer to "consumer" than any crypto exchange, and operating in a relatively favorable regulatory environment, still took two years to achieve genuine stablecoin consumer penetration. For exchanges whose main brand is "crypto trading," this obstacle will only be higher, not lower.

Second internal concern: Obstacles from compliance structure

The most common misconception in this field is equating "holding a VASP license" with "being able to engage in consumer payments." There's a significant gap: a VASP license is not equivalent to EMI, PI, or MPI. Entering the consumer side of each market requires going through the entire licensing application process again. The EU EMI approval cycle is approximately 12–18 months, Singapore MPI waiting times can be even longer depending on the intensity of competition, and in the US, currency sender licenses are applied for state by state; completing all 50 states would take years and tens of millions of dollars in legal costs.

This is why compliance hurdles are categorized as "capital hurdles": they are a matter of "buying time with money," not insurmountable obstacles. Players with sufficient capital can overcome them, just at different speeds. Their importance lies in the fact that they consume capital and time in every market—and the first-mover advantage in consumer scenarios often forms within this window.

Third internal challenge: Obstacles to the business model

This is the only truly structural problem among the three internal troubles.

The business model of an exchange is built on two foundations: users leave their assets on the platform (so they can trade them at any time), and users trade frequently (generating transaction fees). The logic of a consumer scenario is the opposite: it encourages users to spend their money, the more the better.

Velocity data directly quantifies this contradiction: interest-bearing stablecoins (USDG/USDS/USDe) have a daily average Velocity of 0.09x–0.5x, designed to allow users to accumulate returns by holding assets; payment-based stablecoins (USDC on Base) have a Velocity of 14x, designed to facilitate high-frequency fund transfers. Exchanges want to serve both holders and consumers simultaneously—a structural contradiction in the design of stablecoins.

You cannot achieve both high AUM (asset management) and high Velocity (consumer payments) with the same stablecoin product. You need two completely different product and operational logics.

Currently, no exchange has truly resolved this contradiction, including Coinbase.

External threat 1: Independent wallets are eroding the entry point for consumption.

Phantom (valued at $3 billion, with 40 million users) and MetaMask (14 million monthly active users) are evolving from "crypto asset management wallets" to "consumer financial hubs." Phantom Cash integrates Stripe Bridge, Solana Pay, and interest-bearing functionality, and plans to launch the Phantom Card; MetaMask has launched mUSD (an automatically interest-bearing stablecoin) and MetaMask Card (from the Mastercard network).

The biggest advantage of an independent wallet is the absence of the brand baggage of a "crypto exchange." Users perceive it as "this is my Solana wallet," rather than "this is a trading platform that makes me risk market fluctuations." This difference in brand perception directly impacts users' willingness to deposit funds for spending.

A more noteworthy long-term development is that if Phantom/MetaMask successfully extends into consumer scenarios, they could become upstream drivers of traffic for exchanges—after users complete their daily spending needs in their wallets, their only remaining need for the CEX's main app would be "large deposits and professional trading." This would further push exchanges towards becoming pure intermediaries.

External threat two: Systemic erosion of the infrastructure layer – and a discussion of Circle's changing role.

The threat at this layer is unique: it doesn't come from external competitors, but from the exchange's "liquidity providers" and "network partners." They are gradually standardizing the layers that exchanges excel at—the ramp layer, the liquidity layer, and the B2B settlement layer.

Stripe/Bridge : A stablecoin deposit and withdrawal infrastructure in 101 countries, integrated with just 10 lines of code, directly breaking through the ramp layer moat that CEXs once relied on. Sling Money uses it to process global remittances, Phantom Cash uses it to generate interest, and Meta H2 is most likely to choose it as its stablecoin integration partner in 2026.

Coinbase × BVNK / Mastercard × Zerohash : This is the most direct indicator of the strategic intentions of major players – merger and acquisition bidding. Coinbase and Mastercard both bid for BVNK (valued at approximately $2 billion), with Coinbase ultimately entering into exclusive negotiations; Mastercard then pursued Zerohash with a hefty offer (US$1.5-2 billion), but Zerohash chose to remain independent and is currently raising $250 million at a valuation of $1.5 billion. These two acquisition battles illustrate the same thing: the strategic value of payment infrastructure middleware has been priced in by the entire industry, and major players are willing to spend $2 billion to acquire it rather than build it themselves. For exchanges, the window for this asset is closing.

