Has the stablecoin surpassed a trillion-dollar scale? Observing the shift from WLFI to see the infrastructure competition for financial on-chain in 2026

【Blockchain Rhythm】Can stablecoins and Ethereum really become the next-generation financial infrastructure? This question is increasingly gaining traction within the community.

A recent flow of funds is particularly intriguing—co-founder of a leading crypto project announced they exchanged WBTC for ETH. His reasoning is straightforward: stablecoins have proven themselves as the transaction medium of the digital age, and this logic is hard to refute. A specific piece of evidence is that the founder of Liquid Capital recently made an interesting prediction: 2026 could be the inaugural year of on-chain finance.

Following this line of thought, the logical chain becomes clear. How much potential does the stablecoin track have? Someone has done the math:

Short-term goal: A well-known stablecoin, USD1, aims to surpass a hundred billion in recent times, with a mid-term push toward one trillion. Considering the global stablecoin market could eventually reach $3 trillion, it’s not a pipe dream for it to hold a trillion-dollar share in the long run.

Mid-term pathway: The advantages of stablecoin payments far surpass traditional Visa. If they can collaborate with Web2 companies with hundreds of millions of active users and use stablecoins as a transaction settlement tool, this could gradually lead billions of users onto the blockchain. This growth curve is more tangible than any marketing effort.

Long-term vision: In a financial on-chain market of hundreds of trillions, whoever controls the brand, compliance, ToB ecosystem, and user base will have the opportunity to become the true infrastructure.

This explains why institutions are heavily accumulating ETH while also increasing their holdings in certain top stablecoin projects. They are betting not on short-term price fluctuations but on the inevitability of the entire financial system going on-chain after 2026.