An account on X asked the following: what gets V/MA stock to work? is there a wall of worry (stablecoins etc) they can climb, or another "cant disprove" short?

Sharing my answer here in case it’s helpful:

I don't have a great answer to what will get them to work beyond consumer spending hanging in there. Digital payments penetration story more played out in the US so I think macro more important to their volume growth. MA more intl exposure than V. VAS doing well but a different story than offline-to-online.

I don't think stablecoins create a material disprovable narrative anytime soon - existing agentic commerce protocols keep existing payments ecosystem in place and I don't see that changing anytime soon. And true consumer payments stablecoin adoption remains pretty low. And consumer adoption will be challenging. If anything, I could see agentic becoming a narrative tailwind especially since V/MA are making smart moves to put themselves at the center of identifying/verifying agents for payments.

Some of the V/MA data on US penetration and consumer-based stablecoin payment volume is included in here in case it's of interest: substack.com/@ottavi/p-…

Other viewpoints are welcomed!