Visa USDC Settlement : In December 2025, Visa launched USDC settlement in the United States, with an annualized scale exceeding $3.5 billion. Simultaneously, Visa became a design partner of Circle Arc and plans to run validator nodes. This is not a compatibility move—Visa is embedding its stablecoin into the core of its settlement infrastructure while deeply entangled with Circle as a technology partner.

There is a logical chain here that deserves to be highlighted separately because it connects all the actions of the second external threat: declining interest rates → shrinking Float yields → issuers forced to shift to trading volume-driven growth → intensified competition for consumer scenarios → and an earlier timeline for the squeeze on exchanges.

Circle's reserve return rate fell from 4.49% in 2024 to 3.81% in Q4 2025, and continued to be under pressure in FY2026—for every 100 basis point cut in interest rates by the Federal Reserve, Circle earns approximately $700 million less. This isn't just pressure on Circle; Tether's $122 billion in Treasury holdings also suffers from declining interest rates. As "easy money" becomes increasingly difficult, Circle and Tether must compensate for profits with trading volume—CPN, Arc, and equity investments are all products of this pressure. And the arena where they compete for trading volume is precisely the consumer scenario that exchanges originally wanted to enter. The interest rate cut cycle is not a strategic choice for any single player; it's an accelerator for the entire competitive landscape.

External threat three: Meta – the largest entrant with the largest user base.

Even if only 1% of Meta users adopt it, that's 30 million people—equivalent to the current size of the entire crypto market.

On February 24, 2026, CoinDesk exclusively reported that three anonymous sources confirmed Meta has issued an RFP to third-party infrastructure providers, aiming to integrate stablecoin payments on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp by H2 2026, simultaneously launching a new wallet feature. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone responded, "Meta does not have its own stablecoin, nor are there plans to issue one. The focus is on enabling users and merchants to complete transactions on the Meta platform using their preferred payment methods."

This time, the strategy is completely different from Libra's in 2019:

The reasons for Stripe/Bridge's leading position converge on three points: Stripe CEO Patrick Collison joined the Meta board in April 2025; Bridge received conditional trust bank approval from the OCC in February 2026; and Stripe's transaction volume quadrupled within a year of acquiring Bridge. This pipeline is ready in terms of technology, compliance, and relationships.

The priority of the four major platforms in terms of application scenarios is as follows: WhatsApp (cross-border remittances/P2P, India/Brazil are closest to the basic needs) → Instagram (cross-border payment for creators) → Facebook/Messenger (social payments, gaming economy) → Meta Pay (a unified payment brand across platforms, the final game).

The first stablecoin account for these 30 million people will be in the WhatsApp Wallet, with Stripe handling settlement and USDC issuing the currency. Exchanges are not involved in this chain—Meta's scale effect won't benefit any exchanges, but rather the company that becomes its infrastructure partner first, and that company is most likely Stripe.

06 Strategic Mistakes

This chapter is not to supplement information, but to correct misconceptions. There are some seemingly reasonable but ultimately flawed analytical arguments circulating in the stablecoin payment field. Pointing them out is to ensure that end-game projections are built on a more solid foundation.

Myth 1: Number of signed merchants ≠ Penetration metrics

When the cost of merchant onboarding is zero, the number of merchants cannot be used as a measure of penetration depth.

Binance Pay's figure of 20 million merchants is real, but the proportion of "activated users" (those with actual transactions) and "those who have never transacted after signing up at zero cost" is not publicly disclosed—and this proportion is the key data for judging the true depth of penetration. The Bhutan tourism system provides reverse verification: more than 1,000 merchants have completed the connection, but the actual transaction volume is close to zero, because the special nature of the tourism scenario has not generated a sufficiently strong consumer driving force.

Supply-side readiness does not equal demand-side activation.

Merchant onboarding is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. Without activation rate data, the number of merchants is a marketing figure, not a strategic metric.

Myth 2: Technical pipeline readiness ≠ Product launch

The integration of OKX Pay, Grab, and StraitsX is genuine from both a technical and compliance standpoint. However, since its launch, there has been no publicly available data on actual transaction volume.

