The Funding: Why stablecoins are a top bet for crypto VCs

Stablecoins are one of crypto's clearest success stories — and VCs are treating them as a serious long-term bet. The use case is working at scale: stablecoins are moving billions every day, with adoption rising across payments, savings and business uses. Investors now see them as crypto's way into the real economy.

One of the main triggers for renewed VC attention was Stripe's $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge last October — the largest crypto M&A deal to date. For many, it marked a turning point: a fintech giant putting stablecoin infrastructure into production. Juan Lopez, general partner at VanEck Ventures and former Circle Ventures leader, pointed to Stripe’s $1 trillion in total payment volume as a prime example of the upside. He said that if Stripe is able to transition that volume onto its own stablecoin — and operate a widely adopted, interoperable platform — it could unlock a ~$40 billion per year net interest margin opportunity over the next few years, assuming treasury yields remain around 4%.

That kind of monetization potential is part of why VCs now see  stablecoins  as a trillion-dollar opportunity — not just within crypto, but across global finance. Stefan Cohen, partner of Bain Capital Crypto, pointed to more than $10 trillion in annual stablecoin settlement volume and said, "We're still in the early innings."

What's different this time is that stablecoin growth is happening at scale — and it's no longer tied to crypto market cycles. Total stablecoin supply has grown from about $125 billion at the start of 2024 to nearly $230 billion today, an 84% increase,  according to The Block's Data Dashboard . Cross-border payments on stablecoin rails have reached as much as $50 billion per month — up from virtually zero just fifteen months ago, according to Rob Hadick, general partner at Dragonfly, who cited the firm's own proprietary data. That kind of real-world usage — especially outside of trading — is why stablecoins are no longer seen as just a supporting layer in crypto's stack.

A business model that works

VCs aren't just focused on traction — they're looking at the economics. Top issuers like Tether are generating billions in revenue from treasury yields with lean teams and low overhead. "Stablecoins are inherently a very profitable business," said Cohen. That model is now drawing in startups, banks and fintechs all aiming to issue their own. "There is not a single financial services or fintech company in the world that doesn't have a stablecoin strategy today," Hadick said.

The opportunity goes well beyond issuers. VCs are backing startups building the infrastructure that makes stablecoins usable — blockchains, wallets, payment platforms and compliance tooling. Some are betting on app-first models, where stablecoins aren't the product but a layer that enables new monetization. As Cohen put it: "The most valuable stablecoin businesses will either be scalable permissionless infrastructure or centralized apps where stablecoins are seamlessly integrated into products people already use every day."

Waiting on the rulebook

But none of this scales without regulatory clarity — and that's where VCs see both the biggest unlock and the biggest risk. There's broad agreement that a clear U.S. framework could drive adoption from banks, fintechs and enterprises. David Pakman, managing partner and head of venture investments at CoinFund, said he expects at least a fivefold increase in stablecoin supply and transfer volume "in a short amount of time" once regulation becomes law.

VanEck's Lopez said stablecoins could reach cloud-level scale within five years of a stablecoin bill being passed. He compared the moment to the rise of cloud computing — where businesses had to move quickly or risk being left behind. But others are watching the fine print. Jed Breed, founder of Breed VC and former head of digital assets at Circle, warned that if only large institutions are allowed to issue stablecoins, it could hold back growth. "We don't want to make it too difficult for the small guys to be able to issue their own stablecoin," he said.

Hadick pointed to early signs of this dynamic already playing out, citing bills shaped by banking lobbies and stablecoin integrations being deployed in closed systems. "The biggest risk continues to be regulation and the entrenchment of incumbent players," he said. "Much of the adoption we've seen out of the banks like JPMorgan has been utilizing tokenization and stablecoins in closed systems that entrench themselves and cut off the rest of the market, where the real innovation is happening." The consensus: regulation could unlock the next growth wave — but if it favors incumbents, it could freeze out competition before it begins.

The bet crypto VCs are making isn't that stablecoins will keep growing — it's that they'll become the default way value moves online. The rails are being built, regulation is taking shape and real-world demand is already here. The shift won't happen overnight — but it's already in motion.

As Hadick put it, "Stablecoins aren't going to be the best product for all forms of payments, collateral mobility, savings, etc., but they are better and will continue to get better for many, many use cases, eating into that trillions of dollars of the addressable market."

Stablecoins on pace to break 2024 volume records

Stablecoins saw their biggest year yet in 2024, moving over $5.5 trillion in adjusted volume across more than 1.2 billion transactions, according to Visa's onchain dashboard . That momentum hasn't faded: in just the first few months of 2025, adjusted volume has already crossed $2 trillion, with over 300 million transactions recorded. If that pace holds, 2025 is on track to surpass last year's total, potentially hitting $6 trillion in volume by year-end. These figures use Visa's adjusted methodology, which filters out bots, exchange rebalancing and high-frequency noise to reflect real economic usage. The trend is clear — stablecoins aren't retreating; they're becoming routine.

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