Moving Money on Stablecoins: How Long Can the Business Last?

Let me start by conceding the point that most critics of stablecoins refuse to concede: the business works.

A dollar stablecoin can cross a border in seconds, on a weekend, without a correspondent bank in the middle. In markets where local currencies are weak and banking is expensive, that is not a gimmick. It is a better product. Companies running stablecoin cross-border payments today, in Latin America, in Africa, in corridors that traditional finance serves badly, are making real money.

So the right question is not whether the business is real. It is how long the current version of it can last.

By "the business," I mean legitimate cross-border flows: B2B settlement, supplier payments, remittances. I do not mean moving money around anyone's capital controls; that is a different business with a much shorter life expectancy. Even the legitimate version is living on borrowed time, because the profit rests on gaps that are now closing from both ends of the payment.

1. Where the profit comes from

Stablecoins thrive where the traditional system is expensive and the local currency is unreliable.

Start with price. The World Bank's benchmark shows that sending $200 across borders costs 6.36% on average, and the bank channel is the most expensive of all.

These are retail figures, and large B2B transfers cost less. But the structure is the same at every size: wherever correspondent chains are long and FX spreads are wide, a stablecoin route can undercut the incumbent and still keep a margin.

Then add currency weakness. Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm whose figures I cite as industry data, attributes much of Sub-Saharan Africa's crypto surge to Nigeria, where a sudden devaluation of the naira in early 2025 pushed people toward digital assets. In Brazil, the central bank estimated in 2025 that about 90% of the country's crypto flows were linked to stablecoins.

The equation is simple. Profit = the cost of the old system − the cost of the stablecoin route. The first term is large. The question is what is really inside the second term.

2. First countdown: the costs nobody puts in the pitch deck

The pitch deck usually prices the stablecoin route at the cost of the on-chain transfer, which is close to zero. The real cost sits at the two ends of the chain, and in the compliance work around it.

The off-ramp. Your supplier in São Paulo or Lagos does not want USDT. They want reais or naira in a bank account. Converting the stablecoin back into local currency means a spread at a local exchange or OTC desk. Instant payout also means keeping a pool of local currency already sitting in a local bank, funded before the payment arrives.

That pool has a price. The federal funds target range currently sits at 3.75% to 4%. As an illustrative assumption, a corridor that needs $2 million parked in local pre-funding carries an opportunity cost of roughly $75,000 to $80,000 a year at that rate. A growth company, however, does not fund itself at the risk-free rate. At an assumed 20% cost of equity, the same pool costs $400,000 a year. Multiply by the number of corridors you serve.

AML. This is the cost that rises fastest, and it rises for a reason. The FATF's 2026 update found that misuse of stablecoins by illicit actors, including DPRK actors and terrorist financiers, has kept increasing, and that most identified on-chain illicit activity now involves stablecoins. The same properties that make stablecoins useful to a Lagos importer make them useful to a sanctions evader. The more profitable a corridor is, the more it attracts the money that compliance exists to stop. That means more screening, more monitoring, more people.

Local regulators are closing the door too. Brazil is the clearest example. When Brazil's central bank president put the stablecoin share of crypto flows at 90%, he also flagged the regulatory and oversight challenges, particularly around taxation and money laundering. Fourteen months later, the bank acted. Its Resolution 561, published on April 30, 2026, expressly prohibits the use of virtual assets, including stablecoins, to settle eFX operations, the country's regulated cross-border payment service, between the provider and its foreign counterparty. The rule took effect on October 1, 2026. It does not ban stablecoins in Brazil's FX market generally; it removes them from one regulated rail. But the message to operators is unmistakable: the receiving countries are watching the same flows, and they are writing their own rules.

So the first countdown has no single date. It is a margin squeeze. Every year, a larger share of the price gap gets eaten by off-ramp costs, pre-funding and compliance. An operator that earns only the spread and skips the compliance is not running a profitable business. It is borrowing against a fine that has not arrived yet.

3. Second countdown: the owner of the dollar is coming back

This is the countdown Asian operators most often misread.

A stablecoin license from Hong Kong or Singapore is a real achievement. It governs how you issue, acquire customers and operate in those jurisdictions. It does not govern the dollar. And virtually every stablecoin that matters for cross-border business is a dollar stablecoin.

Washington has now written down, in statute and in regulation, what that means.

