It may be “crypto winter,” but it’s also “stablecoin summer” as digital dollar adoption booms, payments giant Stripe said in its annual letter on Tuesday.
Bridge, the stablecoin orchestration platform that Stripe acquired in 2024, saw its trading volume more than quadruple in the last year, according to the letter.
The company also said it would “soon” launch the mainnet of Tempo, a payments-focused blockchain it developed with cryptocurrency company Paradigm and began testing in December.
Stripe is increasingly focused on incorporating cryptography into its payments network, viewing stablecoins as an alternative for cross-border remittances and programmable payments. Stablecoins are $300 billion class cryptocurrencies tied to fiat currencies such as the US dollar that use blockchain for faster and cheaper payments.
Due to their usefulness, stablecoins have been decoupled from the crypto market cycle, the payments company wrote. Citing a recent report from McKinsey & Artemis, it said that while Bitcoin has fallen 50% from its October peak and 6% through 2025, stablecoin payments have doubled to about $400 billion, about 60% of which was from business-to-business transactions.
“Stablecoin payments are quietly and inexorably progressing as real-world adoption continues to accelerate,” the company said in the letter.
Highlighting the growing demand for stablecoins, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp parent company META plans to launch its own stablecoin with an external partner later this year, CoinDesk reported on Tuesday.
According to Stripe, businesses processed $1.9 trillion on its platform last year, a 34% increase from 2024. The company also announced a takeover offer that values the company at $159 billion.
Read more: Stripe’s stablecoin company Bridge receives initial National Banking Trust Charter approval
