The Dollar’s Next Expansion

The U.S. dollar has always played a dual role in the global economy. Inside the United States, it functions primarily as a currency, a medium of exchange. Outside the United States, particularly in emerging markets, it functions as an asset, a store of value, a hedge against inflation, and a unit of account more trusted than local money. Tokenization is amplifying this asymmetry.

1. Stablecoins as a new vector for dollarization

For decades, access to dollars outside the U.S. was constrained by banking rails, correspondent relationships, capital controls, and physical cash logistics. Stablecoins remove many of these frictions. With stablecoins:

• Dollars can be acquired instantly

• Held digitally without a U.S. bank account

• Moved globally at near-zero marginal cost

• Integrated directly into local financial and commercial activity

This has profound implications. In many emerging economies, the dollar is not used for day-to-day spending because it is convenient, but because it is trusted. Stablecoins make that trust programmable and accessible at scale. As a result, they accelerate de facto dollarization without requiring formal policy alignment or physical infrastructure.

From a U.S. perspective, this strengthens the dollar’s global role at a time when the U.S. faces structural fiscal pressure, including a national debt now exceeding $36 trillion. While tokenization does not “solve” debt directly, it reinforces sustained global demand for dollar-denominated instruments, liquidity, and settlement - all of which support the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency.

2. Why this matters more outside the U.S.

This dynamic is often misunderstood because the dollar’s role differs by geography.

• In the U.S., dollars are abundant and low-yielding

• In many parts of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, dollars are scarce, valuable, and defensive assets

For individuals and businesses in these regions, holding dollars is less about payments and more about preserving purchasing power. Stablecoins reduce the friction of acquiring and holding dollars, effectively embedding U.S. monetary assets into foreign economies through software rather than policy. This is not coercive dollarization - it is market-driven adoption, enabled by technology.

3. Implications for the eurodollar market

Stablecoins also intersect with the long-standing eurodollar system - the offshore market for U.S. dollar liabilities held outside the United States. Historically, the eurodollar market relied on:

• Offshore banks

• Correspondent banking networks

• Interbank credit creation

Stablecoins introduce a parallel mechanism:

• Dollar-denominated liabilities issued on-chain

• Settlement without traditional intermediaries

• Near-instant global transferability

In effect, stablecoins represent a digitized extension of the eurodollar system, but with radically lower friction and greater transparency. As this on-chain dollar layer grows, it reshapes how offshore dollar liquidity is created, distributed, and accessed, especially in regions underserved by traditional banking.

4. Why corporates care: the Walmart example

Beyond sovereign and macro considerations, tokenized dollars are also compelling for large global enterprises. Consider a company like Walmart, which generates hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue and operates across dozens of countries. Traditional payment rails impose significant costs on businesses of this scale, including interchange fees, settlement delays, and trapped working capital. A tokenized dollar changes the equation:

• Payments settle instantly

• Treasury balances can earn yield

• Cross-border flows become software-native

• Transaction costs compress dramatically at scale

For a company with Walmart’s volume, even small percentage improvements in settlement efficiency or fee reduction translate into billions of dollars in annual impact. Tokenized dollars are not just a financial innovation - they are a treasury and payments infrastructure upgrade.

5. Tokenization is not just about assets - it’s about plumbing

The common thread across sovereign finance, emerging markets, eurodollars, and global corporations is infrastructure.

Tokenization:

• Extends the reach of the dollar without new physical systems

• Makes dollar access programmable and composable

• Aligns with market incentives rather than policy mandates

The result is a financial system where dollar-denominated value moves more freely, settles faster, and integrates more deeply into global economic activity. This is the macro backdrop against which rwaUSD exists. The question is no longer whether dollars will be tokenized. The question is how that value becomes usable, composable, and productive on-chain - without fragmenting liquidity or excluding entire classes of participants. That is the problem rwaUSD is designed to solve.