{"id":74008,"date":"2026-06-14T08:26:44","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T08:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/rob-hadick-warns-tether-and-circle-face-rising-pressure-from-new-stablecoins\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T08:26:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T08:26:44","slug":"rob-hadick-warns-tether-and-circle-face-rising-pressure-from-new-stablecoins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/rob-hadick-warns-tether-and-circle-face-rising-pressure-from-new-stablecoins\/","title":{"rendered":"Rob Hadick Warns Tether and Circle Face Rising Pressure From New Stablecoins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>(Originally posted on : Bitcoin News )<\/b><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"@container mb-[25px] rounded-sm overflow-clip py-0.5 pr-0.5 pl-2.5 bg-success-100\">\n<div class=\"flex flex-col gap-m overflow-clip rounded-[6px] !bg-success-10 p-3 @[420px]:p-m\">\n<h2 class=\"m-0 flex items-center gap-s text-[19px] !text-[#1c1c1c] md:text-[20px]\"><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"16\" height=\"10\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 10\" fill=\"none\" class=\"shrink-0 text-success-100\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><path d=\"M1 1.5h14\" stroke=\"currentColor\" stroke-width=\"2.5\" stroke-linecap=\"round\"\/><path d=\"M1 8.5h10\" stroke=\"currentColor\" stroke-width=\"2.5\" stroke-linecap=\"round\"\/><\/svg><span>Key Takeaways<\/span><\/h2>\n<ul class=\"m-0 flex list-none flex-col gap-m pl-0\">\n<li class=\"m-0 flex items-start gap-s !text-[#434248]\"><span class=\"mt-2 size-2 shrink-0 rounded-full bg-success-100\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/><span class=\"text-body\">Dragonfly\u2019s Rob Hadick says USDT and USDC won\u2019t remain a stablecoin duopoly for years.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"m-0 flex items-start gap-s !text-[#434248]\"><span class=\"mt-2 size-2 shrink-0 rounded-full bg-success-100\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/><span class=\"text-body\">Paxos, Agora, and fintechs could gain share via payments, remittances, and compliance rails.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"m-0 flex items-start gap-s !text-[#434248]\"><span class=\"mt-2 size-2 shrink-0 rounded-full bg-success-100\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/><span class=\"text-body\">Hadick says stablecoins are only about 5% developed, with major growth still ahead.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Dragonfly\u2019s Rob Hadick Says the USDT-USDC Duopoly Won\u2019t Survive the Next Wave<\/h2>\n<p>The <span>stablecoin<\/span> market may look concentrated today, but some investors believe its structure is only temporary. Rob Hadick, General Partner at <span>crypto<\/span> venture firm Dragonfly, argues that the next wave of <span>stablecoin<\/span> growth will be driven less by issuance and reserve income and more by payments, distribution, compliance, and real-world financial activity.<\/p>\n<p>In his view, the industry is still in its early stages, with new entrants ranging from banks and fintechs to crypto-native issuers positioning themselves to challenge the dominance of <span>USDT<\/span> and USDC.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s inevitable that the <span>stablecoin<\/span> space will continue to get more competitive,\u201d he said. \u201cWe will not be in a duopoly years from now.\u201d The pressure is coming from multiple directions.<\/p>\n<p>Traditional financial institutions are exploring <span>stablecoins<\/span>. Fintechs are embedding them into existing products. New issuers are designing more flexible tokens. There have also been rumors of consortium-style efforts involving major payments players such as Visa and Mastercard.<\/p>\n<p>Breaking the duopoly will not happen along a single dimension. It may not immediately show up in market capitalization. Instead, challengers may first gain ground through transaction <span>volume<\/span>, merchant adoption, regional dominance, or specific business flows.<\/p>\n<p>Hadick sees particular vulnerability on the merchant and business distribution side. If new entrants can place their <span>stablecoins<\/span> inside real payment flows, adoption and <span>volume<\/span> could grow faster than <span>market cap<\/span>.<\/p>\n<h3>Tether and Circle\u2019s Weak Spots<\/h3>\n<p> <span>USDT<\/span> and USDC each have strengths, but Hadick sees vulnerabilities across regulation, geography, yield, distribution, and product experience.<\/p>\n<p>For Tether, regulatory pressure remains a challenge in certain parts of the world. For the broader market, yield sharing has become a contested issue. Banks may resist it, but many users globally have come to expect some form of economic participation.<\/p>\n<p>Product experience is another open field. <span>Stablecoins<\/span> are still difficult for many mainstream users and businesses to access, move, reconcile, and integrate into existing workflows. That creates space for challengers that make the experience simpler, safer, and more commercially useful.