The new stack for global finance: Stablecoins edition<\/a>,\u201d the firm describes stablecoins as the base layer of a modular stack where wallets, orchestration services and credit networks all plug into programmable dollars that move on public blockchains.<\/p>\na16z says stablecoins now rival legacy payment rails<\/h2>\n
The data point a16z leans on is scale. According to its State of Crypto research, stablecoins processed roughly $9 trillion in adjusted transaction volume over the last year, an 87% year\u2011on\u2011year jump that puts them \u201cover half of Visa\u2019s volume and about five times PayPal\u2019s\u201d when measured on comparable terms. At the same time, the supply of USD\u2011denominated stablecoins has climbed beyond about $270 billion, with some estimates pushing the broader sector past $300 billion as tokenized dollars displace bank wires and card rails in remittances, B2B payments and on\u2011chain trading.<\/p>\n
In the firm\u2019s own words, stablecoins have become \u201cthe fastest, cheapest, and most global way to send a dollar in less than one second for less than one cent, almost anywhere in the world,\u201d turning them into an internet\u2011native alternative to correspondent banking. That framing echoes arguments from bankers and regulators who increasingly treat stablecoins as a macro\u2011level force, with one recent\u00a0crypto.news\u00a0report detailing how U.S. community banks warned Congress that yield\u2011bearing stablecoins could drain insured deposits by offering dollar returns outside the banking system.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Arc as the stablecoin \u201coperating system\u201d layer<\/h2>\n
Within that backdrop, a16z presents Arc as a platform that treats stablecoins as the primitive for accounts, payments, foreign exchange and credit, rather than just a token you send from one wallet to another. The firm sketches a stack where companies no longer \u201crent bank licenses and access legacy cores\u201d but instead build directly on wallets, programmable stablecoin balances and APIs that combine account management, merchant payments, FX and lending into end\u2011to\u2011end products.<\/p>\n
This \u201ceconomic OS\u201d view mirrors developments elsewhere in on\u2011chain finance, where tokenization and stablecoin infrastructure are being adopted by incumbents as well as startups. A recent\u00a0crypto.news\u00a0story detailed how post\u2011trade giant DTCC is preparing a tokenized securities platform with more than 50 traditional and crypto firms, while another\u00a0story\u00a0covered Kraken\u2019s xStocks effort to build parallel equity rails on-chain. In a broader DeFi context, an earlier\u00a0story\u00a0on generating passive income with decentralized finance highlighted stablecoins as the core funding leg for lending, liquidity provision and structured products, underscoring why a16z now treats them as the core \u201cOS\u201d for a new financial stack rather than a sidecar to speculative crypto markets.<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
a16z\u2019s Arc thesis recasts stablecoins as a $9T \u201ceconomic OS\u201d for global finance, powering accounts, payments, FX and credit instead of just serving as crypto payment rails. Summary Andreessen Horowitz…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28178,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28177\/revisions\/28178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}