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Everyone’s been jumping on the stablecoins’ wagon over the past couple of months (myself included), but one of the more fascinating discoveries for me was that stablecoins have actually been around for a little over a decade now.
To top it off, McKinsey also predicted that the value of issued stablecoins could reach as high as $2 trillion by 2028. Yet according to dtcpay’s Chief Operating Officer, Sam Lin, the reality may dwarf even that figure.
In an interview with Vincent Fong, Chief Editor of Fintech News Network captured during Singapore Fintech Week 2025, Sam dug into the key factors driving stablecoin advancement and adoption, particularly across Asia and ASEAN.
If you want to understand why stablecoins were on a different gear altogether in 2025, Sam divulges that you have to go back to where it all started.
“If you look at how the technology reshaped the payment itself, when the blockchain came into the picture 10 years ago, there was already something formed to optimise the existing payment infrastructure. But there was always back and forth. Resistance came from many areas, and the concern was always on compliance.”
The TradFi industry wasn’t ready for this change, he says. For years on end, the technology outpaced the appetite for change, and so it played the waiting game.
Then, in 2025, the US passed the GENIUS Act, and something finally shifted. Sam describes that it was less of a revolution but more of a release. The gates were opened, and the flood came through.
The water, possibly years of dormant capital, sidelined institutions, and technology that had been waiting to prove its mettle, had been pressing against the gates long enough. It just needed someone to open the gates.
“If you ask me, I think the technology itself is the main reason.”
Next, Sam was questioned on what makes Asia conducive and why dtcpay opted to build its platform out of here. To that, Sam spoke about innovation and diversity.
Sam believes Asia has always been the more natural home for this kind of innovation, and in his opinion, it comes down to diversity.
ASEAN, for instance, he says, spans many races, regions, and cultures. That friction of diversity is precisely what makes it fertile.
Different people in different countries think differently, and yet coexist, collaborate and build alongside one another in peace.
“They know how to work with each other, which is why innovation has come out from such diversified environments, encouraging them to try new stuff. ASEAN, in the multipolar wars now, is one of the most important pillars there. Together with China and East Asia, they’ve already built quite a lot of innovative technologies, with use cases and the respective populations, too.”
To reiterate, ASEAN, he says, has something rare: the use cases, the demand, and the people to bring it to life. It’s also the precise environment dtcpay was built for.
As a Singapore-based platform licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, it sits at the heart of a region that lives on the need for borderless, multi-currency payments, every single day.
One of the most clarifying moments in the conversation comes when Sam breaks down what stablecoins are actually doing, which is two very distinct jobs at once.
The first, he says, is settlements. Blockchain’s speed and decentralised architecture make stablecoin settlement faster than traditional networks like SWIFT.
But most people will never lay their eyes on it. It runs efficiently in the background, pretty much the same way nobody thinks about acquiring banks when they tap their Visa card. You don’t need to understand the plumbing for the water to run, right?
The second half is the payment layer itself, Sam shares, like B2B transactions and cross-border wholesale settlements in commodities. This is where businesses watch funds move in real time, and wonder why it never worked any other way before.
“People can’t feel it, but it makes all the organisation and different entities and departments work more efficiently and slowly transform your daily life. You will feel the cost-cutting. You will feel your life become easier.”
As more people understand how to use stablecoins, and as the blockchain makes currency truly programmable and accessible, the innovations that follow will be difficult to predict and harder to stop.
The $2 trillion figure McKinsey projected? Sam thinks it’s a floor (not a ceiling), and given that the estimate predates developments like Project Bloom, Hong Kong’s stablecoin ordinance, and a wave of other new regulatory frameworks, he may well be right.
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