The stablecoin wars are intensifying, and the market’s battle lines are now in sharp focus. On one side are legacy fintech companies, publicly dismissing stablecoins while quietly developing their own competing solutions. On the other side are payment giants like Stripe, assembling complete stablecoin infrastructure stacks designed to make digital payments seamless — and invisible — for end users.

This week’s developments say it all: Airwallex’s founder criticized stablecoins as “inefficient” just as Stripe acquired Privy to round out its programmable payments stack. Shopify rolled out USDC payments, Deutsche Bank began evaluating its stablecoin strategy, and even the DTCC — the critical back-end of Wall Street — is reportedly building its own stablecoin infrastructure.

The real competition is no longer about minting stablecoins — it’s about creating the most valuable, scalable distribution networks around them. While incumbents are still debating whether stablecoins are a threat, the next generation of payment leaders is already shipping products and winning market share.The stablecoin wars are heating up, and the battle lines are getting clearer. On one side: legacy fintech companies throwing FUD while quietly scrambling to build competing products. On the other: payment giants like Stripe assembling the full stack to make stablecoins invisible to end users.

This week's action tells the whole story. Airwallex's founder called stablecoins "inefficient" right as Stripe bought Privy to complete their stablecoin infrastructure play. Shopify rolled out USDC payments. Deutsche Bank started "evaluating strategies." Even the DTCC—the invisible backbone of Wall Street—is reportedly building stablecoin infrastructure.

The competition isn't about minting coins anymore. It's about who builds the most useful distribution networks around them. And while incumbents are still figuring out whether stablecoins are a threat, the new players are already shipping products.

By the Numbers: Stablecoin Market Snapshot

The total stablecoin market cap has reached $251.08B, growing by $1.42B week-over-week. USDT maintains its dominance with 62.14% market share, followed by USDC at 24.22% ($60.8B).

Fastest-Growing Networks: XRPL leads with +37.82% growth (RLUSD dominance: 94.32%), followed by Unichain (+24.84%) and Filecoin (+20.19%).

Blockchain Leaders: Ethereum($124.632B), Tron ($79.039B), and Solana ($11.113B) continue to dominate total stablecoin value.

Source: DefiLlama

Stripe Just Cracked the Stablecoin Code

Stripe didn't just acquire Privy this week—they completed the puzzle. First came Bridge for stablecoin infrastructure. Then stablecoin business accounts. Now Privy's embedded wallets. Put it together and you get the holy grail: settlement rails, merchant tools, and user-friendly wallets that hide all the crypto complexity.

Here's the genius move: Stripe already processes payments for millions of merchants worldwide. Instead of asking users to learn crypto, they're embedding USDC into existing checkout flows. Merchants see dollars, users see familiar payment screens, but the backend runs on stablecoin rails.

Privy's wallet-as-a-service is perfect for this vision. No seed phrases, no confusing interfaces—just wallets that feel like normal web accounts. The entire crypto layer becomes invisible infrastructure, which is exactly how mainstream adoption happens.

While crypto companies spend years trying to educate users about private keys and gas fees, Stripe is pulling stablecoins into their existing merchant network. That's not crypto evangelism—that's product-market fit at scale.

Cobo's Take: Stripe's approach reveals how stablecoins actually go mainstream. It's not about building crypto-first products that users have to learn. It's about embedding programmable money into existing workflows so seamlessly that users don't even know they're using crypto. When you can pay with USDC at any Stripe merchant without knowing it's happening, that's real adoption.

The Tron Problem: Why Network Effects Trump Technology

Tether's launching Plasma, a dedicated blockchain for USDT payments with zero fees and Bitcoin-level security. On paper, it sounds like a Tron killer. In practice, it faces the classic innovator's dilemma: how do you displace an entrenched network that's "good enough"?

Tron owns the street-level USDT rails in emerging markets. Not because it's the best technology, but because it's embedded in real business networks built on offline trust and social connections. These aren't DeFi yield farmers looking for the latest L1—they're "street dollar" users who need simple, reliable, cheap tools.

