Stablecoin Shock of 2026: Why Crypto’s Next Revenue Wave Isn’t Trading - Crypto Economy

TL;DR

• Stablecoins are moving from trading tools to financial infrastructure in 2026, with revenue opportunities in routing, coordination, and settlement across on-chain and off-chain systems.
• Nick Elledge expects regional banks to use stablecoins for remittances 90% cheaper that settle in seconds, leveraging 24/7 availability and bypassing FedWire constraints.
• Emily Goodman says value will accrue to interoperability and compliance-aware transaction management as issuers, chains, and on-ramps fragment the ecosystem as adoption broadens.

For much of the last decade, stablecoins have been crypto’s workhorse for trading and capital-markets settlement, underpinning exchange liquidity, powering DeFi, supporting cross-border payments, and letting market makers move dollars quickly. But heading into 2026, a different thesis is gaining traction: will trading really drive the next wave of sustainable revenue?

According to investing.com report, executives at FS Vector and Stablecore say stablecoins like USDT and USDC are evolving from trading instruments into core financial infrastructure. These tokens track the U.S. dollar and are issued by private institutions on public blockchains. The shift is not about minting more units, but about what stablecoin networks enable: routing, coordination, and settlement across on-chain and off-chain systems. If that migration accelerates, it could reshape how banks, fintechs, and infrastructure providers generate revenues as stablecoins move deeper into the real economy. Revenue shifts to connective plumbing, not short-lived speculative trading volume alone.

Where stablecoin revenue shifts in 2026

Nick Elledge, cofounder and COO of Stablecore, points to regional and mid-sized banks as the first pressure point. He predicts that in 2026 they will stop relying on money-center banks and correspondent networks for cross-border dollar transfers, using stablecoins to offer remittances that are 90% cheaper and settle in seconds. What he considers most disruptive is not cost or speed, but availability: stablecoin networks can settle 24/7, outside traditional banking hours, giving banks liquidity flexibility when legacy payment rails are closed. He sketches a weekend playbook where a consortium of regional banks launches a tokenized deposit or a stablecoin to bypass the FedWire window.


As institutions adopt stablecoins as infrastructure, the ecosystem becomes more complex, creating fresh coordination problems and new places to capture value. That move flips the hierarchy of correspondent banking, and turns settlement into an always-on service rather than a weekday batch process for institutions.

Emily Goodman, a partner at FS Vector, argues that issuance will remain a foundation, but 2026’s strategic attention should shift toward orchestration. The opportunity is not simply minting stablecoins, she says, but managing how transactions move between blockchains, banks, payment networks, and legacy systems that do not natively talk to each other. In that hybrid world, participants will try to capture value from coordination, routing, and settlement across on-chain and off-chain environments, with emphasis on interoperability platforms spanning payment rails, DeFi protocols, and banking systems.

As stablecoin use spreads into remittances, treasury movement, and platform settlement, fragmentation multiplies across issuers, chains, on-ramps, off-ramps, and compliance regimes. Durable revenue, the report suggests, accrues to firms that run the connective layer: routing, settlement coordination, monitoring, and compliance-aware transaction management. In that framing, stablecoins stop being the product and become the infrastructure, while the revenue stack migrates upward into coordination services.