Stablecoins are no longer just a tool for crypto traders—they’re becoming a critical infrastructure for global finance, say top executives from Ripple and Kraken. Speaking at Consensus 2025 in Toronto, Ripple’s senior vice president of stablecoins, Jack McDonald, described the rise of stablecoins as a “meaningful innovation for global payments.”
McDonald, who joined a panel alongside Kraken’s head of consumer, Mark Greenberg, said the global use of stablecoins is evolving. “It’s an alternative way of making a U.S. dollar payment, but doing it in a frictionless, cost-effective way,” he told attendees.
Ripple has recently entered the stablecoin market with RLUSD, a fully backed and regulated U.S. dollar-pegged digital asset. McDonald said the move was driven by real-world demand. “We’ve seen the use of stablecoins in payments, and that was a main driver for us getting into the business,” he added.
Both McDonald and Greenberg criticized the inefficiencies of traditional cross-border payment systems. “It is way, way too hard to move money around the world,” Greenberg said. “Stablecoins are the answer for that, and I think what we’re seeing now is a tipping point.”
Kraken is one of the founding members of the Global Dollar Network, a consortium of crypto and traditional finance firms behind the USDG stablecoin. The network aims to build a compliant and scalable infrastructure for stablecoin adoption globally.
Looking ahead, both executives pointed to yield-bearing stablecoins as the next major development in the space. However, regulatory hurdles remain.
“If you’re holding deposits, you should be able to earn on those deposits,” Greenberg said, while highlighting that regulatory attitudes vary by region. For instance, under the EU’s MiCA regulations, USDG is prohibited from offering yield to users in the European Union.
McDonald echoed that sentiment but admitted that launching a yield-bearing stablecoin in the U.S. would involve additional legal complexities. “That’s a whole different journey,” he said, noting that Ripple would likely have to register RLUSD as a security to offer yield-based features.
Beyond retail payments, Ripple sees a broader role for stablecoins in capital markets. McDonald pointed to the company’s recent acquisition of prime brokerage Hidden Road as part of a strategy to enable stablecoin-based collateral and cross-margining solutions.
The two executives agreed that over the next five years, stablecoins could become so deeply integrated into the financial system that they become invisible to the end-user. Greenberg said, “I see stablecoins becoming so embedded in the financial system that no one talks about them anymore—just like no one talks about SWIFT or wires.”
As regulatory clarity improves and infrastructure builds out, both Ripple and Kraken believe stablecoins are on track to redefine how money moves, not just within crypto, but across the entire global economy.
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