PayFi's rebound isn't really about capital speculation; it's driven by genuine users entering the market

I spent a long time studying the PayFi projects that led the gains yesterday. At first, I thought it was just hot money rotating, but the more I looked, the more I felt something was off—if it was just speculative trading, the on-chain data shouldn't look like this now.

Let me tell you a few details. The daily active address count for a certain PayFi protocol has increased by 40% over the past three weeks, and the retention rate of new addresses is unusually high. What does this indicate? It suggests that it's not just a bunch of arbitrage bots pumping the data; real users are actually using it for cross-border payments. Even more surprisingly, the geographic distribution of these new users is very concentrated, mainly from Southeast Asia and Latin America—regions with volatile fiat currencies and high cross-border remittance costs. These users aren’t using PayFi for speculation; they’re genuinely using stablecoins for payments and settlements because it’s faster than traditional banks by a few days and costs dozens of dollars less in fees.

This is why I’ve started to see PayFi differently. It’s not a purely narrative-driven sector; there are real demands underpinning it. This is fundamentally different from the “white paper projects” in the last bull run. Back then, those projects hyped everything up, but on-chain data showed only a few dozen daily active users, and the TVL was propped up by the project teams themselves injecting funds. Now, at least a few leading PayFi projects have real user data and cash flow.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the price of PayFi tokens will keep rising forever. Good fundamentals and rising prices are separated by market sentiment, liquidity, macro environment, and other variables. But projects with solid fundamentals have an advantage: even if the price drops, they have a relatively solid floor because people are actually using them, not just relying on faith.

For those considering participating in this wave, my advice is to spend some time understanding what the project behind the token you’re thinking of buying actually does. Does it have real users? How’s the on-chain revenue? Does the product logic make sense? You don’t need to be a tech expert—spend an afternoon reviewing the project’s documentation and on-chain data, and you’ll probably be able to make a judgment. This one afternoon of homework might be more valuable than a week of watching price charts.