Micro musing: the missing triangle.
The DeepSeek news rocked crypto over the weekend, and the rest of the markets over the past few days — another cool piece of evidence on how this 24/7 market front-runs the world. But let’s leave the nice volatility aside for the tranquillity of stablecoins.
I believe my faithful readers should know I’m fond of this fantastic crypto use case, and perhaps the most widely adopted so far. After all, even Bitcoin started as a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system” and that’s what stablecoins have become.
More or less centralised, focused on individuals or businesses, and even with ridiculous or reasonably sustainable yields — there’s a myriad of varieties to choose from and that’s great because crypto makes them all interoperable.
With roughly $200 billion in total stablecoin circulation supply and growing, this market is under consolidation and strong competitive forces. Trump is forcing US regulators to grapple with this reality and keep control of the dollar’s hegemony.
This policy shift will likely mean crypto OGs will soon have to ask some hard questions about most of these projects, even though there are still plenty of fully decentralised alternatives to choose from—if that’s what one requires.
Meanwhile, you know I’ll be looking into combining the best of both worlds as that’s where the sweet spot tends to be. Traditional banking always had strong moats, but digital technology is about to usher a new, now legal revolution.
Native crypto devs will continue to focus on the next primitives, but for this industry to leave a mark in the world we need it to reach the people who need it the most. So here’s to a 2025 of strong stablecoin distribution!
Chart art: the missing $593 billion.
One thing: the missing stack.
Matt Brown wrote a great post on “stablecoins in 1,000 words”.
Tweet tip: the missing piece.
Meme moment: the missing FUD.
FV Bank: the missing animal spirit.
