Digital Asset News host explains the stablecoin payment rails thesis and the global wealth shift opportunity
A solo presentation by the Digital Asset News host analyzing a Chainalysis report on stablecoin growth, Visa's blockchain partnerships, and the broader global money landscape.
Summary
The Digital Asset News host (referred to as 'Robbie' by commenters) walks through a Chainalysis report projecting stablecoin transaction volumes reaching $719 trillion by 2035, and potentially $1.5 quadrillion with macro tailwinds — figures he treats with skepticism while still finding the directional argument compelling. His core thesis is not stablecoins themselves (USDT and USDC dominate at 94% of the market) but the blockchain rails they run on, particularly the six public chains — Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Polygon, Stellar, and Canton — that Visa has already selected alongside three private chains (Tempo, Arc, and Base). He presents an updated breakdown of global money flows, noting that gold tripled from $12 trillion to a peak of $39 trillion (currently around $33–34 trillion) in market cap since 2022, global M2 reached $109 trillion, and OTC derivatives notional value hit $846 trillion. He also flags Justin Sun's move to join a research project at a Communist Party school in China as a concern for Tron, given Tron's position as the second-largest stablecoin transaction network. The host provides additional context noting that Sun had donated heavily to political causes in the US, had significant investment in World Liberty Financial, and that organization subsequently froze his account — which the host suggests explains Sun's pivot back toward China. The episode also includes an extended discussion of Visa's dividend payments and a personal comparison of investing in Visa versus Bitcoin since 2017, used to illustrate the episode's retirement framing.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and the Chainalysis Report
Host: How to retire on stablecoins. Now, obviously, we can't retire on stablecoins — there's really not much growth going there — but it's the rails that are built on for the stables themselves. So what we're talking about today is Chainalysis. There was a great report that they put out, pretty in-depth. We're going to kind of peruse over it. It's pretty great. I'm going to link it in the description. It's them talking about the $100 trillion wealth shift, stablecoin utility, and the future of payments.
On this channel, you guys know what my thesis actually is. It's not so much stablecoins — USDT and USDC, which is roughly 94% of the entire stablecoin market. It is the rails that they are built on. And we've already talked about the nine that Visa has already chosen. I'll remind you in a little bit, but I just want to go over this report real quick.
Now, unfortunately, because this fits my narrative, I'm very bullish on it. But you have to take it with a grain of salt, because this is where I believe things are going. We have to let the data really parse out where we think things are going and when they actually will go.
So the TLDR — too long, didn't read — is that the adjusted stablecoin volume is projected, and I don't believe this number, but it's projected to reach $719 trillion — and that's a trillion with a T, and I know that sounds ridiculous, just wait — by 2035 through organic growth alone. Factor in macro catalysts and that figure could approach, and again here we go with the numbers, $1.5 quadrillion dollars. Now, quadrillion is kind of a big number, let's just be honest. But with the amount that is going on with the money printing, with the national value of derivatives, and everything that's going on with the back and forth — okay, maybe I can see somewhere, and we'll go over that in a bit.
Between 2028 and 2048, an estimated $100 trillion in wealth will likely move from boomers — nothing wrong with them — to millennials and Gen Z, which are generations that are far more likely to use crypto as a default financial tool. On top of that, this is also the generation that is far more likely to use artificial intelligence. Hence why I think an AI position in the portfolio is nothing to be ashamed of. That's actually one of the things that maybe I'll pivot to, but I digress — going a little too far off topic.
Stablecoin payment volumes are on pace to match Visa and Mastercard's off-chain transaction volume somewhere between 2031 and 2039. So if you're asking yourself, "Am I early?" — you're super early. What we're talking about here is a very long play.
Breaking Down the Transaction Volume Numbers
Host: The report goes over some pretty great details. I just want to go over these three charts real quick. First of all, projected adjusted stablecoin transaction volume from 2023 to 2035 — and we just see that we're going to go over $100 trillion. This is volume of transactions. This isn't the amount of money just going one way. This is the transaction volume for everything out there.
Now, it does state that in 2025, there's $28 trillion in adjusted stablecoin volume. That in and of itself seems to be a little off. When I took a look at Visa's website — and we've always referenced this, visalaunchanalytics.com, you can take a look for yourself — when it says the 2025 transaction volume, $28 trillion in adjusted stablecoin volume, it's actually $13.1 trillion adjusted transaction volume in the last 12 months. So I'm not sure exactly where they got that particular number. Again, you have to take this with a grain of salt, because even though you want it to be true, it doesn't mean that it actually is. There is momentum in where things are going, but I can't take this as gospel and say it's going to be $1.5 quadrillion. I just can't.