The problem isn't technical, but rather behavioral friction: with this system, users need to open the OKX app, confirm their stablecoin balance, and then initiate a Grab payment. In contrast, with GrabPay, the balance is readily available, and the payment is completed with a single click. Without a significant discount, users won't go through these extra steps just to use stablecoins.

There's a gap in product experience between "pipeline readiness" and "user usability," and technological readiness cannot automatically bridge that gap. This isn't just a problem for OKX; it's a common dilemma faced by the entire industry with its product logic of "B2B pipeline priority, C-end experience secondary."

Myth 3: Issuing your own stablecoin ≠ Building consumption scenarios

Issuing a stablecoin and using that stablecoin for consumption are two completely different things.

Using the HHI framework for general judgment: If a stablecoin's holdings are extremely concentrated in the top 10 wallets (HHI > 0.1), it can generally be identified as an inter-institutional tool, rather than a consumer-grade stablecoin. USD1's 87% holding concentration and USDS's 90% concentration both fall into this category—they are tools used for fund transfers between institutions, not a medium for ordinary users to pay at convenience stores.

Issuance volume is a number, while distribution represents purchasing power, and purchasing power still needs to be realized through various scenarios. There is no automatic causal relationship between the three.

Myth 4: User base ≠ conversion of consumption habits

The PayPal case has been analyzed in detail in the previous section of this article, and the conclusions remain the same here: user scale is a measure of reach, not a guarantee of conversion. 360,000 merchants have never "seen" PYUSD; PayPal's CEO stated that "there are currently no real incentives driving stablecoin adoption."

Without real incentives—cheaper, faster, or merchants only accepting stablecoins—a large user base won't automatically generate stablecoin spending. This principle applies to PayPal, as well as Coinbase and Binance.

Myth 5: Focusing only on scale, ignoring who is making money.

This is the most hidden yet most important misconception, because it concerns the foundation of the entire analytical framework: Where does the money go in stablecoin payment scenarios?

Exchanges that distribute cards receive 0.1-0.5% of the revenue share, making them the lowest-earning layer among all participants. The real money is made at both ends: the issuance layer (Rain/RedotPay receives 1.4-2.3% in interchange) and the float layer (where all stablecoin holders share proportionally).

Coinbase Seigniorage : Coinbase holds approximately 22% of the circulating supply of USDC. At a 3.8% reserve return rate, approximately $600 million in seigniorage revenue goes directly to Coinbase annually, without requiring any product development. This fundamentally explains why Coinbase is "not in a hurry to create consumer scenarios"—it has already established an efficient passive income stream at the issuance layer. This is not strategic conservatism, but a rational choice based on unit economics.

The valuation language in capital markets differs : VCs operate on a high-multiplier betting logic; Rain's valuation skyrocketed from $500 million to $1.95 billion in five months, a prime example. The valuation logic in the public market is closer to that of payment companies: RedotPay discussed an IPO with a valuation exceeding $4 billion, its core being interchange revenue plus float income. Investors can model this using P/E ratios, similar to Visa or Mastercard—rather than using transaction volume multiples like Coinbase.

For exchanges, this means that a successful transformation into a stablecoin payment infrastructure signifies a shift in valuation framework from "volatile assets, high beta" to "predictable payment processing revenue, low volatility." This could be a more significant long-term value reshaping than any single strategic choice.

The final background variable, shared by all Float models: Circle's reserve return rate has fallen from 4.49% in 2024 to 3.81% in Q4 2025, and will continue to be under pressure in FY2026. For every 100 basis point rate cut by the Federal Reserve, Circle earns approximately $700 million less, and the profit margins of the entire "float-based profit" business model will be under pressure accordingly. This isn't a problem for just one company; the entire infrastructure layer is in the same boat.

Taking these five misconceptions together leads to a conclusion more important than any single statistic: the actual progress of stablecoin payments is far slower than the surface figures suggest, but the migration of the underlying infrastructure is far faster than the surface figures appear. Both things are true simultaneously. This means the end result is not "an explosion of consumption scenarios on a particular exchange," but rather a re-stratification of the infrastructure layer—whoever owns a particular layer owns the pricing power and revenue of that layer.

07 Endgame Simulation and Practical Direction

With this judgment in mind, let's move on to the final scenario. There are three scenarios, each with different probabilities and strategic implications, but at the beginning of 2026, none of them are set in stone—they are all still open to interpretation.

