Stablecoins on Aptos

The demand for cost-effective payments is at an all-time high.

And stablecoins can be the bridge connecting these transactions across traditional and decentralized finance.

That’s why Aptos is well-positioned to support the growing stablecoin ecosystem, with its capacity to scale high-volume cross-border transactions while processing over 160,000 transactions per second.

According to an article by @SashaSpiegelman and @rgelash, @Aptos achieves this high throughput using a multi-threaded, in-memory parallel execution engine that leverages Software Transactional Memory (STM).

TLDR: Transactions are faaast. These transactions confirm quickly and also cost mere fractions of a cent—roughly $0.00002 per transaction.

The edge Aptos brings is quite competitive for stablecoins that aim to beat the effectiveness of fiat alternatives on payment rails like Visa or Mastercard. And as @moshaikhs noted on Chain Reaction:

Aptos is the new way and the emphasis here is on how efficient the blockchain is across multiple use cases, especially payments.

Currently, Stablecoin's supply on Aptos is peaking at $729.8M, the strong growth trend from January to now is easily visible. Thanks to the launch of both USDT and USDC back-to-back this quarter.

Stablecoins are fast, cheap, and scalable on @Aptos.

With transactions and payments, the conversation between users or businesses usually revolves around: Fees, Time to Settle, and Convenience (ease of use).

Solutions that offer a competitive advantage across these factors tend to have an uncanny edge in the market. Aptos offers that advantage, here's how:

Fees

If Aptos is that fast, does it increasingly outperform other alternatives like MoneyGram, Western Union, Mastercard, etc.? Yes, it does.

Traditional rails, which you use daily, can take hours/days to settle cross-border transactions or charge 2–3% of each transaction, hitting small businesses especially hard.

So, if a coffee shop only nets a dollar of profit for every two-dollar latte sold, losing an extra 15 cents to payment fees significantly hurts margins.

Utilizing stablecoins via Aptos, by contrast, can lower these fees almost to zero.

According to the @ournetwork__ report, Aptos is the cheapest chain for USDT transfers, costing about $0.0002 in fees.

From a business perspective, having a steep drop in transaction fees could offer business owners more operational opportunities, and better margins amongst other perks.

Settlement Period

The settlement period for a transaction is another focus for users, especially with cross-border payments.

Services like MoneyGram and Western Union can take up to 4 days to finalize transactions outside the European Economic Area.

In contrast, Aptos achieves settlement in approximately 6.5 seconds, outside the European Economic Area–––regardless of the location.

This 6.5-second block time ensures fast and efficient transaction confirmations, making Aptos a competitive solution for financial applications and real-time use cases.

The speed also impacts the ease of remittances, where you can send USDT (on Aptos) to someone back home, pay about $0.0002 in fees and it arrives in about 6.5 seconds or less.

That’s a game-changer, not just for individuals, but also for small businesses in emerging markets in West Africa that suffer from slow wire transfers and high exchange markups.

Now, someone in the UK can send money back home to Senegal quickly and cheaply–––0.00002$, removing multiple intermediaries and the associated risk of payment failure.

An alternative for this same transaction is to use Ria Money transfer. To send 100 GBP, there's almost 700 XOF lost in exchange compared to other rates.

You'd also have to pay about 4 GBP in fees for this transaction to be processed within a couple of minutes or hours.

When it comes down to preference, I agree with @SamBroner comments on stablecoins being the cheapest way to send a dollar, with profitability unlock & a new platform.

Ease of Use

Convenience is the crux of it all.

What's the point of fast transactions, cheap fees, and an impressive permissionless composable infrastructure if users can't use it within real-world use cases like remittances and cross-border payments?

That's why I believe the Aptos Card thanks to @thisisarculus and @AptosLabs collaboration can unlock an interesting opportunity for users paying with real-world assets.

Similar to how I use @wirexapp card and now recently @KAST_official cards for real-world transactions.

More than that, thanks to the recent partnership with @stripe and @circle, there could be exciting on-ramp support for USDC on Aptos via Stripe.

Which would make transactions more easy and more convenient for the real-world use case.

Stablecoins Move Better on Aptos

Stablecoins have already proven they can move billions of dollars across borders faster, and more cheaply than traditional rails and also accrue rewards for users.

Over-collateralized, yield-bearing stablecoin like MOD (Move Dollar) is specifically designed with reward mechanisms.

With over 2.3 B in traded volume, users can also stake MOD in the Thala Stability Pool (TSP) to earn rewards easily.

My thoughts are as adoption grows, we could have an efficient way for users to exchange both information and economic value more efficiently and fairly.

For businesses, the bottom-line impact is profound: stablecoins can save billions in fees and expand cross-border trade. For users, stablecoins offer a simple, low-cost way to send value globally, cutting out an underbrush of banking intermediaries.

For developers, Aptos’ parallel execution engine and the Move programming language provide exciting ground for building next-gen DeFi applications, orchestrating stablecoin solutions, and bridging Web2 to Web3.

Ultimately, stablecoins move better on Aptos

Data Reference:

1. Aptos: Layer 1 Engineered To Evolve

2. $MOD Stablecoin Performance Analysis

3. ON–298: Stablecoins

4. Aptos || Stable Coin Supply