BNY Mellon just joined Citi, Bernstein and a chorus of Wall Street analysts calling for up to $3.6 trillion in digital cash by 2030.
The bet is that stablecoins and tokenized deposits will become the central core of the market, replacing correspondent banking friction and lubricating corporate treasury operations.
The question: Does that world exist outside of a slide deck and, if it materializes, will it overload the liquidity of Bitcoin and Ethereum or isolate them in permissioned silos?
BNY Mellon’s Nov. 10 report projects $3.6 trillion by 2030, split between roughly $1.5 trillion in fiat stablecoins and $2.1 trillion in tokenized bank deposits and money market funds.
Citi set a base case of $1.6 trillion in stablecoins, with a bull case that would reach $3.7 trillion and a bear scenario that would collapse to $500 billion if regulation and integration stalled.
Bernstein called for $2.8 trillion by 2028, driven by DeFi, payments and remittances.
JPMorgan pivoted in the other direction in July, cutting projections and warning that widespread adoption is overrated, setting a range below $500 billion by 2028 in the absence of clearer use cases and regulatory clarity.
However, at press time, the global stablecoin market capitalization is around $304 billion, with over 90% of the market pegged to the US dollar, dominated by USDT and USDC.
Usage remains highly focused on crypto infrastructure and applies to trading, perpetuals, and as DeFi collateral. Payments and settlements in the real world remain a minority part. Wall Street is effectively betting on a five- to twelvefold expansion in five years.
What has to go right in banking, compliance, and user experience to get there, and what does that mean for Bitcoin and Ethereum liquidity?
What should happen in banking?
Three ingredients are non-negotiable on a multi-million dollar scale.
First, regulated issuance at scale. The GENIUS Act, passed in 2025, establishes licensing requirements for issuers of payment stablecoins, requires 100% reserve support in cash and short-term U.S. Treasury securities, and stipulates audits and anti-money laundering compliance.
It is designed to allow banks and qualified non-bank entities to issue dollar stablecoins in large quantities. The EU’s MiCA framework, Hong Kong’s stablecoin regime and other jurisdictions now provide clear but sometimes restrictive rules that Citi and BNY cite as prerequisites for their operations.
The UK’s Bank of England has imposed limits on systemic stablecoin holdings and reserve requirements, including a 40% requirement at the central bank.
The $3.6 trillion forecast assumes that the US framework scales issuers rather than caps them, and that at least some G10 jurisdictions allow bank-grade stablecoins and tokenized deposits that can be held on corporate balance sheets, money market funds, and central counterparty clearinghouses.
If major jurisdictions copy the Bank of England’s capping model, the forecast breaks down.
Secondly, banking participation beyond fintechs. What forecasts like those from BNY and Citi implicitly assume is that large banks issue tokenized deposits used as collateral, for intraday liquidity and in wholesale payments.
Stablecoins and tokenized cash become standard in securities lending and repos, margining for derivatives clearing, and corporate treasury sweeps.
If banks stay on the sidelines and only a handful of crypto-native issuers scale, the market will not reach its full potential of trillions. Instead, it remains a larger but still niche market, valued between $400 billion and $800 billion.
Third, a seamless bridge to the existing rails. BNY’s language frames this explicitly: blockchains integrate with existing rails, not replace them.
To justify $3.6 trillion, the market requires T+0 settlement between bank ledgers and public chains, interoperability standards, and tokenized cash on bank chains that can be settled one-to-one with public stablecoins.
Without that pipeline, most tokenized cash remains experimental or isolated.
Compliance and UX are what silently rule the roost.
For big numbers to work, institutional money requires bank-grade Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) infrastructure, including granular allowlists, address selection, and blocklists on major stablecoins.
The GENIUS, MiCA, and Hong Kong framework-type regimes must converge enough that a global company can use the same tokens in all regions.
Transparent reservations also matter. Citi and BNY’s forecasts assume boring, fully booked portfolios of T-bills and repos, without Terra-style algorithmic experiments.
The risk of fragility arises when compliance design pushes everything into permitted walled gardens. The use of DeFi and cryptocurrencies becomes a sideshow, mitigating the impact on Bitcoin and Ethereum liquidity.
The user experience should appear seamless. Retail and small business wallets require stablecoin payments within the same apps people already use, such as Cash App, PayPal, and neobanks, with self-custody options available.
