The scramble for crypto infrastructure is just beginning
Stablecoins settled $33 trillion in 2025. A handful of companies moved early. But the real wave — when every major bank, payment network, and exchange tries to buy crypto infrastructure — is just beginning. First-mover advantage is still available. This is the map.
Stablecoins settled $27.6 trillion in 2024, surpassing Visa and Mastercard combined for the first time.[1] In 2025, that number rose to $33 trillion.[2] By November, stablecoins were processing $95 billion daily, exceeding Visa's estimated $85 billion.[3] This is not a speculative asset class anymore. It is a payments rail operating at global scale.
The business-to-business segment tells the sharper story. B2B stablecoin payments grew over 730% year-over-year in 2025, from under $100 million monthly to over $3 billion.[4] Stripe's Bridge unit alone quadrupled its volume, reaching roughly $400 billion total throughput.[5] The inflection point for enterprise adoption has passed.
"Stablecoins are room-temperature superconductors for financial services."
Issuer economics confirm the durability. Tether reported $10 billion in net profit for 2025, holding $141 billion in US Treasuries behind $186.5 billion of USDT in circulation.[6] Circle posted $2.7 billion in revenue and debuted on the NYSE at $31 per share, immediately surging 168% to $83.[7] PayPal's PYUSD tripled its market cap from $1.28 billion to $3.8 billion in under 90 days.[8] These are not speculative bets. These are infrastructure businesses generating institutional-grade returns.
The regulatory barrier fell in 2025. The GENIUS Act passed with bipartisan support (Senate 68-30, House 308-122) and was signed into law on July 18, 2025, establishing 1:1 reserve requirements, BSA/AML compliance, and consumer priority in insolvency.[9] In Europe, MiCA becomes fully enforceable on July 1, 2026, and firms without authorization will be shut out of the EU market.[10] On February 17, 2026, Bridge received a conditional OCC national trust bank charter, the first for a stablecoin-native company.[11]
"My goal this year is to put us on track to turn this into a new product line that has $100,000,000 of annual revenue. That's my mandate."
The question is no longer whether stablecoins will reshape payments infrastructure. Citi's base case projects a $1.9 trillion stablecoin market by 2030; their bull case reaches $4.0 trillion, calling stablecoins a potential "ChatGPT moment" for blockchain adoption.[12] The question now is who controls the infrastructure.
The data is overwhelming. And yet most financial institutions have not moved. The few that have — Stripe, Ripple, Coinbase — are already in position. The rest are about to start. What follows is the map of a market that is about to get very crowded.
The consolidation wave began in October 2024, when Stripe paid $1.1 billion for Bridge, then the largest acquisition in the company's history.[13] Bridge was a stablecoin orchestration platform whose volume had grown 10x that year and would quadruple again in 2025. In February 2026, reports emerged that Stripe was eyeing a deal to acquire some or all of PayPal, a $43 billion target that would create the most powerful stablecoin-enabled payments infrastructure in the world.[14]
Ripple spent roughly $4 billion on acquisitions in 2025 alone: Hidden Road ($1.25 billion, multi-asset prime brokerage), GTreasury ($1.0 billion, treasury software), Rail ($200 million, B2B stablecoin payments processing over 10% of the $36 billion global market), and Standard Custody.[15][16][17] DL News projects total industry M&A will surpass the previous record of $37 billion.
| Date | Buyer | Target | Price | Strategic Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2024 | Stripe | Bridge | $1.1B | Stablecoin orchestration; volume grew 10x in 2024, quadrupled again in 2025 |
| Jun 2025 | Robinhood | Bitstamp | ~$200M | International crypto exchange for global expansion |
| Aug 2025 | Coinbase | Deribit | $2.9B | Crypto derivatives; now the global leader in options volume |
| Aug 2025 | Ripple | Rail | $200M | B2B stablecoin payments processing (10%+ of global market) |
| Oct 2025 | Ripple | Hidden Road | $1.25B | Multi-asset prime brokerage; business grew 3x post-announcement |
| 2025 | Ripple | GTreasury | $1.0B | Treasury software integrated with stablecoin settlement |
| Nov 2025 | Exodus | Baanx + Monavate | $175M | Card issuance and payment processing; wallet to end-to-end payments |
| Jan 2026 | Polygon Labs | Coinme + Sequence | $250M+ | US money transmitter licenses (48 states) + smart wallet infrastructure |
| Feb 2026 | Stripe | PayPal (rumored) | TBD | $159B buyer eyeing $43B target; stablecoin payments consolidation |
The valuation range tells its own story. At the high end, Bridge sold for 75-90x revenue to Stripe. In the middle, industry observers report one major acquirer self-values at roughly 12x revenue when using its own equity for deals.[18] At the low end, traditional finance buyers have acquired crypto custody businesses for as little as 3.5x revenue. The pattern is consistent: crypto-native buyers pay the highest multiples, payment networks pay mid-range premiums, and banks pay the least.
