Stablecoins Go Mainstream: Inside the New Payments Stack

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 00:00

Hi everyone. We are live now with our episode six of Protocol Roundtable. And today we're speaking about stablecoins going live. My name is Andrei Yurkevich, I'm founding member of Protofire. And today we have very nice lineup of speakers, as always. A couple of them are late, hopefully they will join us. But if not, then we'll have enough content to talk about. So today we will cover the whole cycle of stablecoins.

So we have Kostas from DDSC, who issues the token, cash in, cash out, but it's not a dollar. So he will tell about it, what type of stablecoin he is representing. Now then we have Goldi from Fireblocks. He holds and moves tokens between the institutions. Then we have Eric from Velocity. He keeps it in the company's treasury and settles payments in. And we have Alex from Pulsar. So he runs the wallet where the person receives and holds it. Now we also wait for Pooja from Rain, who runs the card where users can spend a stablecoin in a shop.

Yeah, let's do a round of intros, where our participants will introduce themselves. And when you introduce yourself, please answer three questions. And the first question is: who is your customer? The second question is: give us one number that characterizes the size of your business. And the third one would be: what is the strangest thing that you have seen somebody pay with a stablecoin? So yeah, let's start with Kostas.

Kostas Asimakopoulos, DDSC · 02:08

Hi everybody. First of all, it's a pleasure to be here and be discussing about stablecoins. So I'm Kostas Asimakopoulos. I'm heading partnerships at DDSC. DDSC is a dirham-denominated stablecoin and the only one that has all approvals from the central bank under the payment token framework. Remind me the second question. Sorry, Andrei. I don't have it in front of me.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 02:35

Yeah, who is the customer? Yeah, the second one is the number that characterizes the size of the business. And the third one is the weirdest thing that you have seen somebody paying with stablecoins.

Kostas Asimakopoulos, DDSC · 02:37

Yes, true. Yes.

Kostas Asimakopoulos, DDSC · 02:49

That's a tricky one. Okay. So our customers are actually both institutions and consumers alike. We're enabling both ends, as well as ecosystem players, like exchanges, remittance services, cross-border, and the likes. A number that showcases what we have been doing: we have been live since February. We have already minted more than half a billion dirham. And the weirdest thing I've seen somebody pay with stablecoin. That's a very tricky question. For real, I think I cannot say. Yes.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 03:27

Okay, a backup question for you. The backup question: how do you explain what you do at the family table, and what do they think? And what do they think they do?

Kostas Asimakopoulos, DDSC · 03:39

That's very easy actually, yes.

Kostas Asimakopoulos, DDSC · 03:44

Yes. What I say, first of all, is that we are actually making money movement more efficient, and we do it in a way that they won't, most of the time, realize that something has changed in the back. They will only realize that transaction times are faster, cheaper and the likes. Now, what do they think I do? Currently they think that I'm trading Bitcoin, right?

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 04:07

Okay, yeah, Goldi.

Ran Goldi, Fireblocks · 04:13

So who's my customer? Our customers for Fireblocks, I guess they're anything between a financial institution, a fintech, or even a non-financial company that wants to do digital asset based payments or custody or other types of applications. The number that probably represents Fireblocks, I would say in 2025 we've moved $6 trillion on behalf of our 3,000 clients. So that's a good number for us.

And then the weirdest thing with stablecoins, wow, I'll start by saying that when I started in this business, we used to call these fiat-pegged assets. And I think the weirdest thing I saw someone doing with a fiat-pegged asset: I had a call with a big bank and he was showing me his stablecoin wallet in MetaMask, and he asked, can I move this money? Can I put my stablecoin in my J.P. Morgan account? And he was trying to send it and route it to his account. And I was trying to tell him that's not possible, and he told me, but yes, but J.P. Morgan said they support stablecoins. Well, it doesn't work like this. So maybe it's not the weirdest thing, but that's the weirdest thing I've seen.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 05:39

Okay, yeah, it's a good one. All right, thanks Goldi. Eric.

Eric Queathem, Velocity · 05:45

Hey everyone, good to see you. So Velocity is a stablecoin infrastructure business serving a lot of the similar customers to Fireblocks. Fireblocks also a partner of Velocity. So we help the largest organizations in the world, whether that's a network, an acquirer, an issuer, a fintech, a global business, even a financial institution, both move and store assets onchain. I'd say the number, just 'cause it's fresh, that's kind of most interesting about Velocity: we just raised a $48 million Series A, which is exciting.

