It doesn't matter the day or time. There's no banking hours. I open my Alby Go wallet, connected to my own Lightning node, and send BTC to my daughter in Venezuela. She swaps it directly to USDT in her Aqua wallet and can convert them to bolivars whenever she needs, as if they were cash dollars. In Venezuela, USDT is understood and used. Even some stores accept it directly. I mention this example because it's my experience, but it happens similarly in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nigeria, India, etc.: there's demand for dollars, not everyone can open a dollar account, and cash dollars aren't always available.

That's the starting point. Stablecoins work because they arrive. They're not perfect, and it's best to say it clearly. They're not native money: they're IOUs from an issuer that promises to maintain the 1:1 peg and return the value if you ask. That issuer can make mistakes, have poor accounting, or comply with an order and freeze your funds. Plus, they extend the fiat model, which depends on institutions and their ability to issue money, potentially infinitely and out of thin air. Even so, they win on efficiency: they allow paying and collecting when the bank isn't available or puts up barriers, they cross borders with less friction, and they reach more people faster. They fit into most people's mental framework: "dollars" that are used as always, just that now they move faster.

It makes more sense this way: when your currency wears out every week, you seek a practical refuge. You collect in something "stable," convert just enough for day-to-day needs, and keep going. And where "everything seems to work"—the United States and Europe—they're also used, but for another reason: efficiency and control of time. By control of time, I mean collecting and paying when it suits you, without depending on banking hours, end-of-month closings, or holidays. If you collect by card, you pay high commissions, you can suffer chargebacks, and the money takes days to arrive. An international transfer adds expensive currency exchange and fixed fees. Not to mention international platforms with their fees and blocks. With a well-integrated stablecoin, you can pay fees to freelancers in other countries in minutes. It acts as a bridge between two monetary and banking realities: you operate in digital dollars or euros, and on the other side, your collaborator converts to their local currency when it suits them. Less cost, less paperwork, less waiting.

Now, the kitchen. Today, most of these movements go through Ethereum, Tron, and Solana. In Ethereum, when more people come in, commissions rise and small payments stop making sense. That's why many go to Tron, which is usually cheaper and simpler, but in exchange depends on very few operators. Solana prioritizes speed, but its more centralized design causes instability during usage spikes. The pattern repeats: to cheapen, you concentrate control. And as these networks grow, they become less efficient for daily use: "queues" appear (transactions waiting for confirmation or withdrawals that take time), costs rise, times lengthen, and any incident affects millions at once.

Plus, for a payment to work, both parties need the chip from the same issuer. If you have USDT (Tether) and the other party only accepts USDC (Circle), you can't pay directly; you have to go through an exchange or intermediary. And if that company puts up a barrier, by error or by order, the payment stalls. Result: concentrated power and a single point of failure.

Meanwhile, the political environment has gone from indifference to normalization. In the United States, the GENIUS Act was approved, a federal framework for payment stablecoins that requires 1:1 reserves and compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act. Against that backdrop, Tether presented USA₮ (USAT), its "digital dollar" for the U.S. market, aligned with GENIUS and operated with regulated providers like Anchorage Digital, with institutional reserve management (for example, Cantor Fitzgerald). In Europe, CaixaBank, ING, UniCredit, KBC, Danske Bank, DekaBank, SEB, Raiffeisen, and Banca Sella have established an entity in the Netherlands to issue a euro stablecoin regulated under MiCA, with an electronic money license and goal of instant payments, low cost, and available anytime starting from the second half of 2026. For the end user, this means more accessibility and more acceptance. It also means more volume and, therefore, more pressure on these same infrastructures (Ethereum, Tron, Solana) that already suffer when traffic grows. Regulation accelerates adoption. Adoption exposes the technical seams. If everyone enters through the door of the "dollar that arrives," the queues don't take long to form.

That's where the Trojan horse appears. They enter through what they already know: "dollar" or "euro" in a wallet, in token form. That familiar wrapper facilitates digital adoption. On these rails, it works better: more efficient, more reach, more problems solved than the inherited banking system. When rising commissions and the fragility of these networks emerge, the natural step is to change roads. That road exists and has two levels. The settlement layer is the Bitcoin Network, with its immutable time chain. On top, the payment layer is Lightning. Bitcoin settles value impartially, without favoritism or intermediaries that impose conditions.