"Bridge trading at 90 or 75x on the high end, banks going to OSL for 3.5x on the lower end."
| Company | Event | Date | Valuation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Circle | IPO (NYSE: CRCL) | Jun 2025 | $5B+ |
| Revolut | Secondary raise | Nov 2025 | $75B |
| Rain | $250M raise | Jan 2026 | $1.95B |
| RedotPay | $194M Series B | Dec 2025 | Considering $1B IPO at $4B+ |
| BitGo | IPO (NYSE) | Jan 2026 | ~$18/share; down 40% since |
Six distinct buyer categories are pursuing crypto infrastructure acquisitions simultaneously, each with different motivations, different price sensitivities, and different urgency levels. The convergence of all six categories into the same market at the same time is what makes this moment unprecedented.
Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Adyen, Checkout.com. Post-Bridge, every major payment network needs a stablecoin answer. Visa's stablecoin-linked card spend quadrupled year-over-year in Q4 2025, and its USDC settlement layer reached a $3.5 billion annualized run rate.[19] They will pay a premium for regulatory compliance and enterprise SLAs.
JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Klarna, Revolut. They bring massive distribution (90 million Chase mobile users alone), move slower, but deploy at scale. Goldman has "an enormous number of people" focused on tokenization and stablecoins.[20] Klarna launched KlarnaUSD despite its CEO being "historically skeptical of crypto."[21]
Ripple, Coinbase, Polygon, Exodus, OKX. They move fastest, pay the highest multiples, and face margin compression in their core businesses. Ripple spent $4 billion in 2025 alone. Coinbase paid $2.9 billion for Deribit. Polygon allocated $250 million for on-ramp licenses and smart wallet infrastructure.[22]
Remittance companies, cross-border fintechs, emerging market super-apps. Cross-border payment costs average 6.49% through traditional rails versus under 1% on stablecoin infrastructure. KPMG estimates savings of "up to 99%."[23] The global remittance market moves roughly $900 billion annually. Sub-Saharan Africa corridors still charge 8.37%.
Stellar, Polygon, Solana ecosystem. Blockchain foundations with large treasuries are competing aggressively for stablecoin infrastructure. They need transaction volume to justify their existence and are willing to deploy significant capital to acquire it. Some foundations have realized that without spending their treasuries on infrastructure acquisition, they risk becoming irrelevant.
Derivatives exchanges, regional banks being repurposed for crypto, and traditional financial institutions with board-level mandates to "figure out crypto" but no internal expertise. They ask good questions. They move cautiously. They represent some of the largest potential deal sizes because they acquire capability wholesale.
The novel categories here are the last two. L1 chains and mandated TradFi institutions are not tracked by any published analysis. Their emergence as active acquirers compresses an already tight market further and faster than consensus expects.
Most of these buyers are in the early stages of engagement. Payment networks have made their first moves. Banks are in exploratory conversations. L1 chains are deploying grant capital. The mandated-but-searching TradFi institutions are still figuring out what to ask for. This is not a market that has already played out. This is a market that is just starting to form.
The supply side is already shrinking, and the main wave of demand has not arrived yet. In 2024, a Corp Dev team searching for a licensed, scaled crypto infrastructure company with production-grade technology could identify perhaps 15-20 viable targets. By February 2026, at least 8-10 of those have been acquired, are pending close, or have shut down. Each deal removes a company from the board permanently. By the time most banks and TradFi institutions are ready to transact, several more targets will be off the market.
| Company | Buyer | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Bridge | Stripe | Closed 2024 |
| Bitstamp | Robinhood | Closed 2025 |
| Deribit | Coinbase | Closed 2025 |
| Hidden Road | Ripple | Closed 2025 |
| GTreasury | Ripple | Closed 2025 |
| Rail | Ripple | Closed 2025 |
| Simplex | Nuvei | Acquired |
| Wyre | — | Shut down 2023 |
| Baanx + Monavate | Exodus | Pending H1 2026 |
| Coinme | Polygon | Pending Q2 2026 |
| Sequence | Polygon | Closed Jan 2026 |
| Company | Licenses | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MoonPay | Multiple jurisdictions | Valued at $3.4B (2021); AI agent infra |
| Transak | Multiple | Independent on-ramp provider |
| Mercuryo | 300+ partnerships | Profitable; only raised $10.5M |
| Alchemy Pay | Fiat-crypto gateway | Public token (ACH) |
| Utorg | European focus | Raising a significant round |
| RedotPay | Hong Kong | Considering $1B IPO at $4B+ |
| BitGo | US, institutional custody | IPO'd Jan 2026; down 40% |
"We've hit 162 people. We've gone pretty deep and screened a lot."
