The Next Stop for Stablecoins: International Payments, Tokenization of US Stocks, and AI Agents

The rise of a new track for stablecoins, with the tokenization of U.S. stocks and AI Agents expected to siphon global liquidity.

Driven by accelerated legislation, active corporate participation, and rapid growth in trading volume, stablecoins are moving from the periphery of cryptocurrencies to the core of financial innovation, attracting global market attention.

According to news from the Chasing Wind Trading Desk, analysts Song Jiajie and Ren Heyi from Guosheng Securities stated in their latest research report that stablecoins, with their advantages of payment and settlement, as well as a lightweight account system, not only demonstrate disruptive potential in traditional payment fields but also become key drivers in the tokenization of U.S. stocks (RWA) and AI Agent payment scenarios.

The report indicates that the tokenization of U.S. stocks provides cryptocurrency investors with more asset allocation options and is expected to drive rapid expansion of stablecoin scale, while AI Agent payments may alleviate user operational burdens and give rise to new payment models. The integration and innovation of these two new tracks are expected to become new catalysts worth looking forward to in the second half of the year.

The Tokenization of U.S. Stocks Reignites RWA Enthusiasm

As an important branch of the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA), the tokenization of U.S. stocks is entering a critical period of accelerated implementation.

In the past, stock tokenization briefly emerged on platforms like Mirror Protocol, supporting synthetic tokenization of U.S. stock assets such as Tesla and Google, but fell silent due to regulatory issues and market volatility. Now, with the advancement of the RWA regulatory framework, interest in stock tokenization is heating up again.

In the context of a gradually clarifying regulatory environment, traditional financial institutions represented by BlackRock and cryptocurrency institutions are actively lobbying regulators to promote the relaunch of stock tokenization.

The report shows that the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is seeking approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to offer users "tokenized stock" trading services; the established exchange Kraken has taken the lead, announcing a partnership with Backed Finance to launch the "xStocks" service, covering over 50 U.S. listed stocks and ETFs, including Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia.

The report analyzes that this service not only provides cryptocurrency investors with a channel for allocating traditional financial assets but may also significantly enhance the circulation scale of stablecoins by expanding their usage scenarios.

The report predicts that the enormous scale of the U.S. stock market is sufficient to drive rapid expansion of stablecoin demand. As an on-chain "fiat currency," stablecoins play an infrastructural role in U.S. stock tokenization trading and are expected to become the next important application scenario for stablecoins.

AI Agent Opens a New Era of Intelligent Payments

The deep integration of stablecoins and AI Agents is also seen as another potential market. Especially in future AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) scenarios, AI Agents may replace humans in completing a large number of payment operations.

The report points out that the complex authorization processes of traditional financial accounts are not friendly to AI, often requiring multiple steps such as user authorization and financial institution review, while the lightweight account system of stablecoins based on blockchain is inherently suitable for AI Agent control The introduction of blockchain smart contracts further strengthens the integration of AI decision-making and payments, allowing AI Agents not only to provide analytical suggestions but also to directly operate user accounts, achieving truly intelligent payments.

Moreover, blockchain accounts are essentially smart contracts, inherently possessing AI genes, with features such as flash loans and automated market maker (AMM) protocols reflecting this characteristic.

The report mentions that, for intent-centric applications, users only need to authorize with "one click," and AI can optimize the trading path through algorithms, achieving efficient exchanges from token A to token B without manual intervention from users. This high integration of AI and blockchain accounts provides vast imaginative space for stablecoin payment scenarios, especially in automated trading and smart payment fields.

However, the report also adds that AI Agent payments are still in the early stages, and the decentralized architecture of blockchain networks leads to significant efficiency bottlenecks.

For example, the Ethereum mainnet can only process a double-digit number of transactions per second, far below the efficiency of traditional payment systems (such as Alipay's peak of 256,000 transactions per second during Double 11). Technical scalability and network congestion issues urgently need to be addressed; otherwise, it will be difficult to meet large-scale user demands.

Payment scenario competition is becoming increasingly fierce, and stablecoins have huge potential

The application potential of stablecoins in the international payment field is also significant, with their peer-to-peer and payment-as-settlement characteristics clearly showing advantages over the high costs and low efficiency of traditional financial systems.

The report points out that in underdeveloped regions, stablecoins have even achieved "leapfrogging," allowing dollar payments to be completed by registering a blockchain account via mobile phones, solving the problem of lack of banking service coverage. In addition, payment giant Stripe acquired Bridge for $1.1 billion, launching stablecoin financial account services covering 101 countries, further bridging stablecoins and fiat payment systems.

The report also mentions that there are "non-homogeneous" characteristics among different stablecoin varieties, making market competition exceptionally fierce.

Even Coinbase's USDC has a trading volume that is only one-eighth that of USDT; the scale of the PYUSD stablecoin launched by payment giant Paypal is only about $950 million, far below market expectations.

The report adds that for stablecoins to be widely used in the payment field, it is necessary to solve the efficiency bottlenecks caused by the "impossible triangle" limitations of blockchain. Traditional payment systems like Alipay reached a peak of 256,000 transactions per second during the 2017 Double 11, while the Ethereum mainnet can only process a double-digit number of transactions per second The main viewpoints of this article come from the research report "The Next Stop for Stablecoins: International Payments, Tokenization of US Stocks, and AI Agents" published by Guosheng Securities analysts Song Jiajie and Ren Heyi on June 24