Washington is hearing a steadier crypto pitch these days: forget the hype, focus on the plumbing. Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber, told the Senate Banking Committee that stablecoins and tokenization could cut costs, speed up settlement, and reduce friction in payments and asset transfers.
- Stablecoins as cheaper payment rails
- Remittances still take a painful bite
- Tokenization may trim paperwork
- Regulatory clarity is still the choke point
Carbone’s main point was modest by crypto standards, which is exactly why it deserves attention. He did not claim blockchain will fix inflation, solve housing, or pull the economy out of its own mess. As he put it, digital assets are “not an inflation- or housing-busting tool”, but they can make payments, remittances, and asset transfers cheaper and more transparent.
That is a far more credible claim than the usual crypto circus. Stablecoins do not need to be magic to matter. If they can shave costs off everyday money movement, that is already a serious upgrade over the current system, which loves fees the way a casino loves losing players.
Stablecoins are crypto tokens designed to hold a stable value, usually tied to the U.S. dollar. In plain English, they are a way to move dollar-like value over blockchain payment rails without the violent price swings that make most crypto assets useless for routine payments.
Carbone framed those rails as an alternative to the old stack, not a fantasy replacement for every bank, card network, and payment processor on earth. He said regulated stablecoins should “compete alongside cards, bank transfers, and existing payment methods rather than replace them.” That is the right framing. Financial infrastructure changes slowly, and anyone promising a total overnight wipeout of the incumbents is selling something, usually themselves.
The clearest case for stablecoins is cross-border money movement. The testimony focused on remittances, and for good reason. The United States is consistently the world’s top source of remittances, and the fees are still ugly. According to the World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide data, the global average cost of sending money abroad was 6.36% as of its August 18, 2025 update, more than double the international target of 3%.
That means a $200 transfer can still cost more than $12 in fees. For a worker sending money home, that is not a small leak. It is a chunk of rent, groceries, school supplies, or medicine disappearing into the machinery.
The World Bank also says that cutting remittance prices by 5 percentage points can save up to $16 billion annually. That is the kind of number that explains why policymakers keep hearing about stablecoins in the first place. The pitch is not that crypto will solve poverty. It is that it might stop taking such a fat cut out of ordinary transfers.
Why could stablecoins help? In theory, because blockchain rails can reduce the number of intermediaries involved in moving value across borders. Fewer correspondent banks, less manual reconciliation, and faster settlement can mean lower overhead. That does not guarantee lower prices in every case, but the mechanism is straightforward enough to deserve serious scrutiny instead of reflexive dismissal.
The business side of this story is already more interesting than the consumer side. According to industry estimates cited in Carbone’s testimony, business-to-business activity now makes up a majority of global stablecoin payment volume. The materials reference a McKinsey estimate from February 2026 that put B2B stablecoin payments at about $226 billion, or roughly 60% of global stablecoin payment volume, up 733% year over year.
That kind of growth figure should be read carefully. Big percentage jumps often come from a small base. Still, the direction is hard to ignore: companies are using stablecoins for treasury operations, supplier payments, and international settlement because speed and cost matter more than ideology. Boring use cases are usually the ones that survive contact with reality.
The merchant-payments angle is just as relevant. In the U.S., cards dominate consumer spending by number of transactions, but merchants still absorb interchange fees and processing costs every time a customer taps, swipes, or clicks. Carbone’s point was that regulated stablecoins should give merchants another option, one with quicker settlement, lower transaction fees, and less dependence on the current tollbooth system.
The testimony also leaned on broader payment data. Federal Reserve figures cited in the materials show that in 2024, credit cards accounted for 35% of consumer payments by number, debit cards for 30%, and cash for 14%. The Government Accountability Office found that selected federal entities paid $784 million in card-related fees in fiscal year 2023, equal to 1.8% of revenue, with interchange fees making up nearly 90% of those costs. Federal Reserve data cited in the testimony also puts debit network fees at $12.95 billion in 2023.
That is the unglamorous heart of the argument. Consumers like cards because they are easy. Merchants tolerate them because they have to. The payment stack is incredibly efficient for the people taking a cut and much less charming for everyone else.
