Stablecoin adoption to scale on back of ‘very large’ tech firms: Bitwise

Stablecoins have a better chance of going mainstream if they are adopted by major technology companies, which would drive the market closer to a projected $4 trillion by the end of the decade, says Bitwise.

Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan said on Tuesday that DoorDash and Meta’s recent use of stablecoins for payments in limited projects is likely “the real killer app of stablecoins.”

“On a relative basis, these are not a big deal. Both are pilot projects and the dollar amounts are small,” Hougan wrote. “But they've answered a question I've had about stablecoins for a long time. They’ve also increased my confidence that stablecoins will scale to trillions in assets and hundreds of millions of users.”

Multiple large non-crypto institutions have been testing stablecoin technology. Meta on Thursday launched stablecoin payouts for creators in the Philippines and Colombia, while the food delivery app DoorDash said on April 21 it would offer stablecoin payments to its users, workers and merchants.

The market value of all stablecoins is currently just under $318 billion, but Hougan said projections, such as one from Citigroup in September, pinned that market value could grow to $4 billion by 2030 in a best-case scenario.

Matt Hougan, pictured speaking to Cointelegraph at Bitcoin 2026, says in a recent note that stablecoin value will soar if tech giants adopt them. Source: YouTube

“To get there, stablecoins will have to expand beyond their current primary use case of crypto trading and be embraced for everyday activity, like payments,” Hougan said. “To really scale to hundreds of millions of users, stablecoins are going to need the support of very large players.”

He said that the current pitch to businesses about stablecoins is that they are cheaper and faster, but another main reason multinational companies would adopt the technology is to simplify their global payments infrastructure.

“Stablecoins make global payments simple,” he argued. “One wallet address, no banking infrastructure, no currency conversions. For a global business managing millions of micropayments, that type of simplicity is worth a lot.”

Companies in the US have been more confident in testing stablecoins after Congress passed the GENIUS Act last year, a bill regulating stablecoin issuers and forming a framework for how the tokens should be backed.

Visa is among a group of companies that have adopted stablecoins, and the payments giant expanded its pilot of the tokens on Thursday to include five further blockchains as the volume of settlements on its stablecoin settlement network has grown.

US banks have meanwhile grown wary of stablecoins and have lobbied to restrict them, arguing they compete with and threaten bank deposits, which could harm the banking system.

The Senate is shaping a bill outlining how crypto will be regulated, which currently includes a clause banning platforms such as crypto exchanges from paying rewards on idle stablecoin holdings, but allowing other forms of rewards.

However, banking groups on Tuesday argued the clause, that lawmakers pitched as a compromise between crypto and banking lobbyist interests, did not go far enough.