And then weirdest thing I've seen, I mean, I think the coolest thing I've seen is we've recently opened up Icelandic krona for a customer, and are moving about half a billion dollars a year into Iceland now to help solve some settlement issues for a very, very big customer. And so maybe not the weirdest, but maybe the most interesting thing I've seen in stablecoins recently.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 06:52

All right, thanks Eric. Alex.

Alex Radu, Pulsar Money · 06:58

Hi everyone, glad to be here. I'm Alex from Pulsar. We are building a global money app. We just launched, so it's a very exciting time for us. Starting with one exciting number would be the amount of people that signed up for the app. We have 30,000 people that signed up on the waitlist before the app, and right now we are letting the people in. And we are really happy to see the first traction, people being happy about this. We are improving the stuff and so on, and that's great.

And yeah, our customer is... we are building this mostly for global earners, that's earn money in one currency, spend in another. We have high concentrations of people in Europe and Southeast Asia. So these are the two main markets for us. Yeah, we are connecting basically stablecoin balances, virtual bank accounts, multiple other on and off ramps in local markets and so on. So yeah, bring all of this into one app and getting some good rates for users.

We are also working with a lot of great companies, and we just launched Pulsar on Arc as one of the main use cases and applications on the chain alongside the great ecosystem, and we are really excited about the Arc ecosystem and the use cases that can be built with StableFX and other core differentiators on our side.

And yeah, the last question is quite tricky, but really fun. In regards to one of the weirdest things that we've seen paid by stablecoins, I would say paying for a JPEG and buying some tokens associated to a joke...

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 08:49

Okay.

Alex Radu, Pulsar Money · 08:50

would not count, because that's not weird. We've all done that.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 08:54

Yeah, it's very weird. Very, very weird. Yeah, okay. Awesome. Thanks, Alex. So last but not least, Pooja, Rain.

Alex Radu, Pulsar Money · 08:57

Yeah, yeah. Thanks.

Pooja Shah, Rain · 09:05

Awesome. Great to be here and good to see everyone. So I'm Pooja, I'm the head of product at Rain. Rain is a stablecoin infrastructure platform. Our flagship product is stablecoin-backed cards, but we've also expanded into a number of other verticals this year, including money movement, wallets, stablecoin issuance, and earn products as well. Really building the full stack of infrastructure that companies need if they're planning to launch a stablecoin program.

Our customers are businesses sort of in the category of Pulsar, similar companies that just want to build really compelling and novel financial experiences for end users who are based around the world. Our metric, I guess, our compelling metric is Rain is a Visa and Mastercard principal member. We have millions of end cardholders globally. And because we are directly participating in the Visa and Mastercard networks, our cards are accepted at more than 175 million merchant locations in 220 countries and territories. So really global reach.

In terms of the weirdest stablecoin payment I've seen, so this is definitely not the weirdest. I think it's one of the most beautiful and sweetest ones that I've seen. It was the first one that came to mind, though, because it was very recent. We're working on a new integration on the team. And the engineer who led that integration for us, [...]. And as part of just the first test transaction to prove that our integration was successful, he donated to a [...] nonprofit, which was very sweet. And it was really obviously cool to see that that worked. So yeah, weird things and also inspiring things. And there's a lot of cool stuff that happens in our world.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 11:02

Awesome. Thanks, Pooja. So my first serious question is for everyone. So a couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with an early stage VC. And what he says that a16z crypto raises 2.2 billion, Paradigm raised 1.2 billion, [unclear] raises 1 billion, Dragonfly 650, Framework 400. But from his point of view, what he sees on the early stage in the market, in the early stage of the companies, are mostly stablecoins and cards.

And the question for you guys: do you think that this sector, payments, cards, is big enough to absorb all this huge money that the big venture capital companies raised? What are still the problems that are not solved in this sector? Let's start with Eric, because you raised money from Dragonfly and you just raised a round, congrats, and you probably know how Dragonfly is going to use all this money.

Eric Queathem, Velocity · 12:03

Mm-hmm.

Eric Queathem, Velocity · 12:08

Thanks.

