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With Circle's IPO ongoing and a wrap of yesterday's first Stablecon event in NYC, it's the perfect time to talk about Stablecoins.
If you haven't heard of them then the Rock Ann A Rock Quip is probably guaranteed. But I think it's a peaceful life.
But what about the misunderstandings from people you know?
“To say Stablecoins is simply a new form of payment is like saying the Internet is a better version of fax machines,” said Spencer Spinnell, Americas VP at Circle.
Sitting next to Spinnell was Catherine Gu, head of institutional customer solutions at Visa. She is dull: “Whether you're a bank or an asset manager or any kind of financial institution, I think everyone needs a stable strategy in 2025. That's kind of essential.”
You may recall comments from Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan in February. Next, we saw in the WSJ report that several large commercial banks are considering issuing joint stubcoins.
The profits of Stablecoin Giant Tether ($1 billion for the first quarter) are juicy for those looking at the entryway, but M0 CEO Luca Prosperi said Tradfi players want to focus on the distribution layer.
MasterCard's Raj Dhamodharan said the key abstracts the complexity of multiple steel coins and networks while solving end-to-end utilities. In and out of Fiat is part of it (as seen in the partnership between payment giants and MoonPay).
Industry watchers argue that not only payment rail, but Stablecoins is rewiring the back-end financial infrastructure. They are the foundational layer for tokenizing anything.
Financial companies that are leaning towards Stablecoins/Tokenized RWAS (such as Ie BlackRock, Franklin Templeton) should look at the “huge opportunity” for the so-called Shadowbanks to drive away the bank itself.
Jonathan Steinberg, CEO of WisdomTree, is a $120 billion asset manager that provides clients with a platform to access to tokenized funds and assets.
“We hope that the user experience will improve, which will take away money from traditional banking systems,” Steinberg pointed out. “For large banks, how they handle this new platform, blockchain, is probably their single most important question.”
Though trillions of stable market capitalization forecasts are thrown at (up from today's $235 billion), chain analytics CEO Jonathan Levin looks at the segment's outlook differently.
“I think Stablecoins failed if we replaced ACH and FEDWIRE,” he said. “If a new business model on the Internet is unlocked (and) and a new kind of payment that cannot occur otherwise (and), Stablecoins will succeed.”
Finally, it appears that they first reported some news from Stablecon.
