Before the Focus

In a new article for FinTech Weekly, Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov argues that 2026 may mark the point where stablecoins stop being viewed as alternatives and start being treated as assumed financial plumbing.

 

👇 Read Michael Egorov’s full article
Why 2026 Will Be a Defining Year for Stablecoins and On-Chain Finance

 

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The Focus

Stablecoins appear to be entering a phase where the financial world shifts its perspective. Their role is drifting from speculative instrument toward transactional substrate.

That transition becomes visible in how they are used. Increasingly, stablecoins sit beneath applications rather than beside them. Payments, transfers, and treasury movements rely on them without foregrounding the asset itself. Users interact with interfaces. Settlement occurs on-chain in the background. When a technology disappears into function, it approaches infrastructural status.

This pattern mirrors earlier fintech evolution. Digital wallets once seemed novel payment methods. Over time they became standard access layers to existing rails. Stablecoins may be undergoing the inverse process. They are turning from visible products into invisible rails.

Egorov’s perspective highlights why adoption has grown from the edges inward. Fintech tools and crypto-native platforms implemented stablecoin settlement because it worked operationally. Transfers cleared continuously. Liquidity moved globally. Programmability reduced reconciliation overhead. Institutions are now observing usage that already exists rather than initiating it.

Such bottom-up diffusion differs from prior financial infrastructure shifts. Card networks and bank rails expanded through institutional rollout first, consumer adoption later. Stablecoins spread through developer ecosystems and fintech interfaces before formal banking integration. That sequence influences governance and architecture choices now emerging.

Another structural signal lies in functional specialization within the stablecoin ecosystem. Payment-oriented tokens integrate with consumer and merchant applications. Decentralized variants underpin on-chain finance operations. Both layers rely on shared settlement logic yet serve distinct economic roles. This separation resembles traditional finance, where payment systems and capital markets infrastructure coexist atop common monetary units.

Institutional experimentation adds a second vector. Banks and central banks are testing settlement instruments with stablecoin-like properties. These trials often occur away from consumer visibility. Their objective is operational: faster interbank transfer, programmable collateral movement, reduced counterparty exposure. If such systems converge with public blockchain rails, settlement architecture across finance could align around shared programmable layers.

Security and consolidation pressures accompany maturation. As stablecoins embed deeper into financial flows, protocol robustness becomes systemic rather than technical risk. Liquidity concentrating around fewer networks also reflects infrastructural consolidation. Mature financial systems historically settle on limited core rails. Fragmented alternatives fade as scale requirements rise. Similar dynamics appear in on-chain finance.

The broader implication extends beyond digital assets. Settlement models define how capital circulates. Programmable, continuous finality alters treasury management, cross-border payments, and automated finance logic. Once systems assume immediate settlement, delayed rails appear inefficient. Adoption then accelerates not through advocacy but through operational preference.

Stablecoins therefore may not replace banks or payment networks. They modify the layer beneath them. Banks can custody and issue. Fintech interfaces can distribute. Markets can transact. The settlement substrate becomes programmable and global by default. Infrastructure shifts often proceed in this manner: existing institutions persist while underlying rails evolve.

If 2026 proves consequential, it will not be because stablecoins suddenly appear. It will be because finance begins treating them as assumed infrastructure. The discussion then moves from whether they belong to how systems build on top of them.

 

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