Stablecoins, and all the start-up investment going to building the payment architecture for a new blockchain-based digital finance ecosystem, has arguably taken the wind out of Bitcoin’s (CRYPTO: BTC) sails.  What is the case for Bitcoin now? Why use it as a payment when saving Bitcoin to pay for a debt, or purchase, could see the value collapse? That won’t happen with fiat-backed stablecoins. As a result, all the energy in crypto is shifting to stablecoin infrastructure. 

Bitcoin is far below its highs. It’s fallen below its $65,000 price support. Some see BTC going to $25,000. Institutional investors post the first negative inflow into Bitcoin since 2023.

If stablecoins become blockchain’s dominant commercial use case, where does future economic demand for Bitcoin reside?

Can Bitcoin Surf in Stablecoins Wake?

Some say it’s not over for BTC in payments. It’s next in line.

"The Bitcoin side still needs rails that are genuinely production-grade for payments, meaning fast, cheap, and final without forcing custody compromises," said Mark Zalan, CEO at GoMining. The Cyprus-based company started as a Bitcoin mining platform and gradually expanded into a broader Bitcoin financial services ecosystem.  GoMining’s GoBTC Pay is hoping to fulfill the promise of Bitcoin’s use case as real money you can buy things with. 

Stablecoins lower the barrier to entry but purpose-built Bitcoin rails are what will convert that readiness into actual Bitcoin payment volume. He thinks Bitcoin payments can easily piggy back off of the stablecoin infrastructure being built everywhere these days. A "payment rail" is a way money is moved from one point to the next, such as credit card rails, or PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL), for example.

"A business that has solved on-chain wallets, custody, and compliance for stablecoins has built most of what it needs to support Bitcoin payments," Zalan said. "The second asset is far cheaper to add than the first. So the use cases aren’t separate at the infrastructure layer; they sit on a common foundation, with stablecoins being the on-ramp that gets the Bitcoin payments foundation built."

This might be the best case scenario for Bitcoin going forward. Otherwise, BTC becomes a speculator’s token of choice, often dependent on Fed money printing to post gains.  Alt coins become an even riskier bet in the stablecoin-first market. Even the big blockchains led by Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) have done poorly investors this year. Their only real use case is obvious: you buy their tokens because you think there will be more on-chain developers using them to pay for on-chain fees. Future-thinking investors are better off in space stocks.

Still, Bitcoin is for retail traders looking for alpha. Stablecoins are for private money building a new digital finance infrastructure. Investors are not cashing in on stablecoins. They are cashing in on start-ups that have done well or sold at a premium to other buyers.

"For most of the last decade, crypto sold a story about what money might become. Stablecoins are the first part of that story that actually shipped at scale. The shift we are seeing isn’t really Bitcoin losing relevance; it’s the conversation finally separating two different things that were always conflated," said Bernardo Bilotta, CEO of Stables.  "Bitcoin is an asset you hold. A stablecoin is a thing you use. Those serve completely different jobs, and the market is starting to price them as different jobs."

Stables was founded in Australia in 2021. It started as a stablecoin wallet and spending platform. Over time, it has evolved toward becoming infrastructure for stablecoin payments, remittances, treasury operations, and cross-border settlement. This is where the energy is in crypto, suggesting the only way to make money in this market is in venture capital. 

When a technology stops needing a narrative and starts solving a Tuesday-afternoon problem, that’s when it gets serious. 

"We see this in our own corridors every day. The demand isn’t speculative, it’s people and businesses moving real money for real reasons," said Bilotta. "The platforms tracking this are reporting that the overwhelming majority of stablecoin volume is now business and payments activity rather than trading. That tracks with what we see on the infrastructure side. The asset-class framing is a category error at this point. Nobody calls the SWIFT network an asset class, and stablecoins are increasingly doing the same job for a different generation of users, just faster and cheaper."

Stablecoins Lead Crypto Investment Themes

In a report published in July 2025, McKinsey & Company predicted stablecoin transactions to surpass legacy payment volumes in less than a decade. Maybe sooner.

"Stablecoins have now become a genuine contender to satisfy new payment needs, achieving the first true market fit for non-crypto digital assets," McKinsey partner Matt Higginson wrote. Stablecoins "expand access to payments to everyone through wallet-based rather than account-based infrastructure," he said. Bitcoin was never mentioned as a contender. The contenders are Visa (NYSE:V), Mastercard (NYSE:MA), and the traditional financial transaction architecture. 

In April, Bessemer Venture Partners argued that stablecoins have moved from being a DeFi Web3 story, to part of a new investment thesis in global digital finance infrastructure. 

