Every empire has been built on money and backed by a flag. Rome had the denarius. Britain had the pound. America has the dollar. But for the first time, the flag monopoly that underpins global power is cracking. And what threatens it is not China or Europe, but code, corporations and blockchain protocols, or as angel investor and tech founder Balaji Srinivasan calls them, Network States.
Empires have always relied on bankers to finance their armies. Those who control the banking rails control the world. After the British Empire waned, the U.S.-led financial system—anchored by NATO countries—rose to dominance. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon ended the gold standard, which had enshrined the U.S. Dollar as the reserve currency for global trade. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the global dominance of the dollar was largely complete.
That authority became institutionalized through regulation: KYC/AML rules, Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards and Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) enforcement. But now, that hegemony faces pressure from new challengers. Internet-native assets like Bitcoin, China’s Belt and Road and talk of Russia or Saudi Arabia turning to the renminbi for trade have all tested the dollar’s reach. The real disruption came in 2015, when Tether and ERC-20 tokens put a digital dollar equivalent—stablecoins—on crypto rails.
By 2025, regulation began to catch up. The GENIUS and CLARITY Acts provided legal clarity, pushing PayPal, Visa and Stripe into launching stablecoin plans. DeFi apps from Aave to Hyperliquid are now building deeper bridges to traditional finance. Meanwhile, countries like China, Korea, Brazil and Singapore are experimenting with their own tokens. Ironically, Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision of digital cash looks closer to today’s stablecoins than to Bitcoin itself.
Stablecoins have become the point where the nation state and network state converge. And that convergence marks the start of a real monetary revolution.
The age of stablecoins
Stablecoins have evolved from crypto sideshow to the fastest-growing form of digital money, with daily volumes rivaling Visa. Once just a trader’s hedge, they’ve become a parallel monetary system—run not by central banks, but by private issuers and protocols. Unlike the dollar’s old chain of intermediaries, these digital dollars flow through Circle’s servers, Tether’s offshore accounts, Hyperliquid’s order books, Stripe’s Tempo chain and even PayPal’s balance sheets. And they’re not fighting on one front, but across many arenas—all vying to define the dollar’s future.
The offshore dollar. Tether ($USDT) commands nearly 58 percent of market share with more than $170 billion in circulation. Long dismissed as opaque, it has become the de facto settlement layer for much of Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. In Turkey, Argentina and Nigeria, USDT trades have shown more liquidity than the local currency. For millions, especially Gen Z, the most accessible form of the dollar isn’t a banknote at all. It’s a stablecoin on a phone.
The regulated dollar. Circle’s $USDC, the darling of policymakers, has integrated into Visa, Stripe and Coinbase. While it’s second in stablecoin market share to Tether, its $6.7 billion IPO highlights its influence, and the fight to remain the “official” stablecoin is uphill. And, each new corporate partnership, from big four pilots to bank custody integrations, keeps it embedded within the regulated financial grid.
The onchain dollar. Decentralized stablecoins like $DAI and $FRAX aim to represent crypto’s “sovereign money,” but their combined supply barely breaks 5 percent of the market. MakerDAO is shifting toward U.S. Treasury-backed real-world assets, raising the paradox: Can decentralized money remain independent if it’s backed by Washington bonds?
The exchange dollar. Binance’s failed BUSD experiment showed the risks associated with scaling too fast. Hyperliquid’s decentralized exchange facilitates a 24-hour trading volume of approximately $8 billion, with a total notional volume surpassing $2.6 trillion through its USDH token. Now Hyperliquid’s proposed USDH and OKX’s HKD-pegged experiments suggest exchanges are once again attempting to mint their own currencies. For traders, it’s efficient. For regulators, it’s a nightmare. The question: Do exchanges become the central banks?
The fintech dollar. Stripe’s new Tempo L1 reframes stablecoins as payment-native assets. Such payment gateways don’t just want to process dollars; they want to issue, settle and control their velocity across hundreds of markets, and handle thousands of transactions per second. If this ambition succeeds, the most used stablecoin might not live on Binance or Ethereum, but inside a checkout cart button.
Meanwhile, China’s digital yuan (e-CNY) has long been framed as a domestic experiment. But Beijing now signals bigger ambitions: using e-CNY and offshore RMB tokens to build a “multi-polar” financial system. Hong Kong’s new stablecoin licensing regime, effective since August, provides the legal gateway. It enables banks and fintechs to issue RMB-pegged tokens for trade settlement and remittances under clear reserve and redemption rules. The implication: the renminbi may not rival the dollar through traditional banking, but through stablecoins, especially those launched from Hong Kong, where global banks are already positioning to participate. These fragmentations present fundamental crossroads.
The question that haunts
So here’s the unsettling question: Who will own the future of money? Make no mistake, this is no longer about crypto or fintech. It is about monetary sovereignty. And right now, that sovereignty is being quietly redefined by APIs, order books and payment rails. The next empire of money may not fly a flag. Ownership of this new infrastructure is the real question:
- Banks want stablecoins regulated as deposits, preserving their chokehold on issuance.
- Big Tech and fintechs like Stripe, PayPal and Visa seek to embed stablecoins in their platforms, capturing user fees and data.
- Crypto ecosystems like Hyperliquid, Solana and Ethereum want to mint their own stablecoins to keep value locked in.
- Perhaps a new entrant will emerge that can actually unite them all? Neutral rails governed by interoperable standards, verifiable reserve transparency and multi-stakeholder oversight.
Whoever prevails won’t just issue stablecoin tokens. They’ll control the flow of value in the digital global economy.
The crossroads of risk
Fragmentation: chaos or competition?
Governments see fragmentation as a danger: if the USD splinters into PYUSD, Tempo USD, USDH and others, liquidity thins and oversight fades. Yet markets see competition. Multiple issuers force innovation in speed, transparency and accessibility. The internet thrived on openness, not monopoly—why should money be different?
Sovereignty: erosion or empowerment?
For Washington, stablecoins erode monetary power. If Tether or Circle dictates settlement, U.S. sanctions and visibility weaken. But in Argentina, Nigeria or Turkey, that erosion feels like liberation. Stablecoins allow access to dollar stability without fragile banks or failing states. What the U.S. calls loss, billions call empowerment.
Monopoly: control or rent extraction?
If Stripe’s Tempo or another fintech becomes the “Visa of stablecoins,” regulators may celebrate a U.S.-friendly monopoly. Users, however, face chokepoints and fees—the same old system, just digital. Safety for Washington can mean rent extraction at internet scale.
The missing ingredient: open rails
What’s absent is a neutral, interoperable infrastructure. Without it, stablecoins fracture into fiefdoms, each extracting rent. With it, they become like the internet: portable, liquid, unstoppable.
Open rails would mean:
- A trader in Nigeria, a startup in Turkey and a U.S. fintech transact on the same layer.
- Liquidity flows into a shared commons, not silos.
- No issuer—Circle, Stripe or Beijing—dictates access.
We don’t need another AOL of money. We need the TCP/IP of money. Whoever builds it won’t just design payment rails; they’ll define whether digital money remains open or collapses into monopolies and authoritarian gardens. The stablecoin wars are here. The outcome will decide whether the next era of money belongs to banks, Big Tech—or everyone.