💳 The Infrastructure Play: How WalletConnect is Scaling to $6B Weekly in Stablecoin Volume

📊 The State of Stablecoin Adoption: More Than Just Trading

Six months into 2025, the divide between traditional finance and crypto-native infrastructure is narrowing at an accelerating pace. According to Jess Hoggrave, CEO of WalletConnect, the last half-year has marked a turning point: "This has been the six months that we're closer than ever of the traditional financial world and the kind of crypto stablecoin world really becoming one."

The evidence is mounting. Mastercard's acquisition of BBNK signals major payment network involvement, while stablecoin-focused companies have seen valuations surge. But perhaps most importantly, financial institutions are moving beyond press releases and pilot programs — they're integrating stablecoins into their core product stacks.

WalletConnect itself has become a bellwether for this shift. The company now processes $6 billion in stablecoin volume weekly across its network, which connects over 700 wallets to hundreds of thousands of applications.

🔄 Volume Growth Signals Real Usage

While total stablecoin supply has remained relatively flat during what some characterize as a bear market, the story beneath the surface is more nuanced. Transaction velocity has increased significantly — the same pool of stablecoins is turning over more frequently, suggesting genuine economic activity rather than speculative positioning.

Hoggrave notes a critical shift in usage patterns: "There's less kind of just like buy, hold, sell activity than we've seen before." While DeFi and trading still dominate overall volume, payments use cases are growing rapidly from a small base — a pattern that mirrors early adoption curves in other payment technologies.

The emerging use cases span:

• E-commerce transactions
• Cross-border remittances
• B2B payments
• Corporate treasury management

"When you start to see consumer use cases, e-commerce, more money remittance, B2B payments, you start to see that this is actually something that's going to be a very fundamental instrument for the future."

🌍 Beyond the Dollar: Regional Stablecoin Proliferation

One of the most significant developments has been the emergence of non-USD denominated stablecoins, particularly in Europe where MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) regulation has created a structured framework for issuance.

Recent developments include:

• Euro-denominated stablecoins gaining traction across the EU
• Standard Chartered's Hong Kong dollar stablecoin
• Yen-based stablecoins entering the market
• Swedish kroner and Swiss franc stablecoins from regional partners

The regulatory landscape is also shifting rapidly. USDT will lose MiCA compliance as of July 1st, forcing a reshuffling of stablecoin preferences among European users and institutions. Binance has already faced licensing challenges in the region as regulators draw clearer lines around compliant offerings.

🏦 The CBDC Question: Competition or Coexistence?

Europe's push toward a digital euro raises questions about whether central bank digital currencies will crowd out private stablecoins. Hoggrave's view is more optimistic about competition: "Europe has always been very pro-competition and I don't think that just because we're going to have a euro-denominated CBDC that's going to crowd out private market alternatives."

The Kalis consortium — now comprised of 30 large European banks — is issuing its own euro-denominated stablecoin, suggesting the market will support multiple models. The counterparty risk profile matters: a stablecoin backed by the European Central Bank, a consortium of 30 major banks, or a smaller private entity each presents different risk-return characteristics for holders.

This divergence between the U.S. and European approaches creates a natural experiment in stablecoin design. While the U.S. appears to be moving toward privatized models (potentially including the GENIUS Act if it passes), Europe is exploring public-private hybrid structures. Both approaches will generate valuable data about what works in practice.

⚙️ Infrastructure Neutrality as Competitive Moat

WalletConnect's strategy centers on credible neutrality — supporting any asset on any chain without picking favorites. The core protocol is chain and asset agnostic, allowing the company to capture volume regardless of which stablecoins or blockchains ultimately dominate.

This neutrality extends to WalletConnect Pay, the company's merchant acceptance product. Businesses can configure which assets they accept — whether that means only MiCA-compliant stablecoins in Europe or a broader range of options globally. The platform currently supports over 100 different assets and chains.

Hoggrave emphasizes the merchant-side logic: "If you have people coming into your store and they have asset Y on chain X, you want them to be able to spend it. You don't want to say 'Actually, no, we only want this stablecoin.' You want as many people through the door."

