The Future of Money Is Streaming Now

We stream data. We stream music. We stream video. Thanks to stablecoins, we are about to start streaming the whole economy.

U.S. dollar stablecoins recently hit a milestone–they represent about 1% of the U.S. money supply (based on the M2 measure). Not a big deal, you may be thinking, but in fact, it might become one in the near future.

Stablecoins are growing at a phenomenal rate, about 55% per year. While that is unlikely to continue forever, it is not hard to foresee a future, less than a decade away, where stablecoins represent an amount equal to about 10% of the M1, which is defined as cash, notes, and "easily accessible" digital money like current bank accounts.

Stablecoins are designed to be easily accessible and usable, which certainly seems like it would fit into that definition of the money supply. Indeed, on-chain services are starting to look a lot like standard banking services. Except they work faster and cost a lot less.

Now, imagine if moving money around was, effectively, free, and instantaneous. Would you manage your money differently? You might. Indeed, global firms are already starting to think about it.

Today, companies keep lots of money in lots of separate locations all around the world. It’s not particularly different to how they manage physical inventory. Since moving money across borders is expensive and slow, firms must keep a decent supply of cash on hand locally to pay bills. And, since customers do not necessarily pay invoices with absolute predictability, firms must keep a buffer of cash on hand to manage the variation between predictable costs, like payroll, and unpredictable revenues.

Things may look different in the future. If it costs nothing to move money globally and it can be done nearly instantly, the size of those local buffers can be dramatically reduced. Instead of keeping two weeks' worth of expenses locally, including payroll, you might just choose to keep only a day's worth on hand. A slightly larger cash pile can be kept centrally and sent out as needed. Companies could rebalance their global cash holdings every six hours. The result: a significant decrease in working capital requirements.

What may start at a global level for large firms could spread quickly, and not just in the B2B space. Why not pay every employee every day for actual hours worked? Payday lenders make a fortune today tiding people over between weekly paychecks. Why not bill customers daily for electricity usage? Electric utilities today wait 30 days to bill you and wait another 30 days for you to pay. The gap between when you use power and when you pay for it can be up to 60 days.

This sounds preposterous except that the math pencils out. At 5% interest rates, a $10 debt over the course of a year generates $0.50 in interest at current rates, which is about $0.04 per month. Each week of "float" you can save (or earn) is worth roughly $0.01. Given that payment costs on Ethereum Layer 2 networks are now routinely below $0.01, the answer is yes, it is worth it.

Transaction costs are headed in only one direction, which means the economically efficient size and frequency of managing your money only gets more granular.

We used to buy music. Then we downloaded it. Now we stream it. Once upon time, the idea of streaming music on demand – and all the bandwidth and computation needed to do that – was seen as ridiculous. Now, it is barely a drop in the bucket compared to video streaming. There is no reason to think payments are different.

As with all technological revolutions, the starting point is always "your mess for less." Which is to say that the first thing people will do is take existing processes (like monthly billing) and just run them cheaper. Then it becomes your mess, but faster. Eventually, companies start re-imagining those processes in light of the new economics.

Slashing working capital requirements could rearrange the economy in surprising ways. Many companies keep enough cash on hand to cover 12 weeks of expenses. U.S. firms have, in aggregate, about $2 trillion of cash on hand and $2.8 trillion in working capital loans outstanding. Shifting to a financial streaming model could literally free up trillions in capital for new investment.

It could also change people's behavior. The longer the time gap between an action and a reward, the harder it can be to get people to respond. Incentives for things like using services or energy at off-peak times might be much more effective when the payout is immediate. Nobody ever went wrong betting on instant gratification.

Disclaimer: These are the personal views of the author and do not represent the views of EY.