Eric Queathem, Velocity · 12:13

Yeah, I think when I look at the space, I think top-tier Web3 investors has become pretty concentrated. There's three, maybe four, who kind of dominate and are leading most interesting deals. I do think there's a lot of innovation happening, but it's become at the intersection of something else, right? If you're doing something in stablecoins, it needs to have more real-world applications, not just a DeFi audience. If you're doing some form of lending or other DeFi protocol, it needs to have application for a new audience that's kind of not being served today.

And so I think the reality is they're raising these funds both because Dragonfly has great assets in the portfolio, like Rain and ourselves, who hopefully they'll continue to deploy capital in as we raise future rounds. So part of it, I think, is backing the portfolios and continue to grow with them over time. But also starting to invest at the intersection of where Web3 is going and other places. So you're seeing these funds almost rebrand a little bit, and starting to do more broader fintech, certainly a lot in the AI space.

And so I would expect these funds will deploy the capital, right? I don't think any of these funds are gonna be returning capital. So yeah, I think they have strong conviction. Clearly their LPs have strong conviction. We've seen 86% of all investment in the VC space go to AI this year. So clearly all of those funds, for the most part, are looking for exposure into a broader kind of macro thesis. But I think also are still hyper specialized and bring a lot of unique value to businesses who are building onchain.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 14:01

Awesome. Pooja.

Pooja Shah, Rain · 14:07

Yeah, I definitely agree with what Eric said. I think that there is a lot, because this, I mean, this industry, for those of us who've been in it for a long time, it feels like it's been a long time, and maybe there aren't that many new ideas to invest in. But I think as stablecoins are going mainstream, which is kind of the focus of this conversation, there are so many more really specialized opportunities to build valuable businesses, to target a number of different use cases and needs that people have.

And I think most of us here probably believe that stablecoins, that that's gonna be the new form of money that we expect most people will be interacting with at some point in the future. And if you think about that, there are so many pieces of infrastructure and solutions that are needed to bring that to all of the different payment use cases that people are interacting with today. So I think it makes a lot of sense. I'm glad that these funds continue to raise and to deploy capital in the space.

To Eric's point about how so much capital has been deployed into the AI sector, we've also seen, I think the most practical intersection between the crypto space and the AI space is in agentic payments. And also a lot of people believe those payments should occur on stablecoin rails. So I think there's a lot to build, and as both of these industries grow, there will be a lot of new and exciting opportunities and people building really creative products.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 15:45

All right, Kostas, what's your take?

Kostas Asimakopoulos, DDSC · 15:49

Sure. Actually, Pooja touched upon it. I think that there's a convergence between what we are doing on the stablecoin space and the AI space. Everybody's looking at agentic payments. But you also asked if there is room for all this capital to be utilized in the space. Having experience from the traditional payment space, for me it's very interesting, because now stablecoin is becoming a new paradigm. We're building the new plumbing for traditional payments and money movement.

There is lots of things to be done in the space, right? Because even today we still rely, at least in some small parts of the whole flow, in traditional rails, right? Which actually hinders some of the benefits that we are bringing, right? So there is lots to be done. And I'm glad to see that also the mindset shifted, because if we remember, I remember like a year, two years back, whenever we were discussing about stablecoins, most of the people weren't taking them that much seriously.

And there was a sudden shift, at least this is how I perceived it, that suddenly everybody realized that stablecoin is something serious, and a very good contender to actually drive the traditional payments forward to the future, right? And especially us, coming from being a regulated stablecoin, being able to provide the trust and the credibility and assurance to consumers, especially that they can trust stablecoins and they can transact in them. I think this is a fantastic shift that is happening. There are lots of things that we are building and we will continue building. We are working on use cases across the board, some of which we have already announced. Some of them are coming really soon.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 17:49

All right, thanks Kostas. Goldi, what's your [take]?

Ran Goldi, Fireblocks · 17:55

Well, I think the team here said all the smart things already. I'll just say that I look at this entire thing as an infrastructure revolution in finance, right? And how money moves. It takes a lot of money to upgrade a whole infrastructure. We're probably one of the companies that serves the most actors in this space, from fintechs to exchanges. They don't want to spend a lot of money on infrastructure, right? They keep calling us expensive.

And as long as this, what all of us here on the call are doing, which is pushing this new infrastructure to the world and making it faster and better, as long as it's still not mainstream, honestly, we need that capital going into these VCs, because we still have a lot of work to do. I guess that's my take.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 18:56

Yeah, awesome. Thank you. Alex, anything left to add?