The GENIUS Act takes effect on January 18, 2027. From that date, a U.S. digital asset service provider may not offer a foreign-issued stablecoin unless its issuer has the technical capability to comply, and will comply, with U.S. "lawful orders." The statute defines these as orders requiring an issuer to seize, freeze, burn or prevent the transfer of its stablecoins.

The second date is July 18, 2028. From then, under the Act as Treasury's proposed rule sets out, it becomes unlawful for a digital asset service provider to offer or sell a payment stablecoin to a person in the United States unless it comes from a U.S.-permitted issuer, or from a foreign issuer that meets the Act's Section 18 conditions. Those conditions are cumulative: supervision under a home regime that Treasury determines to be comparable; registration with the OCC; reserves at a U.S. financial institution sufficient to meet U.S. customers' liquidity demands, unless a reciprocal arrangement provides otherwise; and a home country that is neither under comprehensive U.S. sanctions nor designated a primary money-laundering concern.

Two facts make this harder than it sounds. First, the comparability determination is made in Washington, not by your home regulator. As of early November, Treasury has not found any foreign regime comparable, and it has not yet proposed the rules governing that process. Second, look at what the conditions require: enough reserves at a U.S. institution to cover U.S. customers, and a freeze button that answers to U.S. orders.

That is why even a dollar stablecoin issued in Asia, by an Asian institution, under an Asian license, is not outside U.S. reach the moment it wants to reach U.S. markets or U.S. persons. Peg to the dollar, and you accept the dollar's rules. The sharpest of those rules is OFAC: its sanctions list names wallet addresses directly, and an issuer that holds a freeze capability can be asked to use it.

4. So how long can the business last?

It depends on which business you are running.

The arbitrage business earns the spread between an expensive old system and a cheap new rail. It treats AML as a cost to minimize, and U.S. regulation as something that happens to other people. Its window is closing on visible dates: October 1, 2026 has already passed in Brazil; January 18, 2027 and July 18, 2028 are on the U.S. calendar. Its margins will not disappear overnight, but they will not survive the three bills arriving at once.

The infrastructure business prices all three accounts in from the start: the off-ramp and liquidity account, the AML account, and the dollar-sovereignty account. It still makes money after paying them, because it serves a corridor the old system genuinely serves badly. That business is not ending. It is just beginning, because the rules that drive out the arbitrageurs are the same rules that make the market bankable.

"Stablecoins don't remove the cost of moving money across borders. They move it, from the transfer fee to the off-ramp, the compliance team and the regulator's calendar."

A three-account checklist

Before you scale a stablecoin corridor, run these three numbers:

1.       The off-ramp account. What does it cost, end to end, to turn the stablecoin into local currency in a local bank account, including spread, pre-funding at your real cost of capital, and FX risk on idle balances? Count the accounting work too: under U.S. tax law a stablecoin is property, so every disposal is a realization event. At the peg the gain is close to zero, but gains and losses during a de-peg, lot tracking across entities, and reconciliation are a real bookkeeping burden.

2.       The AML account. What does it cost to screen, monitor and document every flow to the standard your bank, your local regulator and the FATF now expect, and what happens to your margin when that cost doubles?

3.       The dollar account. Which stablecoins do you depend on, and will each of them still be offerable to U.S. persons under the GENIUS Act timeline? If you issue your own, are your reserves and your freeze capability ready for Washington?

If the corridor still makes money after all three, you have a business. If it only makes money before them, you have a deadline.

Most operators will find out which business they are running only when one of these dates arrives. CHAINTECH's Phase 1 diligence is built to run all three accounts for your corridors before it does.

This article is for general information only and is not legal, tax or investment advice.

References

·       World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide (September 2025 update)

·       Chainalysis, 2025 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report (industry data), as reported by Mariblock

·       Banco Central do Brasil statements on stablecoin flows (2025), as reported by Cointelegraph

·       Banco Central do Brasil, Resolução BCB nº 561 (April 30, 2026); summaries: Machado Meyer, Demarest

·       FATF, Targeted Update on Implementation of the FATF Standards on Virtual Assets/VASPs (July 2026)

·       Federal Reserve, FOMC implementation note (October 28, 2026)

·       U.S. Treasury, GENIUS Act Regulations on Payment Stablecoin Issuance, Offer, and Sale, proposed rule, Federal Register (August 18, 2026)

·       GENIUS Act, Pub. L. 119-27; 12 U.S.C. § 5916 (Section 18)

·       Davis Polk, client update on Treasury's Section 3 proposed rule (November 2026)