The Future of Stablecoins in Global Payments - TOKEN2049 Dubai 2025

It's fantastic to be here. For those of you who were here earlier, welcome again. Um, I'm joined by two of the industry's best and brightest. Um, to talk about probably the most talked about, you know, vertical within crypto nowadays, which is stable coins, right? So everyone here is building a stable coin, working on some sort of stable coin rails, wanting to build something within the stable coin ecosystem and we have, you know, kind of the stable coin OG here in Paulo and, you know, hopefully the future of what we like to see in in in the stable coin universe and Paul as well.

So um, if we can do a quick introduction even though you guys don't need any. Hello everyone. I'm Paulino. I'm the CEO of Tedar, uh, the company that created the first stable coin 2014. Um, as of today, I think we are celebrating 148 billion in um in total issued tokens.

Amazing. I'm Paul. I'm founder of of Plasma, uh, which is a blockchain specifically built for stable coins. Amazing. And I'm Sirar.

I'm the founder of a firm called Split Capital. We work on as a hedge fund, but within the liquid token space. Um, and I want to kind of dial it back for those of you who know. I mean, Tether's one of the oldest crypto companies, one of the longest lasting with Bitfinex. Um, and so I want to kind of go back to the origin point, right?

What compelled you guys to build out this product alongside the exchange? Well, um, Ted was born in 2000, well, USDT was born in 2014. Um, in a situation where, uh, the cryptocurrency ecosystem was very different than what is today. Uh there were just a bunch of exchanges probably less than 10 as um there was um Bitfinex, there was Bitstamp, there was uh um BTCC, there was um uh Kraken and Coinbase. Yeah, Moonbox Monkos was almost dead on the break of of death in 2013.

And so that moment the volatility of Bitcoin across the different chain across the different exchanges was very high and the spread was very high. you had some sometimes that in 2013 was also the first time that Bitcoin uh rose above uh $1,000 and so sometimes on the exchanges you could see the price of $1,000 on another exchange at the same time you could see $1.2,000 and another exchange $900, right? So the the obvious thing was for any trader was trying to capitalize that spread, right? You sell Bitcoin on exchange where the price is higher and you buy back on the exchange where the price is lower.

You just have to move bitcoin from one exchange to another and dollars from on on the opposite direction, right? But uh moving bitcoins from one exchange to another was very easy. 10 minutes, one block is done. Moving dollars from one exchange to another, especially because every single exchange was uh international to each other was very was very slow. It could take up to five days and all the market makers could not wait for five days in order to capture market volatility.

And so uh we we created I think um the easiest thing after sliced bread that is actually dollar um uh on a blockchain and from 2014 for the first two years no one understood the importance of this technology. No one really no exchange was actually apart Bitfinex was really excited to use it. And then 2016 the first exchange was that started adopting USDT was Paloniex that uh started to list all the trading pairs against USDT. Um and that started to allow a huge arbitrage opportunity and a very efficient arbitrage opportunity between Bitfinex and Polonex. And then 2017 was the year Binance was born was um the ICO uh boom.

And um so every single exchange in 2017 started to use USDT as the main trading pair. Uh and then up to 2020 that became that maintained the cryptocurrency trading was the main value proposition of USDT. Um and uh but then in 2020 with the pandemic people started use USDT as their digital dollar in all the emerging markets developing countries. We have more than 400 420 million users now across the world especially in the developing countries. Uh 30 37% of them are using USDT as a savings tool.

So over time the usage of USDT changed from pure crypto trading to more digital dollar payments remittances you name it. Right. And and that's a great segue because that was my next question. Right. Did you ever foresee kind of going down this rabbit hole of starting off as kind of offsetting trader balances between exchanges to now serving a very vital role as almost this broad-based you know dollar expansion for foreign countries.

