The Rise of Stablecoins and the New Landscape of Blockchain Payments

Stablecoins, regarded as the "killer application" of the crypto market, have seen their total market capitalization exceed $200 billion. With the rapid development of stablecoins over the past five years and their increasing integration into the global economy, the potential of blockchain as financial infrastructure is gradually being explored and utilized by the traditional financial world.

A certain payment giant believes that stablecoins are a promising payment innovation that can provide a safe, reliable, and convenient payment method for more people. At the same time, as one of the earliest and most experienced Blockchain payment companies in the market, a certain company and its coins have undergone a valuation reassessment in the market.

This article aims to outline the development trends of stablecoins, analyze the logic behind the repricing of a well-known payment company's token, and compare it with a similarly established payment project, PlatON, to explore how to capture value in this emerging trend.

The Development Trends of Stablecoins

A recent cryptocurrency report released by a well-known investment institution pointed out that stablecoins have found product-market fit in the past year, becoming one of the most obvious "killer applications" in the Web3.0 field.

Stablecoins simplify the process of value transfer, enabling rapid global value circulation. Their quarterly trading volume is already more than twice that of a certain payment giant, settling hundreds of billions of dollars in assets annually. In November 2024 alone, 28.5 million independent stablecoin users conducted over 600 million transactions, fully demonstrating their practicality. At the same time, stablecoin users are almost everywhere in the world, providing them with a safe, low-cost, and inflation-resistant way to save and spend.

A well-known incubator recently stated: Although there is controversy over the practicality of Blockchain technology, stablecoins will obviously become an important component of the future of currency. Currently, nearly 30% of global remittances are conducted through stablecoins, and traditional financial institutions have also begun to provide platforms for banks to issue their own stablecoins. In addition, a payment technology company has acquired a stablecoin startup for $1 billion, which will attract more investors' attention and capital into the field.

Another payment giant pointed out in its top ten payment trends forecast for 2025 that the development of Blockchain and digital assets in recent years demonstrates the potential of this technology to reform global financial and business systems. Cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and tokenized assets have evolved from the conceptual stage to commercialization, especially in applications related to physical assets. It is expected that by 2025, Blockchain technology will play an important role in improving speed, security, and efficiency, particularly in the B2B and commercial payment sectors.

The Rise of a Well-Known Payment Company and Its Coin

Whether it is cryptocurrency investment institutions, traditional payment networks, or banking systems, they all recognize that value transfer based on Blockchain is a reasonable trend in the future development of financial technology. Against this background, the payment field is bound to become the first application scenario.

A well-known payment company is a Blockchain technology company that mainly provides Blockchain-based financial service solutions, aimed at increasing the speed of global financial transactions and reducing costs. The company's main product services include cross-border payment and remittance networks, which are seen as alternatives to the traditional financial institutions' SWIFT payment network, as well as the recently launched stablecoin.

The company's technology and services primarily rely on an independent distributed ledger that offers low transaction costs and high performance for recording and verifying transactions. This ledger was developed in 2012 and focuses on providing banking solutions for traditional financial institutions. Its native coin is classified as a payment cryptocurrency, serving as a medium for paying transaction fees on the ledger, and provides a way to transfer value using a distributed network instead of centralized storage.

Recently, the value of the company's token has been re-evaluated, mainly due to:

1. Expectations of changes in the regulatory environment: With the new government coming to power, the market anticipates a more favorable regulatory attitude towards cryptocurrencies, and the appointment of individuals who support cryptocurrencies to key positions has boosted market confidence.

2. Positive developments in regulatory litigation: The company has achieved partial victories in its lawsuits with regulators, with the judge ruling that its tokens are not considered securities when sold to retail investors on the exchange, which is a significant benefit.

3. The increase in ETF and institutional investments: A certain asset management company launched a trust product for the token and applied to convert a multi-currency fund that includes the token into an ETF, increasing its appeal to institutional investors.

4. Enhanced scalability of distributed ledgers: The company announced the introduction of advanced programmability, including smart contracts, achieved through native smart contract functionality and sidechains, thereby enhancing the developer ecosystem.

5. Launch of stablecoin: The company announced the launch of a corporate-level stablecoin pegged to the US dollar at a 1:1 ratio, aimed at enhancing institutional liquidity, trust, and compliance within its ecosystem.

Looking for the Next Opportunity: PlatON

In this context, how can we capture the value of similar projects? Currently, successful token issuance in blockchain payment projects mainly focuses on: independent payment protocol applications; projects that use the underlying blockchain ledger as a payment settlement network. Market experience tells us that the value of payment networks is greater, and the ecological scalability is stronger. Therefore, we turn our attention to PlatON.

PlatON stood out early with its "privacy computing" technological characteristics. After completing its technological accumulation, it began to apply its advantages in areas such as payments, providing financial-grade system stability and performance, cryptographically backed compliant digital asset management, as well as stateful payment clearing solutions for multiple scenarios.

PlatON is a project that uses a foundational Blockchain ledger as a payment settlement network, serving the entire Web3.0 ecosystem. LAT is the native coin of the PlatON network, primarily used for network governance, paying resource fees, and incentivizing network participants.

TOPOS is an open payment clearing operating system based on PlatON, with its payment core based on tokenized currency. It ensures that the "Money" of Web 3.0 is self-minted by users and securely completes value transfer through three levels: value locking, payment logic, and authorization mechanisms.

