#稳定币市场扩张 Seeing the market cap of stablecoins surpass $310 billion, a 70% increase over the past year, my mind drifts back to the several major ups and downs in crypto payments over the last decade. I still remember the 2017 bull run, when many projects claimed to lead a "payment revolution" to raise funds, only to mostly vanish in smoke. Back then, we all thought stablecoins would spread like wildfire, but it took the market a full five years to truly bring this thing to life.

The current situation is indeed different. From the data, the driving forces behind this expansion are neither speculative enthusiasm nor retail FOMO, but real demand from payment applications, institutional needs, and the DeFi ecosystem. This reminds me of the early days of Bitcoin payments in 2012—slow and clumsy, but that persistent focus on peer-to-peer value transfer ultimately changed the entire landscape.

Toly predicts that by 2026, stablecoins will surpass $1 trillion in market cap. That number sounds grand, but it's not unreasonable to backtrack using growth trends. The problem is, history shows us that scale growth often brings new risks. As stablecoins evolve from trading tools into a "digital cash layer" penetrating payments, e-commerce, and inter-company settlements, variables like regulation, risk management, and issuer credibility can become critical vulnerabilities.

In this cycle, what we need to be wary of isn't the outlook for stablecoins themselves—that's already clear enough—but the old issues that are repeatedly overlooked during explosive growth: liquidity crises, transparency of issuance, and whether the system will collapse when faced with real stress tests. We've seen too many seemingly stable systems expose design flaws at critical moments.

Rather than predicting the future, it's better to examine the present: which stablecoin projects' risk control systems can withstand a hundredfold scale-up? That is the true investment logic.