7.1 Scenario 1: Infrastructure Symbiotic Mode (probability approximately 60%)

It's not about incorporation, it's about stratification. Visa, Stripe, and Circle each occupy a tier, and capable exchanges actively choose their own position.

The mechanism is a layered, symbiotic one, not a one-way takeover: Stripe Bridge API makes stablecoin settlements transparent for merchants' backends, while the user's frontend fiat currency experience remains unchanged—Stripe earns API fees; Visa USDC settlement is embedded in VisaNet, and Circle is deeply tied to Arc as a partner—Visa earns network evaluation fees, and Circle earns Float; exchanges provide liquidity and ramps at the third and fourth layers—earning infrastructure fees, but their pricing power continues to decline with standardization. The reason this path has the highest probability of success is precisely because it involves the least resistance: users don't perceive any changes, and each participant earns money at the layer they are most proficient in.

There have indeed been stories of "acquisition" in history—PayPal was once thought to be able to disrupt credit cards, but eventually became Visa's largest partner; Square was thought to be able to help merchants bypass card readers, but eventually connected to the Visa network. But today's landscape has a key deviation: the major players are not waiting to be acquired, they are actively choosing their place in the infrastructure stack.

Coinbase is the clearest active player in this scenario : holding 22% of the circulating USDC (approximately $600 million in passive seigniorage revenue annually) + being a Base blockchain infrastructure provider + currently in exclusive negotiations to acquire BVNK (valued at $1.5-2.5 billion) + a direct partner of the Visa network—its role in this scenario is that of an "integrator of the stablecoin infrastructure stack," not a middle layer with compressed profits. This also explains why its actions in the consumer scenario are relatively restrained: the passive income from the infrastructure layer is already sufficient, and there is no need to risk the uncertainty of the consumer scenario.

For most exchanges, the outcome of this scenario is: they continue to play the role of the ramp layer and liquidity layer, becoming indispensable in the larger stablecoin infrastructure, but with increasingly weaker pricing power.

7.2 Scenario 2: Wallet Super App Mode (probability approximately 25%)

This scenario is internally divided into three sub-paths, each with a completely different meaning for the exchange.

Sub-path A: Extending Crypto-Native Wallets to Consumption – Phantom Cash integrates interest-bearing credit, Solana Pay, and Phantom Card; MetaMask launches mUSD and MetaMask Card, both attempting to extend from "my crypto wallet" to "my everyday spending account." The main hurdle is that the mindset of DeFi users is not the same as that of ordinary consumers. DeFi users care about APY and Gas, while ordinary consumers care about whether it's more convenient than a credit card. Successfully implementing both product design logics simultaneously is extremely difficult.

Sub-Path B: Emerging Market Digital Bank – Lemon Cash has been a digital bank from day one, not an exchange transformed. Its penetration is driven by the inherent needs of inflation and remittances, requiring no persuasion to change user habits. With 59 non-USD stablecoins already listed on 6 continents and local fiat-to-stablecoin infrastructure under construction, this is a key on-chain signal for the establishment of Sub-Path B.

Sub-path C: The traditional internet super platform Meta has issued an RFP, with Stripe being the most likely partner. The primary entry point is cross-border payments for Instagram creators and P2P remittances via WhatsApp. The first stablecoin account for 30 million potential first-time adopters will be in the WhatsApp Wallet. Crypto exchanges are not present on this path.

The fate of exchanges in scenario two: Sub-path A depends on the degree of decoupling between wallet brands, with Bitget Wallet having a chance, while the Binance main app does not; Sub-path B is the domain of emerging market platforms; Sub-path C is where exchanges are most likely to play the role of B2B liquidity providers, completely bypassed at the user level.

7.3 Scenario 3: Agentic Commerce - Overtaking on a Curve (Probability approximately 15%, highest potential return)

This is the scenario with the lowest probability but the most profound potential impact—and the only scenario in which exchanges have a structural advantage in the competition.

As the primary consumer, AI agents use stablecoins as a natural medium for settlement between agents. The problem of "spending habit migration" disappears entirely in this scenario because no human user makes the decision at the moment of payment. Agents autonomously decide when to pay, how much to pay, and to whom to pay.

