Crypto's 'barbell': speculation and stablecoin payments drive adoption, Tempo's Romero says

Stablecoins are softly powering real-world wealth flows arsenic different crypto experiments than speculative trading person failed to scale, Romero said astatine Consensus 2026.

May 5, 2026, 9:25 p.m. 2 min read

Miami Beach, FL — After years of experimentation, crypto contiguous is boiling down to 2 halfway uses: trading and payments.

Speaking astatine a fireside chat astatine Consensus 2026 successful Miami, Tempo’s go-to-market lead, Dan Romero, said the manufacture is settling into a "barbell" shape, with speculative trading similar Hyperliquid's marketplace connected 1 extremity and stablecoin-based payments gaining traction connected the other.

"The things that person worked implicit the past 5 years are speculation and stablecoins," helium said. "In the middle, it’s a spot of a wasteland," helium added, describing a slew of projects that person struggled to find product-market acceptable contempt years of improvement and funding.

Romero is speaking from experience. Before joining Tempo, helium was the co-founder of crypto societal app Farcaster, which struggled to summation traction contempt hefty task superior checks and years of hype.

Tempo, a payments-focused blockchain backed by Stripe and Paradigm, is positioning itself firmly connected the payments broadside of that divide. Built arsenic a purpose-specific layer-1 blockchain, the web focuses connected endeavor needs similar compliance and transaction power — features often missing from nationalist blockchains.

For example, companies tin artifact interactions with definite wallet addresses, a relation aimed astatine reducing regulatory risk, Romero said.

That plan reflects a broader displacement successful however ample firms attack crypto. Rather than experimenting with tokens, galore are adopting stablecoins arsenic backend infrastructure. "It’s plumbing," the enforcement said. "But enterprises similar plumbing if it’s better, faster, cheaper."

Stablecoins are already gaining crushed successful areas similar remittances. One illustration cited was cross-border payments betwixt the U.S. and Mexico, wherever crypto rails present relationship for a increasing stock of flows.

The adjacent question could travel from internet-native businesses. Startups, particularly those built astir AI agents, are apt to default to stablecoins arsenic the easiest mode to determination wealth globally, helium said — overmuch similar Stripe simplified online payments much than a decennary ago.