Reducing checkout friction matters. Failed credit card transactions account for 3-5% of lost customer value for online retailers — a problem stablecoins could help solve through more reliable settlement rails.

💰 The Business Model: Capturing Value in the Infrastructure Layer

WalletConnect operates with a layered monetization strategy:

• Core Network: Free, open-source connectivity layer allowing wallets and applications to communicate
• WalletConnect Pay: Merchant acceptance product charging under 1% per transaction to compete with traditional payment processing
• Compliance Tools: Products for travel rule compliance and wallet verification
• Developer Tools: Suite of offerings under the Reown brand for application builders
• Trading and Tokenization Products: Infrastructure for tokenized equities and real-world assets

Revenue from commercial products flows back to sustain the network infrastructure, creating a flywheel where improved infrastructure attracts more users, generating more revenue to reinvest. The long-term goal is a self-sustaining network with value accruing to node operators and token holders.

🎯 The Hidden Layer: Settlement vs. Coordination

A critical insight from the discussion: payments are multi-layered. Blockchain excels as a settlement layer — moving value quickly and efficiently between parties. But consumer payments also require a coordination and messaging layer for fraud detection, authorization, and compliance checks.

Major card networks and acquirers are already using stablecoins for settlement, particularly in B2B contexts. But for consumer-facing transactions, the coordination layer remains largely traditional.

This creates an awkward middle ground for stablecoin cards: they bring benefits to end users who can hold and spend crypto assets, but "they've brought very little benefits to merchants because they just looked like a regular card transaction" with similarly high fees and slow settlement.

The solution may involve keeping more of the payment stack on-chain. As more companies move treasury operations on-chain, enable payroll in stablecoins, and pay suppliers with digital assets, the need for constant fiat conversion diminishes. The endgame: "Let's keep as much on-chain as possible and cut out that off-ramp at the very end of the transaction."

📈 The Growth Thesis: Enterprise Partnerships and Economies of Scale

WalletConnect's bull case rests on several pillars:

• Network Effects: With 700+ connected wallets and minimal direct competitors at scale, WalletConnect has built a significant moat
• Traditional Finance Integration: The recent hire of a Chief Revenue Officer from Visa signals a push into enterprise sales
• Optionality: Multiple product lines (payments, tokenized assets, B2B settlement) provide resilience if any single thesis proves wrong
• Willingness to Pay: Traditional financial institutions have established budgets for secure, robust infrastructure — unlike some crypto-native players

The path from $6 billion to $60 billion in weekly volume runs through business use cases and enterprise adoption. Recent focus areas include compliance tooling and security infrastructure — particularly critical after what Hoggrave describes as "one of the worst [three-month periods] in the history of crypto for security incidents."

⚖️ Waiting on Regulatory Clarity

The fate of the GENIUS Act remains a near-term wildcard. While the broader trajectory points toward institutional adoption regardless of specific legislation, regulatory clarity would remove friction and accelerate deployment timelines. As Hoggrave notes, failure to pass clarity-focused legislation "is going to put a little bit of restraint on the space."

But the momentum appears structural rather than policy-dependent. Financial institutions are building real product integrations, not speculative side projects. The question is velocity, not direction.

🔮 The 10-Year View

Predicting the next decade of financial infrastructure evolution is inherently uncertain — "if you'd asked me 10 years ago about the 10 years that we've just seen in this space, I definitely wouldn't have gotten it right" — but the positioning is clear.

WalletConnect is betting that a significant portion of global financial transactions will eventually touch blockchain rails, whether through:

• Consumer payments with stablecoins
• B2B settlement using tokenized assets
• Securities trading on distributed ledgers
• Cross-border remittances via digital currencies

The company's infrastructure sits at the intersection of all these use cases. The strategy isn't to predict which specific application dominates, but to ensure WalletConnect remains essential regardless of how the market evolves.

That's the infrastructure play: build the pipes, stay neutral, and capture value as the ecosystem scales.

As stablecoin volumes continue their steady climb and traditional finance accelerates its blockchain integration, the companies providing core connectivity infrastructure are positioning themselves as the next generation of financial utilities. Whether measured in billions of dollars per week or hundreds of thousands of connected applications, the infrastructure layer is where abstract potential is becoming measurable reality.