So, $13.1 trillion. And what does "adjusted transaction volume" actually mean? If we look at the difference between adjusted and non-adjusted: unadjusted means this includes internal transactions or internal smart contract transactions that are excluded with the unidirectional volume filter, centralized exchange rebalancing, wallets sending value to other wallets — essentially just moving things between wallets, not really doing any kind of real transaction, just pushing the numbers up. It also includes bot volume, or transaction counts generated from labeled bots and others at unlabeled addresses. So when we take a look at this, you must adjust for the bots, the swapping, and the intra-wallet transfers that really don't mean anything. When we get down to that adjusted number, that's what I'm looking at as the more reliable figure.
Visa's Nine Blockchain Choices
Host: And then one more thing on Visa real quick — as a reminder, because as we're talking about stablecoins, people ask, "Who cares?" But remember that there are nine chains that Visa has already chosen for the rails. Roughly around 66% are open decentralized platforms and the other 33% are closed and private. Those 33% are Tempo, Arc, and Base. This was put out on April 29th, not more than roughly a week ago or so.
They talked about how Tempo, Arc — Arc is from USDC — and Base, which is of course from Coinbase, are the three that are private. The other ones are Canton, Polygon, and then some little-known different crypto projects called Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar. So out of these nine, six of the nine are public.
Why would they choose public over private? Because private seems pretty sweet, right? You don't have to give up the transactions. They are private. You don't have to lay those out so people can see them. You can keep them behind a shield. You can make it super fast. The fees can be super low. So why the heck would they go into the crypto markets and into the open decentralized platforms? It doesn't make any sense — until it does.
Because if you think about this, Arc, Base, and Tempo only have a limited amount of liquidity. If you want all the liquidity globally, you need to go out to the public sector and go grab it. Because of that, private and public will work together, I believe, for stablecoin transactions. And we will continue to see this. People who say it's only going to be private don't understand that there is so much money sloshing around that you have to do it this way.
Visa's Stock and the Long-Term Vision
Host: Before I talk about the money sloshing around, this comes down to the retirement part of the title and thumbnail. This is the stock price for Visa. Over the last year it's been struggling. Here's five days. Here's one month — oh, that's not bad over one month. Six months — okay, he got me on that one. And then one year. But if we look at the five-year, that's looking pretty good. And we look at max — still looking pretty good.
Why do I talk about this? It's because I think people need to have a little bit more vision about what Visa is trying to do. They're trying to sidestep a bunch of banks and partner up with a lot of these crypto digital assets — not sidestep everybody, but you get what I mean — and they're trying to make a whole new payment rail.
My brother, who I'm always trying to talk to about Bitcoin, bought Visa back around 2009 or 2010 at $13, $14, $15 bucks. He is a big believer in Visa. And I was like, "You don't understand — with all these new layer ones and even layer twos coming out, and as far as stablecoins go, Visa is going to get taken over." But now I see it. It's going to be Visa working with these chains to make all the new rails for the new millennia coming forward, and I think that's a pretty good play. So hats off to my brother for investing into something so long ago at around $20 and now holding at $300 and having him retire in his early 50s. And that's what it's all about.
All the World's Money — Updated for 2026
Host: So, speaking of all that money sloshing around — I've shown this many a time on the channel. It's a visualization called "All the World's Money and Markets" from 2022. It's good for 2022, but it's 2026 now. So this is all cute and adorable, but it doesn't do much for us. What I did was take those numbers from 2022 and do all the research for end of 2025 and 2026. Here's how much money is sloshing around and the type of payments you can see — and why $100 trillion is maybe a lowball number.
Global M2, the M2 money supply globally in 2022, was around $85 trillion. You know how much money we've got sloshing around now? $109 trillion. You can verify that over at Bitcoin Magazine Pro — you can just see right there the global M2 money supply at $109 trillion. So when I am talking about buying Bitcoin, it's not because I just like it and it's some fun thing. It's because all governments are going to debase the currency out of existence. And that's why you need hard assets. Me personally, I like gold, I like silver as well, I like Bitcoin, and I especially like land and real estate, which is the majority of my portfolio.
Global real estate didn't go up too much — 2022 was $326 trillion. Global real estate went to almost $400 trillion. So yeah, roughly a $70–75 trillion increase in four years. And I love those assets because money keeps printing. That's why you own these assets.
Global debt went from $300 trillion to $338 trillion. Not bad, especially here in America. Global personal wealth didn't really go up too much — 2022 was $463 trillion, and the 2026 estimate is $471 trillion. So not as much personal wealth growth as you might expect, and you can see it getting eroded. Of course, why is that? People hold on to dollars and francs and yuan and euros and things like that.
Global stock markets were at $154 trillion as of roughly last month, versus $104 trillion in 2022. So that's a good $50 trillion in four years — not too bad, and that's a lot of money sloshing around.
