Miami Beach, FL — After years of experimentation, cryptocurrencies are today narrowing down to two main uses: commerce and payments.
In a fireside chat at Consensus 2026 in Miami, Tempo go-to-market leader Dan Romero said the industry is adapting to a “barbell” shape, with speculative trading like the Hyperliquid marketplace on one end and stablecoin-based payments gaining traction on the other.
“The things that have worked in the last five years are speculation and stablecoins,” he said. “In the middle, it’s a bit of a wasteland,” he added, describing a number of projects that have struggled to find product-market fit despite years of development and funding.
Romero speaks from experience. Before joining Tempo, he co-founded crypto social app Farcaster, which struggled to gain traction despite heavy venture capital controls and years of hype.
Tempo, a payments-focused blockchain backed by Stripe and Paradigm, is positioning itself firmly on the payments side of that division. Built as a purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain, the network focuses on business needs such as compliance and transaction control, features often missing from public blockchains.
For example, companies can block interactions with certain wallet addresses, a feature intended to reduce regulatory risk, Romero said.
That design reflects a broader shift in how big companies approach cryptocurrencies. Instead of experimenting with tokens, many are adopting stablecoins as backend infrastructure. “It’s plumbing,” the executive said. “But companies like plumbing if it’s better, faster and cheaper.”
Stablecoins are already gaining ground in areas such as remittances. One example cited was cross-border payments between the US and Mexico, where crypto rails now account for an increasing proportion of flows.
The next wave could come from Internet-native companies. Startups, especially those built around AI agents, are likely to default to stablecoins as the easiest way to move money globally, he said, much like Stripe simplified online payments more than a decade ago.
