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In the past decade, stablecoins have been the winning horse in cryptocurrency trading and capital markets settlement. They support liquidity on exchanges, facilitate decentralized finance protocols, enable cross-border payments, and allow market makers to move capital swiftly. However, as the digital asset industry looks towards 2026, industry leaders increasingly argue that trading will not be the source of the next wave of sustainable revenue for cryptocurrencies.
In exclusive comments to Investing.com, executives from FS Vector and Stablecore say stablecoins like USDT and USDC, which are digital tokens typically designed to track the U.S. dollar and issued by private institutions on public blockchains, are evolving beyond their role as trading tools to become essential financial infrastructure.
This shift will not be driven by issuing more stablecoins, but by what stablecoins enable: routing, coordinating, and settling transactions across on-chain and off-chain systems. If this migration accelerates, it could reshape how banks, fintechs, and infrastructure providers generate revenue as stablecoins delve deeper into real-economy flows.
From trading guarantees to real-world rails
Nick Eliidge, co-founder and COO of Stablecore, says the initial pressure point is likely to be regional and mid-sized banks that have historically relied on money center banks and messaging networks to move dollars internationally.
"By 2026, I expect regional banks to stop relying on money center banks for cross-border transfers," said Eliidge. "They will use stablecoins to provide transfers that are 90% cheaper and settle in seconds, overturning the traditional hierarchy of correspondent banking."
In his view, the most disruptive element is not cost or speed, as stablecoins are already well understood, but availability. Stablecoin rails can settle around the clock, usually outside of traditional banking hours, giving banks a liquidity edge when legacy payment systems are closed.
"This might look like a consortium of regional banks launching a shared cryptocurrency or stablecoin to bypass the FedWire liquidity window over the weekend," he added.
While this reflects the real-world use case that stablecoins have long promised, it also creates a second-order effect. Once institutions begin using stablecoins as rails, the ecosystem becomes more complex, creating new coordination challenges and new points through which value can be captured.
The bigger vision: The connectivity layer
Emily Goodman, a partner at FS Vector, believes that while stablecoin issuance will remain fundamental, the "larger strategic focus in 2026 is likely to shift toward regulation." This means more attention will be paid to directing, coordinating, and settling transactions across a fragmented hybrid financial system.
"Stablecoin issuance will remain a key part of the digital asset ecosystem," Goodman said. "For 2026, however, the strategic focus will begin to shift toward regulating transactions built 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 capitalize on the value of coordination, direction, and settlement across on-chain and off-chain environments," Goodman said. "We will see an increasing focus on interoperability, meaning platforms that span 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 this could be a source of sustainable revenue
If stablecoins continue to push into mainstream financial flows such as bank transfers, treasury movements, and platform settlements, the ecosystem is likely to become more fragmented, with multiple blockchains coexisting alongside issuers and entry and exit points and compliance systems.
This fragmentation creates demand for services that enable connectivity and support this regulation: interoperability tools, routing layers, settlement coordination, monitoring, and compliance transaction management.
The companies best positioned for sustained revenue may not be those facilitating the largest volume of speculation, but those coordinating how value moves across an increasingly hybrid system.
Summary of 2026
By 2026, the most important 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 Eliidge is correct, stablecoins will begin to influence the economics of correspondent banking. If Goodman is right, the bigger prize will be a layer above issuance, in regulating how money moves across on-chain and off-chain environments.$XRP
