Emily Goodman, a partner at FS Vector, believes that while the issuance of stablecoins will remain fundamental, the "greater strategic focus in 2026 is likely to shift towards regulation." This means more attention to directing, coordinating, and settling transactions across a fragmented hybrid financial system.
"The issuance of stablecoins will remain a key foundation for the digital asset ecosystem," said Goodman. "For 2026, however, the strategic focus will begin to shift towards regulating transactions based on stablecoin infrastructure."
In her view, the emerging opportunity is not just the issuance of stablecoins, but managing how stablecoin-based transactions move between blockchains, banks, payment networks, and legacy systems, especially when those systems do not natively communicate with each other.
"Market participants will seek to leverage the value of coordination, guidance, and settlement across connected chain environments and beyond," Goodman said. "We will see an increasing focus on interoperability, which means platforms that extend across payment networks, decentralized finance protocols, and banking systems."
In other words, stablecoins provide the rails, but the revenue opportunity lies in the infrastructure that dictates how transactions are routed, settled, and managed.
Why could this be a source of sustainable revenue
If stablecoins continue to push towards mainstream financial flows like bank transfers, treasury movement, and platform settlement, it is likely that the ecosystem will become more fragmented, with multiple blockchains coexisting, issuers, and entry and exit points, along with compliance systems.
This fragmentation creates demand for services that enable connectivity and support this organization: interoperability tools, routing layers, settlement coordination, monitoring, and compliance-oriented transaction management.
The companies best positioned to achieve sustainable revenues may not be those that facilitate the largest amount of speculation, but those that coordinate how value moves across an increasingly hybrid system.
Summary of 2026
By 2026, the most significant stablecoin story may not be the launch of a new token, but the infrastructure built around stablecoin rails that connect banks, blockchains, and payment networks into a single transaction fabric.
If Elidg is right, stablecoins will begin to impact the economics of correspondent banking. If Goodman is correct, the biggest prize will be in a layer above issuance, in organizing how money moves across connected chain environments and beyond.
In that future, stablecoins will not be the product but the infrastructure, with revenues flowing to the companies that manage routing, settlement, and coordination.