Tokenization is the other half of Carbone’s pitch, and it is less flashy than it sounds. Tokenization means representing ownership rights or assets as digital tokens on a blockchain. In plain terms, it is a way to keep a more streamlined, shared record of who owns what, and what can be transferred, pledged, or settled.
Carbone argued that blockchain-based ownership records could reduce administrative costs in financial markets, supply chains, collateral management, and real estate. That is plausible. Property purchases, title transfers, settlement steps, and ownership verification can involve a ridiculous amount of paperwork and a parade of intermediaries. If even part of that process can be made cleaner, the savings could be real.
But here is where skepticism is healthy. The materials support tokenization as a promising infrastructure idea, not as a fully proven market-wide cost cutter. Some of the most ambitious claims around tokenized assets are still forecasts, not settled fact. The testimony referenced the possibility that tokenized assets could be worth trillions of dollars over the next decade, but that remains a projection, not a guarantee. Crypto has a long and colorful history of confusing “could” with “will.”
Regulation is the real bottleneck. Carbone made that clear, and he is right. Stablecoins can only become serious payment infrastructure if users, banks, merchants, and institutions know what rules apply. In the United States, that still matters because legal uncertainty has been one of the biggest brakes on broader adoption.
The broader global picture is moving too. Research notes from TRM Labs point to jurisdictional developments in global crypto regulation, with Brazil tightening oversight of crypto activity, Argentina introducing a framework for tokenized assets, and Canada maintaining a stricter regime for fiat-backed stablecoins. Translation: the rest of the world is not sitting around waiting for Washington to decide whether digital assets are useful.
That matters because the real debate is no longer whether blockchain rails can be used for payments and ownership records. They already are. The question now is which use cases prove themselves first, which ones stay stuck in pilot purgatory, and whether regulators can provide enough clarity without smothering the sector in red tape.
The strongest near-term case for stablecoins is not retail novelty. It is infrastructure: cross-border transfers, business payments, and settlement. That is less sexy than “everyone pays for coffee with crypto, ” but much more believable. And frankly, boring is often what wins when money is involved.
Key questions and takeaways
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Why are stablecoins getting congressional attention?
Because lawmakers are looking at whether blockchain-based payment rails can reduce fees, speed up settlement, and improve transparency in remittances, merchant payments, and business transfers. The policy pitch is being framed around reducing costs and enhancing accessibility, not some utopian crypto fantasy. -
What is the strongest real-world use case right now?
Cross-border and B2B payments. Those are the areas where high fees and slow settlement are easiest to spot, and where stablecoins are already showing practical demand. The central theme is cross-border payments in a fragmenting world, which is where the plumbing actually matters. -
Are stablecoins proven to cut costs at scale?
Not across every use case. The cost-reduction case is credible and supported by the structure of the system, but large-scale proof is still uneven and depends on the corridor, platform, and compliance setup. The basic logic behind a $690B Stablecoin Opportunity? Crypto CEO Tells Senate is real, but the numbers still need to survive contact with reality. -
Why do remittances matter so much?
Because the World Bank says the average global cost is 6.36%, well above the 3% target, and sending $200 abroad can still cost more than $12. Even a small fee cut can matter a lot for families sending money home. -
Does this mean crypto solves inflation or housing?
No. Carbone explicitly rejected that claim, saying digital assets are not an inflation- or housing-busting tool. -
Is tokenization already mainstream?
Not yet. It is moving from concept to policy and infrastructure planning, but broad adoption is still uneven and depends heavily on legal clarity and market structure. That is why the Senate Banking Committee Advances Crypto Market discussion matters so much. -
What is the biggest obstacle to wider adoption?
Regulatory uncertainty. Without clear rules, even useful stablecoin and tokenization systems struggle to scale beyond narrow or experimental use cases.
There is plenty of noise in crypto, but the cleaner argument here is hard to dismiss: if stablecoins and tokenization can reduce friction in payments and asset transfers, they have real economic value. No moonshot required. No meme needed. Just cheaper rails that actually work.
