Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm says the word “stablecoin” may not survive the next phase of digital-dollar adoption. The firm argues that the label belongs to an earlier crypto era, when volatility was the main problem and price stability was the breakthrough.
That problem has changed. Dollar-pegged tokens are no longer defined only by their ability to hold a $1 value. They now sit inside payment apps, exchange settlement flows, DeFi markets, cross-border transfers, card programs, and on-chain treasury systems.
The firm compared “stablecoin” to “horsepower,” a useful bridge word that explained a new technology through an older frame. In the same way, stablecoin explained why dollar-pegged crypto mattered when Bitcoin, Ether, and altcoins were too volatile for ordinary payments or savings. The name still works, but it increasingly undersells what the technology does.
As a16z put it, “Stability is now table stakes.” The bigger shift is that money is becoming programmable, portable, and embedded directly into software.
Stablecoins were once treated mostly as exchange balances for traders escaping volatility. That use case remains important, but it is no longer the whole category.
Stablecoin transfer volumes have reached a scale that makes the payment-rail argument harder to ignore. Artemis-based data shared by Alex Obchakevich showed stablecoins processing about $7.2 trillion in February, ahead of ACH at $6.8 trillion and Visa at $1.2 trillion. More recent data also shows stablecoin volume nearing $10 trillion per month in 2026, with USDC driving most of the on-chain activity.
That volume needs context. Stablecoin transfers include trading, DeFi routing, exchange flows, minting, redemptions, treasury movement, and settlement activity. They are not the same as pure consumer card payments. Even with that caveat, the direction is clear: tokenized dollars are becoming core infrastructure for moving value across public blockchains.
a16z expects cleaner labels to take over as the asset class becomes more normal. “Digital dollars,” “digital euros,” and “on-chain assets” describe how people may actually use these tokens better than a term built around surviving crypto volatility.
The naming change also reflects the business shift. Payment companies, fintechs, exchanges, wallets, and traditional financial firms are building around stablecoin rails because they settle quickly, operate outside bank hours, and can be embedded into software products. Visa’s expansion of stablecoin settlement across card infrastructure shows how the category is moving closer to mainstream payment networks rather than staying inside crypto-native trading loops.
The term “stablecoin” will not disappear overnight. USDT, USDC, and other dollar tokens are too deeply embedded in market language for that. The pressure is already visible, though. As these assets become payment rails, collateral instruments, and programmable dollar accounts, the market may stop caring that they are stable and start caring where they can move, what they can connect to, and how much financial activity they can carry.
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