Stablecoins transferred $27 trillion in 2024 - more than Visa and Mastercard combined. This is right in the article.

Vast majority is from one exchange wallet to another. Left hand to right hand.

That comparison isn't really equal.

Visa / Mastercard have such large fees that they're mainly used for commercial payments like a coffee or couch.

If most of the Stablecoin transactions were for buying a coffee, I think it'd be fair, but the vast majority of stablecoin transactions are for shuffling money around, i.e. to buy and speculate on bitcoin, or to move money to an exchange to liquidate some crypto into cash.

I think the current use of stablecoin transfers is closer to a wire transfer.

SWIFT apparently deals with about $1.25 quadrillion/year, so ~50x the claimed amount for stablecoins in the article... though there's more than just SWIFT out there too.

idk, I don't really have a point, I'm both amazed stablecoins are such a big number, but also feel like the comparison the article's making with VISA is misleading for how they're currently used.

Aren’t stablecoins also backed by a central authority that guarantees it will always exchange the coins for a fixed amount of cash? That’s what makes them stable right? At least the major ones like Tether.

And by now we have seen many cases of stablecoins predictably crashing when trust in that backing authority dissolves. Most famously UST/Luna but it’s a long list.

I suppose they are useful for covert transfers, and the actual transfer mechanism is decentralized. But they are strictly worse than normal currencies for storing wealth, since the backing authority is a private company with virtually no oversight. And the utility for transactions would vanish if you were not confident that you can exchange it back and forth with cash immediately before and after the transfer.