Remember the old days when calling or sending a message via text outside the country cost money? With the help of modern messaging apps like WhatsApp, paying for cross-border calls and texts is now obsolete.

For money transfers, stablecoins might do just that: democratize the payments industry by eliminating historical gatekeepers, says venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

«Just as WhatsApp disrupted costly international phone calls, blockchain payments and stablecoins are transforming global money transfers,» the firm said in a blog post on Wednesday.

The current global payment infrastructure is a complex web involving points of sale, payment processors, acquiring banks, issuing banks, correspondent banks, foreign exchanges, and card networks.

Read more: What Is a Stablecoin?

To make matters more difficult, each of these intermediaries charges fees and introduces delays, making international transactions cumbersome. For instance, a16z says remittance fees can reach up to 10% — just like cross-border calls or text used to be restrictive before instant messaging apps came into play.

Enter blockchain and stablecoins — cryptocurrencies pegged to assets like the U.S. dollar.

«Stablecoins offer a clean-slate alternative. Instead of stitching together clunky, costly, and outdated systems, stablecoins flow seamlessly on top of global blockchains,» the blog post said.

«Already, stablecoins are slashing the cost of remittances: Sending $200 from the U.S. to Columbia using traditional methods will cost you $12.13; with stablecoins, it costs $0.01.»

And, it’s not just remittances where stablecoins are eliminating inefficiencies; this could help boost B2B payments on a massive scale, too. A16z uses business transactions from Mexico to Vietnam as an example, which take three to seven days to process and cost anywhere between $14-to-$150 per $1000 transacted. These pass through as many as five intermediaries along the way, each of which takes a cut.

The adoption of stablecoin could make such transactions nearly free and instant, it says.

Some corporations have taken notice, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX is already using stablecoins to manage their corporate treasuries to shield itself from FX volatility.

So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to see that the total market cap of stablecoins has passed $200 billion or that the annualized transaction value of stablecoins in 2024 hit $15.6 trillion — roughly 119% and 200% that of Visa and Mastercard, respectively.

However, the rise of stablecoins isn’t without challenges.

Regulatory bodies have scrutinized their use, making it «incredibly difficult» to bridge traditional finance to stablecoins, said a16z. The landscape is now finally evolving, as policymakers are now actively shaping rules to recognize and regulate stablecoins in the U.S. «A forthcoming bill clarifying this regulation could pave the way for even broader adoption and integration into the global financial system,» the blog said.

With the rapidly changing landscape for finance and crypto becoming more mainstream, stablecoins could become the transformative force that revolutionizes the future of money.

«Just as WhatsApp disrupted costly international phone calls, blockchain payments and stablecoins are transforming global money transfers,» added a16z.

Read more: U.S. House Committee Advances Stablecoin Bill, While Dems Warn of Trump Conflicts

Paul Atkins is just one oath away from taking over the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as President Donald Trump’s pick to oversee the nation’s securities sector — including whatever role the crypto sector plays in that.

A swearing-in ceremony will soon put the former SEC commission in charge of the high-profile regulator — a matter cheered on by the digital assets sector that sees him as a strong ally after his significant background advising crypto firms as a financial-services consultant in Washington. Atkins’ Senate confirmation was easily cleared on Wednesday in a 52-44 vote.

The longtime figure in U.S. financial policy — both in government and as an outside adviser — was generally expected to easily move through confirmation, though the Senate Banking Committee approved Atkins along party lines, with all the panel’s Democrats opposing the nominee.

Atkins’ confirmation took the usual months to emerge from the Senate, and in the time between the departure of predecessor Gary Gensler and Atkins’ arrival, Trump’s interim agency chief, Mark Uyeda, carried out an ambitious and rapidly deployed crypto overhaul. The SEC has thrown out almost all of its high-profile digital assets enforcement actions, and its staff quickly outlined a number of segments of the industry that it considers outside its jurisdiction — including some stablecoins, memecoins (such as the president’s own $TRUMP) and proof-of-work mining.

Many of the areas in which the agency has already demonstrated policy shifts overlap with Trump’s family crypto businesses, including the family’s memecoins and its ties to World Liberty Financial, which has pursued its own stablecoin. Atkins will be taking over those issues to apply permanent standards, potentially directed by future legislation that’s now a priority in Congress.

Atkins’ tenure will begin with an incomplete commission, which is meant to have five members and whose sole Democrat — Caroline Crenshaw — is occupying an already expired term. The White House hasn’t yet moved to fill the two Democratic positions on the commission.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) gave the green light for the trading of options tied to ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

On Wednesday, the regulator approved a filing from Nasdaq ISE, filed last July, which asked to list options contracts on the BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA). Options are a popular trading vehicle to leverage and hedge risk and are especially attractive to institutional investors who are looking to control large amounts of shares.

The Commission had until today to make a decision. James Seyffart, ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said the approval was “100% expected.”

The options apply specifically to ETHA, meaning that BlackRock’s product is the only spot ether ETF that options can be traded on.

Other funds are listed on the New York Stock Exchange’s Arca and Cboe.