Tech Firms Bringing Stablecoin Payments to Masses: Bitwise

Tech companies with big distributed gig worker bases will help expand stablecoins into a $4 trillion business. Along the way, they will help bring millions of investors into the crypto economy.

That’s according to Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of crypto asset manager Bitwise, who pointed to a pair of pilot programs by DoorDash and Meta to pay gig workers and content creators in stablecoins.

“On a relative basis, these are not a big deal,” Hougan said in a blog post. “Both are pilot projects and the dollar amounts are small. But they’ve answered a question I’ve had about stablecoins for a long time. They’ve also increased my confidence that stablecoins will scale to trillions in assets and hundreds of millions of users. And perhaps most importantly, they’ve given me a new window into what the real killer app of stablecoins is.”

That killer app, Hougan argues, is simplicity.

Noting that with stablecoins one can send money around the world instantly and for a penny, as opposed to several days and $30 for a bank wire transfer, Hougan argues that the main reason DoorDash and Meta are experimenting with stablecoin payments is that “stablecoins make global payments simple—one wallet address, no banking infrastructure, no currency conversions. For a global business managing millions of micropayments, that type of simplicity is worth a lot.”

On April 30, Meta rolled out stablecoin payments for creators in the Philippines and Colombia, while on April 21, Doordash revealed that it was building a stablecoin-powered payment infrastructure for its “dasher” delivery people.

If all global tech companies follow Doordash and Meta down this path — and Hougan says he suspects they will — they’ll bring millions of users into the crypto economy, giving them digital wallets and the comfort in using them that plays a big role in making people comfortable investing in bitcoin or decentralized finance (DeFi).

“Getting stablecoins into the hands of tens or hundreds of millions of people will cement crypto as a permanent part of the world’s financial infrastructure and dramatically expand the audience for crypto investing,” Hougan said.