<\/p>\n<p>Geography may be especially important. Hadick noted that <span>stablecoins<\/span> are already being used in major remittance corridors such as the U.S. to India and the U.S. to Mexico. However, if a challenger builds superior infrastructure in those corridors, it could begin to chip away at Tether\u2019s position in emerging markets, where <span>USDT<\/span> remains deeply entrenched.<\/p>\n<h3>The Challenger Advantage<\/h3>\n<p>The next generation of <span>stablecoins<\/span> may have advantages that incumbents cannot easily copy. According to Hadick, the biggest one is incentive alignment combined with infrastructure flexibility.<\/p>\n<p>A new issuer can design from scratch around institutional backing, full collateralization, cross-chain <span>DeFi<\/span> support, commercial customization, and regulatory positioning. That gives challengers room to target specific use cases without inheriting every constraint of the current market structure.<\/p>\n<p>Hadick pointed to companies such as Paxos and Agora as examples of players developing more flexible and composable <span>stablecoin<\/span> solutions. These products may be optimized for savings, collateral mobility, FX settlement, or other specialized financial use cases.<\/p>\n<p>The path will not be easy. <span>Liquidity<\/span> remains hard to build, and distribution is even harder. But if a new issuer finds a foothold in a specific corridor, platform, or business workflow, it can potentially expand from there.<\/p>\n<h3>Neutral Issuers Still Matter<\/h3>\n<p>As banks, fintechs, crypto-native companies, and large platforms enter the market, a key question is whether <span>stablecoins<\/span> become closed-loop products or neutral financial infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>Hadick still believes neutral non-bank and fintech-issued <span>stablecoins<\/span> can win a significant share. He reasons that competitive dynamics make it difficult for closed systems to transact with one another without a credible neutral party in the middle.<\/p>\n<p>That is why the evolution of issuers such as Circle, Tether, Paxos, and Agora matters. They are no longer simply issuing tokens. They are expanding into payments, fintech infrastructure, and global financial services.<\/p>\n<p>Governments are a different matter. Hadick views government-issued <span>stablecoins<\/span> as closer to central bank digital currencies, a separate product category with different trust, privacy, and programmability tradeoffs. In his view, <span>stablecoins<\/span> and <span>CBDCs<\/span> should not be treated as the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>The more likely future is not one <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bitcoin.com\/get-started\/what-are-stablecoins\/\" class=\"lar_link lar_link_outgoing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">stablecoin<\/a> replacing all others. It is a proliferation of purpose-built tokens. Some will be built for savings. Others will prioritize speed, compliance, settlement, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bitcoin.com\/get-started\/what-is-liquidity\/\" class=\"lar_link lar_link_outgoing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">liquidity<\/a>, or regional payment flows. Most will fail. The ones that survive will need more than a ticker and a reserve account. They will need distribution, trust, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bitcoin.com\/get-started\/what-is-liquidity\/\" class=\"lar_link lar_link_outgoing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">liquidity<\/a>, regulatory clarity, and a reason to exist.<\/p>\n<p>The USDT-USDC duopoly may remain powerful in the near term, but Hadick sees competition as inevitable. Banks, fintechs, crypto-native issuers, and neutral infrastructure providers are all moving toward the same opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>As stated in a previous article, \u201cWe\u2019re still maybe 5% of the way there,\u201d Hadick said. That may be the clearest summary of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bitcoin.com\/get-started\/what-are-stablecoins\/\" class=\"lar_link lar_link_outgoing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">stablecoin<\/a> market today.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.bitcoin.com\/rob-hadick-warns-tether-and-circle-face-rising-pressure-from-new-stablecoins\/\">Source link <\/a><br \/>\n<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Originally posted on : Bitcoin News ) Key Takeaways Dragonfly\u2019s Rob Hadick says USDT and USDC won\u2019t remain a stablecoin duopoly for years. Paxos, Agora, and fintechs could gain share via payments, remittances, and compliance rails. Hadick says stablecoins are only about 5% developed, with major growth still ahead. Dragonfly\u2019s Rob Hadick Says the USDT-USDC [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3947362377,"featured_media":74009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74008"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3947362377"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}