Today’s blog will cover four topics:
A snarky blog to provoke my Stablecoin friends
Let’s get one thing straight: the idea that US and EU shoppers are going to ditch their beloved credit cards for stablecoins is a special kind of fantasy. It’s the kind of magical thinking usually reserved for people who believe juice cleanses are a sustainable diet.
Continue readingMy best guess
Recent media reports have ignited speculation about the entry of Amazon and Walmart into the stablecoin. The dominant narrative surrounds consumer use and the desire to endrun card processing fees. IMHO this perspective represents a fundamental misreading of the strategic calculus for a global supply chain “masters” and overlooks the far larger, more complex lucrative prize: the radical optimization of its global treasury operations. An “On Us” that spans the globe and encompasses all of amazon’s marketplaces, AWS services, Advertising,… and everything else. A proprietary, closed-loop financial rail that serves as the financial backbone for its vast network.
Continue readingPart 1 – Programmable Settlement Summary
Continue readingStripe’s announcedits acquisition of Privy yesterday, web3 wallet infrastructure platform that enables developers to easily build and integrate secure, self-custodial wallets into their applications with well defined APIs (consistent with everything Stripe does).
IMHO this signals an acceleration of Stripe’s strategy to dominate the intersection of eCom, wallets, Finance and stablecoin, with a likely product focus on embedding user-friendly stablecoin wallets directly into merchant checkouts and developer platforms. This will greatly expand and “juice” stablecoin adoption in eCom, particularly when combined with LINK. While it COULD present a slight challenge to cards, I don’t see near term impact there (per blog last week). US and EU consumers prefer card, merchants do as well (due to governance and customer support), ROW, micro payments, cross-border, small merchant acquiring/payfacs (and other edge UCs are a different story).
Continue readingAn example of how Stablecoins could take off for global consumers with the backing of a BigTech. I view this as a low probability and my purpose of painting this picture is for discussion.
Stablecoins have been a significant focus for my blog over the last 45 days. A quick recap of my 8 blogs on topic
Continue readingBankers View: Stablecoins, Deposits, and the Future of Payments
Summarizing my 20 odd tweets yesterday. Note that I don’t necessarily agree with the banks’ strategy, but I do understand it. Given that most of the press is focused on how Stablecoins will destroy banking, I thought a banker’s view would be a useful counterbalance.
The buzz around stablecoins continues, often painting a picture of banks demise. As a former banker I thought I’d share my view on the topic and explain the bank strategy (as I see it). While stablecoins present novel tech, the notion that they will supplant established retail banking relationships is a bunch of “hooky”. Big banks aren’t just watching from the sidelines; they are best positioned to integrate this new rail, much like they’ve absorbed countless payment innovations before.
Continue readingFollowing up on yesterday’s discussion about the potential for US Banks to issue stablecoins, the fintech world is abuzz after Stripe’s Sessions announcements covering AI and stablecoin. Given Stripe’s massive influence, any move they make warrants attention. The question on many payment strategy executives’ minds: Is Stripe about to unleash stablecoins to circumvent traditional card rails for consumer payments? While the crypto-evangelists might be shouting “yes!”, a more pragmatic and skeptical view suggests this is highly unlikely, at least for the core retail checkout experience.
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