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Fintechs See Strongest Payments Challenge From Stablecoins and CBDCs, Not Bitcoin: Cowen
The team at Cowen recently held fireside chats with executives from PayPal and Visa, among others.
Updated May 11, 2023, 7:18 p.m. Published Mar 29, 2022, 3:37 p.m.
While it’s still early innings for crypto, management teams at leading fintech companies regard stablecoins and possibly central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as more “elegant” than with respect to payments, according to a research report from financial services firm Cowen (COWN).
- PayPal’s (PYPL) Edwin Aoki and Jose Fernandez da Ponte – the chief technology officer of blockchain, crypto and digital currencies, and the unit’s senior vice president, respectively – told Cowen their company for the moment intends to work within the crypto ecosystem, rather than launching a proprietary product.
- The report noted that they see room for the use of a number of types of digital assets and tokens – stablecoins and CBDCs among them – but believe decentralized cryptos (i.e., bitcoin) may not work as well due in part to scalability issues.
- Visa (V) Chief Financial Officer Vasant Prabhu reiterated his company’s enthusiasm for digital currencies and its goal of being a bridge between the crypto and fiat worlds. In similar fashion to the PayPal executives, Prabhu told Cowen that Bitcoin has “limitations” in payments due to volatility and speed.
- Summing it up, the Cowen team, led by Managing Director George Mihalos, called bitcoin as a payments medium “a far less elegant approach with stablecoins and potentially CBDCs offering a superior solution.”
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Exchange Review - March 2025
CoinDesk Data's monthly Exchange Review captures the key developments within the cryptocurrency exchange market. The report includes analyses that relate to exchange volumes, crypto derivatives trading, market segmentation by fees, fiat trading, and more.
What to know:
Trading activity softened in March as market uncertainty grew amid escalating tariff tensions between the U.S. and global trading partners. Centralized exchanges recorded their lowest combined trading volume since October, declining 6.24% to $6.79tn. This marked the third consecutive monthly decline across both market segments, with spot trading volume falling 14.1% to $1.98tn and derivatives trading slipping 2.56% to $4.81tn.
- Trading Volumes Decline for Third Consecutive Month: Combined spot and derivatives trading volume on centralized exchanges fell by 6.24% to $6.79tn in March 2025, reaching the lowest level since October. Both spot and derivatives markets recorded their third consecutive monthly decline, falling 14.1% and 2.56% to $1.98tn and $4.81tn respectively.
- Institutional Crypto Trading Volume on CME Falls 23.5%: In March, total derivatives trading volume on the CME exchange fell by 23.5% to $175bn, the lowest monthly volume since October 2024. CME's market share among derivatives exchanges dropped from 4.63% to 3.64%, suggesting declining institutional interest amid current macroeconomic conditions.
- Bybit Spot Market Share Slides in March: Spot trading volume on Bybit fell by 52.1% to $81.1bn in March, coinciding with decreased trading activity following the hack of the exchange's cold wallets in February. Bybit's spot market share dropped from 7.35% to 4.10%, its lowest since July 2023.
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