Stablecoins Are Becoming the Settlement Layer for the Tokenized Economy

Stablecoins have grown more than tenfold since 2021, reaching around $300 billion in 2026, while tokenized real-world assets have surpassed $30 billion, excluding stablecoins.

Stablecoins provide digital money, while tokenization brings real-world assets onchain.

As blockchain technology matures, global financial institutions are adopting stablecoins to modernize legacy infrastructure.

In the article below, we take a look at what exactly stablecoins are, what is driving their rapid growth, and what their rise could mean for the future of RWAs.

Stablecoins are digital assets designed to maintain a relatively stable value, most commonly by tracking a fiat currency such as the U.S. dollar.

Once primarily used by traders to navigate crypto market volatility, stablecoins have evolved into a core piece of onchain finance.

Today, they facilitate payments, power DeFi markets, enable cross-border transfers, and provide a settlement layer for the growing world of tokenized real-world assets.

Think of them as digital representations of stable value that live on the blockchain. Unlike known crypto assets, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, which can experience high price fluctuations, stablecoins are designed to provide a more predictable unit of value onchain, closer to the value of $1.

Some of the most widely used stablecoins include:

Instead of moving funds through traditional financial infrastructure, users can transfer a stablecoin directly between wallets, applications, and blockchain-based markets.

Stablecoins are entering their next era.

Their growing adoption is being driven by three key forces: clearer regulation, increasing institutional adoption, and an expanding range of real-world use cases.

Regulatory frameworks such as the GENIUS Act in the U.S., MiCA in the EU, and Singapore’s stablecoin framework are providing greater clarity around how stablecoins can be issued, governed, and used.

At the same time, institutions are becoming more familiar with the technology, while businesses are exploring stablecoins for payments, settlement, treasury management, and cross-border transfers.

This legal clarity has helped shift stablecoins from being speculative tools to becoming trusted financial products.

However, some challenges remain. Regulatory uncertainty remains a key consideration as governments and financial regulators establish rules around issuance, reserves, consumer protection, and cross-border use.

Centralization is another concern, particularly for fiat-backed stablecoins where reserves are managed by a central issuer. This can introduce risks around transparency, governance, and the ability to freeze or restrict specific addresses. Stablecoins can also face depegging risk due to past failures across certain algorithmic and undercollateralized models.

Addressing these challenges will require clearer regulation, transparent reserve management, and stronger infrastructure for verifying the assets backing stablecoins.

This is where stablecoins and tokenization begin to overlap.

A real-world asset-backed stablecoin is a stablecoin whose value is supported by assets that exist in the traditional financial system.

Those assets can include:

These assets sit behind the token, providing the underlying value that supports its stability.

For example, a stablecoin issuer may hold short-term government securities and other reserves while issuing an equivalent amount of tokens onchain.

This creates a bridge between traditional financial assets and blockchain-based money. As tokenization expands, stablecoins are becoming increasingly important as the onchain medium for moving, settling, and transacting with these assets.

As this use expands, so does the stablecoin market, which has reached around $300B in total market cap in 2026. USDT and USDC continue to dominate, while newer stablecoins such as USDS, USDe, and USD1 are also gaining traction.

Stablecoins began as a core piece of crypto market infrastructure, but their potential use cases have expanded significantly:

Trading: Stablecoins provide a common settlement asset across digital asset markets, allowing traders to move between positions without converting back into traditional fiat currencies.

Payments: Businesses and individuals can use stablecoins to transfer value across blockchain networks, potentially reducing friction in certain payment flows.

Cross-Border Transfers: Stablecoins can move globally without relying entirely on traditional banking rails, making them particularly interesting for international transfers and emerging payment infrastructure.

Lending & Borrowing: Stablecoins are widely used across decentralized finance as a medium of exchange, lending asset, and form of collateral.

Settlement: This is perhaps the most important use case for RWAs. When a tokenized asset changes hands, there needs to be a way to transfer payment. Stablecoins can provide that onchain settlement layer.

The shift toward stablecoins is also increasingly visible across traditional financial institutions and payment networks.

For example, nine major European banks, including ING, UniCredit, CaixaBank, and Danske Bank, initially joined forces to develop a euro-denominated, MiCA-compliant stablecoin. The token would provide near-instant payments, cross-border settlement, and digital asset transactions, designed to be fully backed 1:1 by euros.

Another example is Western Union. In May 2026, the company launched USDPT, a U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and built on Solana, leveraging its high throughput and low transaction fees to optimize high-frequency, low-value cross-border remittances.

For users in developing countries without bank accounts, this is crucial. Western Union offers a viable solution for converting digital funds into local cash, improving user experience and reducing transaction costs.

It doesn’t stop there. Mastercard is also expanding in the same direction. The company completed its $1.8B acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK in August 2026, and Visa is building stablecoins into its settlement infrastructure, with its stablecoin pilot now supporting nine blockchains and reaching a $7B annualized settlement run rate in August 2026.

Taken together, these developments show that stablecoins are moving beyond crypto-native markets and into the infrastructure of payments, settlements, and global money movement.

As more stocks, bonds, Treasuries, funds, and other assets become tokenized, stablecoins can sit on the other side of the transaction.

A buyer can use stablecoins to purchase a tokenized asset, while the seller receives the payment directly onchain. Through smart contracts, the exchange of the asset and payment can also happen simultaneously, creating a more efficient delivery-versus-payment (DvP) process. This creates a powerful connection between the two markets.

Tokenization brings traditional assets onchain, while stablecoins bring programmable money onchain. They allow assets and capital to interact on the same infrastructure, opening the door to 24/7 markets, faster settlement, and more efficient movement of liquidity.

Tokenized assets can potentially be used across DeFi for lending, collateral, and liquidity, while stablecoins can move between different applications and markets.

As these pieces become increasingly connected, RWAs can become more than digital representations of traditional assets.

Stablecoins are moving beyond their original role as a crypto trading tool and becoming a broader piece of financial infrastructure. As regulation becomes clearer and adoption grows, their use is expanding across payments and tokenized assets.

The next phase could see stablecoins become increasingly programmable, allowing money to move automatically between people and applications.

The bigger picture is a gradual convergence between traditional finance and blockchain infrastructure. RWAs bring real-world value onchain. Stablecoins bring stable, programmable money. And together, they could help create financial markets that are more connected, accessible, and capable of operating around the clock.

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Anchored is the digital operating layer for global capital markets and the infrastructure foundation for Fintech 3.0. Starting with tokenized stocks, Anchored provides the compliant onchain infrastructure for real-world assets, connecting origination, issuance, distribution, settlement, and liquidity across markets and jurisdictions.

Anchored is infrastructure for distribution partners such as exchanges, neobanks, wallets, and DeFi protocols who want to offer tokenized real-world assets to their users.