Top 50 bank assets — not a big deal. $100 trillion in 2022, $101 trillion in 2026.
Now, this is the big one that affects us. Gold tripled. Let me say that again — the valuation of gold tripled from $12 trillion to $34 trillion. And during that short span of four years, you can just see how far ahead gold was relative to Bitcoin, and how much gold blew up. Nothing wrong with that. It is what it is. It was a $39 trillion market cap at its peak and now it's around $33 trillion. So congratulations to all the gold holders. I have it in my iTrust Roth IRA. I never thought it would be my number two holding, but here we are. That's why I like diversification. It lost about $6 trillion, but what's a couple trillion among friends, right?
And then of course, here is Bitcoin down here. Taking a look at this, we can see that gold has done really well and wants a lot of money.
Then crypto — I found this interesting too. Crypto is $2.77 trillion today. Correct me in the comments section. But in 2022, it was only $809 billion. And actually, if we take a look at the high of the last cycle, which was November 2021, the market cap of all of crypto was $2.784 trillion. You know what it is today? Almost roughly the same — we're just off by about $10 billion at $2.774 trillion. So we've been pretty stagnant along the way, but there's still a lot of money sloshing around. I think that's why we're in the right place at the right time.
And then lastly, the over-the-counter notional value of derivatives went from $600 trillion to $846 trillion, but the actual value of that only roughly doubled from $12 trillion to $21 trillion. The notional value of derivatives is the total face value of underlying assets in a privately negotiated OTC derivative contract — swaps and things like that. The gamblers use it to calculate payment obligations rather than representing the actual amount of risk. As of June 2025, outstanding OTC derivatives reached $846 trillion, with $155 trillion in foreign exchange risk, illustrating high leverage. So again, when we talk about stablecoins and money movements, this I believe is the big play.
The Generational Shift and Timeline to Visa Scale
Host: The last two points and then we'll get out of here. As we move away from an older generation to a younger one, the crypto-native population becomes the majority in 2028. Hey, guess what else happens in 2028? There's a thing called a Bitcoin halving. Maybe it's a good time to dollar-cost average right now.
And then lastly, projected years until crypto merchant transactions reach Visa scale: bull case, 2031 — you've got time. Base case, 2033. Or maybe it takes until 2039 in the extended scenario. But it eventually does happen. And that, my friends, is it for that piece.
Justin Sun and Tron's China Connection
Host: Oh, there was one more thing I wanted to talk about, because I'm always talking about the best of Binance and Ethereum. I should be putting Polygon into that list actually, because that's going to be the rails for stables. But there is one thing going on which I thought was interesting.
Justin Sun looks like he's cozying up to China. Well, that's where he's from. This was sent to me and I thought it was interesting: Justin Sun joins a research project at a Communist Party school. Sun is transferring from business school, as stated on his WeChat and Weibo accounts. A statement some took to imply he's thinking of winding down. He will become a deputy leader in a research project on blockchain-based social governance, according to a joint press release.
And again, you know why I talk about Tron so much — if we take a look at the transaction volume, they are number two, right behind Ethereum, at $3.2 trillion per month. That is nothing to sneeze at. And that's why I'm concerned. I'm like, "Hey Justin, don't leave us hanging."
The research team that he's been placed with includes members from the People's Bank of China, the Central Cyberspace Administration — China's internet watchdog — as well as scholars from CIIC, the China Information Association, Tsinghua University, and Peking University.
So maybe, as great as Justin is as a marketer, maybe this is a great marketing ploy. And before people say, "Well, he's going to step down, he's going to leave us high and dry" — he just did put this out. He says: "I'm thrilled to announce we are collaborating with the Chinese Academy of Governance, a prestigious research institution in China. We will continue to support more. Currently, I have no plans to retire." So let's see how that works out in the long run.
Q&A
Host: Now let's get into a little Q&A and answer all your questions.
Rusty's always got something good to say. Jito announces JTX directing 80% of platform fees to JTO value accrual. That's pretty nice. I'm not too familiar with it, but is that on the Solana blockchain? I believe it is. Solana is looking good. Again, I'm not saying it's the end all be all, but it is number three as far as transactional volume for all stablecoins. Just putting it out there.
Breaking — Rusty, you're just going to take my job. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced that it has raised $2.2 billion for its fifth crypto-focused fund. Those guys have a keen insight into things. I think it'll work out. Marc Andreessen is a pretty smart guy — I believe he's one of the original browser inventors and an angel fund investor.
Ed says, "Robbie, you'd have me if the title was 'Retire on a cruise ship using stables.'" Has a better ring to it.
