After the Genius Act, cryptocurrency payments rapidly surged, while traditional fintech companies are experiencing a serious identity crisis. Players like Stripe, PayPal, Wise have tried for years to create an independent payment channel outside the banking system but failed. The reasons are simple: they could never fully bypass processing money through the banking system. Blockchain, however, can do this.

The valuation logic of the fintech sector has changed. Stripe is valued at $159 billion, Revolut at $75 billion, but looking at these numbers, what are they really doing? Wise's transfers, Stripe's payment collection services... they have no real future. Fintech companies are being shut out by banking sector alliances because they cannot manage electronic dollar flows independently without banking. Blockchain can do this, even the most challenging stablecoin companies can bypass banking system vulnerabilities.

Think about it: PayPal was worth $340 billion in 2021, now it’s being sold. The entire fintech sector will have to prove by 2026 why it is superior to stablecoins and Agents. But this will not be easy at all.

The banking sector has always done this historically. In the 1970s, when Merrill Lynch’s CMA product started pulling deposits from small banks, the banking sector tried to ban these products. What happened in the end? Large banks used their scale advantages to take over small banks. When Alipay and WeChat became widespread in 2013, the US banking sector again lifted the shield protecting small banks. There were even questions about what Alipay was at that time, but what mattered was how US fintech companies like PayPal were being crushed.

Now, payment wars have begun, and four powers are playing here: companies like Stripe are jumping onto new IPO narratives, Meta and Google see negotiation advantages as channel providers, the banking sector wants to protect channel fees, and Tether is making aggressive investments imagining surrounding Circle.

The USDF vs USDC competition is interesting. USDT, which is being circulated by the third world, is starting to encircle Europe and America. The $80 billion USDT on Tron meets the cross-border transfer needs of individuals worldwide. In Argentina and Nigeria, the local currency is essentially transforming into USDT. Meanwhile, USDC’s DeFi + B2B + stablecoin logic contrasts with USDT’s CEX + P2P + stablecoin story. The result: USDC is more widespread in DeFi, USDT dominates in P2P transfers.

All these movements show that stablecoins need to go beyond just payments. Although the global stablecoin transaction volume appears to be around $35 trillion, in reality, only $390 billion represents actual payments. B2B payments are $226 billion ( with a growth rate of 733% annually, cross-border transfers are $90 billion, and clearing is $8 billion. The numbers are small, but the growth rate is enormous.

While following fintech’s steps, we hope crypto will create a different future. Payments should not be just SaaS or a simple function; it should be an AI payment infrastructure like Cloudflare. Distribution networks cannot be valued by volume alone. This is the story that crypto wants to tell: to move stablecoins beyond payments and ensure that money remains entirely on-chain.

If the banking sector wins the third attack, USDT/USDC will be delivered with government bond yields and they will continue to use the cheapest cash assets. But no one is really asking if Agents are truly necessary. This question will be discussed in the future. The only thing we need to know now is: the dominance of fintech is ending, and the era of stablecoins is beginning.