Stablecoins: The Internet Protocol for Value

1. Payments: The Trillion-Dollar Inefficiency Beneath the Surface

Every digital payment today is a modern façade built on outdated plumbing.
When a business pays a supplier or a consumer taps a card, the transaction appears instant — but under the hood it moves through banks, card networks, processors, and clearing houses, each keeping its own ledger and taking a cut.

A single payment usually passes through five or more intermediaries:

the acquiring bank,
the card network (Visa, Mastercard, Amex),
the issuing bank,
the processor (like Stripe, Adyen, or PayPal), and
finally clearing institutions that reconcile balances overnight.

Each operates on batch-based systems, with settlement dependent on cut-off times, liquidity windows, and manual reconciliation. Even the most advanced fintechs only accelerate messages — not money.

The cost is staggering. On a $100 transaction, merchants lose about 3% to fees; the payment provider keeps a razor-thin 0.1–0.2% margin after network and interchange costs.
Globally, this outdated structure drains over US $2 trillion per year in friction — roughly 2% of global GDP — through fees, FX spreads, compliance overhead, and idle liquidity.

Even “instant” payment networks like Pix in Brazil or FedNow in the U.S. only move faster within national borders. The plumbing remains fundamentally the same — fragmented, opaque, and expensive. Money still hops between silos of trust, one message at a time.

Nowhere is this inefficiency more punishing than in cross-border payments.
The global B2B market exceeds US $150 trillion annually, yet it still depends on correspondent banks created decades ago. Each link adds delay, spreads, and cost — settlement often takes two to five business days and 1–3% of value.
In Latin America, these inefficiencies are amplified by inflation, volatile currencies, and fragmented regulation. The region moves over US $5 trillion per year across borders, half of it in Brazil. Once funds leave domestic rails like Pix, they fall back into the slow, multi-hop world of SWIFT.

McKinsey estimates over US $300 billion a year in friction costs from cross-border payments alone — capital trapped in motion, liquidity frozen mid-route.
For exporters, it’s delayed revenue; for importers, a working-capital squeeze; for fintechs, an engineering nightmare.

I believe cross-border payments are the stress test of global finance — the purest expression of how broken our monetary plumbing is.
If we can fix this layer, we don’t just improve payments; we redefine the infrastructure of commerce.

2. Stablecoins: The Architectural Breakthrough in Moving Value

Stablecoins are digital representations of money — backed 1:1 by fiat assets like cash or short-term U.S. Treasuries — that move directly on public blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana, or Base.
Instead of sending messages about money, stablecoins move the money itself. Each transaction settles instantly, with transparency, traceability, and finality.

A $100,000 transfer that costs $1,500 and takes three days through traditional rails can settle in under a minute for less than $10 on-chain. Settlement is peer-to-peer, programmable, and borderless, without dependence on business hours or intermediaries.

The technology introduces three foundational upgrades:

Transparency: every movement of value is verifiable on-chain, enabling real-time auditability and compliance.
Programmability: settlements can embed conditions — automatic FX, KYC checks, or escrow triggers.
Always-on liquidity: transactions clear 24/7 without reliance on correspondent networks or clearing windows.

This isn’t just speed; it’s a structural redesign of how money moves.
By collapsing intermediaries into one atomic transfer, stablecoins reduce costs below 1% and expand provider margins 2–5×, while merchants and corporates see their fees fall from 3% to under 0.5%.

Globally, stablecoins now represent US $275 billion in circulating supply and process trillions in transaction volume annually — yet they make up less than 0.3% of total global payments.
In Latin America, the shift is already underway: 70% of crypto transaction value in 2024 involved stablecoins, driven by FX hedging, remittances, and business settlements — not speculation.

Three converging forces make this adoption inevitable:

Macroeconomic demand — persistent currency volatility and dollar scarcity push companies toward stable digital dollars.
Technological maturity — blockchains like Solana and Base now settle faster and cheaper than any legacy network.
Regulatory readiness — Brazil, Singapore, and the EU are formalizing frameworks for stablecoins and virtual-asset providers.

This combination transforms stablecoins from a crypto product into institutional-grade financial infrastructure — the HTTP of money.

Beyond speed, the economics shift entirely. Traditional payment providers operate on thin spreads, earning 10–20 bps on a 3% fee. Stablecoins collapse that model.
A $100 payment on-chain incurs less than $0.01 in network costs.
Even after accounting for custody, on/off-ramp, and compliance, total cost stays under 1%. Providers can charge 0.3–0.5% and keep 1% in net margin — a 2× to 5× improvement.

This is not theoretical. Platforms like Lumx already provide the orchestration layer — compliance, liquidity, and fiat integration — that enables enterprises to capture these gains safely. They typically charge 5–50 bps per transaction, giving banks and fintechs direct access to blockchain efficiency without touching the complexity.

I believe stablecoins are not about crypto; they’re about upgrading the world’s financial infrastructure.
They won’t replace banks — they’ll replace the rails banks use to move money.

3. Lumx and the Infrastructure Opportunity

Technology only scales when it’s abstracted — and that’s exactly what Lumx is building.

Rather than issuing tokens or retail wallets, Lumx provides the API infrastructure that connects financial institutions, fintechs, and enterprises to stablecoin rails.
Its platform enables cross-border settlement, on/off-ramps between local currencies and digital dollars, and embedded compliance — all accessible through a single API.

The timing could not be better.
Brazil’s Law 14.478/22 brings digital-asset service providers under the Central Bank’s supervision, while Mexico and Colombia move in the same direction.
Institutions are ready — they just need infrastructure they can trust. Lumx is building precisely that bridge between blockchain liquidity and traditional finance.

The market opportunity is enormous.
If Lumx captures just 1% of Brazil’s US $2.5 trillion B2B cross-border flow, it would process US $25 billion annually, generating roughly US $50 million in revenue at standard infrastructure take-rates.
Using fintech multiples of 6–10×, that translates into a US $300–500 million enterprise value from one country alone.

More importantly, Lumx embodies the next phase of fintech — where the innovation isn’t in the app, but in the infrastructure.
Its product philosophy mirrors what Stripe did for card payments: make complex infrastructure programmable, invisible, and compliant.

I believe we’re entering the infrastructure phase of fintech — where stablecoins become the default settlement layer for the real economy.
In Latin America — a region defined by friction but open to innovation — this transition is already happening, block by block, API by API.

Stablecoins are not the future of speculation.
They are the future of settlement.
And companies like Lumx are quietly building the pipes that will carry the world’s value into that future.