Every day, about $2.2 trillion in foreign-exchange (FX) transactions carry a risk that the yet-to-be settled side of an agreement won’t meet obligations. But a new paper from Circle Internet Financial and decentralized exchange Uniswap Labs finds that a distributed ledger could solve that problem with simultaneous settlement.

“On-chain FX can offer faster and more affordable transaction processes, as well as greater liquidity and stability,” the paper concludes. The researchers also say remittances – money that people send across international borders – could see their costs cut by 80% through decentralized finance (DeFi). Sending money to people in other countries has always been one of the strongest arguments for crypto, and the paper said the lower costs could translate to $30 billion a year remaining in people’s pockets.

Circle has been making recent waves after it began moving reserves for its USDC stablecoin into a BlackRock fund overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission, with the eventual intention to get the fund into the Federal Reserve's reverse-repo program.