I think that in 2014 if you were asking me uh what would would have been the size of USDT in 10 years I would have said thinking very very um in a nice um and positive way I would have thought 1 billion and um on a really more realistic way I would have said $100 million. Uh so of course we exceeded that but um unfort you know there is this u almost unfortunate realization the success of stable coins especially USDT since it's focusing so much in emerging markets is directly proportional to the insuccess of really bad uh monetary policies right uh from um from nations and countries right so the more economies get rotten the more stable coins and especially USDT have adoption It's it's kind of a sad thought in a certain sense but at the same time um we get know thankfully there is USDT because it's creating a lifeline for all the people living in those countries. So that that is uh I think the most exciting thing that and the most exciting outcome that could could see in in 11 years 100%. And Paul you know when we talk about building a purpose-built chain for stable coins what does that look like? Why why did you build this product?

How did you think about this? I think the underlying thesis is very much I think the the use cases that that stable coins get used for are kind of undergoing some some some massive transformation right where at the beginning it was like very very exchange collateral how do we do more efficient arbing between different venues and I think that that's kind of very much where where it started but it's massively outgrown that obviously right but like all of a sudden you have like an export dollar product right that that kind of really meaningfully mean like you say you have 420 million people who like use USD and and it it's a lifeline in in in so many countries to have good liquid trustworthy access to to USD and I think that also requires rethinking the the rails the those stable coins move on to to an extent where you can as a chain you can just make very different choices if all you focus on is how can we be the greatest kind of execution environment to to move around value and to like move around stable coins specifically because I think that's very much the kind one massive massive use case that that blockchains have. Um, and and that really has kind of found product market fit. And I think the kind of existing tech stack is is is is fantastic at like doing the like cryptonative kind of stable coin um um money movement, but I think the kind of future use cases of of really having like fantastic tokenized USD kind of by far eclipses what what we have just in the cryptonative side of things. And that requires also rethinking some of the kind of tooling underneath and and and and above like in in the in the payment stack basically.

And I think as a chain you're like in a in a very unique position to be to be opinionated on like what that should look like from like a chain product level basically. And that gives you a lot of leverage to actually kind of meaningfully drive stable coin adoption in my view. Right. And I I I guess moving on to to another idea, right? I mean stable coins are the talk of the town now.

Everyone is building something on a stable coin. Um I get a DM every day, every week from someone asking about their stable coin project. A lot of them are good, you know. Um but that it's now deviated from dollars in emerging markets to, you know, how do I build a yield bearing product? How do I build a, you know, compute product?

How do I build, you know, a lot of different functions trying to fit them into a stable coin product? How are you guys thinking about this, you know, as a company, as a as a as a team when you're building out, you know, kind of the best product for USD? Well, I think that definitely everyone and their sisters are building stable coins now. The, you know, I was reading that, um, uh, also Bank of America and many European banks want to do stable coins. Um I mean from my point of view is quite exciting because um first of all is acknowledgement of the technology we created but I believe that after 11 years not many realize that you know they they look at stable coins they look at how much money ted is making and they think oh I should get a portion of that and that makes sense as a as a business statement but the reality is that almost all the stable coins we are we are seeing are trying to compete it on the institutional level.

They're trying to become the stable coin for institutions. They want to become the stable coin that is used by all the market makers in in Wall Street and they and all the banks and they want to become that layer of stable coins. While no one of these competitors or almost no one of these competitors is actually trying to challenge us where it matter the most that is the emerging markets in developing countries. Tether built the biggest physical and digital distribution network for the US dollar ever built by humanity. We have hundreds of thousands of touch points actually millions and millions of touch points physical touch points on the world right plus we have tens of millions of digital touch points in the world.

We have you know through our investments we are not doing everything alone. We have more than 90 portfolio companies. We have boots on the ground. We we started you know we never try to leverage institutions as our distribution channel because with the the problem with institution is that they will squeeze you for one business point right but our focus is not just trying to be just another dollar that is uh no different than the banking dollar that has been used for the last uh uh hundred 100 years and honestly that dollar that traditional dollar is take keeping out from the financial financial system three billion people. There are three billion people in the world that are unbanked because they are too poor of being of interest of the bank.

