The Stablecoin Battleground: Why Issuers Are the New Power Players
(Originally posted on LinkedIn - join the conversation there)
In the emerging web3 economy, the power struggle isn’t about who owns the network—it’s about who issues the money flowing through it.
Stablecoins are quietly becoming the most strategic battleground in crypto, and I think we’re underestimating just how big of a shakeup this will create across fintech, payments, and even global financial infrastructure.
Blockchains may be decentralized, but the value layer—the unit of value that represents money movement—is still up for grabs. And the players who control this unit of value could redefine how the world transacts.
Right now, most stablecoin issuers capture the “float”—the interest earned between issuance and redemption. That’s a lucrative slice of the pie, and it's what made banks and payment platforms so powerful for decades. But today, that power is shifting.
Look at who’s getting into the game:
➡️ PayPal has PYUSD
➡️ Robinhood, Kraken Digital Asset Exchange, & Galaxy, among others, have the USDG consortium
➡️ Agora has AUSD
➡️ Circle has USDC
➡️ Tether.io has USDT
There’s no one-size-fits-all model—but there is a clear incentive: if you want to keep the float, you need to be the issuer.
Now, consider what this means for players like Stripe.
In the current model: a consumer buys something, Stripe holds the funds temporarily in a “for the benefit of” (FBO) account at their bank, and Stripe earns interest before passing the money along to the merchant.
But in a stablecoin world: the consumer sends a digital dollar directly to the merchant. No bank float. No delay. And no interest income for Stripe—unless they adapt.
So what do these platforms do?
If they embrace stablecoins, they risk losing their current revenue stream—and possibly their banking relationships due to regulatory ambiguity. But if they don’t adapt, they risk losing merchants who want to meet consumer demand for faster, borderless, crypto-native payments.
It’s a classic innovator’s dilemma—it’s about risking your cash cow to go after a much larger market where you don’t just move money, but control it. Want to keep the float? You’ll need to issue the stablecoin yourself. And you might have to share some of this yield with your users.
At Loop Crypto, we believe the future of payments won’t be defined by one winner —it’ll be defined by many global players fighting over a trillion-dollar opportunity to capture the value of money movement.
That’s why we’re building for a world where merchants don’t have to choose which digital dollar to accept. A world where stablecoins are seamless, safe, and strategic.
We’re still early. But the battle lines are forming.
If you’re building in this space—or thinking about what’s next in fintech—I’d love to hear from you. Where do you see the biggest shakeup coming?