And there's one more thing I wanted to talk about. On this channel, it's not just about tribalism and getting into this or that, and thinking there's only one crypto or digital asset that's the best. I personally believe that 99% of altcoins are trash. But when we're talking about payments and rails and things like that, one thing about Visa — and this is actually a positive — is that they pay dividends every quarter. For every share, I want to say it's around 64 to 68 cents. So if you would have gotten in early buying Visa, like my brother — he's not a genius, but he did something right — he bought Visa. He's living off those dividends quite honestly, because he got in early. And that's the big thing. He just said, "Yeah, this kind of makes sense," and he went through the whole crash when it was at $23 bucks. Actually, this thing did great the whole time. Should have listened to him.
But the last time he told me about something was when I got into Bitcoin. I wonder which would have done better, Visa or Bitcoin. Let's compare those right now. Let's just say, if I put a thousand bucks into Bitcoin back in 2017 when we were talking about this — damn, I'd have a 10x already. And with Visa, that would have gone from $80 bucks to $300 bucks. Okay, good. I don't have to listen to him gloat. I love him though.
Irrational says, "Most roads lead to Solana." It might. I mean, it's gone through the test of time, that's for sure. Any project that was able to make it through 2022 and stay within the top 20 did a pretty great job. And any business or exchange that got through 2022 revealed their character and how well they're able to deal with finances. The FTXs, Celsiuses, and Voyagers just didn't work out. Even though a lot of the investments that Sam Bankman-Fried did make into little things like Claude and some other AI startups would have been worth hundreds of billions of dollars by now — go figure. It's just that he used customer funds to pay for all that stuff and you can't do that.
But if you're able to get through 2022 and you're still here, you did a pretty good job. I remember when Solana went from like nothing to like $200-something dollars, and then it crashed all the way to like $8 or $9 bucks. And it was all because Sam had just a huge stake in Solana, and people were like, "Oh, that's trash because FTX is trash and Sam is trash, so this is the only way it works." And here we are now. Solana's back to like $90 bucks and it seems to be doing pretty good and stable. Has anybody heard of it crashing lately? Just asking for a friend. No.
What should I do when my stablecoins get confiscated? The question I have to ask is why did you get them confiscated and what did you do? I don't think it's mostly a confiscation issue — you probably have more fear of them getting frozen. That's probably the bigger thing. Remember, Circle and Tether will freeze your stablecoins. So on this one, I'm not saying to put all your money into stablecoins because it's still backed by the dollar. So what are you doing? I'm talking about the rails that it's built on. That's the bigger thing.
And if you really want to think about it — remember, we talked about Visa and my brother who bought it at like $18 bucks — there's this stock called Circle, not doing too bad. Maybe this would be the time to look at that. Just saying. So anyhow, stablecoins getting confiscated — they'll freeze them. Don't forget that.
"You forgot to mention that Eric Trump is suing his buddy Justin Sun." I'm sure they'll work it out. That was my next statement, but I thought it might be a little classless. But I thought to myself, oh, and everybody who was against Eric is like, "Oh, let me hear it." It's funny enough that Justin Sun goes in — first of all, he paid a lot for the current president in donations, which is legal, it's fine. But then he got a lot of investment into World Liberty Financial, and then that organization froze his account. So he sued them and they're going through that right now. They counter-sued for a defamation lawsuit, which is in Florida. And after that, Justin Sun is like, "Hmm, I don't really like what's going on here. Let me just move myself back from the Western world and go buddy back up with China where I'm from." Nothing wrong with that. I'd be pissed off too, you know, if I donated to the president and then all of a sudden he freezes my account worth billions of dollars. Like, "Hey, I supported you and now you're freezing me out." That's not how friends operate. Just saying.
Ed says, "Since the Firedancer upgrade, Solana's been pretty solid." I had no idea that was already a thing. Wow.
Kunk says, "Don't fade Ton." And my position on this is — whatever altcoin you guys have, I don't have it, but hopefully it does well. I don't really follow a lot of altcoins anymore. So Ton, Tronk, I hope it works out for you, and who knows — it's probably going to be the best thing of all time again. What about Casper? I have no idea. BBL — if you own it, good luck to you. I hope it works out.
"I retired six months ago. Now opened a new family entertainment center in Kerrville, Texas." Your old state — Texas is the greatest state ever. That's pretty awesome. You retire from whatever you're doing, then you get to do stuff that's actually fun. A family entertainment center — yeah, that's not a bad deal. Because I'll tell you, when you retire — and some of you have already retired, you know what I mean — it's boring. You have to have different hobbies and different goals and different purposes, because without that, it's like the worst thing of all time. Me personally, I get to do this show and then I get to learn all about AI and I'm putting together all these things with OpenAI and Hermes and Claude for these four different businesses that I run. It's good times. It's great times. You've just got to find something.
Joseph says, "I was bored. Retired. Remember to stake some likes." Thank you.