An era in which people can live using only stablecoins may come, but stablecoins are likely to settle as one option rather than fully replacing cash and traditional finance, an outlook said.

On Oct. 5 (local time), three industry figures at a panel discussion at an artificial intelligence and on-chain finance summit held in Japan broadly agreed on the potential spread of stablecoins, but differed over use cases and pace, blockchain outlet CoinPost reported.

The session was attended by Hiroo Isowa (이소와 히로오), an executive officer and managing director at Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Noritaka Okabe (오카베 노리타카), CEO of JPYC, and Sota Watanabe (와타나베 소타), head of the Startale Group. They discussed whether people can live using only stablecoins, whether stablecoins are more competitive than SWIFT in international remittances, whether they can be used to pay taxes, and whether yen-based stablecoins are needed.

◆"Living is possible with only stablecoins"... Coexisting with traditional finance

On the question of whether an era of living only with stablecoins is coming, two were in favour and one opposed, but all three acknowledged the possibility itself.

Watanabe said physical payments will not disappear even if on-chain finance expands. "An era in which people can live only with stablecoins will come, but there is no need to do everything with stablecoins," he said. Like cash and digital payments coexisting, stablecoins would become one of the payment methods users choose, he explained.

Okabe referred to his experience of living for a week using only JPYC in 2022, when it was a prepaid product. "If it was possible then, there is no reason it cannot be now, when it can also be linked with cards and existing merchants," he said. Isowa also said the current situation resembles the early stages of the spread of cashless payments, and he expected stablecoins to be used alongside other payment methods.

Opinions diverged on international remittances. Isowa said SWIFT and stablecoins should be used in parallel, given large-scale investment has already been made in existing banking networks.

Okabe said the right tool varies by remittance size. "For sending 1,000 won, stablecoins are effectively the only option, but at a scale of 10 billion yen, about 85 billion won, a bank may be the right choice," he said. That means stablecoins could be highly competitive in areas such as small overseas remittances, sponsorship and payments.

Watanabe said he was paying more attention to tokenised deposits than stablecoins as the long-term main tool for international remittances. He said stablecoins could spread over the next 2 to 3 years, and over a longer term of more than 5 years, tokenised deposits and stablecoins could expand together. Isowa also said tokenised deposits could be more useful in Japan, where bank account ownership is high, and depending on design, the boundary between the two tools could blur.

All three were positive about the possibility of introducing stablecoins for tax payments. Watanabe argued that even government disbursements need to be converted on-chain. Isowa cited the ability to check where taxes are used and emphasised the advantages of a structure where payment and record-keeping happen at the same time. "What matters in the end is programmability and DVP," he said, pointing to the importance of instant settlement and record tracing.

◆Change may start with small remittances and 24-hour trading... Yen stablecoins remain a task

Areas expected to change first in traditional finance included the cost of small remittances and restrictions on trading hours. Okabe said excessive costs for small remittances and dividend payments could fall. Watanabe said time constraints in financial markets could also weaken as activity shifts to markets that can trade 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

On the need for yen stablecoins, one view distinguished between the present and the future. Okabe said liquidity is not sufficient at present. In September, JPYC's price briefly surged to about four times its reference price due to a shortage of circulating supply immediately after it was listed on Upbit.

"It is hard to say it is sufficient when the price of a stablecoin that should be 1-to-1 is fluctuating greatly under the current conditions," Okabe said. He added that yen stablecoins would be needed in the long term.

By contrast, Isowa and Watanabe said there remains potential use for yen stablecoins, citing Japan-specific assets and the yen's role as a funding currency. Watanabe mentioned the possibility of designing new financial products linked to U.S. assets, and Isowa mentioned a complementary role as a payment method for assets in which Japan has strengths.

On regulation, a cautious view emerged that strict rules are needed, considering anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT).

On the failure of the Clarity Act, a U.S. digital asset market structure bill, to pass a procedural vote in the Senate in September, Watanabe said it was not a fatal blow to the industry. He said changes based on interpretations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) could be reversed depending on a change of administration, pointing to that as a risk. The Clarity Act was rejected 49-50 in a Senate procedural vote on Sept. 15.

On stablecoin plans being pursued by Japan's three megabanks, another view said the focus is on improving fund efficiency for large companies with substantial overseas transactions. Funds left in different regions due to time differences could be gathered and managed efficiently, an analysis said, making it more likely to lead to real-world use.

In the end, the shared outlook confirmed in the discussion was that stablecoins will spread across areas such as everyday payments, small overseas remittances, payment for tokenised assets, tax payments and corporate cash management, in parallel with existing financial infrastructure, rather than replacing traditional finance at a stroke. If institutional preparations and liquidity 확보 back them, the possibility was raised that use cases for stablecoins could expand quickly in Japan as well.