When Speed Approaches Infinity: Why Stablecoins Aren't Just "Faster Payments"

I keep getting asked the same question at conferences, on panels, and podcasts: "What are the use cases of stablecoins?" And inevitably, someone in the audience will answer their own question before I can: "Oh, it's just faster and cheaper payments. But we already have Paypal, instant payments..."

They're missing something fundamental. Something that changes everything.

The Physics of Transformation

Here's what people don't understand: when you increase the speed of something so dramatically that it approaches instantaneous, and simultaneously reduce its cost to near-zero, you don't just improve the existing system. You fundamentally transform the nature of what's possible.

This isn't speculation. It's physics.

When you travel at the speed of light, time itself dilates. You don't just "move faster" - the fundamental nature of time changes relative to your frame of reference. At light speed, time stands still. You're not traveling anymore - you're almost teleporting. The rules of reality itself shift.

The same principle applies to transaction speed and cost. When both approach their theoretical limits, you don't get "better payments." You get an entirely new category of economic activity that was previously impossible.

Emergence: When the Whole Exceeds the Sum

There's a concept in physics and philosophy called emergence - how new properties arise at different scales that are completely unpredictable from examining the individual components.

Consider water molecules. A single H₂O molecule isn't "wet." Wetness is an emergent property that only appears when you have vast numbers of water molecules interacting together. You could study a single water molecule for eternity and never predict the sensation of wetness.

Individual neurons aren't conscious. Each one performs simple, mechanical tasks. But connect 86 billion of them in the right configuration, and consciousness emerges - something entirely unpredictable from studying individual neurons.

Temperature doesn't exist at the level of individual atoms. It's an emergent property of molecular motion at scale.

This is what philosophers call strong emergence - when the behavior of a system cannot be predicted or derived from complete knowledge of its components. The whole genuinely exceeds the sum of its parts. New properties manifest that simply don't exist at lower levels of organization.

And here's the crucial insight: when transaction speed approaches instantaneous and cost approaches zero, entirely new economic behaviors emerge that couldn't exist before.

The Internet Parallel: What We Couldn't Imagine

In the 1990s, if you'd asked "what's the use case of going from dial-up to fiber optic internet?", most people would have said: "Websites load faster. Email arrives quicker. Maybe better video quality."

They would have been catastrophically wrong.

No one predicted:

• Netflix and streaming - the entire television industry ported to the internet
• YouTube and the creator economy - billions of hours of user-generated content
• Instagram and TikTok - visual social networks that didn't exist in the dial-up era
• Spotify - music as an infinite streaming library rather than owned albums
• Zoom and remote work - real-time video collaboration making geography irrelevant
• Twitch - livestreaming as entertainment and community

These weren't improvements on existing things. They were entirely new categories that only became economically viable when bandwidth approached infinity and cost approached zero.

The pattern is clear: when you compress a fundamental constraint (bandwidth, in this case) to near-zero, you don't just do old things faster. You unlock entirely new categories of human activity.

The AI Parallel: Intelligence at Near-Zero Cost

We're watching the same phase transition happen right now with artificial intelligence.

Intelligence used to be expensive and slow. You'd hire consultants, wait weeks for analysis, pay thousands for expert opinions.

Now intelligence is instant and approaching free.

This didn't just make consulting cheaper. It created:

• Real-time code assistance - AI pair programming that didn't exist five years ago
• Instant translation - breaking down language barriers in real-time
• Personalized education at scale - adaptive learning for millions simultaneously
• AI companions - conversational agents that provide emotional support
• Automated research - synthesis of vast knowledge bases in seconds

Again: new categories, not improvements. The economic viability threshold shifted, and entirely new markets emerged.

The Music Parallel: Tempo Creates New Cultures

Music shows the same pattern. Push tempo from 80 BPM to 130 BPM and you don’t get the same song faster. You get different rhythms, structures, dance, venues, even fashion. House and techno aren’t faster pop, they’re new ecosystems that emerged when tempo and tools crossed thresholds. In money, collapsing settlement latency and cost is the BPM shift. It changes what fits, what flows, and what can emerge. Tempo isn’t the only driver. It interacts with instruments and context, just like speed and cost interact with programmability, compliance, and UX in finance.

Stablecoins: The Phase Transition in Money

Scope for this piece: I am talking primarily about fiat-backed stablecoins on low-fee chains and L2s, with programmable settlement and global reach.

When that stack delivers:

• Costs that are pennies to sub-pennies per transaction on some new networks, not dollars on legacy rails
• Final settlement in seconds, not days
• Programmability at the protocol level, not bolted-on
• Permissionless access for developers and users, not gatekept integrations
• Composability that lets you atomically chain actions

You do not just get faster payments. You get new behaviors.

