Contrary to the Western view of crypto as a speculative asset, its rapid adoption in Asia is driven by utility. Dollar-pegged stablecoins provide a cheaper, faster solution for real-world needs like remittances, B2B payments, and freelancer payouts in regions with volatile currencies or inefficient banking, transforming crypto from curiosity into infrastructure.

Visa's moat is threatened less by traditional competitors and more by sovereign payment systems. Government-backed networks like India's UPI and Brazil's Pix facilitate direct bank-to-bank transfers, bypassing Visa's rails. In China, state control and super apps like Alipay have effectively blocked Visa from the market.

Chinese super apps like WeChat combine messaging, payments, and e-commerce into one interface. This provides a massive advantage for AI agents, which can seamlessly execute complex, multi-service tasks for users, a feat nearly impossible in the siloed US app ecosystem.

To facilitate the emerging agentic economy, Circle developed a system for transactions priced at a micro-level previously impossible. This allows AI agents to pay for services, data, or intelligence from other agents in real-time, high-volume scenarios.

Stablecoins uniquely combine speed (<1 second), low cost (<0.1 cent), and global reach. This positions them to dominate global payments, outperforming traditional systems like Swift (slow, costly) and credit cards (high fees), especially for B2B cross-border transactions where friction is highest.

Getting customers to order and pay via an app does more than improve their experience. For McDonald's, it fundamentally shifted resource allocation inside restaurants. Employees were freed from taking orders to perform other valuable tasks, boosting operational efficiency across dozens of new transaction channels.

Food delivery is massive in China not just because of low labor costs, but because the local restaurant culture is so affordable that eating out is comparable to the cost of cooking at home. Combined with extreme urban density, this creates a fundamentally different and larger market than in the US.

China's internet is dominated by mobile super apps that already integrate digital services with physical networks like drivers and warehouses. This existing infrastructure makes it far easier to plug in agentic AI and deliver real-world outcomes, a structural advantage over the more fragmented, desktop-oriented West.

Unlike many nations, the U.S. lacks a government-backed instant payment system due to bank lobbying that protects high credit card fees. This "regulatory capture" creates a massive opportunity for stablecoins to offer the instant, low-cost transfers that directly threaten Visa and Mastercard's high-margin business model.