Who remembers the Playstation Move, that PS3 add-on that used a glowing wand remote as a motion-based controller? That’s a relic of the distant past, right? Well, it’s newer tech than Bitcoin.
It doesn’t feel like that long ago that we were asking ourselves whether Bitcoin was the future of currency. Created in early 2009 as a digital alternative to the dollar, Bitcoin once held the potential to revolutionize the way online payments were executed. Since then, it’s certainly made a cultural impact, though not in the way its creators intended. In the last 17 years, Bitcoin and other types of cryptocurrencies have been used as penny stocks, memes, rug pulls, and get-rich-quick schemes. Bitcoin has had time to evolve, devolve, and finally settle into what we know it as today: a stock, more or less.
Crypto was never supposed to be as volatile as it became. Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, originally defined its purpose as “a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash [that] would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.” The guy who bought a pizza for 10,000 BTC in 2010 was just trying to use Bitcoin as it was intended: a payment method. Instead, he’s become an effigy of regret. In a perfect world, a pizza would still be worth a set number of BTC, and peer-to-peer purchases would be routine. That’s the kind of world that stablecoins are trying to bring back.
Stablecoins are virtual tokens designed to maintain price stability, usually by being linked to an underlying fiat currency. The two most popular stablecoins in use today are USDC (Coin) and USDT (Tether), which are both pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar. These cryptocurrencies are exactly what most of us thought Bitcoin was in its early stages: a digital version of real money. They aren’t memecoins or stocks that can be day-traded, since their value doesn’t fluctuate.
Stablecoins may just be the future of crypto. If you haven’t heard of them, however, you might be surprised to learn that they were around during the early days of crypto, too. The first two stablecoins, BitUSD and USDT, were created in 2014. While these tokens didn’t have the meteoric rise that Bitcoin and Ethereum did, stablecoins overall have become a powerhouse in recent years, registering $46 trillion in total transaction volume in 2025 (per Andreessen Horowitz’s State of Crypto 2025).
So, if stablecoins are essentially a digital version of the US dollar, why aren’t we all using them right now?
Who Uses Stablecoins?
While Bitcoin and stablecoins are both digital currencies that function via the blockchain, they tend to serve completely different audiences. Bitcoin users are often individuals who hold a chunk of money in BTC as an investment, fretting when it drops 5% and celebrating when it jumps 5%. You probably know some of these people (and you may even be one). However, these users aren’t typically interested in actually buying goods with their tokens.
According to a 2025 National Cryptocurrency Association survey, 61% of crypto holders don’t actually use it to make purchases, and only 11% of users actively spend it like fiat currency. This isn’t due to a lack of adoption; thanks to payment processors like BitPay, many websites, luxury stores, and even car dealerships can accept tokens like Bitcoin for payment.
There are a couple reasons that actual purchases with these coins are fairly uncommon. For one, volatility can be intimidating to both the buyer and the seller. If a Bitcoin user sends $2,000 in BTC for a wristwatch, by the time it settles and the merchant converts it, the payment might be worth anywhere between $1,900 and $2,100. Its inconsistency makes it impractical for standard use.
The other reason is the simple fact that peer-to-peer Bitcoin payments don’t really solve a practical problem. Sure, it’s cool to buy a car with Bitcoin, but buying a car via check is just as easy and far less volatile. Sending Bitcoin to a friend as payment is also unnecessary, especially when there’s simpler solutions like Venmo and Cashapp.
There is one audience, however, that seldom uses peer-to-peer apps to send transactions: B2B companies. This is where stablecoins can step in.
Whether purchasing from a vendor, sending funds to business partners, or sharing money between entities, plenty of organizations routinely send large payments. These transactions bring operational challenges in the form of timeline delays and expensive fees. Sending money across borders also invites foreign exchange risk, as different currencies fluctuate in value.
In a nightmare scenario, a U.S.-based tech company might send a South American vendor a $5,000 payment that costs $50 via international wire and takes five business days to arrive, only for the vendor’s country to experience economic collapse within the week the payment traveled. It could settle as half its original value.
Because of crypto’s decentralized design, this kind of collapse is unlikely. Blockchains rely on distributed networks of nodes that protect against single points of failure, with no governing authority that can experience sudden turmoil. While some coins are volatile, the underlying technology is designed with strong security controls.