PlatON demonstrates a business structure that is purer and better at reflecting value in its tokens than a certain well-known payment company:

1. PlatON network used for payment settlement (LAT is the network's native token)
2. Open Payment Clearing System TOPOS
3. Initiators and Promoters of Open Financial Infrastructure LatticeX

It is worth noting that a well-known payment company is a private enterprise, and the value of its payment network and stablecoin cannot be fully reflected in its token, while PlatON's business architecture can fully unleash the value of LAT.

How does PlatON capture payment value?

Blockchain provides the technical conditions for the complete unification of information flow and capital flow for value exchange, but the current payment architecture based on blockchain is still at the stage of settlement rules centered around peer-to-peer transfers, and has not yet formed a clearing and settlement standard to address complex payment scenarios and multiple participants.

Although global stablecoin-based payments have become a reality with great potential, the simple logic of peer-to-peer transfers is difficult to support a rich variety of stablecoin payment scenarios. At the same time, due to the lack of standardized clearing rules on the Blockchain, payment transactions still rely on traditional payment clearing systems.

PlatON aims to leverage its network as the "master ledger" and application platform for future global cross-border payment settlement by establishing a standard for clearing rules on the Blockchain to address the distribution of interests among multiple payment participants and complex payment scenarios. TOPOS is the carrier of this set of clearing rule standards.

PlatON aims to build the "VISA of the Web3 era", and the VISA card organization is precisely the highest valued entity in the global payment ecosystem. PlatON compensates for the lack of standardized clearing rules on the Blockchain through TOPOS and attracts various parties to participate by creating a win-win digital currency "VISA" network, achieving the construction of rich payment scenarios. As the ecological network gradually builds up, network effects will gradually emerge, and the ultimate value will reflect on PlatON and LAT.

TOPOS Open Financial Ecosystem, Shaping the PlatON Payment Landscape

PlatON is building a large open payment settlement network TOPOS based on Blockchain. Through an innovative payment settlement system framework, it reshapes global payments in a Web3.0 manner.

TOPOS's open payment ecosystem can reduce cross-border payment fees by at least 60%, supports non-custodial digital asset holding, and relies on acquiring institutions, wallet institutions, and tokenized currency payment scenario standards to complete payments and value exchanges. Each participant in the payment process assumes different roles and gains benefits.

TOPOS is not only a payment settlement platform on the Blockchain but also the foundation of an open financial ecosystem. As an open operating system, it can adapt to different application scenarios and needs, making it easy to integrate new technologies and features.

TOPOS is committed to building a bridge between Web2.0 and Web3.0, breaking down the barriers between traditional finance and emerging financial technology. Whether traditional financial institutions or emerging blockchain projects, they can all find a suitable position within the TOPOS ecosystem to achieve free flow of funds and seamless transfer of value.

Currently, TOPOS's payment solutions cover stablecoin issuance, cross-border remittances, digital currency acquiring, cross-border trade, etc. Anyone can assemble the ultimate payment services on this ecosystem using the underlying blockchain capabilities provided by TOPOS.

In summary, PlatON supports and incentivizes multi-party participation by introducing standardized clearing rules on the Blockchain, bringing rich payment scenario construction, gradually forming network effects, and ultimately achieving the value capture of LAT.

The Breaking Point of PlatON's Future

By building "VISA of the Web3 era", PlatON can leave the value on the transaction chain to network participants, forming an incentive system, rather than going back to the traditional clearing system where it is divided among various intermediaries. At the same time, the complex payment scenarios constructed by TOPOS can perfectly integrate with Web2.0 applications and payment scenarios, achieving cost reduction and efficiency improvement for applications and a better user experience.

PlatON's vision is not limited to digital currencies on the Blockchain and Web3.0. In the long run, the current on-chain native innovations are a stage manifestation of this long-term wave, and the breakthrough fundamentally comes from the iterative upgrade of interbank financial infrastructure driven by a large number of actual commercial needs from Web2.0.

Therefore, PlatON is turning its attention to the richer Web2.0 market, which is the key for the Web3.0 ecosystem to achieve large-scale popularity and is also the fundamental breakthrough for crypto payments!

The founder of PlatON believes: "The biggest market opportunity in the current and next stage is the full migration of core Web 2.0 teams and applications to Web 3.0, similar to the migration of Internet Web applications to mobile Internet Apps a decade ago. Due to limitations in technology and infrastructure capabilities, the vast majority of core applications from the Web 2.0 era are still unable to be fully migrated on-chain directly, and can only utilize the features of cryptographic technology and incentive mechanisms to delegate services such as payment, clearing, trading, custody, and verification of assets/funds to public chains and their ecosystems.

Therefore, the core demand is transformed into fiat currency deposits and withdrawals, and the receipt/transfer of digital currencies. This means that the upcoming competition among public chains will not primarily come from on-chain native scenarios, but rather from the migration of transactions and user onboarding from the original internet outside the chain. The only channel for non-Web3.0 native users to enter is still through the applications/services they are familiar with, and it is highly likely to be through a B2B2C path.

In the Web 2.0 era, the number of retail payment transactions processed globally each year exceeds 20 trillion. For PlatON, seizing the opportunity as traditional retail gradually transitions to the comprehensive use of digital currency as a new payment medium means aligning with the era where data ownership and currency ownership belongs to the owners themselves as we move from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. We aim to build a decentralized open-loop standard similar to VISA, providing a solid infrastructure for the transition from Web 2.0 retail to Web 3.0 retail. TOPOS is the innovative payment clearing infrastructure we have launched based on the above considerations.

This view coincides with what some investment institutions have observed: influential large capital from both the new and old worlds is laying out plans in the crypto space.