Stablecoins are here with enthusiasm. Yield is next.

Notes from four days at Money20/20 Vegas.
Stablecoins got far more airtime at Money20/20 this year than last. Our team covered the sequence of stablecoin adoption and payment side of that story comprehensively in our Overheard at Money20/20 threads over on X.
I went to Vegas to listen as much as to talk, and get a read on where the industry is heading. On the sidelines, the people I caught up with were already looking ahead. The fintechs and banks I met have accepted that stablecoins will move their money. They now want to know how the money earns while it sits still. We've seen this before. In the 1970s, US rules capped what banks could pay on deposits, so money market funds started paying market rates on the same dollars, and the cash followed.
Here are my five convictions.
1. Agents will push domestic flows onchain
Cross-border business payments moved first because delays, costs, and uncertainty hit a business’s bottom line directly. Domestic flows are next, and AI agents will pull them forward. I expect corporate treasury, payments, and agents’ spending to be among the first domestic flows to settle in stablecoins. Tal Zackon of Fireblocks described agents that already hold their own wallets with spending limits. An agent paying for the AI models and cloud services it runs on pays in small amounts, around the clock, without a person approving each payment. Bank transfers settle in batches and stop on weekends. Stablecoins don’t.
2. Stablecoins that sit still will be expected to earn
Your bank pays you close to nothing on a checking account and lends your deposits out at a spread. Tether does the same thing with Treasuries. It backs USDT with Treasuries, so its revenue rises when Treasury yields rise, and it passes none of that to holders. Whoever holds the stablecoin gives up the interest on the dollars behind it, and the issuer keeps it. Paul Unterberg, CPO at Uphold, said institutions now want yield on that idle capital. The early adopters are already building for it, especially in the emerging markets. Manuel Godoy, CEO of Félix, said the remittance company has moved almost $10B on stablecoins from the US to Latin America for 6M users across 11 markets. The next step on its roadmap is credit and store-of-value products built on DeFi, giving users yield and cheaper loans. Companies that hold stablecoins today are asking what those balances earn. The rest of the market will ask the same question once it catches up.
3. Yield-bearing assets scale once onchain lending markets accept them
A yield-bearing asset that only sits in a wallet stays small. It grows once an onchain lending market accepts it, because holders can then borrow against it and add leverage. One DeFi curator team pointed to syrupUSDC on Solana as an example of that pattern after its Kamino integration. Demand for more yield is there. A fintech from Korea told us that local investors are looking for real-world assets for higher returns. Leverage magnifies losses as well as returns, so the source of the underlying yield matters more with every integration.
4. New collateral needs credit expertise
Every asset that comes onchain becomes collateral someone has to underwrite. In September, Visa announced its data will help card programs borrow onchain against card receivables. Robinhood is integrating tokenized equities into DeFi. I expect tokenized equities to approach 10% of traditional equity markets. Lending against a receivable or a tokenized share means accepting the collateral, custodying it, monitoring it, and liquidating it when a loan goes bad. That’s the work Maple already does for crypto collateral through our own vertically integrated vault infrastructure.
5. Banks will back stablecoins widely within five years
Banks are worried about losing deposits. Rather than watch that money leave, they will tokenize deposits and connect to stablecoins, and I expect broad bank support for stablecoins within five years. Cody Carbone of the Digital Chamber said every institution will find its own way into the onchain economy. Connecting to stablecoins takes little investment, and in emerging markets a stablecoin is often the first way people hold dollars at all. Most stablecoin volume today runs through countries whose home currency isn't stable. Once people there hold dollars, I expect the question to follow: What do they earn?
All five convictions have something in common. A stablecoin earns when someone borrows the dollars behind it, and a loan is only as good as its underwriting. This year, Money20/20 was about getting money onchain and making it move efficiently. Next year, I expect it to be about putting that money to work, and deciding who to trust with it.(Historical earnings: For 2026Q2 (period ended 2026-06-30), reported basic EPS of 0.42, diluted EPS of 0.39, net income of USD 0.103 billion, revenue from contracts with customers of USD 75.207 million, and total revenues of USD 1.395 billion. Consensus expectations: Consensus for 2026Q3 expects EPS of 0.4 and revenue of USD 0.797 billion.)