STABLECOINS 2030: WEB3 TO WALL STREET

Summary from the TLDR Crypto newsletter

Citi has revised its 2030 stablecoin issuance forecasts upward to $1.9 trillion base case and $4 trillion bull case, driven by 40% year-to-date growth, regulatory clarity from the GENIUS Act, and accelerating institutional adoption following what the bank calls blockchain's "ChatGPT moment." The growth drivers include partial reallocation of USD bank deposits and offshore holdings, continued crypto market expansion, and substitution of physical banknotes, with stablecoins potentially supporting $100 trillion in transaction activity by 2030 at 50x velocity similar to traditional payment rails. Citi expects bank tokens like tokenized deposits to potentially exceed stablecoin transaction volumes, reaching $100-140 trillion annually if just 5% of global large-value payments migrate onchain, as multiple digital money formats will coexist rather than compete in a "format war." Challenges include fragmentation and interoperability issues, privacy concerns on public blockchains, scalability limitations for large-value transactions, and the need for accounting recognition as cash equivalents. Emerging solutions include zero-knowledge proofs and the rush by Circle, Stripe, Bitfinex, and others to build specialized Layer-1 blockchains for payments infrastructure.