They are not generating enough fees on a yearly basis to be of interest on the bank. They are not they are called non-bankable. It's not their fault. They are just too poor. Of the 420 million users that Tedar has today, JP Morgan would touch four.

not 4 million, not 44 just because you know they are not that wealthy for them. So we are serving a niche or it's called a niche that is not a niche is half of the population of the world and then yet there is the arrogance of calling them a niche from from the traditional banking system. So that's why I am excited there is to see all the competitors coming in but unfortunately they are looking at the wrong market. They're all trying to pile up on the market where is easiest entry but is also highly competitive is the United States market, European market. As a CEO, I decided to withdraw from the European market from 600 million people.

Above $140 billion in market cap of Tedar, we lost $300 million. So nothing because in Europe that was our teases from the beginning. In Europe and in US you have 15 ways to pay people like you have credit cards, debit cards, bank accounts, z cash app, you name it. That was the biggest realization. We lost a very tiny market cap and we are not subject to a regulation that is very dangerous because requires 60% of of um of uh reserves in uninsured cash deposits.

These are the trade-offs that USDT and Ted are doing to protect the people that are using USDT as a lifeline. And not to say that we love the regulations. We are engaging with US lawmakers with local lawmakers in the UAE, but we want proper laws and regulations that protect the people that don't have other alternatives. Sorry for the rant. No, we love the rant.

And then we're gonna get more of the rant in a second. Uh and Paul, how do you think about this? Right. I mean, you're you're much more on the on the on the chain side. So you're getting pitched this all the time, right?

Yeah. I mean, you'll be shocked to hear. Um I agree. Um I think I think I think that's fully right. Um I think especially in in the US and in Europe, I mean, everyone is extremely well served from like a banking perspective, right?

And so um the the benefit of like having tokenized cash for like a large financial institution in the US there's probably some benefit but I think like really the true kind of massive massive value value unlock is very much in South America and and and and in Africa and and andurkey in Turkey massive market and like in in those types of jurisdictions where you don't have like extremely robust banking rails and and you have like you say like a lot of this kind of underbanked um um population and I think those are billions of people, right? And and like building building infrastructure that can kind of scale to to that level obviously and can kind of really be almost I think the way we conceptualize it, I think a lot of the world is kind of going to skip a step in like the the financial development cycle basically where like um if you look at the the history of like how financial systems developed in in the western world, right? like you had really really bad banking and then you had like functional kind of traditional banking and now it's probably slowly moving towards a kind of more tokenized more blockchain um based based system in in a lot of those kind of most interesting jurisdictions I think the like middle ground of having like a really really advanced and like mostly well functioning banking system I think a lot of those jurisdictions are just going to skip that step entirely and just kind of fully move to to stable coins from basically having only like okayish backing and and um I think that very much aligns with kind of the the the the the ethos of like USD should be easily accessible to to to everyone and and USDT is kind of the the best export dollar euro dollar kind of product basically 100%. I mean, you know, on on a personal note, you when when I first got into crypto, the the number one ideal was I'm Afghan by ethnic descent. So, it's very very difficult getting money to Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, these countries, getting physical dollars there.

It's a very challenging process. Um, and not not only is it just challenging from a logistics perspective, it's expensive, right? You're spending 7% 8% almost user like rates to get, you know, dollars dollars to these countries. And Paulo to to something you kind of touched on earlier, right? That you start off as this, you know, what we like to call a niche maybe, but it's not a niche market.

It's a massive market, half the half of the world. Now it's it's interesting that even as an unintended consequence of, you know, targeting the people who are actually unbanked, now every institution is lining up to say we want something in the stable coin universe when a few years ago maybe they weren't so interested. Can you talk a bit about you know what you see as the the future for these institutions who kind of want to participate in the stable coin landscape and what does that conversation look like? So I think that there are two types of an institution. The one that wants just to look cool and say oh we are doing stable coins because you know the majority of the money is already digital right so banks are already digital.

The beauty of stable coins in the western world in the rich countries is um simply more programmable money. You can do many things in DeFi. I'm not discounting that. That is great, right? Um it's it's helping to build uh additional functionalities around money.

