Crypto’s ‘barbell’: speculation and stablecoin payments drive adoption, Tempo’s Romero says
Stablecoins are quietly powering real-world money flows as other crypto experiments than speculative trading have failed to scale, Romero said at Consensus 2026.
What to know:
- Crypto usage is consolidating around two core areas: speculative trading and stablecoin payments, said Dan Romero, Stripe-backed blockchain Tempo’s go-to market lead.
- Tempo is leaning into payments, building a network for enterprises with compliance and control in focus.
- Stablecoins are gaining traction in real-world use cases like remittances and global payouts, he said.
“The things that have worked over the last five years are speculation and stablecoins,” he said. “In the middle, it’s a bit of a wasteland,” he added, describing a slew of projects that have struggled to find product-market fit despite years of development and funding.
Romero is speaking from experience. Before joining Tempo, he was the co-founder of crypto social app Farcaster, which struggled to gain traction despite hefty venture capital checks and years of hype.
Tempo, a payments-focused blockchain backed by Stripe and Paradigm, is positioning itself firmly on the payments side of that divide. Built as a purpose-specific layer-1 blockchain, the network focuses on enterprise needs like compliance and transaction control — features often missing from public blockchains.
