In today's global financial system, stablecoins are playing an increasingly important role as a crucial part of payment infrastructure and are becoming a backbone force driving the mainstreaming of cryptocurrencies. Recently, HTX's global investment department, HTX Ventures, released a research report (On-Chain Extension of the Dollar: Stablecoins, Shadow Banking, and the Reconstruction of Global Payment Weight) that deeply analyzes the rise of stablecoins in the global financial system and their strategic significance.
Building a 'Parallel Dollar Network' to reshape the payment structure
In the global cross-border payment system, the dollar has long dominated, establishing a solid moat through fiat anchoring, international trade anchoring, and credit anchoring. However, the dollar-centric cross-border payment system has long faced issues such as low efficiency, high settlement costs, strong censorship, and prominent financial exclusion, severely limiting financial inclusivity.
Against this backdrop, stablecoins provide a permissionless, highly liquid, and near-real-time payment solution through on-chain technology and dollar anchoring mechanisms. In terms of payment, the advantages of stablecoins include:
● Real-time arrival, settlement upon clearing: The blockchain structure inherently provides payment and clearing consistency, avoiding traditional T+1 or T+2 processes;
● Borderless circulation capability: Users only need to have a wallet and network access to participate in the dollar payment network;
● Connecting multi-chain ecosystems and payment APIs: USDT and USDC now support multi-chain deployment on Ethereum, TRON, Solana, etc., and can be directly integrated with Web3 merchant systems and financial APIs;
● Integration of settlement currency and store of value currency: Stablecoins serve as an account unit, payment method, and value storage method all in one, making them suitable for replacing local currency in high-inflation regions.
As a result, stablecoins are gradually building a more convenient, inclusive, and censorship-resistant on-chain dollar system, becoming an important alternative to traditional systems, with their application scenarios gradually expanding. In some Latin American countries, due to severe depreciation of local currency, residents heavily rely on USDT as a means of daily payment. Some platforms have integrated stablecoin transfers with fiat currency deposits and withdrawals, forming a 'on-chain dollar - local currency' exchange loop. Additionally, stablecoins are also used for import and export settlements between global SMEs, particularly in countries facing dollar foreign exchange restrictions.
This parallel dollar network significantly enhances the efficiency of cross-border remittances, international trade payments, and transactions within the Web3 economy, allowing the 1.3 billion unbanked population worldwide to access digital financial services, greatly enhancing the international influence of the dollar.
The challenges of stablecoins and 'shadow banking'
Despite the many advantages of stablecoins, there are still numerous challenges in compliance, liquidity, as well as privacy and censorship. Additionally, as an emerging payment solution, stablecoins need to carefully address how to compromise with regulators, cooperate with payment institutions, and coexist and win alongside the dollar hegemony system due to the threat they pose to various central banks and traditional cross-border payment giants.
In addition, stablecoins are playing the role of 'shadow banking for dollars' on-chain, becoming a new channel for financing by the U.S. Treasury. Stablecoin issuers are akin to 'on-chain money market funds', investing user-exchanged dollars into short-term government bonds and other assets, and creating 'credit currency' in the form of on-chain tokens. By combining dollar-anchored faith with on-chain efficient liquidity, stablecoins bring the logic of 'dollars as a global sovereign currency' from the traditional banking system into the DeFi world. From this perspective, stablecoins are not just a payment tool, but a cross-platform transplantation of a monetary value system. However, this architecture poses challenges to the central banks' monopoly on currency issuance and credit creation while enhancing the international penetration of the dollar, and there are also risks of inadequate regulation as well as systemic liquidity, security, and trust issues.
Global regulatory acceleration towards unification, stablecoins moving towards institutionalization
The widespread use of stablecoins in cross-border payments has attracted significant attention from governments and regulatory agencies around the world. Mature markets such as Europe and the United States have established regulatory frameworks for stablecoins centered on compliance, capital requirements, and transparent reserves, while Asia seeks a balance between innovation and regulation. In the future, the mainstreaming process of stablecoins will increasingly rely on clear policy expectations and cross-border regulatory collaboration, and the depth and flexibility of regulation will determine their legitimacy and vitality in the global payment system. HTX Ventures points out that the regulatory certainty and technological neutrality of stablecoins will determine whether they can truly take on the role of 'digital era's dollar infrastructure.'
HTX continues to expand the stablecoin ecosystem, strengthening its global payment network strategy
As an active promoter of stablecoin development, HTX continues to expand the stablecoin matrix on its platform, further consolidating its core position in the global crypto ecosystem. Since May of this year, HTX has successively launched six stablecoins: USD1, EURR, USDR, EURQ, USDQ, and AETHUSDT. Among them, USD1, issued by the Trump family's crypto project World Liberty Financial, is expected to become a star project in the stablecoin track against the backdrop of gradually clarifying U.S. stablecoin regulation; HTX, as the first platform to launch USD1 globally, added BTC/USD1 and ETH/USD1 trading pairs on June 17, further enriching the USD1 ecosystem.
These newly launched stablecoins not only enhance the asset choices and circulation efficiency for users on the HTX platform in a multi-chain, multi-currency environment but also provide more liquid and composable solutions for various scenarios such as high-frequency trading, asset hedging, and on-chain payments.
Read the full report: https://square.htx.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/htx-ventures-zui-xin-yan-bao.pdf
About HTX Ventures
HTX Ventures is the global investment department of HTX, integrating investment, incubation, and research to identify the best and brightest teams globally. As an industry pioneer, HTX Ventures has over 11 years of experience in blockchain development and is adept at identifying cutting-edge technologies and emerging business models in the field. To promote growth within the blockchain ecosystem, we provide comprehensive support for projects, including financing, resources, and strategic advice.
HTX Ventures currently supports over 300 projects across multiple blockchain areas, with some high-quality projects already trading on HTX. Additionally, as one of the most active FOF funds, HTX Ventures invests in 30 top global funds and collaborates with leading global blockchain funds such as Polychain, Dragonfly, Bankless, Gitcoin, Figment, Nomad, Animoca, and Hack VC to build a blockchain ecosystem together. Visit us.
For investment and cooperation inquiries, please feel free to contact [email protected]
