Stripe, a payments company that will have a total transaction volume of $1.40 trillion in 2024, said in its annual letter published on Thursday that stablecoins were one of the most innovative areas of the "internet economy". In their annual letter, Patrick and John Collison, co-founders of Stripe, which bought Bridge, a stablecoin start-up, for $1.10 billion last October, noted that stablecoins represent an "improvement" in the "basic usability of money", just as paper money is an improvement on coins. "Stablecoins have four important characteristics compared to the status quo," the Stripe founders wrote. "They make money flow cheaper, they make it flow faster, they are decentralized and open (so they can be used globally from day one), and they are programmable."