The buyer mix has surprised even the bankers running the processes. In one active sell-side engagement, crypto-native companies have shown less interest than expected, while traditional financial institutions, including a major derivatives exchange, have been among the most engaged.[24] The demand side is broader than anyone predicted. The supply side is finite and shrinking.
"That know-how and that expertise of someone who's done this, who's made those mistakes, is so valuable. I wouldn't achieve it by just partnering."
Every buyer faces the same math. Six buyer categories are converging on a shrinking universe of qualified targets. Some will IPO (RedotPay is considering a $1 billion listing). Some will be acquired before the end of 2026. The scramble has started, but most of the demand is still forming. The companies that move now choose from a menu. The companies that wait until the wave fully arrives will take what's left.
The debate is over. Multiple buyers, across every category, have independently walked through the same analysis and arrived at the same conclusion: building crypto infrastructure from scratch takes 18-30 months, costs more than acquiring it, and delivers less than what is available on the market today.
"When we started out, it was actually a very strong buy. Then we discovered very quickly that the perfect acquisition target doesn't exist. So we pivoted to rent. But then we realized that expertise and know-how cannot be rented. There are very few human beings who are equally proficient at fiat and digital assets."
The bottleneck is licensing. A MiCA CASP license takes 9-18 months. An FCA crypto registration takes 6-12 months and has a notoriously high rejection rate. US money transmitter licenses require 3-9 months per state, and you need 45-50 for full coverage. Stack these sequentially, add 12-18 months for production-grade platform development, and the composite critical path reaches 18-30 months before first multi-country launch.
| License | Jurisdiction | Timeline | Key Constraint |
|---|---|---|---|
| MiCA CASP | EU (27 states) | 9-18 months | 40-80 authorized as of Feb 2026; 50+ applications revoked |
| FCA Crypto Registration | UK | 6-12 months | High rejection rate; estimated $30M+ total compliance cost |
| US MTLs (full coverage) | US (50 states) | 3-9 months/state | $100K+ per state; need 45-50 for coverage |
| MAS License | Singapore | 12-18 months | Highly selective |
| MiCA deadline | EU | July 1, 2026 | Firms without authorization excluded from EU market |
The operational floor is equally daunting. Running an on/off-ramp business carries a fixed cost of roughly $900,000 per month, a figure confirmed across multiple operators.[25] Below that threshold, compliance, fraud detection, payment rail maintenance, and customer support cannot function at production quality. This is not a market you enter experimentally.
"Even the largest banks are operating via reverse solicitation in Europe because they don't have MiCA CASP licenses yet."
Margin compression accelerates the urgency. OTC crypto volumes doubled in 2025. Stablecoin-based OTC transactions grew 147%. Spreads have compressed to 0.1-0.5%, making standalone on-ramping unprofitable as a business model.[26] Fireblocks processed over $200 billion in stablecoin transactions per month in 2025, a 300% year-over-year increase.[27] The companies that survive are the ones that bundle: licensing, technology, compliance, and distribution in a single integrated stack.
"If your only product or service is on-ramping, you're going to lose because you won't be able to compete. You need to offer something more."
The implication for buyers is straightforward. You cannot build the licensing moat fast enough. You cannot hire the talent (because there are "very few human beings equally proficient at fiat and digital assets"). And you cannot afford to wait, because every quarter of internal development is a quarter where competitors who acquired are capturing users and locking in distribution partnerships.
Six catalysts will reshape the crypto infrastructure market in the next 12 months. Each one accelerates the consolidation. Together, they define a window that is closing faster than the market appreciates.
"They stopped a bunch of ongoing R&D projects, fired a bunch of people, and everybody that was left focused heavily on revenue-creating projects. Big boys from Wall Street basically audited them and said, there's clearly two or three things that cash this entire company. You should focus on those. As you prepare for an exit."
Citi projects the stablecoin market will reach $1.9 trillion to $4.0 trillion by 2030.[12] The infrastructure that processes, settles, and enables those trillions in transactions is being divided up now. The companies that move in 2026 will be early. The companies that move in 2027 will be on time. The companies that wait until 2028 will discover that the market they needed to enter was divided up while they were still getting internal approval.
The room is small. The door is open. It will not stay open long.