A retail trader in Lagos funding a perpetuals account with $50 in USDC and an institutional desk in the US moving eight figures in USDC into a CFD exchange have almost nothing in common, except one thing: both of them need a way to get that capital onto the platform. Right now, WalletConnect is the only infrastructure layer built to serve both at once.
The range is the point
Look at where onchain perpetuals and CFD platforms sit today. On one end, Hyperliquid and Aave are processing serious volume through fully onchain, wallet-native flows built for crypto-native retail traders funding accounts directly in USDC. On the other end, institutional infrastructure is moving regulated derivatives volume for some of the largest desks in the world, increasingly settled in the same asset. Robinhood sits somewhere in between: mainstream retail, increasingly crypto-curious.
These platforms don't compete for the same user. But they all face the same underlying problem: how do you let capital in, quickly, cheaply, and compliantly, regardless of where that capital already sits, and regardless of whether it's arriving as $50 in USDC or $50 million?
Why one integration matters at this range
WalletConnect connects over 900 million users and 700+ wallets and exchange accounts, from MetaMask to Binance, and Bybit through a single integration. That's not a retail statistic or an institutional statistic. It's both, because the same connection standard serves a self-custodial wallet holding $200 in USDC and an exchange-custodied account holding a fund's working capital, also parked in USDC because it's the most widely held and widely trusted stablecoin in the market.
For a platform trying to capture volume across that entire spectrum, building separate integrations for each type of capital source isn't realistic. One integration that reaches everywhere the capital already sits, and speaks the language of the asset that capital is actually held in, is the only approach that scales. That's true on the way in, and it's just as true on the way out: see why payout speed decides retention for what that looks like once a position resolves.
Why USDC specifically matters as the reference asset
USDC has become the default unit of account for platforms trying to serve both retail and institutional users at once. A few reasons that matter for a CFD or perpetuals platform specifically:
- Liquidity depth. USDC trades tightly against fiat on every major exchange, so converting in and out rarely moves the price against the user.
- Issuer transparency. Regular attestations and a public reserve breakdown make USDC easier for an institutional compliance desk to sign off on than a less transparent stablecoin, which is exactly the question the GENIUS Act raises for US platforms and MiCA raises for EU-facing ones.
- Cross-chain availability. USDC is natively issued on most of the chains prediction markets, perpetuals platforms, and CFD exchanges actually run on, which reduces the number of bridge hops a deposit needs to take.
- Familiarity. Retail users researching where to hold stablecoins overwhelmingly land on USDC first, so it's usually already sitting in the wallet a new user connects with.
$400 billion in 2025, and growing
WalletConnect moved over $400 billion across the network in 2025, the same year Ingenico brought stablecoin payments to physical checkout on this exact infrastructure. That volume didn't come from one segment of users. It came from the full range: retail wallets funding small positions in USDC, institutional flows settling large ones in the same asset, and everything in between. Stablecoin holdings are projected to reach $730 billion, according to S&P Global research, and a majority of that supply already sits with the kind of users platforms are trying to reach, much of it already in USDC specifically. The network's scale is covered in more depth here.
The cost of only reaching part of the market
A platform built to capture only retail deposits, or only institutional flows, is leaving the other half of the addressable capital untouched. Worse, most platforms don't build for either segment well: they build a narrow, chain-specific deposit flow that serves neither a retail user holding USDC on the "wrong" chain nor an institution that needs clean settlement and reconciliation data on every USDC transfer. We cover exactly what that friction costs in the deposit rail problem every CFD platform has.
WalletConnect is built to be the single point of access regardless of where on that spectrum a user or institution sits. That's the case for treating deposit infrastructure as core product, not a checkout detail: the platforms that solve it once, for the full range of capital and the asset it's actually held in, are the ones capturing volume the rest of the market is leaving on the table.
FAQ
Why does WalletConnect focus on USDC as an example rather than stablecoins generally?
USDC is the most widely held, most transparent, and most cross-chain-available stablecoin among the users and institutions WalletConnect connects. It's a representative example, not an exclusive one. WalletConnect Payment Products routes any token in, and your chosen token out, so a platform isn't locked into a single stablecoin.
Does a platform need separate integrations for retail and institutional users?
No. That's the core argument here. One WalletConnect integration reaches self-custodial retail wallets and institutional accounts alike, because both connect through the same 700+ wallet and exchange standard.
Is this only relevant for crypto-native platforms?
No. Traditional CFD and brokerage platforms exploring stablecoin deposit rails face the exact same fragmentation problem, and the same single-integration fix applies to them too.