Alex Radu, Pulsar Money · 19:02

I agree with all the things mentioned by the guys, and yeah, from our side, I especially agree with what Goldi has just mentioned about there is a whole new infrastructure revolution right now, and great companies start building the rails, like all of the guys here in the call are from great companies that have empowered all of these new things. I think also the question start with the cards first, and yeah, companies like Rain, Wirex and other companies are basically completely enabling the solutions, and custodians and so on are, yeah, empowering the stablecoin use cases.

Ran Goldi, Fireblocks · 19:42

I'm sorry, Alex, to interrupt, but I'll tell you the problem, Andrei. The problem is that people think stablecoins should not only be free, it should pay them back money. They forget that an infrastructure costs money and that moving money costs money. And there were so many promises over the years that stablecoins are cheaper. People now expect that if they're putting stablecoins into their business, there should actually be a revenue stream for them, not a cost of sorts.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 20:10

Yeah, Goldi, that was my next question. All right. Yeah, so you're reading my mind, and you're already answering the next question that I wanted to ask you. And the question actually is that a couple of episodes ago, one of our guests told us that stablecoin wins on speed, not on price. And that is also that you yourself told...

Ran Goldi, Fireblocks · 20:12

I'm so sorry. I'll mute myself, don't worry.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 20:37

at Money20/20 before, is that stablecoins are not cheaper. So the question is, when a payment company switches a real flow to stablecoin today, what makes them switch? Is it speed? Is it cash released from prefunding? Or reaching countries that the banks don't serve, or something else? Maybe customers just asking. And which flows move first? And yeah, be honest if most of the big monthly numbers are just crypto moving between exchanges.

Ran Goldi, Fireblocks · 21:14

Are you asking me now? I'm afraid to just jump in. Okay. So look, let's try to break down what's a week in stablecoin land, okay? So we've done this a while ago. You take a week of stablecoins movement in the world, that's somewhere around, if I remember correctly, something like $248 billion of volume a week, right? And...

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 21:15

Yes.

Kostas Asimakopoulos, DDSC · 21:40

300 something, 350 if I'm not mistaken.

Ran Goldi, Fireblocks · 21:44

No, but I mean real stuff, not... I'm sorry, I don't mean to dismiss anything. I just mean not P2P, right? Something of a CeFi of sorts or a DeFi, but not P2P transfers, which are a lot, obviously. Now, if you look at that, about 60 to 70% is sort of more like smart contracts: people doing Uniswap stuff, DeFi-related things that maybe most people on the call are not even thinking about. And only about 30, let's say 30%, is the money movement of payments, is companies paying right now to other companies, settling, doing the amazing work that Rain is doing of settlement with stablecoins, or what Eric is doing, helping companies move money worldwide. That's like 30 to 40% at this point, right?

Why do people come in? It's different reasons, right? If you look at the cohort of ten years ago, sorry, it was true believers who thought Bitcoin should be a payment method. That's obviously not happening right now. If you look at the cohort of three, four years ago, it was mostly B2B companies that recognized this opportunity, that big financial institutions cannot touch this asset and they can actually use it to provide a better service for money movement.

If you look at the last 12 months, it's a totally different cohort. It's everything after GENIUS Act. It's people who now say, okay, we've heard a lot about this. It seems that there's some value. Let's say you're a bank. We're not 100% sure, but now we can touch it. Let's do a POC. And I will tell you, by the way, that all of the financial institutions, unfortunately without naming names, that we've been in touch with over the last 18 months and actually came into this space and actually did a use case of money movement of sorts, they were all at awe and they were all amazed at, okay, we can't believe we haven't done this before. It saves capital for us. It allows things to move faster. Again, it's not necessarily cheaper, as you said.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 23:54

All right, thank you. My next question is for Kostas. In the UAE, shops on the mainland may only accept dirham tokens licensed by central bank. USDT, USDC and the coins that most people already hold are not allowed. So does this closed market with only licensed tokens grow faster because people trust it, or slower because everything that people have is essentially locked out?