This is why the American business in our example is better off using stablecoins. Without dependence on correspondent banking networks, stablecoins transfer in minutes at any time of day and on any day of the week. These transactions typically carry lower transfer costs than international wires, maintain a stable dollar peg under normal market conditions, and settle independently of banking hours, holidays, and cutoff times.
So, where does that leave us?
The Current State of Cryptocurrency
If stablecoins align much more closely with crypto’s original purpose as “a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash,” why has Bitcoin ended up as the face of cryptocurrency?
It may owe to good old-fashioned word-of-mouth. Ever since consumers realized they could use Bitcoin as a penny stock, they were motivated to go tell everyone else about it in order to increase its popularity. The very mechanics of volatile tokens like Bitcoin encourage their holders to market them. In fact, Reddit users who owned Dogecoin once pooled their money together to sponsor a NASCAR car at Talladega.
When it comes to the future of crypto, we’re probably looking at a “Tortoise and the Hare” story. Bitcoin has spent the last decade-plus catching headlines and consumer attention, partly due to its moneymaking potential and partly due to how long it’s been around. As the saying goes, “first to market owns the market;” plenty of people associate all crypto with Bitcoin because it was the first one they learned about.
Behind the scenes, stablecoins are the foundation of most large crypto payments, especially in business contexts. According to projections, the tortoise isn’t far from the lead: J.P. Morgan estimates that the market cap of stablecoins may double or triple within the next three years. Additionally, Chainalysis projects that stablecoin transaction volume could reach over $700 trillion by 2035, representing a 1500% increase from today.
This level of growth is much more rapid than what we’ve seen from stablecoins throughout the last decade. That’s because the industry is finally shifting at the consumer level, corporate level, and even the governmental level. Here are some significant stablecoin developments we’ve seen within the past 12 months:
- The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act was signed into law in the United States, ensuring reserve backing for U.S. dollar-pegged crypto.
- Circle, the issuer of USDC, completed its IPO with a company valuation of $18 billion. The stock was initially priced at $31 a share, but ended up officially opening at $69 a share.
- JP Morgan, the largest bank in the United States, created its own stablecoin called JPM Coin
- Visa launched a stablecoin settlement pilot. This pilot has surpassed a $7 billion annualized run rate, surpassed 50% quarterly growth, and expanded to nine blockchains.
- Mastercard made a $1.8 billion deal for BVNK, a London-based stablecoin platform. Michael Miebach, Mastercard’s CEO, remarked, “[This will] put us in position for stablecoins and tokenized deposits, and set us apart.”
The world’s largest economy, credit card company, and (non-Chinese) bank have all turned to stablecoins at the same time. A mainstream shift like this will ripple down to businesses of all sizes, and likely to everyday consumers sometime afterwards. While your average Joe doesn’t make five-figure payments to vendors very often, they may use stablecoins for cross-border transfers.
Traditional methods of sending money overseas, including bank transfers and money orders, can come with the same delays, fees, and FX risk concerns that plague B2B payments. As long as both parties hold digital wallets, you can send stablecoins to and from 100+ countries in seconds.
The Future of Payments, Powered by Slash
The next stage of crypto will be defined by stablecoins. While it’s tough to say whether we’ll be buying pizzas with USDC within the next decade, it seems reasonable that these tokens could be the backbone of international transfers and business payments in the near future. At Slash, we’re helping bring that future closer to today.
With Slash, you can send and receive stablecoins via eight different blockchains.⁴ With built in on/off ramps, you can seamlessly convert between USDC, USDT, and US dollars without the need to juggle multiple payment providers. Businesses can off-ramp stablecoins into USD with conversion fees of less than 1% per transaction.
Our platform gives businesses access to a diverse range of payment rails for the contexts that crypto doesn’t serve.¹ Users can send and receive funds through same-day ACH, international wire, RTP/FedNow, and virtual cards.
For entrepreneurs based outside the U.S., the Slash Global USD account allows companies to open a business account without forming a domestic entity.³ The account is backed by Slash’s own USD-pegged stablecoin USDSL, and it enables you to send and receive funds just like you would a normal bank account, complete with rails like ACH and wires. Users can now utilize the Slash Global Card, too, which enables you to use your Global USD account to fund in-person card transactions.
Pretty soon, your vendors, competitors, and even your friends may be sending payments via stablecoin. You won’t want to be left behind.
