Money20/20: stablecoins gaining steam
- Money20/20 Asia highlighted culture gaps between Web2 institutions and Web3 builders, and growing stablecoin use in APAC. - Event reflections note stablecoins are accelerating among unbanked populations in countries like the Philippines and Thailand. - Policy20 delegates at Money20/20 called for co‑creation as finance moves onchain, signalling more institutional engagement with digital rails ( ).
Stablecoins — digital tokens designed to hold a steady value, usually against the U.S. dollar — moved from crypto side topic to main-stage payments issue at Money20/20 Asia in Bangkok this week. (asia.money2020.com, manilatimes.net) Money20/20 Asia is running April 21-23, 2026, at Bangkok’s Queen Sirikit National Convention Center, and its agenda now puts digital assets alongside banks, payments firms and regulators rather than in a separate corner. (asia.money2020.com, media-outreach.com) Policy20, the event’s regulatory forum, said it brought together more than 80 policymakers, regulators and industry leaders, with a closed-door roundtable on “Sovereign Intelligence” and a public call for “co-creation” between government and private firms. (manilatimes.net, asia.money2020.com) A stablecoin works like a digital poker chip backed by reserves: users move the token on internet-based rails, then cash in or out through exchanges, wallets or payment apps. That makes it useful for remittances and merchant settlement in places where bank transfers are slow, expensive or hard to access. (federalreserve.gov, bis.org) The regional demand is already visible in the numbers. A Consensus by CoinDesk report published in November 2025 said 24.3% of adults in Asia-Pacific — about 535 million people — use digital assets, and almost one in five use stablecoins. (prnewswire.com, consensus-hongkong.coindesk.com) That same report said Thailand led the survey on both overall digital-asset adoption at 42% and stablecoin adoption at 30%, while the Philippines posted 31% overall adoption, tied to a large remittance market and a mobile-first consumer base. It also said 29% of remittance users in the region now use stablecoins, representing an estimated $72 billion in annualized flows. (prnewswire.com) The inclusion angle predates this week’s conference. The World Bank’s Global Findex 2021 says financial inclusion still depends heavily on access to low-cost digital payments, especially for adults outside formal banking systems. (worldbank.org, microdata.worldbank.org) Regulators are not all reading the trend the same way. The Bank for International Settlements said in its 2025 annual report that stablecoins “offer some promise” but fall short of the standards it says a core monetary system needs, arguing instead for tokenized platforms centered on central bank and commercial bank money. (bis.org) That tension — user demand on one side, official caution on the other — is now showing up inside mainstream finance events rather than outside them. In Bangkok this week, the message from the conference floor and the policy forum was that digital-dollar rails are no longer being discussed only by crypto builders; banks, regulators and payment companies are now in the room too. (asia.money2020.com, manilatimes.net)