For them, Tron works: fast enough, cheap enough, wallets they already understand. More importantly, their business partners, suppliers, and customers are already on Tron. Switching to Plasma isn't just a technical migration—it's asking entire commercial ecosystems to rebuild their payment flows.

Even if Plasma delivers 10x better performance, it can't easily replicate years of accumulated network effects, local partnerships, and user habits. Circle learned this lesson with CCTP—instead of building a single "best" chain, they made USDC flow across multiple networks because users were already distributed.

Cobo's Take: Plasma's real competition isn't technical—it's social. Beating Tron requires more than better blockchain specs. It requires winning the ground war: building local trust, onboarding real businesses, and creating reasons for established networks to migrate. That's why Tether's diversification strategy makes sense, but execution will be brutal.

Airwallex's Stablecoin Take: Missing the Bigger Picture

Circle's IPO has sparked fresh debate about stablecoins, with Airwallex founder Jack Zhang recently questioning their value in developed markets. His argument centers on fintech already solving cross-border payments efficiently.

While Jack raises valid points about existing payment infrastructure, this perspective might be looking at stablecoins through too narrow a lens. It's a bit like evaluating the iPhone purely on call quality compared to Nokia—technically accurate but missing the transformative potential.

Jack's core argument is that traditional cross-border payments work well enough. And he's right—companies like Airwallex have genuinely improved the experience. But stablecoins aren't necessarily competing on speed or cost alone.

The real opportunity lies in programmability.

Traditional cross-border payments, even improved ones, still operate within geographic silos, business hours, and require liquidity middlemen. Stablecoins offer something fundamentally different: a unified, 24/7, dollar-native clearing layer where settlement logic can be embedded directly into the asset.

Think automatic revenue splits, real-time financing, conditional payments—all without platform dependencies or approval workflows. This isn't about making payments 2% cheaper; it's about rebuilding the rails entirely.

Both traditional fintech and stablecoins have their place in the evolving payments landscape. The most interesting opportunities might actually emerge from companies that can bridge both worlds, combining proven fintech infrastructure with programmable money capabilities.

The debate itself signals how seriously the market is taking digital assets. That's probably bullish for everyone building in this space.

Cobo's Take: The stablecoin vs. traditional fintech debate isn't zero-sum. Companies like Airwallex have genuinely solved real problems in cross-border payments. But stablecoins open up entirely new possibilities through programmability. The winners will likely be platforms that can bridge both worlds—combining the reliability of proven fintech infrastructure with the innovation potential of programmable money.

New Launches: AI Money and Digital Cash

The latest launches show stablecoins expanding beyond human-to-human payments into entirely new categories:

• Flipcash: Kik founder Ted Livingston launched a zero-fee payments app on Solana that replicates physical cash digitally. Users scan virtual cash codes for instant USDC transfers—no crypto knowledge required. It's cash-like simplicity with borderless digital reach.

• Tether's AI Wallet Kit: An open-source development kit that gives AI agents and robots financial autonomy. They can manage Bitcoin and USDT without human oversight, opening the door to autonomous economic actors. Social platform Rumble is already building on it.

Cobo's Take: These launches reveal stablecoins' next frontier: AI-native financial systems and cash-like digital experiences. When autonomous agents can manage their own treasuries and users can send money as easily as sharing photos, we're not just digitizing payments—we're creating new economic possibilities that didn't exist before.

Capital Moves: Infrastructure Summer Is Here

The funding landscape shows capital flowing toward stablecoin infrastructure, not speculation:

• Atticus raises $1.5-2B: A stealth stablecoin startup led by Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey is raising at unicorn valuations, marking the first major stablecoin "unicorn" of the year with backing from defense industry capital.

• Noah launches with $22M: Co-founded by Adyen's former EVP, Noah raised $22M to build a global USDC clearing network with enterprise-grade APIs for 24/7 programmable payments that bypass traditional banking.

• OpenTrade gets $7M: UK fintech raised funding with a16z participation for "yield-as-a-service," enabling fintech apps to offer users up to 9% yields on stablecoins in high-inflation markets.

