The cryptocurrency industry is converging around two pillars: speculative trading and stablecoin payments, an assessment showed.

Coindesk reported on May 5 that Dan Romero (댄 로메로), head of market expansion at payments-based blockchain developer Tempo, compared the recent market structure to a "barbell" in a talk at Consensus 2026 in Miami.

Romero said one end is a speculative trading market such as Hyperliquid, while the other end is stablecoin-based payments. He said what has actually worked over the past 5 years is speculation and stablecoins. In between, he added, many projects continued development and fundraising for years but failed to find product-market fit.

Romero was a co-founder of the crypto social app Farcaster before joining Tempo. Farcaster drew large-scale venture investment and high expectations but struggled to spread.

Tempo is focusing on payments. Backed by Stripe and Paradigm, Tempo is a payments-focused layer 1 blockchain that puts enterprise features such as regulatory compliance and transaction controls at the center. Companies can block interactions with certain wallet addresses, and Romero explained that this is designed to reduce regulatory risk.

Companies' approach is also changing. Many companies are adopting stablecoins as back-end infrastructure rather than experimenting with tokens. Stablecoins are already seeing growing use in remittances, and Romero said the share of crypto-based payment networks is also rising in cross-border payments between the United States and Mexico.

Romero said the next demand is likely to come from internet-based operators. He said startups, particularly those centered on AI agents, are likely to adopt stablecoins as a default method for moving money globally.