Airwallex founder questions the practical value of stablecoins in mainstream currency cross-border transactions.

Jack Zhang, co-founder of Airwallex, a corporate payments and financial platform, posted on social media that he questioned the usefulness of stablecoins in cross-border transactions of mainstream currencies. Zhang pointed out that in transactions between G10 currencies, the existing banking system has been able to transfer funds in real time at a cost of less than 0.01%, and stablecoins are difficult to provide a more competitive solution. He believes that the cost of an off-exchange transaction from a stablecoin to the recipient’s currency is much higher than that of a foreign exchange interbank transaction. Zhang said that stablecoins may provide regulatory arbitrage opportunities in emerging markets such as Latin America or Africa, but they are not significantly advantageous in mainstream currency trading. Zhang also noted that the cryptocurrency space has not yet shown a clear practical case in the past 15 years compared to technologies such as artificial intelligence, and he has reservations about the future development prospects of Web3.