Big news late at night! The truth behind the stablecoin industry chain is exposed: issuing is only the tip of the iceberg—where the real gold mine lies is in the downstream, and the retail investors’ wealth code may soon be reshuffled?

Bro, let’s talk today about a get-rich-quick track that everyone is ignoring—stablecoins.

You think stablecoins are just Tether and Circle issuing a token and lying back to earn interest? Too small a mindset. Just now, a deep breakdown of the industry chain told me: the issuance side is only the starting point—the real commercial gold mine is in the five downstream segments.

First, take your $1,000 as an example in your wallet. Step one: you use a service provider like MoonPay to swap fiat into $USDC —this is “fiat on/off-ramping.” Step two: you send $500 to your family in Mexico, and it lands in seconds—this is “on-chain transfers.” Step three: you take $200 to spend with your Visa card offline—behind the scenes, stablecoins are settled in real time—this is “payments.” Step four: the remaining $300 is thrown into Aave to earn interest—this is “asset appreciation.” Every link has institutions collecting tolls, and the further downstream you go, the smaller the competition and the thicker the profits.

What about the issuance side? Tether and Circle together hold 83% of the market share, and the total market is only $300B. New players want to enter? First, burn for a few years to get the necessary compliance licenses, and build brand trust. Circle makes money from reserve interest, but in 2023 it signed an agreement with Coinbase: the $USDC interest sitting on Coinbase goes entirely to Coinbase; the interest on Circle’s platform goes entirely to Circle; and the interest out in circulation is split in half—this is a classic “channel swaps for scale” strategy.

The real money is in fiat on/off-ramping. Service providers charge 2% to 7% in fees, but product standardization is severe, and net fee rates have already been squeezed down to around 3%. Smart players are starting to do “embedded” solutions—bundling on/off-ramping into wallets and apps, earning B2B revenue shares. MoonPay acquired Iron and launched a customized stablecoin issuance service, aiming to shift from one-time fees to recurring cash flow—but this path hasn’t worked out yet.

The on-chain transfer segment is even more blunt: transferring itself is almost zero cost, and the profits come from the fiat exchanges at both ends and compliance licenses. Getting MTL licenses in the U.S. takes 12 to 24 months, so “license leasing” has become a high-margin business. Rise, a payroll distribution platform, processed $1.5 billion in funds, and more than half of its employees chose stablecoin payouts. How does it make money? Three layers: a $50 monthly subscription fee, or a payroll fee of 3%; plus compliance employment services of $399 per month; and also putting idle funds into Aave to earn interest, then charging a 1% cut when withdrawing.

The payments segment is the hidden treasure. You think the card transaction fees are what Visa makes? Wrong. The real high-profit is at the card-issuing base layer. Rain provides wallet and exchange brand-card backend, and settles in real time using $USDC; compared with traditional card issuers, it ties up 60% less collateral—because credit card receivables can be tokenized into on-chain lending, enabling revolving loans totaling over $175 million. When consumers swipe cards to buy coffee, Rain has already fronted the funds to Visa using on-chain liquidity, 365 days a year without downtime.

The asset appreciation segment is even more aggressive. The Steakhouse on-chain asset management team has fewer than 20 people, managing $1.7 billion in assets, and takes a 5% cut. Their operating costs are an order of magnitude lower than traditional asset management. But note: high returns come with high-risk tail events, especially stablecoin depegging and repricing/rehypothecation blowups. Institutional capital now favors RWA products backed by U.S. Treasuries, such as BlackRock’s BUIDL, with annualized management fees of 0.15% to 0.5%.

Finally, the takeaway. Stripe spent $1.8 billion to acquire Bridge, and Mastercard is throwing heavy money into BVNK—every major player is doing the same thing: leveraging stablecoin settlement advantages to the traditional payments layer. The future isn’t about who issues the most stablecoins, but who can control the end-to-end infrastructure from fiat on/off-ramping to asset appreciation across the whole chain. In a rate-cut cycle, the interest on the issuance side shrinks, while the value of the downstream settlement layer is surging. Central banks in different countries push local stablecoins, and JPMorgan Chase and Visa are both looking for mature commercial infrastructure. This path is irreversible.

Bro, don’t just focus on the market cap of $USDT . The boom is quietly shifting toward compliant settlement, card issuance, and on-chain asset management. The $ETH and $BTC you hold ultimately have to flow through these channels.

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