What Shipping Containers Did for Trade, Stablecoins Can Do for Money

In 1956, a trucking entrepreneur named Malcolm McLean did something quietly radical: he placed 58 identical steel boxes onto a cargo ship in Newark and sent them to Houston. Those boxes, the first standardized shipping containers, didn’t look like a revolution. But they soon rewrote the logic of global commerce.

As economist Marc Levinson chronicled in The Box, this wasn’t just about saving space or time. The genius of the container was its standardization. No matter the cargo, no matter the destination, one set of protocols including fixed dimensions, stackability, and compatibility with cranes, trucks, and ports suddenly governed a previously fragmented industry. Costs fell. Transit times collapsed. Theft and spoilage plummeted. Global trade surged from $100 billion in 1960 to over $25 trillion today, largely because containers allowed goods to move frictionlessly through a universal system.

What the shipping container did for physical goods, stablecoins now promise to do for money.

The recent bipartisan passage of the GENIUS Act and the expected passage of the CLARITY Act in the next few weeks, is the policy equivalent of agreeing on the international container standard. It establishes a framework for dollar-backed stablecoins, digital tokens whose value is pegged 1:1 to U.S. dollars and backed by reserves held in cash or short-term Treasuries. Issuers must meet rigorous disclosure, audit, and consumer-protection requirements. In short, the Act sets the rules to make stablecoins not just safe, but also scalable and interoperable by defining basic regulatory guidelines.

That distinction matters. Because like early maritime trade before containerization, today’s financial system remains fragmented, expensive, and slow. Sending money internationally often takes days, involves multiple intermediaries, and racks up fees, especially for consumers and small businesses. Different ledgers, jurisdictions, and systems don’t talk to each other.

Stablecoins change that. They are programmable, 24/7, borderless instruments that allow dollars to move instantly across platforms, contracts, and geographies. They’re not trying to replace the dollar; they’re trying to standardize its transport, just as containers didn’t replace ships, they made ships dramatically more efficient.

Even before the GENIUS Act, the market for stablecoins was exploding. In 2024, stablecoins processed over $27 trillion in transactions, more than Visa and Mastercard combined. Over 90% of that volume was denominated in U.S. dollars. And, unlike cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, these aren’t speculative assets. They are increasingly the infrastructure of modern financial exchange.

But just like container adoption required more than a clever box, it required regulatory alignment, international buy-in, and standardized protocols, stablecoins need legislative scaffolding to scale securely. The GENIUS and CLARITY Acts provide that scaffolding. This legislation sets a bar that serious, well-capitalized issuers can meet and ensures dollar-backed tokens are trusted, transparent, and functional at scale.

The benefits are profound. For consumers, it means faster and cheaper transactions. For entrepreneurs, it unlocks programmable financial applications. But for the United States, the biggest benefit is macroeconomic and geopolitical: the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts will increase global demand for U.S. dollars.

Every compliant stablecoin must be backed by reserves held in dollars or short-term Treasuries. As stablecoins are adopted globally, for remittances, trade settlement, and digital contracts, they become a continuous engine of demand for dollar-based assets. Morgan Stanley estimates this could generate trillions of dollars in new demand for U.S. government debt, strengthening Treasury markets and lowering borrowing costs.

It also fortifies dollar primacy. In a world where China is pushing a digital yuan and the EU is experimenting with a digital euro, the U.S. must export not just currency, but currency infrastructure. Stablecoins are the shipping containers of monetary influence. If we define the standard, the world will adopt it. If we hesitate, others will fill the vacuum.

To be clear, stablecoins aren’t risk-free. But their risks, such as liquidity mismatches, fraud, systemic exposure, are precisely the kinds of challenges that regulation is designed to manage. The current crypto legislation addresses them with measured oversight. It is neither overbearing nor permissive, it is infrastructural.

The true lesson of the container revolution is this: infrastructure wins not by invention, but by consensus. Once enough actors agreed on the rules, global trade scaled almost automatically. Stablecoins offer the same promise for digital commerce if we codify their standard.

Both the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts are not just about enabling crypto. They are about ensuring the U.S. dollar remains the base layer of global finance in a world that is moving, inevitably, toward digital rails.

The future of money needs a container. We have it. Now we need to standardize it and lead.