Stablecoins’ Growth to Outpace Visa: Bitwise

Jimmy Aki
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The crypto market’s massive turnaround is spurring strong bullish predictions for the next 12 months. According to asset management firm and spot Bitcoin ETF applicant Bitwise, the foremost crypto asset could easily scale up to $80,000 by 2024.. 

Stablecoins Use Could Topple Visa

Discussing his outlook on how the coming year would pan out, Bitwise’s senior research analyst Ryan Rasmussen had only positive things to say about the crypto market.

Rasmussen discussed his outlook in a series of tweets where he stated that stablecoins would significantly affect how people move money in 2024.

According to the Bitwise researcher, stablecoins, also known as fiat-backed tokenized assets, are like “killer apps,” and these assets would become the norm in how people settle payments online.

Making a further bold prediction, Rasmussen said stablecoins would topple Visa, the market leader for online payments.

This prediction is not entirely out of line, given the close margin in the payment settlement space.

According to Bitwise, Visa processed over $9 trillion in payments in Q3, 2023, while stablecoins have done a combined output of $5 trillion in that space. This tells a growing preference for digitized dollars in settling online payments by most businesses.

Rasmussen also pointed out the rapid growth of the stablecoin industry (principally led by Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC assets). According to him, the asset-pegged tokens have skyrocketed from $0 in market cap to a $137 billion industry within a few short years.

Given this remarkable growth, stablecoins could become the next hub for settlements for all USD transactions on the internet.

However, Rasmussen is not the only one seeing the huge potential stablecoins have to play in the coming year.

Circle’s CEO Jeremy Allaire also outlined the unique role stablecoins have to play in a special appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

The Circle boss believes stablecoins are becoming increasingly popular due to their “huge appetite” on the internet. Hence, they are bound to grow in the coming years.

To Allaire, stablecoins will also serve as a store of value on the internet instead of only enabling cross-border payments.

Bitcoin Ready to Break 2021 ATH

In Rasmussen’s report, Bitcoin’s potential bull run also came up for discussion. The researcher predicts that Bitcoin could reach a new all-time high (ATH) of $80,000 in 2024. Bitcoin’s current all-time high is $69,000, achieved in November 2021.

Providing the reasons for his strong bullish prediction, Rasmussen stated that the anticipation for a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) approval by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) could serve as a major catalyst for this significant jump.

A spot Bitcoin ETF has largely been refused by the SEC despite attempts two years running.

However, recent events point to the idea that the SEC could eventually give the needed approval to onboard legacy-backed financial institutions into the emerging industry.

According to Bloomberg’s ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, the SEC has had multiple meetings with asset management firms like BlackRock, Grayscale, Fidelity, and Franklin to address key issues before a subsequent approval in early 2024.

In addition, Rasmussen stated that the forthcoming Bitcoin halving event in April 2024 would serve as a strong propellant for Bitcoin’s bullish race to a new record value.

A halving event occurs every four years or at the attainment of 840,000 block height. Halving reduces the amount of BTC paid as a reward to miners for validating transactions on the network.

About Jimmy Aki PRO INVESTOR

Based in the UK, Jimmy is an economic researcher with outstanding hands-on and heads-on experience in Macroeconomic finance analysis, forecasting and planning. He has honed his skills having worked cross-continental as a finance analyst, which gives him inter-cultural experience. He currently has a strong passion for regulation and macroeconomic trends as it allows him peek under the global bonnet to see how the world works.