1. True Micropayments at Scale

Pay per article read, per minute of video watched, per API call made. The creator economy explodes when you can monetize every tiny interaction without being eaten alive by transaction fees. This isn't "better payments" - it's an entirely new economic model where attention becomes directly monetizable at granular levels.

2. Streaming Money

Not monthly salaries but per-second wages. Payroll becomes a continuous flow rather than discrete chunks. This fundamentally changes labor dynamics - workers have instant liquidity, employers have better cash flow management, and the entire concept of "payday" dissolves.

3. Programmable Conditional Payments

Smart contracts that execute payments based on real-world data feeds. Insurance that pays out automatically when flight delays are detected. Supply chain payments that release upon delivery confirmation. Escrow without escrow agents. These aren't just "faster" - they're trustless, automatic, and previously impossible.

4. Cross-Border Commerce for the Bottom Billion

When remittances cost 0.1% instead of 6.5% today, and arrive in seconds instead of days, you enable economic participation for people currently excluded from the global financial system. This isn't incremental - it's bringing billions of people into the formal economy for the first time. Reality check: cash-out, KYC, FX, and local acceptance still matter. On- and off-ramps also influence adoption.

5. Machine-to-Machine Payments

Your car pays for parking automatically. Your fridge orders groceries when supplies run low. Your solar panel sells excess energy to your neighbor's EV. IoT devices transacting autonomously, without human intervention, at scales and speeds impossible with traditional payment rails.

6. Composable Financial Primitives

• What changed: instant settlement and atomicity.
• Reality check: composability multiplies risk surfaces. Circuit breakers, limits, and audits are non-negotiable.

"But We Already Have Fast Payments!"

Yes. And we had AOL Instant Messenger in the 1990s.

The question isn't whether fast digital payments exist. The question is whether they're:

• Globally accessible (not just US/EU banking systems)
• Programmable at the protocol level (not just APIs on top)
• Permissionless (no gatekeepers deciding who can participate)
• Interoperable (work across all systems without intermediaries)
• Actually settled (not just fast authorization with slow settlement)
• Near-zero cost (not just "cheaper than wire transfers")

Venmo is fast authorization. Stablecoins are instant settlement. That's not a minor distinction - it's the difference between a promise and reality. Visa publicly runs USDC settlement on Ethereum and Solana with acquirers Worldpay and Nuvei, stating it has already moved “millions of USDC” in live pilots.

The Threshold Effect

Emergence happens at thresholds. Physicist Sean Carroll explains that emergent properties are "scale dependent" - they only become observable when a system reaches sufficient size or complexity. Individual ants follow simple rules, but a colony exhibits complex problem-solving that no single ant possesses.

There are quantifiable thresholds where new economic behaviors become viable:

• When transaction costs drop below $0.1, micropayments become economically rational
• When settlement time drops below 1 minute, real-time commerce becomes possible
• When global accessibility reaches >50% of the population, network effects explode
• When programmability is native, composability becomes exponential

We're crossing some of these thresholds now. And just like with internet bandwidth and AI intelligence, we can't fully predict what will emerge on the other side.

What We Can't Yet Imagine

The most important use cases of stablecoins are probably things we haven't thought of yet. Things that will seem obvious in retrospect but are invisible to us now because we're still thinking in terms of the old paradigm.

In 1995, you couldn't have explained Uber to someone because the concept of "summoning a stranger's car with your phone" required too many pieces that didn't exist yet. The idea was literally unthinkable.

In 2005, you couldn't have explained TikTok because "15-second vertical videos with AI-curated feeds" required infrastructure and cultural shifts that hadn't happened yet.

What are the equivalent stablecoin use cases that are currently unthinkable? What emerges when:

• Every human has a global, programmable bank account in their pocket?
• Every device can transact autonomously?
• Every piece of value can be tokenized and moved instantly?
• Every financial service can be composed like Lego blocks?

I don't know. And that's precisely the point.

The Question You Should Be Asking

The question isn't "what are the use cases of stablecoins?"

The question is: "What becomes possible when the friction of moving value approaches zero?"

Because when you remove a fundamental constraint from a system - when you take something that was slow and expensive and make it instantaneous and free - you don't just improve the system.

You transform it into something entirely new.

Just like the internet. Just like AI. Just like every other phase transition in human technological capability.

The use cases of stablecoins and new forms of digital money aren't just "faster payments."

They're the emergent economic behaviors we can't yet imagine, arising from a system where the speed of value transfer approaches the speed of light, and the cost approaches zero.

And when you're traveling at the speed of light, the rules change. Everything transforms.

That's not faster payments.

That's a new economic reality.