Unprecedented! The $100 trillion wealth shift is happening, and the epic gates of $BTC and $ETH are opening. Is the death knell for traditional finance ringing?

Market analysis indicates that the real trading volume of stablecoins could reach $150 trillion by 2035. If you rely only on natural growth, the adjusted trading volume is expected to be $71.9 trillion; but if you factor in macro catalysts, that figure will be close to $150 trillion.

Between 2028 and 2048, an estimated $100 trillion in wealth will be transferred from the baby boomer generation to Millennials and Gen Z. These two generations are more inclined to treat crypto assets as the default financial instrument.

The payment scale of stablecoins is expected to catch up to the transaction volumes of Visa and Mastercard between 2031 and 2039, directly creating competitive pressure on traditional payment networks. Events such as Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge and the cooperation agreement between Mastercard and BVNK show that stablecoins are becoming core payment infrastructure.

In 2025, the trading volume handled by stablecoins was $2.8 trillion. By 2035, this number could rise to $150 trillion, exceeding the total size of the current global cross-border payments market. The growth momentum of stablecoins is beyond question.

Since the U.S. 《GENIUS Act》 has released clear regulatory signals, stablecoins have become a central topic in financial services. But under the backdrop of policy debate, a fundamental question has emerged: how do economic data reveal the risks and opportunities that stablecoins pose to traditional financial institutions?

For institutions, connecting to faster, lower-cost, programmable payment infrastructure presents a wealth of opportunities; institutions that refuse to embrace the on-chain trajectory may face the risk of being disintermediated.

Unlike traditional payment networks that rely on multiple layers of intermediaries, batch processing, and multi-day settlement, stablecoins enable near-instant settlement, 24/7 cross-border payments, and eliminate the need for intermediaries. This means lower transaction costs, faster finality, and programmable money that can be directly embedded into software and business workflows.

Compared with traditional systems, stablecoin payments can reduce reconciliation costs, eliminate intermediaries, and enable 24/7 trading in global markets. These advantages have driven widespread adoption in remittances, corporate payments, and treasury and liquidity management.

This article focuses on stablecoins’ use in financial products, with an emphasis on the payment areas where implementation is currently the clearest. Stablecoins are also expected to more broadly reshape various financial products—from lending and capital markets to funds and liquidity management.

Two forces are accelerating this transformation: the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in history and the quiet rollout of stablecoins at payment terminals. When combined, the two may reshape the landscape of the payments industry, and traditional institutions can no longer afford to ignore it.

Raw stablecoin transaction data is misleading. Liquidity providers, bot activity, and MEV transfers can inflate the data, but they cannot reflect real economic activity. To address this, we use an adjusted stablecoin transaction volume metric that strips out noise and counts only real economic behaviors such as payments, remittances, and settlements.

Since 2023, the adjusted transaction volume has risen at a compound annual growth rate of 133%, and by 2025 the real economic scale reaches $2.8 trillion. If you project based only on baseline growth, by 2035 it could reach $7.19 trillion.

But baseline growth is likely to underestimate future trends. Two major macro inflection points will significantly accelerate stablecoin adoption: intergenerational wealth transfer and the rollout of payment terminals. After accounting for these catalysts, the forecast will be substantially raised: the transaction volume in 2035 could approach $150 trillion, exceeding the current global cross-border payments scale of about $100 trillion.

Starting around 2028, traditional financial institutions in North America and Europe will face major demographic shifts. Millennials and Gen Z will become the majority of the adult population, gradually replacing Generation X and baby boomers as the core financial group.

Accompanying this shift is the movement of massive capital. Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates that by 2048, up to $100 trillion in wealth will be passed down from the baby boomer generation to their descendants. Based on analytical estimates, this single transfer could add $50.8 trillion in transaction volume for stablecoins by 2035, and further drive broader adoption of crypto assets.

For traditional institutions, this creates a dual mandate: either capture the growing flow of customers’ capital into crypto, or face the risk that capital flows toward the on-chain ecosystem.

Stablecoin merchant services mark the final stage of on-chain payment value: moving from specialized transfers to everyday consumption. Today, using crypto payments is still an active choice. But once stablecoins become the standard for retail payments, that boundary will disappear.

This transformation is already underway: stablecoin payments are shifting from consumers’ active decisions to background settlement processes. Unlike traditional card networks, stablecoin networks can enable near-instant settlement for merchants and reduce the cost of card processing fees.

If you follow current trends in transaction counts, on-chain stablecoin transactions could catch up to the off-chain transaction volumes of Visa and Mastercard between 2031 and 2039. Since payment network adoption curves are typically nonlinear, on-chain transaction volume could even surpass traditional networks in the early 2030s.

We estimate that solely the rollout of payment terminals could add $23.2 trillion in transaction volume for stablecoins by 2035. Just as consumers once compared credit cards based on fees and benefits, in the future they will compare crypto networks and traditional networks using the same criteria.

Cards tied to stablecoins will directly challenge traditional payment facilities. For giants such as Visa and Mastercard, this threat is no longer far off.

Intergenerational wealth transfer has already begun, and payment terminal rollout is approaching. Together, they point to a new financial benchmark: stablecoin networks becoming core payment infrastructure. The strategies of traditional financial institutions are shifting from regulatory planning to proactive deployment.

By acquiring platforms, forming partnerships, and building infrastructure, traditional and on-chain rails can operate in parallel. For example, Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge and the cooperation between Mastercard and BVNK are strategic bets on the payments future.

For today’s major players, blockchain is the core pipeline for the next generation of global payments. Now is the window for institutions that are moving early to define the industry’s future—while those who watch from the sidelines will ultimately have to process transactions on networks built by others.

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