Insights
The Trojan Horse: How Stablecoins Are Stealthily Onboarding the Next Billion Web 3.0 Users
The Twin Engines of Adoption: The Fire Has Been Lit, Now Comes the Fuel
The Bottom-Up Pull: A Global Demand for Stability
This organic growth is fueled by people solving real-world problems. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, stablecoins are designed to hold a steady value. This removes the risk of price swings and provides a straightforward, trustworthy foundation for users unfamiliar with digital assets.
- Escaping Currency Debasement: From cab drivers in Egypt to small business owners in Argentina, citizens are using stablecoins to protect their savings from the ravages of local currency inflation. In countries with volatile currencies, local money can be unreliable, while more stable fiat currencies are not easily accessible.
- Efficient Remittances & Commerce: The massive global remittance market is being transformed as users bypass traditional channels that can charge fees as high as 10% and take days to settle. Businesses are also adopting stablecoins for near-instant, 24/7 cross-border payments, freeing up capital and removing friction from global trade.
The Top-Down Push: The U.S. Government Embraces the Digital Dollar
This already-massive fire is about to be supercharged by a powerful new accelerant: a strategic, top-down push from the world’s largest economy. The U.S. government now views stablecoins as a tool for geopolitical influence.
“We are going to keep the US the dominant reserve currency in the world, and we will use stablecoins to do that.”
-Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary
This strategic mandate is backed by action. The passing of the GENIUS Act creates a clear regulatory framework for dollar-backed stablecoins, giving large institutions the confidence to engage and invest heavily in the ecosystem.
This regulatory clarity is validated by the market itself. The blockbuster IPO of Circle (CRCL), the issuer of USDC, marked a major milestone, signaling that mainstream capital markets now recognize stablecoin infrastructure as a legitimate, high-growth, and institutionally-investable industry.
The “How”: The Stealth Onboarding Funnel
Users are being onboarded to solve a problem, not to join a movement. They are drawn to stablecoins because moving money can be slow and cross-border payments can be expensive. Technology like account abstraction is rapidly improving the user experience, making crypto wallets as simple to use as sending an email. This is crucial for onboarding the next billion users who are not tech-savvy.
The crucial insight is this: a person holding $100 of USDC in a wallet to protect their savings might not consider themselves a “crypto user.” But they are. They have a self-custodied asset and a wallet address. They are officially inside the gates.
Inside the Gates: A Historical Parallel to Web 1.0
Before e-commerce and social media, the early internet had its own “Trojan Horse”: email. It was a simple, boring utility that gave hundreds of millions of people their first digital address and identity. This vast network of users became the foundation upon which the entire Web 2.0 economy was built.
Stablecoins are doing for the value internet (Web 3.0) what email did for the information internet. A stablecoin wallet is the new universal financial address, and the growing network of these financially connected users is the foundation for the next generation of digital finance.
Once a user holds stablecoins on-chain, the friction to try other services plummets. They become the addressable market for a full suite of applications – from DeFi to digital collectibles- creating a powerful growth cycle that attracts more builders and more capital.
The Investment Implications: Capitalizing on a Foundational Shift
For sophisticated allocators, the “Trojan Horse” phenomenon provides a clear signal. The primary opportunity is not in speculating on the stablecoins themselves, but in strategically funding the new economy being built to serve this incoming wave of users.
This wave of global, on-chain users creates a fertile ground for venture capital investment in two primary areas:
- Foundational Infrastructure: The “picks and shovels” required to support a billion-user economy. This includes next-generation wallets, secure on/off ramps, and scalable blockchain infrastructure.
- User-Centric Applications: A new generation of financial applications designed for simplicity and utility that offer tangible value to everyday users, such as high-yield savings, streamlined global payments, and tokenized real-world assets.
Venture capital follows a power-law where a few winners drive the majority of returns. Understanding the stablecoin-led adoption trend is key to identifying where the next cycle of venture capital returns will be generated. The capital that flows into building this new financial plumbing and the applications on top of it is poised to capture the most value.