I love that. But again um you know the other there are institutions that are just thinking that this could be a business done if done the old way the traditional way that will not happen. Again I think that Tedar with 400 million users in emerging market is proving that you know while financial inclusion is considered the the problem of the 21st century. You had NOS's and charities and so many companies that try to raise capital to try to solve financial inclusion. They are nowhere where we are like they are not present in emerging markets in developing countries or many tiny how is possible that a tiny company because it's a titan company with 150 people could make more for financial inclusion than anyone else these are the questions that people should ask not because and it's not because we are very good at tether like the reason why we were we had so much impact is because there was nothing else so these are the things that really annoy me and why the institutions are looking at our technology They should ask themselves where they failed to not be able to deliver what we delivered.

100% aligned. Yeah, that that totally checks out. I think from the Thank you. And this is personally a clap for me because again being able to send money to my family like or extended family in Afghanistan such a big thing and I can't do that outside of Bitcoin and Tether, right? That doesn't exist.

you know, even the competitors that are that are kind of hovering around don't let people in the global south who actually need dollars to, you know, be able to send that money across. That's which is the irony of this whole thing, right? I can use a lot of other stable coins within the American market, European market, but I can't use it where it's actually valuable. Right. Exactly.

So, it's it's it's it's kind of circular. And, you know, something else I wanted to touch on and and Paul love to hear about this. what do you see as the kind of next generation, next kind of innovation uh for you know stable coin use cases um today right so you know we have kind of targeting the global south we have you know uh the expansion of of dollars but who's the next kind of user of stable coins now that now that larger firms are kind of getting involved in in the space yeah I think in in general like stable coins are just the best way to move value around globally right and and um So I think like we're very much at the like very early inning of of also kind of seeing some of these kind of larger more institutional use cases actually truly come onto stable coins which I think is is mostly driven by like really everyone has access to it. You have insane network effects and and now you're seeing commodities trades being being settled in USCT right which is also something that that million that was settled on that's and one product that's going to expand more. Yeah there we go.

Yes. No, 100%. And I think like all of that like very kind of like the the the the large kind of flows of of capital that kind of move around the world. Um I think a good chunk of that is is going to be stable coin based obviously because it is just the superior way to like move value around. And I think um that's also something that we are quite focused on at at Plasma is to kind of bring more of these like moving money from from A to B is just kind of the most natural use case for a blockchain and a stable coin is the most natural product to to use to achieve just that.

And and so I think there's like a large share of basically like crossborder commerce is is going to be stable coinbased and and probably commodities is is going like to be like the most immediate use case of that. But um I think you have like basically all of the kind of everything you can kind of put onto like global commerce is going to end up touching stable coins in in some capacity is is is very much our view. Yeah, I I think you know that that was an interesting point that you said that the nexus of uh crossber payments in a lot of countries where they do have dollar problems. Another problem that also exists is that the customs agencies are one of the wealthiest people because they take an insane tax on moving things in you know in between countries. So the corridor between like you know two African countries will have an insane tax rate between money that's being kind of moved around and with digital dollars that no longer becomes a problem.

And for you Pablo I mean you have your hands in a hundred different things at once which sometimes I'm just concerned. I'm like you know we were talking about this backstage where you know you're you're you're on top of all of the new mints for Tether and you know now you're working on on AI in in a very material way. What what do you see as kind of the most interesting, you know, next generation idea for for the stable coin landscape? That's how Please say plasma on this. Paulo, I I think the I would expect first of all other types of stable coin.

Now everyone is trying to catch up with the dollar stable coins, but there are also goldback stable coins. We were discussing about how you know uh blockchain should be the settlement layer for new types of stable coins and also stable coins for let's say minor national currencies. So have global effects very transparent effects and more very very liquid effects right so that should up move all on chain because it's uh again it's faster it's more transparent allows everyone to participate and to have the same rates more more egalitarian uh type of approach so I'm excited about that in the in the near future and and h and how do you weave in I guess the the the AI aspect of this as well within the within the context of the stable coin I think every single AI agent there will be trillions in the next 15 years will use stable coins to negotiate interaction and incentives among themselves. Amazing. Amazing.

I could spend a whole afternoon talking to Paulo. So, and and and Paul and and learn about the stable coin landscape with these guys. So, but at this point, the the event organizers are going to kill me. Uh and I have a pile tomorrow, so hopefully that can't be that mean. Thank you again, guys, so much.