Kostas Asimakopoulos, DDSC · 24:29

Yes, that's a very good question and a very valid point, because this is something that we also discuss a lot. Many are unaware that for retail payments in the UAE only dirham-backed stablecoins are allowed as per the central bank, no other foreign stablecoin or any other crypto token. And we were the first to do the first stablecoin transaction in the UAE, in partnership with Network International, in Lulu Hypermarkets and with the Al-Futtaim Group. So I think that this opens up the market. It provides trust and comfort to the user.

We are already working on many different use cases on how we will enable anyone to be able to pay with DDSC at the counter, even if initially they hold a different token, obviously in a fully compliant way and by working closely with partners. But this brings quite a lot of interesting use cases to life, right? The obvious thing is that you can go around and pay on a card terminal, not with a card directly. This is a peer-to-peer transfer from a consumer to a merchant, right? The card terminal there is just the acceptance device.

So we also have to start thinking that cards that we are all used to not necessarily need to be in the mix anymore. In many cases they are, because they allow acceptance worldwide, and you have Visa and Mastercard, obviously, being ubiquitous. But in the UAE especially, this is not always the case. And we actually see interest from merchants and big groups that they want to understand how this works, the benefits, and they have already conducted pilots. And you will see this really soon, right? It's happening already.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 26:39

All right. Yeah. Now you are front-running my questions. They will be related questions. Yeah, yeah. Alex, the same question essentially to you. In Europe, MiCA, USDT is not allowed. So for your users, which effect is bigger? Is more trust, because every coin in the application is now licensed, or it's cost, because people...

Kostas Asimakopoulos, DDSC · 26:44

Sorry. Yeah, Goldi gave me his power, as it seems.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 27:09

actually a big chunk of people holding USDT had to sell it and switch.

Alex Radu, Pulsar Money · 27:16

Yeah. If we are talking about this specific aspect of compliance of stablecoins in Europe, that was also a very important thing for us. In order to simply serve these regions, we need to have every single aspect of the app to be MiCA compliant, including the stablecoins. And that was also one of the main reasons we started a discussion with Circle, which they are one of the main partners for us. Today it was deploying on Arc. We are also using all of the Circle issued stablecoins and also non-Circle issued stablecoins, part of the StableFX and all of the things inside of the ecosystem.

But yeah, the core stablecoins inside of Pulsar are the Circle issued ones, which are actually one of the very few MiCA compliant stablecoins in Europe. But that doesn't mean that you cannot basically have an integration where you accept multiple other stablecoins and abstractize everything, and basically bridge everything to USDC, for example, in the interface. And yeah, we built a whole interface inside of the app where you can basically on-ramp through multiple other stablecoins, but everything is fully merged into USDC as the native token of the app, or EURC, depending on that.

And we are right now working on accepting multiple other currencies in other regions, having native balances in multiple other currencies, and basically using StableFX as a core module to basically exchange between currencies. But at all times you need to work with compliant stablecoins and make sure that everything is fine on that side.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 29:04

All right. Yeah, this one for Pooja, actually. So that is something that Kostas started to talk about. And the card is something that we got used to, right? We have cards in our wallet, and attaching stablecoins to a card was a natural way to start with. But right now, as he's describing, in UAE and in some countries like Brazil, India, people can just pay by scanning QR code, and they don't need a card, right?

So for you, for Rain, a member of Visa, Mastercard, you're clearly betting on cards. So picture ourselves in three, five years from now: everybody has a payment app and they can pay by this QR code, but will still people pay by Visa and Mastercard? What will be the reason? Why will I, instead of going next time to Dubai, scanning the code, will take out my card from the wallet and make a payment?

Pooja Shah, Rain · 30:11

Yeah, it's a great question. And that was, yeah, very interesting to hear about how this is happening in the UAE. And I have some experience with this in India as well, which is where my family is from, with UPI, and that is way preferred over any of the local card networks there. RuPay is the dominant card network, not even Visa, Mastercard. So yeah, I think it's a really good question.

I mean, the reality is that the world is very large. There are a lot of nuances just in different geographies, culturally, where people place their trust, what the level of technological adoption is in general in the country, maybe even unrelated to payments technology, how a local government makes different financial innovation opportunities available to its citizens and so on, that I think make it so Visa, Mastercard and cards aren't going away anytime soon.

