Why Stablecoins Still Need Banks to Grow Big

Stablecoins (digital coins tied 1-to-1 to a real currency like the US dollar) were supposed to let money move around the world without banks. But the opposite is happening — the companies making stablecoins big are building deeper into the banking system than anyone expected.

How a cross-border payment actually works

When a business sends money to another country, the payment has three parts:

• The sender pays in their local currency (like Brazilian reais).
• The receiver gets money in their own currency (like US dollars).
• In the middle, value has to cross the border between two banks.

That middle step used to run through 'correspondent banking' (a chain of banks passing money to each other), which was slow and added fees. Stablecoins can now settle that middle step in seconds. But banks still control the start and the end — where money enters and exits as regular cash (called 'fiat').

The numbers show how small stablecoin payments still are

• The global cross-border payments market was worth $208 trillion in 2025.
• Real stablecoin payments ran at only about $390 billion a year.
• That's roughly 0.02% of all payment volume.
• Huge headline figures of '$30 trillion' are mostly automated trading bots, not real payments.

Why growth gets stuck

Small companies can survive with one bank and one stablecoin partner. But at large scale (think $10 billion a year), success depends on how many banking, currency-exchange, and licensing connections a company has built — not on the technology itself.

The hidden danger: relying on one bank

Many stablecoin firms depend on a single banking partner. That's risky because banks can suddenly cut ties. Real examples include the collapses of Silvergate and Signature Bank, and regulators quietly pressuring banks to drop crypto clients ('debanking').

Bottom line: Stablecoins aren't replacing banks — they're teaming up with them. To scale, they need deep banking relationships in every market they touch.

This is an AI-generated summary. Read the original article at: https://decrypt.co/377280/stablecoins-wont-scale-without-banks