Is there a possibility of stablecoin volumes surpassing Visa in this quarter?

Stablecoins are projected to surpass payment giant Visa in terms of total payment volume this quarter, according to research firm Sacra. However, Visa’s head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, disagrees with this assessment. Sacra co-founder Jan-Erik Asplund argued in a blog post that stablecoins have a strong advantage in cross-border money movement, with their convenience, speed, and low cost leading to a potential total payment volume of over $4 trillion. Asplund also stated that major banks are actively exploring the use of stablecoins for their payment systems. On the other hand, Sheffield believes that stablecoin data is noisy and that on-chain transactions resulting from interactions with bots and automated programs do not resemble traditional settlement. Visa’s recently launched dashboard reveals that around 90% of stablecoin transactions in the past 30 days were not made by genuine users. The dashboard, developed in collaboration with Allium Labs, employs adjusted metrics to filter out inorganic activity and artificial inflation. Despite the controversy, the total monthly stablecoin transaction volume has nearly doubled since the beginning of 2024, with Tether (USDT) and Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) dominating the market. Other payment giants such as PayPal and Stripe have also entered the stablecoin space, further expanding its reach. The current market capitalization of stablecoins stands at approximately $161 billion, with a daily trading volume of $37 billion. Visa and Tether did not provide immediate comments when contacted by Cointelegraph for further information.