The perceived epicenter of the stablecoin opportunity, where capital flows and venture capital firms convene, is often assumed to be in global financial hubs like New York, San Francisco, and London. However, the largest stablecoin markets globally are emerging in regions where many venture capitalists have never conducted a meeting.
A Global Shift in Stablecoin Activity
In 2025, global stablecoin transaction volume surged past $28 trillion, eclipsing the combined figures of Visa and Mastercard. Despite the concentration of founders and capital in the U.S. and Europe, where stablecoins are largely viewed as an institutional product, this segment is already highly competitive. Major players like BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Fidelity are actively entering the tokenized money market and enterprise settlement space, leaving limited room for venture-backed startups.
The true demand for stablecoins is manifesting elsewhere. Nigeria alone boasts over 26 million cryptocurrency users, representing more than one in eight adults, with 59% holding USDT. In Latin America, stablecoin flows constitute 7.7% of the regional GDP, according to IMF data. The critical question is no longer whether emerging markets are significant, but why so many venture capital portfolios seem to disregard this data.
Stablescape, a tracker of over 3,000 stablecoin and crypto-fintech companies worldwide, reports that 1,300 are based in the United States. In contrast, emerging markets across Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East account for only 32% of these tracked companies, despite generating the majority of real-world stablecoin volume.
Stablecoins as a Financial Lifeline
In Argentina, stablecoin purchases now represent over half of all exchange transactions, a trend fueled by triple-digit inflation and currency controls that make accessing dollars a complex bureaucratic challenge. Brazil recorded $318.8 billion in crypto inflows by mid-2025, with over 90% channeled through stablecoins. Sub-Saharan Africa experienced a 52% year-over-year growth, receiving more than $205 billion in on-chain value. Yet, the founders building the infrastructure to meet this demand remain concentrated in cities where these problems are not prevalent.
The prevailing Western narrative frames stablecoins as infrastructure for sophisticated use cases, such as programmable settlement, DeFi yields, and enterprise treasury management. In these markets, stablecoins enhance existing systems. However, in cities like Lagos, Buenos Aires, and Istanbul, the context is fundamentally different. For millions, stablecoins offer the first reliable method to hold dollar value outside of banks prone to failure, currencies susceptible to collapse, or intermediaries with the power to revoke access abruptly.
The Rise of B2B Stablecoin Payments
Business-to-business stablecoin payments across Latin America have seen a dramatic surge, growing from under $100 million per month in early 2023 to over $6 billion per month by mid-2025. This 60-fold increase over 30 months is primarily driven by cross-border commerce rather than retail speculation. Consumer-facing stablecoin products often face significant overheads, including compliance costs that scale with user numbers, precarious local banking relationships, and unit economics that struggle with small retail transfers. Yellow Card, operating in 34 countries, has pivoted entirely from its consumer business to focus on B2B. Similarly, Bitso established its strong position in the Mexico-U.S. corridor through business payment flows, not retail wallets. In both instances, proximity and founders’ deep understanding of their respective corridors proved advantageous.
A Misplaced Geographic Focus
In 2024, 30 venture capital firms secured 75% of all capital raised by U.S. funds. While these firms may grasp the macro thesis for stablecoins, their geographic focus appears to be misaligned. The pattern recognition of a Sand Hill Road fund regarding San Francisco founders offers little insight into the potential of a founder in Lagos, Buenos Aires, or Manila.
A common counterargument is the perceived lack of viable exit opportunities in emerging markets. However, the data contradicts this. OPay is reportedly seeking a $4 billion valuation ahead of a potential IPO, built on African payment infrastructure, and Modern Treasury acquired Beam, a stablecoin cross-border liquidity startup, for $40 million. The exit market is actively forming around the same corridors that Western funds have been slow to support.
Regulatory Clarity and Emerging Markets
Regulatory developments, such as the GENIUS Act and MiCA, are significant, and institutional capital naturally gravitates towards regulatory clarity. However, this framing often overlooks that U.S. regulatory clarity is primarily aimed at ensuring stablecoin safety for compliance departments. The substantial volume in Nigeria and Argentina, which outpaces the U.S. market on nearly every metric, does not require additional regulatory clarity. These markets are served by companies funded by regional networks with which Western funds have no existing relationships.
The Philippines received $39.6 billion in personal remittances in 2025, with transfer costs averaging 5% to 7%, compared to stablecoin transfer costs measured in fractions of a percent. Nigeria’s 2025 Investment and Securities Act brought virtual assets under formal oversight, with licensing regimes established across South Africa, Botswana, Mauritius, and Namibia, and regulatory sandboxes now operational across East and West Africa.
The Next Generation of Stablecoin Companies
These corridors are poised to produce the stablecoin companies of the next decade, much like Brazil produced Nubank. These companies succeed by serving customers overlooked by incumbent systems, leveraging local knowledge that external entrants have struggled to replicate. El Dorado, a Latin American stablecoin super-app, surpassed 600,000 users and 3 million transactions in 2025, achieving $2.7 million in annual recurring revenue through 12x annual growth, and became Venezuela’s most downloaded crypto app. Multicoin Capital and Coinbase Ventures invested after the market had already validated the model. This sequence—volume first, local validation second, and global capital third—is expected to repeat across major emerging market corridors over the next five years.
The stablecoin market has effectively bifurcated. One segment focuses on building enterprise infrastructure for regulated Western institutions, encompassing treasury orchestration, compliance tools, and settlement rails. The other segment is dedicated to providing dollar access for billions of individuals within unstable monetary systems, where stablecoins serve as a financial lifeline rather than merely a crypto product. While one side commands the majority of venture capital, the other already holds the bulk of the demand.
The on/off-ramp layer, where 57% of companies are locally founded in emerging markets, along with regional remittance networks and local currency issuers across MENA, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, remains significantly underfunded relative to the demand it serves. Companies like Kulipa, developing stablecoin payment infrastructure for African markets, and Mural Pay, focused on cross-border B2B payments in Latin America, represent a category that appears small by Western VC standards until the corridors they serve become impossible to ignore.
The next generation of stablecoin companies will emerge from founders in Lagos, São Paulo, and Manila. Funds that cultivate relationships in these regions today are likely to achieve the best returns in stablecoins over the coming decade. Those that wait for these companies to appear on platforms like Crunchbase will face the same premium investors have paid in every prior emerging market cycle.
The landscape is already defined, and the volume is demonstrably present. The only missing element is where venture capital is directing its attention.
