As stablecoins take hold as unseen financial infrastructure rather than a promising technology, the market’s focus is shifting from expanding adoption to how revenue is shared.

On March 31, blockchain outlet Cointelegraph reported that OpenTrade co-founder Jeff Handler wrote in a contributed article that the key question for 2026 is “who actually collects fees and enjoys that value.”

He said the fundamental change in stablecoins lies not in expansion but in internalisation. He described digital dollars as quietly working as efficient working capital and settling into place like financial plumbing for the global financial system, rather than being popularised by a single app or service growing explosively.

He argued that evaluation standards should also change. The industry has focused on market capitalisation and share battles, but for stablecoins as infrastructure, velocity is a more important indicator. Handler called market capitalisation a static vanity metric and stressed that what really matters is how quickly money circulates.

Data also supports the shift. The article said total stablecoin transaction volume in 2025 exceeded $33 trillion, up 72 percent from the previous year. With supply remaining at the level of hundreds of billions of dollars, the far larger transaction volume suggests the same funds are repeatedly used for various purposes, including payments, remittances and treasury operations.

By region, Latin America appears to have moved into real-world use the fastest. In Argentina and Brazil, 61.8 percent and 59.8 percent, respectively, of on-chain activity is based on stablecoins, showing they function as a survival tool in a high-inflation environment rather than a simple investment vehicle.

In the United States and Europe, by contrast, stablecoins are still widely seen as a yield tool or a means of settling trades. It is an analysis that while regulatory and tax discussions continue, some emerging economies are already seeing the replacement of fiat currency become a reality.

The issue is where the economic value generated in the process accrues as transactions surge. Handler said the current structure resembles a “revenue pyramid” that runs through issuers, exchanges and custodians.

For example, stablecoin issuers generate revenue through reserve management and distribution partnerships. Citing Tether, Handler also mentioned an assessment describing it as “the second most profitable company in the world on a per-employee basis.” Exchanges take fees in settlement and internal routing, while banks and neobanks are securing additional revenue sources through tokenised deposits and on-chain payments.

Regulators do not earn direct revenue, but through licensing and compliance systems they act as a key variable in deciding who can make money in the market. In Latin America, competition among on- and off-ramps, wallets and exchanges is intensifying, aligning interests toward raising transaction turnover.

Handler stressed that redesigning the incentive structure is needed for a sustainable ecosystem. He argued that rather than keeping a structure in which revenue is concentrated in intermediaries, some value should be returned to users who generate actual transactions.

He said the true turning point would come when stablecoins are no longer seen as a “technology,” meaning the moment they become completely invisible infrastructure.

If 2025 was the year that proved stablecoins can handle value flows worth tens of trillions of dollars, 2026 is expected to be when competition intensifies over who captures and controls those flows.