Are Corporate Blockchains A Threat to Crypto?
If you can do it yourself, why pay someone else to do it?
In recent weeks, big payment firms Stripe, Circle, and Tether have deployed or plan to deploy their own blockchain networks. Tether teamed with Bitfinex to create the Plasma chain. Stripe then announced Tempo, its layer one blockchain. Circle completed the trifecta by deploying the Arc blockchain. Each of these new chains promises to offer the same benefit as the networks that have supported these stablecoins. But what happens now that these stablecoins have their chains?
Circle IPO JUNE 2025 - IMG Credit Rueters
What Could This Mean For Your Favorite Asset
Bad News! Since the passing of the Genius Stablecoin Act into law, a truckload of payments/retail companies have shown interest in stablecoins. What no one expected was that a few of these names would go so far as to build their own blockchain.
Tether's Plasma Chain was designed to generate more revenue for Tether. This spells trouble for a chain like Tron, which is a leading issuer of USDT. Could this have the same impact on other chains? Yes. On July 11th, Tether announced that it will discontinue support for 5 legacy blockchain networks on September 1st.
I asked then, What does Tether know that we don't? A lot, it seems. But another question lingers...
Why Cross-Border Payments?
Lately, stablecoin volumes have rivaled Visa. Would explain why they're pushing so hard into stablecoins themselves. The bulk of the volume is coming from emerging markets where Visa can't readily get to. However, RWA or Real World Assets like Private Credit, Stocks, and Treasuries, have accelerated Stablecoin adoption worldwide.
Tether has profited nearly $5 billion on the $100 billion in US treasuries that it holds. It makes total sense that Tether and Circle would want a larger piece of the pie. In Circle's case, this could be how they break away from the Rev-Share deal they have with Coinbase. 50% of revenue from USDC goes back to Coinbase. 100% of USDC revenue on any Coinbase platform also goes back to Coinbase. This arrangement may have helped Circle gain influence in the beginning, but now they seem ready to survive on their own.
The goal of cross-border payments for a much lower fee is what scares me the most. This is the same value proposition as XRP, XLM, SOL, and many others. If these stablecoin chains can offer a much cheaper, faster, and stable product, what is the need for those other networks?
Outside of RWAs and Defi, the rest of stablecoin volumes come from international remittances. Now, there is growing support for increased usage of Stablecoins for global remittances.
How will this change things?
With each new stablecoin blockchain being designed for cross-border payments and faster remittances, legacy blockchain networks have to come up with something new. Each of these stable-chains is intended to be fee-less or much cheaper than the competition. This setup makes existing rails on public networks less valuable.
If a major stablecoin issuer can build a blockchain, they can build a wallet, or build dApps, and produce them at scale, then many public networks are at risk. This is going to have a lasting impact on the market. Legacy blockchain networks will have to come up with something new, quickly. And please, not another stablecoin.
Welcome to the Corporate Era
Corporate blockchain networks are poised to revolutionize this market. Companies like Stripe, Circle, Visa, PayPal, Tether, BitGo, and a slew of others are trusted by the market. If they can offer basic blockchain features for a fraction of the price on a massive scale. Legacy Networks will have to adapt quickly.
Now, a strong community, a meme token, or a defi protocol isn't enough to compete. It appears that the open-source nature of crypto has allowed for centralization to take root.