• Tether's $89M hedge: Tether bought a 34% stake in precious metals firm Elemental Altus for $89.2M, diversifying reserves ahead of new U.S. regulations while backing their gold token strategy.

Cobo's Take: This isn't crypto speculation money—it's infrastructure capital. Investors are backing businesses that solve real problems with stablecoins: enterprise payments, yield generation, regulatory compliance, and reserve diversification. The "picks and shovels" phase is in full swing.

Corporate Adoption Accelerates

The enterprise adoption wave is picking up serious momentum:

• Stripe talks with banks about stablecoin applications for mainstream payment rails, following their $1.1B Bridge acquisition and new product launches.

• Deutsche Bank evaluates strategies for everything from issuing their own stablecoin to tokenized deposit solutions, building on clearer regulatory frameworks.

• Société Générale launched USDCV, a dollar stablecoin on Ethereum and Solana with BNY Mellon as custodian for 24/7 settlement and FX transactions.

• Shopify rolled out USDC payments on Base for merchants, with plans to reach all Shopify Payments users by year-end. Merchants get local currency settlement without FX fees.

• DTCC builds stablecoin infrastructure: The clearing giant that processes quadrillions in securities is developing stablecoin capabilities—potentially the institutional catalyst everyone's been waiting for.

Cobo's Take: When the world's largest payment processors, banks, and clearing houses all start building stablecoin infrastructure simultaneously, that's not experimentation—that's industry transformation. The question isn't whether stablecoins will become mainstream payment rails, but how quickly incumbent financial institutions can adapt.

Regulation & Compliance Watch

Global regulatory frameworks continue crystallizing with different approaches:

• Ant International seeks licenses in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Luxembourg for stablecoin issuance, leveraging their enterprise blockchain platform that processes over $1T annually.

• South Korea proposes corporate framework: The "Digital Asset Basic Act" would allow qualified corporations to issue stablecoins with capital requirements and full reserve backing.

• Hong Kong sets high barriers: New stablecoin regulations require HK$25M capital, favoring large institutions while creating opportunities for infrastructure providers and service companies.

Cobo's Take: The regulatory landscape is fragmenting by design. Hong Kong's high barriers favor incumbents, South Korea's corporate framework could unleash competition, while Singapore maintains sandbox flexibility. Success requires platforms that can navigate multiple jurisdictions seamlessly, not just comply with one.

Big Picture: The Trillion-Dollar Valuation Game

An analysis by Artemis CEO suggests Tether could command a $515B valuation if it went public, applying Circle's 69.3x EBITDA multiple. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino responded by calling that "potentially conservative," citing growth from Bitcoin and gold reserves.

This isn't just financial speculation—it's a signal about how markets are starting to value stablecoin infrastructure. Circle's IPO created the template, but Tether's scale and profitability could dwarf those numbers. When the world's largest stablecoin issuer eventually goes public, it won't be another crypto company—it'll be a financial infrastructure giant competing directly with traditional banks and payment processors.

Cobo's Take: The stablecoin issuer valuation game reveals how the market sees this space: not as crypto speculation, but as core financial infrastructure. These aren't tech companies that happen to use blockchain—they're the new central banks of the digital economy, and they're being valued accordingly.

Final Word from Cobo

Stablecoin summer is here, and the skeptics are getting louder because the builders are getting closer to winning. Legacy fintech companies are throwing FUD while quietly building competing products. Payment giants are assembling full-stack solutions. Even traditional banks are "evaluating strategies."

The infrastructure war is being fought on multiple fronts: user experience, regulatory compliance, network effects, and institutional adoption. The winners won't be the companies with the best technology—they'll be the platforms that make stablecoins so embedded in existing workflows that users forget they're using crypto at all.

Whether you're building the next generation of programmable money, integrating stablecoins into business operations, or navigating regulatory frameworks—we've got the infrastructure to power your vision.

The future isn't just better money. It's programmable money that works so well, it becomes invisible.