Enterprise tools require ERP and treasury systems that natively support stablecoins.
Rails shouldn’t suck: near-free, sub-second layer 2 and high-performance layer 1 like Solana and Base as default emitting and paying rails.
Visa’s recent push to position stablecoins as invisible settlement means within card, credit and financing products is precisely this story.
If, by 2028, people will still have to consider gas rates, chain IDs and bridges, the $3.6 trillion ask is a fantasy.
Three probable scenarios
Integration Max represents the BNY-style bull case. GENIUS is fully implemented, MiCA is up and running, and Hong Kong and Singapore are friendly.
Four to six global banks issue tokenized deposits and money market funds. The user experience is often invisible, as stablecoins will be integrated into banks, payment service providers, and card networks.
Digital cash and stablecoins reached approximately $1.5 trillion in public and permissioned stablecoins, plus $2.1 trillion in tokenized bank money.
A large part is wholesale and is found in intraday settlements and collateral pools. The important point is that the headline numbers seem huge, but a significant portion is not fungible with DeFi and only partially interacts with Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Rails’ fragmentation reflects Citi’s base case or JPMorgan’s caution. The US is friendly, the EU and the UK are cautious, and many emerging markets are cautious. Banks experiment but remain small. User experience and compliance frictions are not trivial.
Stablecoins are expected to be within the range of $600 billion to $1.6 trillion by 2030. This is the range where forecasts are plausible and the impact on Bitcoin and Ethereum liquidity is tangible and visible; However, the “revolution of the $3.6 trillion market” is marketing.
The regulatory shock represents the bearish case for Citi. A major takeoff or scandal triggers a regulatory overreaction. Strict limits such as the Bank of England model are replicated. Stablecoins stagnate below $500 billion and remain primarily a tool for cryptocurrency trading.
What it means for Bitcoin and Ethereum liquidity
Today, with the market capitalization of stablecoins at approximately $304 billion, most Bitcoin and Ethereum spot and derivatives are traded in terms of USDT and USDC.
Stablecoins fund perpetual, core trading, and lending in centralized and decentralized finance.
If the market reaches the BNY world and even 30% to 50% of stablecoins remain on open public chains and are composable with decentralized, perpetual exchanges and lending markets, then the open cryptocurrency stablecoin float for Bitcoin and Ethereum could reach between $450 billion and $750 billion.
This equates to 1.5x to 2.5x dollar liquidity, narrowing spreads, increasing market depth, and enabling larger block flows with less slippage.
Tighter spreads and lower volatility at the micro level mean more capital for market makers and less friction entering and exiting Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Increased leverage follows; A larger stablecoin collateral pool allows for more perpetuals and credit, which can amplify both rallies and liquidations.
However, much of the $3.6 trillion could bypass Bitcoin and Ethereum entirely. BNY explicitly counts tokenized deposits and money market funds that may reside on permissioned chains, where assets cannot be freely exchanged for Bitcoin or Ethereum, and uses “know your customer” allowlists to control access.
You can have a world where over $2 trillion in digital cash is tokenized. Still, only a few hundred billion dollars are in the free-flowing stablecoins that actually provide liquidity for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
A digital cash figure of $3.6 trillion is bullish for Bitcoin and Ethereum liquidity to the extent that those tokens can be included in the same pools as perpetuals, decentralized exchanges, and major brokers.
If they are enclosed in gardens enclosed by walls, they are pipes, not fuel. Institutional desks and on-chain credit markets may prefer fully backed stablecoins and tokenized Treasury bills over Bitcoin and Ethereum as collateral, reducing structural demand.
In contrast, smoother stablecoin rails reduce friction for new money to flow into stablecoins and then into Bitcoin and Ethereum, and deep, regulated stablecoin pools make it easier to arbitrage and hedge ETFs and funds.
The $3.6 trillion target is plausible, but only if banking infrastructure, compliance design, and user experience are aligned across multiple jurisdictions.
For Bitcoin and Ethereum, the bullish reading is not the size of the digital dollars, but how many of them can be in the same pool.
The forecast assumes integration, not disruption. If that integration separates the permissionless layer, Wall Street gets its digital cash infrastructure and cryptocurrencies get a larger but still limited trading pool.