Stablecoins Push to Go Mainstream Amid Crypto Renaissance

This isn’t last week’s crypto landscape. And it’s far shake from last year’s, too.

Bitcoin has surged past $90,000, signaling renewed investor confidence in crypto markets after a classically volatile first few months of 2025. Simultaneously, major financial institutions are integrating blockchain technologies and regulatory frameworks are becoming more defined.

This convergence of factors is ushering in a new era for digital finance, characterized by increased institutional participation, innovative stablecoin applications and strategic moves by unexpected players.​

Regulatory Clarity and Institutional Integration

The crypto industry in 2025 finds itself at a critical juncture, shaped less by speculative booms and more by its confrontation with regulation.

As Dan Boyle, partner at Boies Schiller Flexner, told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster this week, “crypto is not getting a get-out-of-jail-free card”— a nod to the end of the industry’s regulatory gray area and the beginning of its era of accountability.

“There’s some strategic value to being a world leader in digital assets … If my competitor is issuing a stablecoin or tokenizing assets, am I missing out if I don’t?” Boyle added.

In a sign of the changing times, Paul S. Atkins was sworn into office as the 34th chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday (April 21) after being confirmed by the Senate earlier this month. Atkins, who has been personally involved with digital assets, is viewed favorably by industry advocates.

This shift is pushing institutional players out of the shadows, as evidenced by news this week. Major global banks, like ING, are in fact beginning to partner on stablecoin projects, motivated both by the fear of being left behind and the opportunity to define new standards. These are robust, multi-bank consortia aiming for real-world use cases — cross-border payments, corporate treasuries and eventually programmable money at scale.

Meanwhile, settlement infrastructure is catching up. The Lynq network — developed by Arca Labs, Tassat Group, and tZERO — promises real-time, yield-bearing settlements, a marked upgrade from legacy systems that still settle on T+2 timelines. This settlement innovation, which also includes participation from U.S. Bank, is critical for both risk management and unlocking new forms of financial products.

But regulation is not just a hurdle; it’s also an on-ramp for credibility. By building within clearer rules, crypto firms are opening doors to mainstream adoption. In this way, the “compliance crunch” is less a death knell and more a growth spurt — setting the stage for new business models and products that would have been unimaginable in the industry’s early days.

Putting an exclamation point on today’s landscape, a Cantor Fitzgerald affiliate business is teaming up with SoftBank and Tether to create a multi-billion-dollar corporate treasury vehicle with the goal of accumulating bitcoin.

They aren’t alone. Upexi, a consumer products firm, is raising $100 million to accumulate Solana, echoing the “corporate treasury as crypto hedge” playbook pioneered by MicroStrategy. This signals not just speculative belief, but operational integration: companies see blockchains not only as investment vehicles but as potential infrastructure for their own business models.

Stablecoins: The Battle for Everyday Utility

Stablecoins — digital tokens pegged to fiat currency — were supposed to be crypto’s killer app. In practice, their journey has been more complex.

On one hand, there’s an acceleration in the development of stablecoin infrastructure. Circle’s launch of a stablecoin orchestration layer aims to make stablecoins “invisible” in the best sense: moving money across borders, across blockchains and into the hands of consumers without them needing to understand the underlying tech. Major financial institutions are taking notice, not just with experimental projects but with real investment and product launches.

There are efforts to merge cash and crypto worlds. The partnership between CompoSecure and MoneyGram exemplifies this. By enabling cash-to-crypto conversions at thousands of global MoneyGram locations, stablecoins are made accessible to the unbanked and underbanked, potentially reshaping remittance and financial inclusion.

But there’s a disconnect: if stablecoins are so promising, why aren’t they ubiquitous at the cash register or online checkout?

As PYMNTS explored, merchant adoption is lagging. The reasons are myriad: regulatory uncertainty, concerns about fraud and reversibility, technical integration hurdles and the simple inertia of established payment methods. There’s also a user experience gap — most people are not clamoring for change, especially if it’s more complicated than swiping a card.

Additionally, tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) is gaining steam. With Visa, Mastercard and JPMorgan testing tokenized forms of cash, treasuries and even real estate, we’re beginning to see the outlines of a future where everything of value can be transacted in programmable, composable digital units.

Still, widespread adoption will hinge on regulatory harmonization — especially for cross-border use cases — and the resolution of critical technical bottlenecks. The race is on: can stablecoin projects solve for “spendability” before their window of opportunity closes?

What’s clear is that the market is bifurcating. “Crypto as casino” remains, but is being joined by “crypto as capital market.” The result: a more mature, complex and — paradoxically — less predictable ecosystem.

Taken together, these three trends — regulatory maturation, the real-world quest for stablecoin utility and the institutionalization of digital assets — mark a turning point. The Wild West days of crypto are fading, replaced by a convergence with mainstream finance.

The stakes are enormous. Success could mean a financial system that is faster, fairer and more inclusive, leveraging the strengths of both centralized and decentralized models. Failure — or stagnation — could see the space captured by legacy interests or fragmented by regulatory balkanization.

In the end, the future of crypto will be shaped not just by code, but by collaboration — between innovators, regulators, financial giants and the everyday users whose adoption will determine which experiments take root and which fade into history.