Banks must be a part of crypto for stablecoins to succeed—that was the message from Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal’s senior vice chairman of digital currencies, throughout a panel dialogue at Consensus 2025 in Toronto.
“It’d sound counterintuitive, however you do need the banks on this area,” Fernandez da Ponte mentioned, including that their infrastructure—from custody to offering fiat rails—will likely be important if stablecoins are to scale past crypto-native circles. “You need that connectivity and that cloth to work.”
His remarks got here amid efforts to deliver regulatory readability for digital property within the U.S., with lawmakers inching nearer to move stablecoin laws that might redefine the market and permit banks to enter the area.
Learn extra: U.S. Senate’s Stablecoin Push Nonetheless Alive as Invoice Might Return to Ground: Sources
“That is going to be an enormous unlock,” mentioned Anthony Soohoo, chairman and CEO of MoneyGram, a cross-border cash switch service. “There’s at all times hesitation: Can I belief this? [The stablecoin legislation] goes to reply a number of these questions.”
Each executives mentioned they count on a wave of recent issuers to enter the market as soon as regulation is in place, adopted by a interval of consolidation. “It’s not going to be 300 stablecoins, and it’s not going to be simply two,” Fernandez da Ponte mentioned.
At present, Tether’s USDT USDT$1.00 and Circle’s USDC USDC$0.99992 dominate the market, representing almost 90% of the $230 billion asset class. PayPal’s PYUSD PYUSD$0.99958, launched in 2023, lags far behind with $900 million provide. Fernandez da Ponte pushed again on market cap as the first metric for achievement. “We have a look at velocity, energetic wallets, variety of transactions,” he mentioned. “These are what drive actual utilization.”
In nations with excessive inflation and risky currencies, shoppers are in search of out dollar-backed stablecoins as shops of worth and instruments for cross-border funds. Soohoo mentioned MoneyGram, which operates in over 200 nations with almost half one million cash-access places, helps facilitate that entry.
“We see ourselves between bodily finance and digital finance,” Soohoo mentioned. “A variety of shoppers in native economies need to maintain worth in {dollars} however nonetheless have to entry it as money to spend in locations that don’t take digital forex.”
Stablecoin adoption in developed nations, in the meantime, has been slower. With clear regulation in place, stablecoins can streamline company treasury operations and cross-border disbursement, Fernandez da Ponte famous.
“We used to have this mad rush on Friday to ensure cash was in the best locations earlier than the weekend,” he mentioned. “Now we’re sending cash to the Philippines and Africa in ten minutes with stablecoins.”
Each executives famous that real-world use circumstances, not hype, will decide if stablecoins may attain the trillion-dollar scale within the subsequent years that is been projected.
“Customers don’t care about stablecoins. They care about fixing issues.” Fernandez da Ponte mentioned. “We’re 5 years right into a ten-year journey, and regulation will outline the following half.”