In today's global financial system, stablecoins are playing an increasingly important role as a vital component of payment infrastructure and are becoming a cornerstone for the mainstream development of cryptocurrencies. Recently, HTX Ventures, the global investment arm of Huobi HTX, released a research report (On-chain Extension of the Dollar: Stablecoins, Shadow Banking, and Global Payment Weight Reconstruction), which deeply analyzes the rise of stablecoins in the global financial system and their strategic significance.
Building a 'Parallel Dollar Network', Reshaping Payment Structure
In the global cross-border payment system, the US dollar has long dominated, establishing a strong moat through fiat anchoring, international trade anchoring, and credit anchoring. However, the dollar-centric cross-border payment system has long faced issues like low efficiency, high settlement costs, stringent censorship, and prominent financial exclusion, severely limiting financial inclusivity.
In this context, stablecoins provide a permissionless, highly liquid, 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 a wallet and internet access to participate in the dollar payment network;
Integration with multi-chain ecosystems and payment APIs: USDT and USDC now support multi-chain deployment including Ethereum, TRON, Solana, etc., and can be directly integrated with Web3 merchant systems and financial APIs;
Settlement currency and store of value combined: Stablecoins serve as a unit of account, means of payment, and store of value, making them suitable for replacing local currency in high-inflation areas.
Therefore, 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 devaluation of local currency, residents heavily rely on USDT as a means of daily payment, and some platforms have integrated stablecoin transfers with fiat currency deposits and withdrawals, forming a 'on-chain dollar - local currency' exchange closed loop. Additionally, stablecoins are also used for import and export settlement among global SMEs, especially in countries facing dollar foreign exchange restrictions.
This parallel dollar network not only significantly improves the efficiency of cross-border remittances, international trade payments, and transactions within the Web3 economy but also enables 1.3 billion unbanked individuals worldwide to access digital financial services, greatly enhancing the international influence of the dollar.
Challenges of Stablecoins and 'Shadow Banking'
Despite the many advantages of stablecoins, there are still significant challenges in terms of compliance, liquidity, and privacy and censorship. As an emerging payment solution, stablecoins need to carefully address how to compromise with regulators, collaborate with payment institutions, and coexist and win together with the dollar hegemony system.
Moreover, stablecoins are acting as 'shadow banks on-chain', becoming a new channel for financing for the U.S. Treasury. The issuers of stablecoins are akin to 'money market funds on-chain', investing the dollars exchanged by users into short-term government bonds and other assets, thus creating 'credit currency' in the form of on-chain tokens. By combining the belief in dollar anchoring with efficient on-chain 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 also a cross-platform transplant of a monetary value system. However, this structure poses challenges to central banks' monopoly on currency issuance and credit creation while also facing 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 high attention from governments and regulatory agencies around the world. Mature markets such as Europe and the United States have established stablecoin regulatory frameworks centered around 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 depend on clear policy expectations and cross-border regulatory cooperation, and the depth and flexibility of regulation will determine their legitimacy and viability in the global payment system. HTX Ventures points out that the regulatory certainty and technological neutrality of stablecoins will determine whether they can truly assume the role of 'digital age dollar infrastructure.'
Huobi HTX continues to expand the stablecoin ecosystem, intensifying its global payment network strategy.
As an active promoter of stablecoin development, Huobi HTX continues to expand the stablecoin matrix on its platform, further solidifying its core position in the global crypto ecosystem. Since May of this year, Huobi 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 sector as US regulations on stablecoins become clearer; Huobi 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 Huobi HTX platform users in multi-chain and multi-currency environments but also provide more liquid and composable solutions for high-frequency trading, asset hedging, on-chain payments, and other scenarios.
About HTX Ventures
HTX Ventures is the global investment arm of Huobi HTX, integrating investment, incubation, and research to identify the best and brightest teams worldwide. As an industry pioneer, HTX Ventures has over 11 years of experience in blockchain development, excelling at identifying cutting-edge technologies and emerging business models in the field. To drive growth within the blockchain ecosystem, we provide comprehensive support to projects, including financing, resources, and strategic advice.
HTX Ventures currently supports over 300 projects across multiple blockchain fields, with some high-quality projects already trading on Huobi HTX. Additionally, as one of the most active FOF funds, HTX Ventures invests in 30 top global funds and collaborates with leading blockchain funds such as Polychain, Dragonfly, Bankless, Gitcoin, Figment, Nomad, Animoca, and Hack VC to jointly build the blockchain ecosystem.
