Stablecoin velocity trumps supply, founders argue

STABO founders James Li and Pursuit Li say the key metric for stablecoins is velocity — how often a token circulates in commerce — rather than total supply. The company is developing STABO Pay to receive, risk-screen, convert and settle corporate stablecoin receipts into customers’ existing bank structures, with a planned launch in Q3 2026.

Public estimates place stablecoin circulation at about $310 billion, and some forecasts extend to $1.9 trillion by 2030. The founders say those totals do not capture how frequently tokens move. They estimate current B2B stablecoin velocity is close to one, meaning tokens typically change hands only once on-chain before conversion back to fiat.

Founders attribute the low velocity to behavior at the banking interface. Companies often convert receipts immediately because banks review crypto-linked inflows and can delay, return or withhold funds. In markets STABO serves in Asia, those banking and compliance checks create operational risk that finance teams will avoid rather than accept.

STABO Pay is designed as a phased product. The initial function will be to receive stablecoin receipts, perform risk screening and convert funds into a client’s bank account. Later phases aim to let customers retain part of those balances, reuse them to pay suppliers and subsidiaries that accept stablecoins, and combine fiat and on-chain liquidity with financing, yield and card products.

The founders described the product roadmap as sequential. Payments are expected to create customer flows and transaction data that can support financing products. Retained balances would enable liquidity deployment and yield, and card products would allow spending from those balances. The team said each expansion requires existing flows, data and regulatory approvals before the next capability is added.

STABO is building operational access across Asian, Middle Eastern, African, European and North American corridors, and reports active engagements with direct customers in the Middle East and platform partners in Hong Kong. Regulatory applications for payments and virtual-asset activity are under way in several markets, including parts of the Middle East, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and North America; the company cautions those applications are in progress, not approvals.

Banks, the founders said, need a clear perimeter defining which entity holds the customer relationship, what activities are authorized and how responsibility divides among STABO, liquidity providers and custodians. Incoming stablecoin flows must be attributable and commercially documented so they do not appear as unexplained crypto transactions that prompt account reviews.

“Payments are a transaction. Treasury is a relationship,” James Li, STABO CEO, described. Pursuit Li, the company’s COO, warned that “cash-flow reliability matters more to a finance team than the theoretical speed or cost advantage of the rail.”

Looking ahead, James Li estimated that by 2031 a mid-sized global company might hold or move 10 to 20 percent of its transaction-ready balances on stablecoin rails. The founders expect AI to assist in forecasting, sweeps and rail selection, but they said material transactions should remain subject to human approval. STABO positions its current off-ramp work as both an entry point for companies that must convert now and a source of data for future treasury products.