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

Written by: Li Xiaoyin, Wall Street Insights

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

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

According to news from the Chasing Wind Trading Platform, Guosheng Securities analysts Song Jiajie and Ren Heyi stated in their latest research report that stablecoins, with their advantages of payment settlement and lightweight account systems, not only demonstrate disruptive potential in the traditional payment field but also become a key driving force in the tokenization of US 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, while also expected to drive the rapid expansion of stablecoin scales. Meanwhile, AI Agent payments may alleviate the operational burden on users, giving rise to a new payment model. It is anticipated that the innovative integration of these two new tracks will become a new catalyst worthy of expectation in the second half of the year.

The tokenization of US stocks reignites the RWA craze.

As an important branch of the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA), the tokenization of US 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 US stock assets such as Tesla and Google, but fell silent due to regulation and market volatility. Now, with the advancement of the RWA regulatory framework, interest in stock tokenization is rekindling.

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

The report analysis states 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 large scale of the US stock market is sufficient to drive a rapid expansion in the demand for stablecoins. As an on-chain “fiat currency”, stablecoins play a role as an infrastructure tool in the tokenized trading of US stocks, and are expected to become the next important application scenario for stablecoins.

AI Agent Opens a New Era of Smart Payments

The deep integration of stablecoins and AI Agents is also seen as another major 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 manipulation.

The introduction of blockchain smart contracts further strengthens the integration of AI decision-making and payment, enabling AI Agents to not only provide analytical recommendations but also directly operate user accounts, achieving truly intelligent payments.

Moreover, blockchain accounts are essentially smart contracts, inherently possessing AI genes, which is reflected in features such as flash loans, automated market makers (AMM) protocols, etc.

The report mentions that, taking the ( Intent-centric ) application as an example, users only need to “one-click” authorize, and AI can optimize the trading path through algorithms to achieve efficient exchange from Token A to Token B without manual intervention from users. This high integration of AI and blockchain accounts provides a broad imaginative space for stablecoin payment scenarios, especially in the fields of automated trading and smart payments.

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 double-digit transactions per second, which is far lower than the efficiency of traditional payment systems (such as Alipay’s peak of 256,000 transactions per second during Double 11). The issues of technical scalability and network congestion need to be urgently addressed, or it will be difficult to meet the demands of large-scale users.

The competition in payment scenarios is becoming increasingly fierce, and the potential of stablecoins is enormous.

The application potential of stablecoins in the field of international payments is also significant, with their peer-to-peer and payment-on-settlement characteristics providing a clear advantage over the high costs and low efficiency of traditional financial systems.

The report points out that in underdeveloped areas, stablecoins have even achieved a “leapfrogging” effect, allowing dollar payments to be made through blockchain accounts registered via mobile phones, thus solving the problem of lack of bank service coverage. In addition, payment giant Stripe acquired Bridge for $1.1 billion, launching a stablecoin financial account service covering 101 countries, further bridging the gap between stablecoins and fiat payment systems.

The report also mentions that there are “non-homogeneous” characteristics among different types of stablecoins, making market competition extremely fierce.

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

The report added that for stablecoins to be widely used in the payment sector, it is necessary to address the efficiency bottlenecks caused by the “impossible triangle” limitations of blockchain. Traditional payment systems like Alipay reached a peak payment volume of 256,000 transactions per second during the “Double 11” period in 2017, while the Ethereum mainnet can only handle a double-digit transaction volume per second.

The main points 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.