Dragonfly’s Rob Hadick Says Stablecoins Could Grow 10x as Payments Adoption Expands

That means in the future, the most valuable businesses may sit at the edges of the system: the companies that own customer distribution, merchant relationships, compliance workflows, banking access, and regulatory infrastructure.

But Hadick does not expect reserve yield alone to define the next stage of the market. “Going forward, both have started investing heavily in moving from asset management models to payment models,” he said.

That transition is already visible. Hadick pointed to Tether’s investments in companies and ecosystems such as Whop, Transfi, Rumble, and Plasma, while Circle has launched the Circle Payments Network and Arc. These moves suggest that the largest issuers understand the limits of being purely reserve-backed asset managers. In other words, issuance was the first business model, but it will not be the final one.

“You don’t need both an issuing and merchant bank,” Hadick said. “You don’t need the card network if the merchant and consumer are already known to the provider. You don’t need the network to facilitate clearing and settlement.”

For Hadick, the winners will not be simple network aggregators sitting in the middle. They will be companies that control the last mile, solve compliance problems, face customers directly, and take real operational responsibility.

As for retail investors, Hadick believes the investment map is not just about who issues the token; it is about who owns the flow.

The biggest winners so far may not be the final winners. As the stack collapses, the real value will move toward the companies that own users, flows, compliance, and trust.