Why do exchanges actually have an advantage in this scenario ? Agents choose payment layers based solely on three metrics: API latency, gas costs, and liquidity depth, regardless of brand or user experience. These happen to be the three strongest aspects of CEX infrastructure. The brand advantage that Phantom/MetaMask has built on the user side is meaningless to agents. Stripe's user-friendly experience is also of no value to agents. The liquidity pools and API infrastructure that exchanges have accumulated over the years are a real competitive advantage in agentic commerce scenarios—and there's no need to rebuild a brand on the user side.

Infrastructure exploration: The x402 protocol (proposed by Coinbase in 2025) allows HTTP requests to carry payment instructions directly, enabling AI agents to complete micropayments without establishing accounts or obtaining human authorization; Coinbase Agentic Wallet (MPC architecture + strategy layer) allows agents to autonomously sign transactions within preset rules; Visa's 2026 report explicitly states that "stablecoins may become the natural currency for machine-driven commerce".

Timeline: Currently, we are still in the early stages of the protocol layer. 2026–2027 will be the infrastructure construction period. Around 2028, if AI agents truly penetrate enterprise procurement processes, this scenario may enter the verification stage. The probability is low, but the window of opportunity is the longest of the three scenarios—today's infrastructure investment does not need to wait for the scenario to mature.

7.4 Common Constraints of the Three Scenarios

Regardless of the scenario in which it is implemented, the three constraints will persist.

Fees approaching zero : On-chain transaction costs are nearing zero, and any model attempting to charge for the transaction itself faces a systemic price war. Sustainable revenue can only be built on adjacent service layers—Interchange, FX, Float, and API subscriptions. This is the underlying logic of the entire stablecoin payment ecosystem and will not change due to different scenarios.

Developed Markets vs. Emerging Markets: Demand Splits . Penetrating consumption scenarios in developed markets is far more difficult than the numbers suggest; while the essential needs already exist in emerging markets, the players' logic is completely different. Attempting to cover both markets with a single strategy will result in mediocrity in both—not because of insufficient resources, but because the two driving logics are fundamentally different.

First-mover pressure : "Building infrastructure downwards" is not a path without competition—Circle CPN is standardizing the layer that exchanges excel at, and Visa has deeply partnered with Circle as a technology partner. The window of opportunity is narrowing; the later you enter, the fewer positions you can secure.

7.5 Corresponding Strategic Direction

Regarding acquisition strategies: Building infrastructure doesn't necessarily mean starting from scratch. BVNK is currently the most complete independent company in terms of stablecoin middleware layer, and Coinbase has entered into exclusive negotiations with a valuation range of $1.5-2.5 billion. For exchanges with capital but lacking middleware layer execution capabilities, this is a faster and more certain path than building it themselves—and it's also a direct way to realize the high valuations that the private market gives to "stablecoin infrastructure."

08 In conclusion: Jevons saw not a paradox, but a pattern.

"Jevens watched coal consumption surge as engine efficiency improved, calling it a paradox. It's not a paradox, it's a law: when the unit cost of a basic service falls low enough, the market doesn't shrink—it reaches everyone previously excluded by the cost structure. We're about to see how many that includes."

— Noah Levine, February 2026

The story of stablecoin payments is not about a particular exchange winning or losing. It's an inevitable process of financial services expanding to more people once infrastructure costs have decreased sufficiently.

For remittance senders in sub-Saharan Africa, the fee for a $200 remittance has dropped from $17 to near zero. This isn't just an abstract concept of financial innovation; it's changing the quality of daily life for families. For exporters in Nairobi, the combination of virtual dollar accounts, stablecoin cards, and on-chain interest—which was just a concept on PowerPoint three years ago—is now a tangible reality.

The strategic dilemma faced by exchanges is just one small slice of a larger transformation. And the ultimate goal of this transformation—as the story of the steam engine and the ATM ultimately proved—is not the redistribution of existing resources, but the birth of a larger market.

The person who integrates these five layers may not be "one person"—more likely a layered and symbiotic infrastructure ecosystem, with winners at each layer, and each winner taking their share of the profits.

The real question is: who occupies an irreplaceable position in this ecosystem, and who is just a cog in the machine that can be replaced at any time?

The real significance of all this lies in the billions of people that will be reached in that market.

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