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Robert Hackett, features editor and head of special projects at a16z crypto, published an essay on May 1, arguing that the term ‘stablecoin’ has become a liability for the category it names.
His core thesis: stability is no longer the point. It is the prerequisite.
— Robert Hackett (@rhackett) May 1, 2026
The question for the industry has shifted from ‘Will it hold its value?’ to ‘What else can we build with it?’ A name anchored to the original problem, not the current capability, is holding the conversation back.
The analogy he reaches for is precise. ‘Horsepower’ was coined by James Watt in the 1770s to sell steam engines to mine and mill owners who understood horses. The metaphor outlived its reference by more than a century.
‘Stablecoin’ was coined in crypto’s volatile early years, when a 20% price swing in a day made the technology unusable for payments, savings, or lending. It described the problem it solved. But the technology has since outgrown the label.
Hackett proposes ‘digital dollars,’ ‘digital euros,’ and ‘on-chain assets’ as successors. The argument is that as stablecoins scale into the trillions, underpin global payment flows, and sit at the center of financial applications worldwide, the name will matter less and less.
At some point, he suggests, they will simply become how money works, the way ‘electric lighting’ became just ‘lights.’
There is one issue Hackett’s essay does not address directly. The European Central Bank has been developing its own project, the ‘digital euro‘, for several years. The ECB’s version is a central bank digital currency, a publicly issued instrument backed by the full faith and credit of the eurozone, functionally distinct from privately issued euro-pegged stablecoins like Circle’s EURC.
When Hackett proposes ‘digital euros’ as the replacement term for privately issued euro stablecoins, he is reaching for a name that the continent’s central bank has already claimed for a structurally different product.
The naming collision is not hypothetical. In the regulatory context where the GENIUS Act in the US and MiCA in Europe are actively establishing frameworks for stablecoin issuance, the distinction between a publicly issued CBDC and a privately issued stablecoin is the entire legislative argument. Giving both the same name is not a rebrand. It is a category error with legal implications.
Ulrich Bindseil, in a recent report for Blockchain of Europe, warned that strict MiCA requirements could paradoxically drive stablecoin activity out of the EU. That regulatory risk is directly tied to the distinction between ECB-issued and privately issued instruments. Conflating the names makes that distinction harder to communicate, not easier.
The a16z stablecoin data piece, published alongside the essay as a supporting document, reinforces the infrastructure argument. Adjusted quarterly volume hit $4.5 trillion in the first quarter of 2026. Stablecoin velocity, the ratio of monthly transfer volume to circulating supply, has roughly doubled since early 2024, climbing from 2.6 times to 6 times.
A rising velocity means the existing supply is being used more intensively, not just accumulated. That is the signature of a functioning payments network, not a speculative asset class.
The geographic story is equally instructive. Cross-border activity has fallen as a share of payment volume from roughly 50% in early 2024 to approximately 25% by early 2026. Intra-country transactions have grown to nearly three-quarters of payment volume. Stablecoins are not primarily a remittance or FX tool. They are becoming a local payments medium that runs on global infrastructure. Brazil’s BRLA stablecoin processes approximately $400 million per month, powered partly by integration with Brazil’s PIX instant payments network.
As per TRM Labs’ Q1 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index report, euro-backed stablecoin monthly transaction volume rose from $69 million in January 2025 to $777 million by March 2026, a 1,200% increase in 15 months. The ten major European banks forming the Qivalis consortium, including BNP Paribas, ING, and UniCredit, plan to launch a joint euro-backed stablecoin in mid-2026. The category is scaling at full speed regardless of what it is called.
The counterargument is not that ‘stablecoin’ is an accurate name. It is that rebranding a $320B category with established regulatory recognition, exchange listings, and consumer familiarity comes at a cost the essay underestimates.
John Palmer’s X post, which Hackett links to directly, captures the skeptical view. The first-mover naming advantage is real. We still ‘dial’ phone numbers and ‘film’ video. The literal meaning of ‘stablecoin’ has already begun to detach from its etymology in everyday usage.
The process of semantic drift Hackett describes is the very reason rebranding is unnecessary: the term evolves on its own.
It still feels like a bug that we call these “stablecoins.”
The name is clearly reactionary to crypto historically being quite volatile.
But stablecoins will probably 10X the impact of crypto thus far, and deserve to have a self-defined and non-reactionary name. https://t.co/GUWlwaQZwB
— John Palmer (@johnpalmer) April 30, 2026
There is also a regulatory recognition argument. The GENIUS Act uses ‘stablecoin’ throughout its text. Circle’s IPO filings, Tether’s reserve disclosures, and every institutional custody agreement in existence use the same word.
Replacing it with ‘on-chain assets’ creates ambiguity in a regulatory context where precision is increasingly important. Consensys raised a parallel concern: the OCC’s proposed regulations could restrict yield-bearing features regardless of naming, suggesting the substantive regulatory fight matters more than the label.
Hackett’s essay ends with a bet: that the technology will eventually disappear into the background and become just how money works. That outcome does not require the industry to agree on a name. It requires the infrastructure to become good enough that the name stops mattering.
The Meta-Stripe-Tempo deployment announced on April 30, paying creators across over 160 countries in stablecoins via Link wallets, is the clearest signal of that trajectory. No press release referred to the underlying instrument as anything other than a stablecoin.
Nobody publishing coverage of the announcement debated the terminology. The infrastructure ran silently behind the product, which is exactly the outcome Hackett is predicting.
80K Is Still the Magnet. 70K Is the Support.
BTC spot: $76,210
Net dealer GEX: -$76M
Gamma flip: $70,933
Call/put gamma asymmetry: 1.68x
Realized vol: 37.2%This is still pinned price action, not broken price action.
80K key level:
75K is still local support.
70K is now the… pic.twitter.com/x7Px3XSB6J— David (@david_eng_mba) April 29, 2026
Whether the category ultimately settles on ‘digital dollars,’ ‘onchain assets,’ or retains ‘stablecoin’ as a legacy label is a question markets and regulators will resolve over years, not months.
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