Inside the Stablecoin stampede, as mainstream financial giants rush to cash in on the crypto coin
Stablecoins processed $33 trillion last year — 20 times the amount of transactions that PayPal did. And now, financial giants like BlackRock, credit cards like Visa and crypto ventures like World Liberty Financial are racing to get in on the cryptocurrency, which allows money to be transferred instantly and with minimal fees.At least, that is the verdict from a gathering of heavyweights at the Future Investment Initiative in Miami, where I interviewed Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Witkoff and Maja Vujinovic, CEO of Digital Assets at FG Nexus, about how the digital asset will transform our financial systems.Stablecoins, which are pegged to the dollar and designed to be less volatile than, say, Bitcoin, carved out a prominent role at FII Miami this year as sovereign wealth funds, family offices and asset managers look to get more exposure to lower-risk cryptocurrencies.“Do I think the biggest banks in the world are thinking about whether they should launch a stablecoin? Yeah, I know they are,” Garlinghouse told me.JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citi are in talks to launch a joint stablecoin in part because they worry they are being supplanted by the new technology, according to recent reports — and Garlinghouse believes this is just the beginning.“You’re seeing CIOs and CFOs at Fortune 2000 companies saying, ‘Hey, are we using stablecoins? Could we be using stablecoins?’ And that’s going to continue to happen,” Garlinghouse adds.He points to the Genius Act’s passage last summer, which set rules about who can issue stablecoins and how they’re overseen, as well as the success of early adopters.Ripple itself is an example of how quickly a company can benefit.
The XRP-focused payments company was minting 20% of a rival coin, Circle’s USDC, before deciding 13 months ago to launch its own stablecoin instead.“We found if we’re the number-one minter on the network, why don’t we look at actually doing thi...