Lightning transfers value quickly and at very low cost, and without interbank credit in between. This means you don't depend on banks lending to each other to square your payment: settlement happens between the parties, without third-party promises in the middle. Lightning enables nearly instant value transfer at very low cost, and improves with use because channels and routes grow. Taproot Assets adds what was missing for stablecoins: issuing and routing "digital dollars" over Lightning. This eliminates the joke of "gas" that spikes with congestion, you don't depend on few operators or networks that stop during peaks, and you no longer need to share an issuer. Apps like Strike already demonstrate it in practice: you send from Issuer A (for example, USD or USDT via Tron), receive from Issuer B (for example, local fiat or BTC), with fluid swaps and remittances in seconds, settling on Bitcoin/Lightning, although under Strike's custody as intermediary. Taproot Assets takes that scheme one step further: native issuance and movement on Bitcoin, routing over Lightning, and self-custody (you control your keys). This provides resistance to stops or congestions in account-based networks, that is, systems where addresses maintain balances that update as in Ethereum/Tron/Solana, and eliminates custodian risk; but it doesn't eliminate issuer risk (it can deny redemptions or blacklist addresses for compliance).

The practical result is money that arrives without queues, without a single off switch, and without the toll of using the same issuer brand. If you want to fine-tune privacy and efficiency, pieces like Spark, RGB, or Ark help without sacrificing decentralization. Core idea: Bitcoin settles; the edges compete. In short, Lightning scales in reverse: the startup requires liquidity and adjustments, but as the network densifies, more routes and more liquidity appear in each segment. This makes more payments complete on the first try. Before, a send could require several attempts to find a path with sufficient balance; with more channels and funds available, retries decrease and immediate deliveries increase, and the marginal cost falls. It's not magic, it's well-oriented network effects. Where other infrastructures become more expensive and fragile as they grow, Lightning becomes more reliable and cheaper the more it's used. It also changes the power map. Every dollar that leaves a bank deposit to "live" in a fully backed issuer reduces the deposit base of fractional reserve banking and its ability to create credit. At the same time, authorities tolerate these issuances because they help move the economy: they allow payments to flow where the bank doesn't reach and channel savings toward short-term public debt and deposits. But that tolerance has fragility. If they're used to evade sanctions or capital controls, if custody failures or dubious reserves appear, if the banking lobby pressures over deposit flight, or if they clash with the agenda of a public digital currency, support can be withdrawn. For the user, the risk boils down to one phrase: the issuer can stop, prioritize, or deny. It's wise to understand it and act accordingly.

And what about Bitcoin? It ends up in the position that favors it most. Neutral settlement layer and non-confiscable if you custody your keys well: no issuer can freeze or reverse. The more "stable" payments are routed through Lightning, the more useful volume circulates on the network, routes improve, and liquidity increases. That strengthens the infrastructure everyone uses. In parallel, fiat money loses purchasing power over time, while a payment network increasingly used and with more capital circulating over Bitcoin tends to attract demand to the asset that settles it. When the user decides to save long-term, they don't have to change roads. They just change the denomination in the same wallet. The day they click, the transition will be natural.

I return to the beginning. In my house, it happens every month: I send via my Lightning node from Alby Go, my daughter swaps to USDT in Aqua and sells for bolivars in Caracas. I don't idealize anything. I assume the political risk of the issuer and the volatility of the hard asset on the other side. I use what solves each segment of the path: first the familiar wrapper of the dollar in token form, then the rails that work best. In the short term, many stablecoins will continue moving on networks that are already more efficient than inherited banking. In the medium term, that flow will migrate to the best rails, Bitcoin and Lightning. Over time, that bitcoinized infrastructure will facilitate the final step from "digital dollars" to saving in BTC. Bridge → rails → Bitcoin → hyperbitcoinization.

Original article in spanish on my webpage: https://hablemosdebitcoin.xyz/stablecoins-sobre-lightning/