Stop Chasing Volatility: Stablecoins, FX, and Payments Are Where the Real Money Is
The Graveyard of Volatility Traders
Let us dispense with the romantic notion that trading volatile cryptocurrencies is a viable path to wealth for most people. The data is unambiguous and sobering. A 2025 survey of over 1,000 retail crypto traders found that 84 percent lose money in their first year, with nearly six in ten losing almost all of their capital. Day trading, the most popular strategy among beginners, was also the leading cause of losses, with 54 percent of new traders gravitating toward it despite lacking the experience and discipline it demands.
The reasons are well documented. Emotional decision-making, poor risk management, FOMO-driven entries, and the seductive randomness of short-term gains all conspire against the amateur trader. Over 85 percent of new traders fail to consistently use basic tools like stop-loss orders. Meanwhile, institutional players equipped with algorithmic trading systems, deep liquidity, and informational advantages are sitting on the other side of nearly every retail trade. This is not an argument against Web3 or blockchain technology. It is an argument against the specific behavior of chasing the shiny object of price volatility as a business strategy.
Stablecoins: The Trillion-Dollar Foundation
While volatile crypto trading destroys retail wealth, stablecoins are experiencing explosive, sustained growth rooted in genuine utility. The stablecoin market grew from just $28 billion in 2020 to over $306 billion by the end of 2025 — a tenfold increase in five years. Average daily transaction volume reached $3.54 trillion, with annual totals pushing toward $33 trillion, a figure that rivals and by some measures exceeds the volumes processed by Visa.
This is not speculative froth. Stablecoins have found product-market fit as payment instruments, settlement layers, and stores of value. The U.S. Federal Reserve Board estimates that more than 80 percent of trade volume on major centralized crypto exchanges already involves stablecoins. Citi Global Perspectives projects the stablecoin market could reach $1.9 trillion by 2030 in its base case, and as high as $4 trillion in a bull scenario.
Foreign Exchange: The Elephant in the Room
Foreign exchange is the largest financial market on the planet. According to the Bank for International Settlements’ 2025 Triennial Survey, global FX trading reached $9.6 trillion per day in April 2025, up 28 percent from 2022. The U.S. dollar remains dominant, accounting for 89 percent of daily trading volume.
Yet for all its scale, the traditional FX infrastructure is remarkably inefficient for the businesses and individuals who depend on it. Banks typically add two to five percent in hidden markups to the mid-market exchange rate on cross-border transfers. Correspondent banking chains introduce intermediary fees at every handoff. The World Bank reports that global average remittance costs still hover around 6.5 percent of the amount transferred.
This is exactly the pain point where stablecoins and FX intersect to create transformative value. When both parties in a cross-border transaction can hold USD-pegged stablecoins, the FX conversion happens only at the edges — from local currency to stablecoin and back — rather than through multiple intermediary conversions.
Where FX and Stablecoins Converge: Cross-Border Payments
The cross-border payments market is enormous and growing. An IMF working paper published in 2025 estimated that the global cross-border payment market approached one quadrillion dollars in total value in 2024. EY projects cross-border payment volumes will reach $290 trillion by 2030.
McKinsey estimates that lower-value cross-border flows — including peer-to-peer, consumer-to-business, and small business transactions — account for about 10 percent of $179 trillion in global cross-border payments but represent nearly one-third of the total revenue pool, with margins as high as 3.4 percent in peer-to-peer corridors.
Stablecoins are purpose-built to capture this opportunity by attacking both the FX cost layer and the settlement speed bottleneck simultaneously. Traditional SWIFT transfers take three to five business days and rely on correspondent banking chains that each extract fees. Stablecoin-based payments settle in minutes, operate around the clock, and can cut total transaction costs by up to 80 percent compared to traditional methods.
The New York Federal Reserve itself has acknowledged this convergence. In a December 2025 keynote at its FX Market Structure Conference, the Fed noted that modernization in payments, increased usage of stablecoins, and transfers of tokenized deposits across jurisdictions may affect FX trading processes by accelerating the speed of trading and extending liquid trading hours.
Regulatory Tailwinds Are Accelerating Adoption
Perhaps the most significant catalyst for the stablecoin-FX-payments thesis is the arrival of regulatory clarity. The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, established the first federal regulatory framework for stablecoins in the United States, requiring issuers to maintain one-to-one reserves, publish monthly attestations, and meet redemption obligations. In Europe, MiCA has been in effect since 2024, providing licensing requirements, capital standards, and consumer protections.
This regulatory maturation separates the stablecoin and payments opportunity from the casino of volatility trading. Regulation creates trust, trust attracts institutional capital, and institutional capital creates durable, scalable businesses.
The Institutions Are Moving
Since this article was first drafted, the institutional validation has only accelerated. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo are exploring a joint stablecoin initiative through Early Warning Services and The Clearing House — the same infrastructure that powers Zelle and real-time interbank payments. Separately, a nine-bank global consortium including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, and UBS announced plans for a jointly backed stablecoin pegged to G7 currencies.
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has publicly stated the bank is preparing to enter the stablecoin market. In the same breath, he warned that as much as $6 trillion in U.S. bank deposits — roughly a third of all commercial bank deposits — could migrate to stablecoins under certain regulatory outcomes. That is not a threat assessment from a crypto skeptic. It is a strategic acknowledgment from the CEO of the second-largest U.S. bank that stablecoins are becoming core financial infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the GENIUS Act implementation is accelerating. The FDIC published its first proposed rules for stablecoin issuers in December 2025. The NCUA followed with its own proposed rulemaking in February 2026. The Treasury Department is targeting final rules by July 2026. Visa’s stablecoin settlement volume has reached a $4.5 billion annualized run rate. Payoneer, powered by Stripe’s Bridge acquisition, is launching stablecoin payment capabilities in Q2 2026.
The thesis is no longer speculative. The largest financial institutions in the world are building for this future. The question is no longer whether stablecoins will reshape payments — it is who will build the infrastructure they run on.
Build for Utility, Not Speculation
The path to building lasting value in Web3 runs through utility, not speculation. The entrepreneurs and companies that will define the next era of digital finance are those building at the intersection of stablecoins and FX: cross-border payment rails, settlement infrastructure, payroll automation, merchant acquiring tools, treasury management platforms, and on-ramp and off-ramp services that bridge local currencies to the stablecoin economy.
The total addressable market is measured in the hundreds of trillions of dollars, the regulatory environment is maturing, the technology is proven, and both the Federal Reserve and the Bank for International Settlements are tracking this convergence.
The future of Web3 finance belongs to the builders who understand that the most powerful revolution in money is not about price swings — it is about moving value faster, cheaper, and more inclusively than ever before, across every currency and every border. That is where the real money is.
Sources: BIS Triennial Survey (September 2025), Binance Research, Citi “Stablecoins 2030,” Decrypt, FinTech Magazine, IMF, McKinsey, New York Federal Reserve, NFT Evening, Rise, Visual Capitalist, World Economic Forum.