It's just, it's so difficult to get, I mean, I mentioned the stat, right? That Rain cards are accepted at 175 million merchant locations today. That's a huge, huge number. So getting all of those merchants globally to accept either a local, sort of government-backed payment rail that's real time, or some just native stablecoin payment mechanism, I think is just... it may happen. It just may take a really long time. So I think in the timeframe we're talking about, three to five years, cards are still going to be relevant.

But I do think, I mean, when we were talking about agentic payments too, that's something that we think about a lot. We talk to a lot of agentic companies who, they come to us because they want to issue agents cards to spend online, just with e-commerce. But increasingly we are starting to see a lot of these companies just thinking about, and Coinbase is also leading the charge here with x402, and Stripe and others as well, just thinking about machine-to-machine payments and how those will just occur directly over stablecoin rails. So this is not even talking about the UPIs and Pixes of the world, but just directly leveraging stablecoins. So it'll be really interesting to see with the agentic buyer as a buyer...

Pooja Shah, Rain · 32:36

persona that grows over time, how this will shift. And then, yeah, I mean, it's also been really interesting to see that in the UAE, or to hear that in the UAE, this is kind of like a private company that's issued the stablecoin. In India there's a CBDC, and it'll also be really interesting to see how, in certain markets which are just trying to drive more local stablecoin adoption, if it'll be driven by private companies or by the government. And what that means for just day-to-day consumers and how they're making purchases online.

But yeah, I don't think Visa and Mastercard are going anywhere. Cards are not going anywhere, but I do think these other payment methods will definitely increase in adoption, and the landscape will look really different. And it's a very good thing, because it forces competition, which will ultimately result in the best UX for consumers.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 33:31

Yeah, Kostas, do you have different perspective?

Kostas Asimakopoulos, DDSC · 33:33

No, no, no, actually I agree with Pooja. This is a valid point. I didn't say that cards will go anywhere, right? I mean, for the foreseeable future at least, for sure. And we are also looking into this space. We also have an SVF license ourselves, so we can issue, right? And we're looking into that. What Visa and Mastercard have built is something that you cannot switch overnight, and actually you don't want to.

We are working closely with Visa and Mastercard as well, looking on the new things that need to be built and how things will transform, because they are transforming. Even Visa and Mastercard, they have understood that things are changing and they need to be part of it, and they are actually doubling down on how they can utilize stablecoins. It's just that now there is a new system as well in place, right? That will be used by at least some part of the market, but definitely they are not going anywhere anytime soon, right?

Again, I feel that we are trailblazers there, all of us, right, being here, looking at the future and trying to build new use cases. Some will work out, some will not. It's an interesting space to be in. And one more point regarding the CBDC that you mentioned, compared to private stablecoins. That's also an interesting thing. And also in the UAE, as far as I'm aware, at least, there will be a CBDC eventually, or the central bank is looking into one.

And I also get this question. My personal opinion is that the private stablecoins will try and break and make stuff, while the CBDC is mostly for monetary policy and for the central bank to utilize. Actually, even the regulation, by definition, considers private stablecoins as payment tokens, while CBDC is being [unclear] as currency, right? So I think there is room for both.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 35:43

All right. Yeah. Thank you, Kostas. Next one is for Eric. Eric, in our last episode, we had Emma Landriault from J.P. Morgan, and she told an interesting thing, that corporate treasuries can't hold stablecoins at scale because every issuer's reserves need their own credit review. So can you walk us through what your customers' treasurers require before they keep stablecoin balances? And what is your response, and who are the hardest parties on the customer side to make agreement with? Is it compliance? Is it auditors? Is it banks? Is it somebody else?

Eric Queathem, Velocity · 36:25

Yeah, it's a good question. I think the reality is there's not a lot of appetite today for corporate treasurers to be holding balances onchain, unless you're a Web3 native business. I think that's changing, though. I think folks are asking the right questions now. I think a lot of the questions will likely come down to things related to accounting principles and things related to how these balances interact with different debt covenants that the organization has. And certainly, depending on whether a company's public or private, that will also play a role and how they think about it. To me, these are all things that are solvable.

It's not going to stop the movement of folks kind of moving into a dual asset world. There will be clarity that's needed, some on the regulatory side, but I think more around just general practice and precedent that needs to be set. And I think what's great about the US environment right now is it's creating, I think, an incentive for folks to use the next two plus years in the current administration to test and to try and to learn. And I think that that headroom gives folks enough opportunity to start to experiment on what can happen, and do it in a pretty low-risk way, because the downside or the consequences, I think, are still pretty limited.