"Stablecoins began as a liquidity layer for decentralized finance – a way to store and move value on-chain without exposure to crypto volatility. But over the past three years, the market has recognized that the core attributes of stablecoins on blockchain rails was low cost, borderless, 24/7 availability, self-custody, and programmability," wrote Bessemer partner Charles Birnbaum in New York City. "Stablecoins unlock massive real-world applications in traditional finance far beyond crypto trading," he said. 

The global fiat-backed stablecoin supply exceeded $273 billion in March 2026, growing 40-fold from $6.8 billion in March 2020, according to data published by Visa. 

Bitcoin No Longer The Favorite Child

Crypto market executives increasingly agree that stablecoins have become blockchain’s first true enterprise product. As businesses adopt on-chain payments and treasury tools, the infrastructure being built today could pave the way for broader digital asset adoption tomorrow. This is a global phenomenon and is why private capital loves it.

Sota Watanabe, CEO of the Startale Group in Japan said businesses do not adopt new financial infrastructure because it’s innovative and might earn a 40% return in a year. They adopt it because it improves how they move, manage and deploy money. 

"Stablecoins do more than improve payments, they are beginning to bring businesses on-chain," he said. "Once value moves on-chain, companies gain access to a financial system that operates all day, all night, settles globally and enables assets and capital to move with greater speed and programmability."

Watanabe was recognized in Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2022. He is one of the most visible figures in Japan’s Web3 market. Unlike many crypto founders, Watanabe has spent years working with large Japanese corporations and governments rather than targeting the retail crypto trade.

Startale has partnerships and investments from the Sony Group (NYSE:SONY) and SBI Holdings (OTC:SBHGF). In March 2026, Startale said they raised $63 million from SBI Group and the Sony Innovation Fund to expand stablecoins, tokenized securities, and blockchain financial infrastructure. He has worked on the Japanese yen stablecoin project alongside SBI.

"I think we are seeing the early stages of a broader transformation in financial infrastructure," Watanabe said.  "As adoption expands, I think the same infrastructure can be used to support a wider range of financial services, including automated treasury operations, tokenized real-world assets, and new forms of digital commerce. Stablecoins are not simply a payment innovation, but are the foundation of the next generation of financial services."

Some think Bitcoin can be used on those rails, too. Others doubt.

"I think Bitcoin sucks at payments," said AmericanFortress CEO Michal “Mehow” Pospieszalski. The company generates unique addresses behind the scenes, reducing the risk of phishing, mistyped wallet addresses, and fraud. 

For Mehow, start-ups building a global payments company in 2026 are probably doing so on Ethereum-compatible networks before Bitcoin.  "On Ethereum, there are 1000 times more payment rails using stablecoins than on UTXO chains," he said. 

For the lay retail investor, UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) is simply an accounting model mostly used by Bitcoin, but also a few other coins going the way of the dinosaur and memes: Litecoin (CRYPTO: LTC), Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) and Cardano (CRYPTO: ADA).

LTC and DOGE are down 90% from its all-time high (ATH); ADA is down 95% from its ATH. By comparison, BTC is down 52% from its ATH.

"For cryptocurrency, payments will be a far better use case than simply holding," he said.

If stablecoins dominate payments and those stablecoins mostly run on Ethereum-compatible systems, then what exactly is Bitcoin’s role? That’s the question for Bitcoin holders. Many of them will say it’s a worthwhile store of value. Mehow and other founders are mostly in agreement that it’s a back up for payments, but not completely cast aside in that space.

Bessemer thinks we are in "the early innings" of stablecoin adoption. They have "crossed the chasm" from crypto-native speculation and maybe on-chain use cases to real-world financial infrastructure. For this reason, stablecoins have decoupled from crypto. Bitcoin has been cut in half from its $100k "moonshot."  Meanwhile, real-world stablecoin usage is growing rapidly. This is the future of Web3 and digital currencies more broadly.

No one is going to get rich trading dollar Tether. The idea of getting rich fast keeps investors in Bitcoin. It’s probably the only thing that keeps them in Bitcoin.

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes reiterated his $250,000 BTC target for 2026 and projected $500,000 to $750,000 by end of 2027. His reason: the Fed will "print money" and send Bitcoin to the moon again. Fingers crossed for BTC "hodlers."

The writer owns Bitcoin and Ethereum. Artwork created by the author using Canva.

Benzinga Disclaimer: This article is from an unpaid external contributor. It does not represent Benzinga’s reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.