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4 Nov 2025 Cheeky Pint Stablecoin special: Zach Abrams (Bridge) and Henri Stern (Privy)
“You have a business in the US and then you have a business in Brazil. And in order to move money from the US to Brazil, because of the way your entities are set up, you need to move it from the US to Ireland, Ireland to Singapore, Singapore to Brazil.”
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- 4 Nov 2025
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…'re going to want the underlying economics of the stablecoin. And importantly, this has not been the case up to now where it's mostly been USDC and Tether is like where most stablecoincoin balance is. And it was all USDC all Tether for a long time. And that was because the perceived risk of issuing a stablecoin, creating a stablecoin, doing that was really high. And we then over the last basically year have been building this open issuance platform that makes it really easy for any platform to come to us to issue their own stablecoins so that they can access the underlying economic benefits. And they can control the money on top of which whatever financial experience they want is built. So who is issuing their own stablecoin and who should issue their own stablecoin? Who listening to this should be like, “I should issue a stablecoin”? I mean everybody who's sitting on top of money, they should issue a stablecoin. That's the market, is all money at rest. And today we're issuing stablecoins with Phantom, we're issuing stablecoins with MetaMask. We're issuing stablecoin for Hyperliquid. These are all the leading crypto wallets in the first two cases and a trading platform in the third case. Yeah, this has been an interesting duopoly that we've seen. One of the things that we find really important is to serve both traditional businesses who are otherwise uninterested in crypto other than the benefits that crypto gets them. And then crypto businesses, and I think both are going to be big businesses. I mean one of them already are, and crypto businesses will continue to grow, but I think it's really important to serve both, because you have early adopters in the crypto businesses who are the first to do these things that then set the rails for this is how it's done for everyone else. And I think GENIUS has at least opened it up so that you have a lot more traditional businesses engaging as early adopters and willing to be early adopters of the tech itself. Yeah, like what we see on the adoption curve is you had a lot of the crypto businesses, the Phantoms, the MetaMasks coming and issuing stablecoins first. We very quickly see the fintechs coming after them. And this is like any of those folks who are building a global neobank. They're sitting on top of stablecoins, they're sitting on top of millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions of dollars of stablecoins, and they can literally just swap them out and all of a sudden earn 4% on all of those balances. It is extremely economically rational for them to do that. Is the yield the only reason why you would want to do it as a business sitting on a balance? ll of a sudden earn 4% on all of those balances. It is extremely economically rational for them to do that. Is the yield the only reason why you would want to do it as a business sitting on a balance? No. The other really big reason is that then you control your money. And that manifests in two ways. So one is, let's say you want to build on a specific blockchain. Let's say you want to build on Tempo, or you want to build on ARC, or you want to build on Sui or you want to build on Aptos or what have you. If it's your stablecoin, you can guarantee that it will be available to you. Or maybe you want to build your own blockchain, you can guarantee that your asset will be available wherever you move. And then the second thing is that you control all of the fundamental economics of it. So right now a lot of stablecoins like Tether for instance, charges burn fees when you move out of that stablecoin. (00:54:07): So let's say you build a giant platform on top of a stablecoin, and then over time that stablecoin changes the economic game. And now all of a sudden in order to move in and out of it, there are additional fees. Now all of a sudden to move in and out of it there are delays if you want it free, but if you want it fast, you have to pay more for it. All the economics of building on the platform, it's not that different than being Zynga and building on Facebook and then all of a sudden Facebook is like, “ You're making more money than we are. Why don't we take that money?” So it just reduces general platform dependence, which can be economic but can be roadmap and all those things. But it feels like the leap from “I want to use stablecoins, should I build my own?” This is if you're already convinced that you want to use stablecoins, these are the advantages of building your own. Do you have the pitch for the people who have balances in a Chase account and are generally saying, “Well, I am earning yield, my savings account kind of works”. What's the pitch for the business that is otherwise not using stablecoins at all? So I think that ultimately all corporate treasuries will move into stablecoins. So let's say you're a large global company and you have a business, and I was actually talking to one such company. You have a business in the US and then you have a business in Brazil. And in order to move money from the US to Brazil, because of the way your entities are set up, you need to move it from the US to Ireland, Ireland to Singapore, Singapore to Brazil. Today, that's swift settle, swift settle, swift settle. In the future you should just tokenize your treasury, set up wallets and all balances, click a button and it goes 1, 2, 3, 4 down into the thing. And that should be your own stablecoin because you don't want your balances commingled with everyone else and you want access to the yield. That's a very good analogy where yes, if they’re a corporate treasurer, they then have their own system for managing their treasury. But importantly, people think, won't this be crazy if there are thousands, tens of thousands of stablecoins? Part of the vision is that they're all interoperable, right? m for managing their treasury. But importantly, people think, won't this be crazy if there are thousands, tens of thousands of stablecoins? Part of the vision is that they're all interoperable, right? Yes. There will be. Ultimately these stablecoins will recede into the background purely as infrastructure. And I believe that in a couple years— today you look at a product and you're like, oh, that's a stablecoin balance and that's a dollar balance and it's like another FX out there. And actually there are many because you could have a wallet and in that wallet you could have US dollars and you could have USDC on Solana and USDC on Ethereum and USDC on TRON and so on. So is the right analogy for people… I think when people hear, “Everyone's going to have their own stablecoin.” Currently stablecoins are very different. It's a big thing. They're very hard boundaries between them. Maybe people's mental model should be like, you have money in the bank with different banks and moving money between banks isn't completely instant and trivial, but it's pretty trivial. That's maybe the mental model. And I think it will be completely trivial to move money already from moving money to MetaMask to Phantom with stablecoins we issue, it's a seamless transition. And when you move from one to the other, it settles as cash or mUSD. And that's going to be the case as money pings all around the world when it comes to Stripe and then when it goes to Walmart, then when it goes to Amazon and so on, it will just change shape and be attributed to each of the different entities. How about you? The GENIUS question. How's it changed your life? So we're a software business. In this regard, I feel very grateful compared to both of you. We have a much simpler life than you do and we're not involved in the flow of funds. And so we build software, we build really key management and then everything that comes with it, which enables these digital asset accounts. So what it's really done for us is it's opened up a lot of new business for us of companies who are not willing to engage— Companies being excited— Who are. So much broader US customer base, much broader fintech base and then much larger companies who are now engaging in this. What got you excited about joining Stripe? Many things. So Zach, we have a strong interweaving journey. The first time I met Zach was when he was talking about what Bridge was and we all thought this is a crazy idea, stablecoins are not a thing. The second time I met Zach, I think I was your reference call for Sequoia? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where our joint investor at Sequoia was like, “Do you want to talk to Zach? I feel like it'd be helpful for him to understand what we're like to work with.” And then the third time you were my reference for RIBBIT. And then the fourth time we were doing a lot of work together and I think you had a choice sentence, which was something along the lines of, “In the next two years we will either work together or we will compete very heavily.” And it wasn't said as a threat, it was said as a pure statement of fact, which I think was factual. Because what you guys were building was so close to each other?…
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