So I think folks are trying to figure it out. I think payments is always gonna be the starting point into holding value onchain and broader treasury management. And so that's the starting point. That's the point that I think everybody's entering the market. And ultimately, I think as comfort grows and as problems or open questions are solved, you'll start to see more of it. And you'll see it first from companies who have the least amount of regulatory or shareholder complexity. But then over time, as precedent is set across bigger organizations, you'll start to see more of it.

Eric Queathem, Velocity · 38:37

But by the way, there's, and there has been for many years, very big publicly traded companies who have held Bitcoin on their balance sheet. So the idea that companies are afraid of or not willing to hold assets onchain, I think, is not necessarily true. You've been seeing that for some of the most innovative companies for quite a while.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 38:38

Yup.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 38:59

All right, thanks Eric. Alex, this one is for you. Somewhat related. So, European already has instant bank transfers, Revolut, Wise, and why would European hold a stablecoin balance in their wallet? And who is your real user today? The European, or somebody out of Europe who wants to hold a dollar or euro account but they cannot get at home?

Another one, also related, is that in the United States, and also in Europe, actually in the United States there was a discussion, and something that blocked the CLARITY Act, that you cannot earn balances on stablecoins. In Europe, it's not as straightforward, but also there is limitation of interest paid for stablecoin balances. So yeah, why would common users hold stablecoins?

Alex Radu, Pulsar Money · 40:04

Great question. Love to answer this. And the great thing by having all of this infrastructure that was built for the past many years is that you can basically build the app very customized for your niche user base, and focus on some specific use cases and targets and different geographies and so on. Of course, Europe is big, there are multiple countries. It depends if you are talking about Eastern Europe, countries part of the European Union. There are multiple use cases inside of Europe as well, and different categories of people inside of Europe.

We identified quite a lot of interest from people that are basically working from abroad and are getting paid, for example, even people that are earning money from US, or are working in Europe and then send money back home to their family in Asia. This would be quite some use cases. And we simply offer some better rates for the transfers. We are connecting virtual bank accounts to the balance. We try to make as simple as possible to basically receive either stablecoins or transfers via virtual bank account, Apple Pay and other functionalities, and to give one to one, stables to the initial currency and the initial currency to stables in our app. So we are trying to get as many routes as possible in this way, and also native currencies.

And yeah, there are multiple reasons for that. I was just mentioning one of the reasons, for the transfers between countries. Another one would be to offer better rates for exchange of currencies, which we are working a lot on. And I was mentioning it through StableFX, and basically giving better rates for, for example, euro to USD, and having 1% lower FX for that specific route, or even for, let's say, pounds to Hong Kong dollars. That would be another route that we are going to work on and have enabled very soon. And yeah, to your last point, we are really excited about the Earn module that we are going to launch very soon.

Alex Radu, Pulsar Money · 42:27

And yeah, I think there are a lot of great apps in the space, such as Morpho curators like Steakhouse, and the earn opportunities on Arc, I think, are going to be really exciting. And we are about to launch this module very soon, which is going to give quite compelling offer to the users, and also connecting that to the balance on the card, and have the ability to basically earn on the spendable balance on the card. That would be something quite exciting that we are also working on.

And yeah, this would be some of the main interests that we've identified in the European regions right now that are quite cool. Apart of this, there could be a lot of other things, such as tokenized stocks, which we are also really, really excited. And we already have a lot of people using the app for basically trading, swapping tokens between each other. And yeah, there are multiple things that, through tokenizations, through stablecoins, you can basically offer better rates. To the point of Goldi, there still costs something to do all of these things, but I think it's much more efficient in terms of the rates that you can offer to the people. And through the competition from all of these great apps in the space, in the end, the users are getting much better service, products, interfaces and rates.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 43:51

All right, yeah, thanks Alex. Okay, so let's now play a small game. Between all of you, you covered the whole life cycle of a stablecoin. It issued, held, moved, kept in custody of treasury, then received a person's wallet and spent with a card. And then the shop is paid with normal money and needs to redeem the cash. So let's do the handoff from each of you to the other party, from one business to the next one. And the question is: where does the money or the data get stuck today? And what would the other side need to fix? Please give us example, but don't call the customer names. Make sense?

