The old crypto narrative was simply that Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) is an investment everyone needed to hold. Maybe someday people will use it to buy cars or real estate.
But with Bitcoin and other major crypto currencies declining all year, and alt-coins desperately trying to prove their investability, the best cryptocurrency story today lies in two things: stablecoins and payment infrastructure.
Researchers at Chainalysis have repeatedly noted that emerging markets are increasingly using stablecoins for remittances, savings preservation, cross-border payments, and business transactions rather than speculation. Singapore, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines consistently rank among the world’s highest crypto-adoption markets.
In those markets, stablecoins are being integrated into existing national payment systems. Philippines is perhaps the best case, if not the most recent example.
“A growing number of Filipinos are using stablecoins as a form of dollarized savings and that demographic is broader and more mature than commonly assumed,” said Wei Zhou, CEO of Coins.Ph, one of the oldest fintech companies in Southeast Asia and arguably the Philippines’ most important crypto payments platform. Coins.Ph launched in 2014 as a Bitcoin wallet and remittance service, long before crypto became mainstream in the Philippines.
“Stablecoins are often associated with younger, tech-savvy users. But our data shows that the majority of stablecoin holders in the Philippines are working adults in their 30s and 40s,” Zhou said. The driver is simple: opening a traditional dollar denominated bank account in the Philippines is difficult, with high minimum balance requirements and burdensome paperwork. “Stablecoins offer a more accessible, low-friction do-it-yourself dollar savings account, allowing Filipinos to protect their wealth without traditional gatekeepers.”
The Philippines is one of the top five largest remittance markets. Millions of Filipinos work abroad and send money home. That made the Philippines a natural testing ground for crypto remittances and stablecoin payments. Coins.ph was one of the earliest firms trying to bridge traditional finance and blockchain in that environment.
Coins.ph enables stablecoin payments across the Philippines through integration with the Central Bank-backed QRPh system, a QR code that allows users to pay with local pesos, Tether, USDC, or a mix of those. The launch in April marks the first direct stablecoin payment integration within the national QR code framework in the Philippines, a market that saw a record $35.63 billion in remittances last year.
These new digital systems, running on a blockchain, can be seen as direct competition for traditional players like Western Union (NYSE:WU) and even Visa (NYSE:V) and …
