Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not represent the views and opinions of the crypto.news editorial.
Today, stablecoins already move real money and power a large portion of on-chain transactions. McKinsey puts daily stablecoin transaction volumes at approximately $30 billionand if that figure is even close to reality, calling stablecoins “experimental” is absurd. Still, mass adoption is not here.
Summary
- Stablecoins are not blocked by regulation, but by liability: companies will not adopt payments when responsibility for errors, disputes and compliance is unclear.
- Interoperability, not speed, is the real scaling bottleneck: without standardized data, ERP integration, and consistent exception handling, stablecoins cannot function as real commercial payments.
- The Wyoming Governed Stablecoin shows the way forward: defined rules, auditability, and institutional accountability de-risk stablecoins and make them usable within real financial workflows.
Most companies don’t pay suppliers, manage payroll, or process refunds in stablecoins on any real scale. Even with the Wyoming precedent of launch As a state-issued stablecoin, the same question remains: what is really blocking its adoption if the pipelines already exist?
The typical response would be regulation. But I think that’s only part of it, as the biggest hurdle is accountability and plumbing. When a payment for a digital asset goes wrong, who bears the loss? Who can fix it? And who can prove to an auditor that everything was done correctly? So, let’s analyze what is still preventing stablecoins from being widely adopted and what a real way out could be.
When no one owns the liability
To be honest, the fact that stablecoins are adrift has less to do with companies not “getting” the technology. They understand the mechanism. The real obstacle is a confusing accountability model.
In traditional payments, the rules are boring but reliable: who can reverse what, who investigates disputes, who is responsible for errors, and what evidence satisfies auditors. With stablecoins, that clarity often disappears once the transaction leaves your system. And that’s where most pilots fail.
A finance team can’t rely on guesses about whether money arrives, gets stuck, or comes back as a compliance issue three weeks later. If funds go to the wrong address or a wallet is compromised, someone must own the result.
In bank transfers that property is defined. With stablecoins, there is still a lot of negotiation on a case-by-case basis between the sender, the payment provider, the wallet service, and sometimes an exchange on one side. Everyone has a role, but no one is really responsible, and that’s how risk spreads.
Regulation is supposed to solve this, but it’s not quite there yet. The market is receiving more guidance, especially in the US, where OCC letter #1188 has clarified that banks can engage in certain cryptocurrency-related activities, such as custody and “risk-free principal” transactions. That helps, but it doesn’t solve the daily operational issues.
As a result, permission does not automatically create a clean model for disputes, controls, testing and accountability. It still needs to be built into the product and detailed in contracts.
Sending is easy, settling is not
Liability is a part of the limitation. Another is equally visible: the rails still don’t connect to how companies actually manage money. In other words, interoperability is the gap between “you can send the money” and “your business can actually run on it.”
A stablecoin transfer can be quick and final. But that alone doesn’t make it a commercial payment. Finance teams need each transfer to have the correct reference, match a specific invoice, pass internal approvals and limits, and be transparent. When a stablecoin payment arrives without that structure, someone has to manually fix it and the promise of “cheap and instant” becomes extra work.
That’s where fragmentation silently kills scale. Stablecoin payments do not arrive as a single network. They present themselves as islands: different issuers, different chains, different wallets, different APIs, and different compliance expectations. Even the International Monetary Fund flags Payment system fragmentation is a real risk when interoperability is lacking, and the back office feels it first.
All in all, until payments carry standard end-to-end data, connect to ERP and accounting without custom work, and handle exceptions the same way every time, stablecoins won’t scale. But is there anything that can solve the liability and plumbing problems in a way that companies can actually use?
Wyoming’s plan for governed stablecoins
In my opinion, liability and plumbing can be solved the moment a payment system has two things: a set of rules and a standard way to connect to existing financial workflows. That’s where the Wyoming precedent matters. A state-issued stable token provides the market with a governed framework that a company can evaluate, reference in contracts, and defend against auditors.
Here’s what that framework offers businesses in more detail:
- Easier approval by finance and compliance. Adoption stops relying on a few “crypto-friendly” teams and starts working through normal risk committees, procurement rules, and audit checklists.
- Cleaner integration. When “the rules of money” are defined at the institutional level, repeatable workflows can be created that work across systems and markets, rather than reinventing settings for each provider and jurisdiction.
- More realistic partnerships between banks and PSP. The model aligns more closely with fiduciary expectations, such as stricter oversight, more transparent reserve rules, and accountability that can be built into contracts.
Given the context, stablecoins cannot scale smoothly based on speed and convenience alone. In my view, accountability should be unambiguous, while payments should be tailored to the tools that companies already use. The Wyoming case is not a panacea. However, he stresses that stablecoins must be treated as governed and auditable money, so that real-world adoption no longer seems distant.
