Global foreign exchange and payments platforms are lobbying hard against stablecoins, which stand to significantly disrupt their business models, investor Kevin O’Leary said during a keynote address at Consensus 2025.
Legacy forex and payments platforms often extract large fees for servicing cross-border cash transfers and stand to lose out on revenue if regulated stablecoins become accepted as a cheaper, faster alternative, O’Leary said at the Toronto conference.
“Currency trading is a multi-trillion dollar market — and it’s old and ugly and inefficient,” O’Leary said, adding that “[ t]he biggest threat to that monopoly or oligopoly is a regulated stablecoin.”
“Once that’s approved, the multi-trillion dollar FX market becomes efficient, transparent, and inexpensive,” he said.
Kevin O’Leary speaking at Consensus. Source: CointelegraphStablecoin legislation
US lawmakers are working on legislation that stands to accelerate global stablecoin adoption, O’Leary added.
US Senators are aiming to pass the so-called Genius Act — a framework for regulating stablecoins — <a