Stablecoin infrastructure is ready, why is user experience the final bottleneck?

Written by: Ignas Survila

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

Original Title: The Internet is Building a Native Financial System, but Success Still Hinges on User Experience

Money is experiencing its own "Internet moment."

The web has long had its communication systems (email), publishing platforms (blogs, social media), and commercial systems (Stripe, Shopify). Now, it is building its own financial system. This system is inherently programmable, open by default, and borderless from day one. It is being built on the underlying protocols of stablecoins.

But the key is: despite the rise of infrastructure, we still lack the crucial user experience. And history tells us that it is here where the biggest winners are crowned.

Infrastructure Enables Possibility, User Experience Wins Everything

Every cool technological revolution starts with infrastructure, but no one remembers the protocols; everyone remembers the products that made them usable.

In 1982, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) made email possible. However, it wasn't until 2004, when Gmail launched with its clean product, massive storage, and effective spam filters, that email truly became widespread.

Search engines existed long before Google. AltaVista, Archie, Lycos. But Google simplified everything—it was faster, cleaner, and smarter.

Skype didn't invent the Internet voice protocol (VoIP), and WhatsApp didn't invent instant messaging, but they made these technologies accessible to ordinary people.

We Are at the Same Inflection Point in the Evolution of Money

Stablecoins are helping to create an internet-native financial system.

And this is not just theoretical—it is already running.

• In 2024, stablecoins settled over $15.6 trillions on-chain.

• Tether is now the 18th largest holder of US Treasury bonds in the world, surpassing countries like South Korea, the UAE, and even Germany. To put it another way, the world’s fourth-largest economy now holds less US debt than a single stablecoin issuer.

• Yet despite this scale, only $263 billions worth of stablecoins are in circulation. In comparison, the US M2 money supply is $22 trillions, meaning the penetration rate barely reaches 1%.

• Today, less than 5% of the global population uses stablecoins, but it is expected that in the next five years, adoption will reach 7-10%, unleashing a massive new wave of financial inclusion.

• In regions such as Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, and Southeast Asia, stablecoins already operate as parallel dollar economies, with people relying on them daily to escape inflation, capital controls, or the failures of local banking systems.

We have never seen financial infrastructure scale so rapidly, especially across borders. Stablecoins have already reached millions of users worldwide. There is a good reason for this: they are fast, borderless, denominated in US dollars, and run on open protocols. In a world where 1.4 billion people lack adequate financial services and even more are subject to capital controls or volatile local currencies, stablecoins offer something revolutionary: an interface to access the global dollar network, accessible from anywhere with just a smartphone.

But the problem is: if you try to use stablecoins today, you will quickly hit a wall. The payment experience is clunky, the onboarding process is confusing, and everything is wrapped in jargon, wallets, gas fees, networks, and cross-chain bridges.

This is where the gap lies. We have a new monetary operating system—call it the internet-native financial cloud—but most people still cannot access it.

It's like getting a PS2 steering wheel for Christmas but not having a PlayStation to plug it into. A huge opportunity is right in front of us: to make all of this feel normal, invisible, and seamless.

Why User Experience Is a Moat

In fintech, having users means having user relationships. Trust is built here, user behavior is shaped here, and long-term value is created here.

Although in strategic meetings, user experience is rarely the strongest argument, in fintech, it is everything. Because this is not just software—this is money. And money requires trust.

Just look at the most successful cases in neobanking: Revolut, Cash App, Nubank. These companies operate in different markets, but they all follow the same strategy: providing a world-class user experience.

As stablecoins enter their next stage of adoption, the real winners will be the brands people trust to send money to their families, the cards they instinctively use to pay for lunch, and the apps that quietly replace their local banks. It will be the experience that makes stablecoins invisible, that makes them feel like ordinary money. Ordinary, but globally accepted.

Why Now?

What makes this moment so urgent and exciting is the convergence of three forces:

Infrastructure Is Ready

• Stablecoins are liquid and being deeply integrated.

• Wallet-as-a-service platforms (such as Privy) and embedded on-ramp solutions (such as Bridge) are solving the technical user experience challenges.

• Credit card issuance, compliance-as-a-service, and KYC providers—all of these have been battle-tested.

Regulation Is Catching Up

• Hong Kong introduced stablecoin legislation in 2024.

• The US Treasury’s GENIUS Act outlines a future path for regulated, scalable stablecoin usage.

The User Base Is Growing Rapidly

• In Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, stablecoins are leapfrogging banks.

• Globally, 1.4 billion people still lack adequate financial services. But they have smartphones.

• Gen Z are natural natives of internet finance.

This is not a speculative hype cycle. This is the maturity of infrastructure, regulation paving the way, and a massive consumer market waiting to be served. Billions of people still lack access to modern financial tools and services, but they have smartphones, internet access, and are increasingly familiar with stablecoins. The underlying protocols are finally in place. Now it’s a race to build the experience layer that brings everything to life.

The Stablecoin Standard Is Being Written

We believe that the most underestimated move in fintech right now is to build a stablecoin experience that feels like Apple Pay—an experience that blends into the background, that just works, and that wins by being obvious, trustworthy, and globally accepted.