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Stablecoins as a $9T ‘economic OS’ in a16z’s Arc bet
Andreessen Horowitz has laid out its investment thesis for Arc, arguing that stablecoins are evolving from simple payment rails into an on-chain “economic operating system” for global finance.
The firm cites adjusted stablecoin transaction volume of around $9 trillion over the past year and a total USD stablecoin supply above $270 billion, framing the sector as systemic infrastructure rather than a niche crypto product.
a16z positions Arc as a platform layer in this stack, abstracting stablecoins into programmable accounts, payments, FX and credit that can be embedded into applications worldwide.
Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm has published a new thesis on its investment in Arc, arguing that stablecoins are “no longer just a payment rail” but “the foundation of a new economic operating system for global finance.” In its essay, titled “The new stack for global finance: Stablecoins edition,” the firm describes stablecoins as the base layer of a modular stack where wallets, orchestration services and credit networks all plug into programmable dollars that move on public blockchains.
a16z says stablecoins now rival legacy payment rails
The data point a16z leans on is scale. According to its State of Crypto research, stablecoins processed roughly $9 trillion in adjusted transaction volume over the last year, an 87% year‑on‑year jump that puts them “over half of Visa’s volume and about five times PayPal’s” when measured on comparable terms. At the same time, the supply of USD‑denominated stablecoins has climbed beyond about $270 billion, with some estimates pushing the broader sector past $300 billion as tokenized dollars displace bank wires and card rails in remittances, B2B payments and on‑chain trading.
In the firm’s own words, stablecoins have become “the fastest, cheapest, and most global way to send a dollar in less than one second for less than one cent, almost anywhere in the world,” turning them into an internet‑native alternative to correspondent banking. That framing echoes arguments from bankers and regulators who increasingly treat stablecoins as a macro‑level force, with one recent crypto.news report detailing how U.S. community banks warned Congress that yield‑bearing stablecoins could drain insured deposits by offering dollar returns outside the banking system.
Arc as the stablecoin “operating system” layer
Within that backdrop, a16z presents Arc as a platform that treats stablecoins as the primitive for accounts, payments, foreign exchange and credit, rather than just a token you send from one wallet to another. The firm sketches a stack where companies no longer “rent bank licenses and access legacy cores” but instead build directly on wallets, programmable stablecoin balances and APIs that combine account management, merchant payments, FX and lending into end‑to‑end products.
This “economic OS” view mirrors developments elsewhere in on‑chain finance, where tokenization and stablecoin infrastructure are being adopted by incumbents as well as startups. A recent crypto.news story detailed how post‑trade giant DTCC is preparing a tokenized securities platform with more than 50 traditional and crypto firms, while another story covered Kraken’s xStocks effort to build parallel equity rails on-chain. In a broader DeFi context, an earlier story on generating passive income with decentralized finance highlighted stablecoins as the core funding leg for lending, liquidity provision and structured products, underscoring why a16z now treats them as the core “OS” for a new financial stack rather than a sidecar to speculative crypto markets.
