stablenomics weekly digest #1

stablecoin wars, bridge x visa, circle payment network and disruption or interoperability

May 04, 2025

Hi!

Welcome to the first edition of the stablenomics weekly digest. In today’s piece:

Stablecoin wars
Disruption or interoperability
a16z guide to stablecoins
Circle Payment Network
Podcast for your morning commute

Stablecoin wars

Are we witnessing the beginning of a new era of financial warfare? Stripe and Revolut are expected to introduce their own stablecoins soon. This clearly raises the stakes. As Christian Catalini points out in Forbes’s piece:

industry watchers fully expect Revolut and Stripe to unveil coins of their own—a smart defensive move before the modular stablecoin stack lets rivals skate straight into their core business.

Will traditional banks, with their direct access to dollars, dominate the battlefield?

When it’s time to wrap dollar liabilities, banks and other heavyweight financial institutions will get the crisp ribbon; everyone else is left with scotch tape and yesterday’s newspaper. The logic is simple: the closer you are to the central-bank vault, the lower your cost of minting digital dollars.

ChatGPT’s interpretation of stablecoin wars

Disruption or interoperability

I liked Brady Dale’s article about stablecoins. I’ve worked in crypto for a few years and whenever my family asks me what crypto is, I say it will integrate with the current financial system rather than replace it. I’d love to see it fully replace traditional finance (as I worked in traditional finance before), but that seems unlikely given the size of that market. It looks like someone from the Atlantic Council agrees with me.

But Ananya Kumar, of the Atlantic Council, reads Circle's goals modestly. "A goal here is to create interoperability and reduce frictions," she said. She doesn't see an imminent threat to SWIFT.
Reality check: "There's something like $1.8 quadrillion in value when it comes to global payments," Kumar says. "The volumes are far from this transplanting of SWIFT happening."

Worth a read this week

a16z's guide to stablecoins. This comprehensive guide by a16z breaks down stablecoins from the ground up. Why they exist, their mechanics, and their transformative potential. A foundational read for anyone involved in crypto.
What Stripe’s Bridge acquisition means for fintech and stablecoins by a16z
Good Chris Dixon’s quote about stablecoins mentioned in the article:

He describes them as “the WhatsApp moment for money,” observing that they’re our first real shot at doing for money what email did for communication: make it open, instant, and borderless.

Bridge launching stablecoin card issuing with Visa.
Circle Payment Network whitepaper (longer deep dive on it this week).
Stablecoins - the infrastructure opportunity

The landscape of providers is certainly evolving at an astonishing rate. Today, categories are fluid and we see companies also vertically integrating to varying degrees either building in-house or through acquisition – for example, on/off-ramp provider MoonPay recently acquired orchestration platform, Iron.

I'm curious about how things will look in 3 years, especially with the stablecoin wars.