Wall Street Titan Druckenmiller Predicts Stablecoins Will Power the Future of Global Payments

And the sector has grown quickly.

The reason investors and policymakers continue watching the sector anyway comes down to efficiency.

Traditional international transfers can take days to settle and often involve multiple banks, intermediaries, and foreign exchange fees along the way. Credit card networks typically charge merchants 2% to 3%, while global remittance fees average roughly 6.5%, according to the World Bank.

For businesses moving money across borders—supplier payments, payroll operations, treasury management—the potential savings can be significant. Companies that once waited days for bank wires to clear can move funds instantly between digital wallets.

Payment networks and financial institutions have started experimenting with the technology as well.

Regulation has also begun to take shape.

Other jurisdictions—including the European Union, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—have launched similar regulatory regimes. The emergence of clear rules has helped attract banks, fintech companies, and institutional investors who previously avoided the sector due to uncertainty.

Because most are pegged to the U.S. dollar, widespread usage effectively exports digital dollars around the world. Some economists argue this could reinforce the dollar’s global role even as new forms of digital money emerge.

Still, even supporters of the technology admit the transition is far from complete.

And the scale of global payments itself is enormous.

But infrastructure shifts often begin quietly before becoming unavoidable.

If the billionaire investor’s timeline proves accurate, the pipes carrying money around the world could look very different by the mid-2030s—and the legacy payment networks that once dominated global finance may find themselves racing to keep up.