Kostas Asimakopoulos, DDSC · 44:39

Can you repeat the first part of the question, because it broke up a bit for me? What is that?

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 44:44

What is the bottleneck right now? Where does the money or data get stuck today? So, for instance, I'm a contractor living in Abu Dhabi, and my company pays me, issues with dirham stablecoin. Then it goes to Fireblocks. Then it comes to corporate treasury. Eric pays to me, I [unclear] Pulsar in my wallet, and I spend my money with a card in a coffee shop. So the first leg will be the DDSC, Kostas, to Fireblocks.

Kostas Asimakopoulos, DDSC · 45:31

Correct, yes. From a tech point of view, yes, it will go to Fireblocks, right? But somebody needs to request this DDSC from us. And then we will hold it with Fireblocks in this case. But eventually for us, because we also offer our own off-ramp, in this whole equation, I think the bottleneck here we see is only the case of off-ramping, because then we will rely on traditional rails. And this will limit us from offering the instantaneous payout that we might like if, for example, somebody requests that during a weekend.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 46:12

All right. Okay, yeah. So, Goldi, now you are transferring money to Velocity, from network to company's treasury. So what Eric has to solve for you to make your life easier?

Ran Goldi, Fireblocks · 46:25

Well, I think because we're sort of the wallet infrastructure that gets to sit below, I would say, these applications, we call them, DDSC or Velocity or even Rain, that our job would be to make sure that no one else can access these funds other than DDSC and Velocity or anyone else. And what I would need from Eric is to make sure that... and this is sort of, I guess, my advice to any company that's doing digital assets: don't assume that because you're using a very secure solution like Fireblocks or others, then you can play around with your API key or any other secrets in the organization.

Because what we're seeing right now, and I'm sort of abducting this question to another thing, I think it's important, but what we're seeing in the last six months is so many threats coming from, obviously, with the rise of AI models having the ability to take an exploit and translate that into something they can actually use on companies. It's super important that I will ask Eric and Kostas and everyone to make sure that they look at their company's security, not just their wallet, custody, whatever provider like Fireblocks, but make sure that their entire apparatus is secured.

Because what we're seeing in the last six months is probably a 300% increase on hack attempts to our clients and everyone in the space. And I'm sure people have seen what happened to Ledger recently with the... not to Ledger itself, the company, but that those devices were compromised, and now there are compromised devices out there around the world. So my request before, as an infrastructure, Eric takes that money and moves it forward, is that for Eric to be a responsible CEO and founder of his security.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 48:37

All right, yeah. Thanks, Goldi. So, Eric, your turn. So you're paying to my wallet on Pulsar. So what Alex has to do to avoid some mistakes and make your life and life of customers easier?

Eric Queathem, Velocity · 48:59

Yeah, I mean, I think as Goldi said, right, I think the onchain movement, security and privacy are probably the two big things that the world is maybe not quite ready for. So maybe I'll just mention the privacy point, which is, I think for corporate use cases, we still haven't yet solved for what does a publicly traded company, who now has balances and money movement being visible publicly onchain somewhere, do? And so I think that's probably one of the next big themes that we've got to solve and figure out how we support.

I think in a consumer use case it's less of an issue, or not an issue at all. But certainly the biggest companies in the world don't publish their bank account details, and they report on the things they have to, and they certainly don't want folks getting more insight into their business. And so I think that's one of the big things that's gonna have to be solved in order for there to be big, big movements of traditional businesses coming onchain.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 50:06

And now next leg, Alex: I am attaching my credit card account to the wallet and I spend the money in the shop. So what would you recommend Pooja to solve, for me, for you, for the ecosystem?

Alex Radu, Pulsar Money · 50:28

First of all, thanks Eric for the suggestion. And I would love, of course, to have you guys test our app in real life. So yeah, and in regards to the privacy point, we are working on it, and we are going to add privacy on all transactions in the app later in the year. So we are working on that, and we are really excited about having privacy on a fintech app. I think that's quite very important, not only for businesses but for everybody. I agree with that point.

And to the next leg. Of course, we respect what Rain has built with the infrastructure powering a lot of the cards in the space. I think it scaled a lot. We are right now not working with Rain, we are working with other card providers, but we really think that it's an important component of an app to have the card balances connected to the stablecoin balances. And yeah, I think the security part is the most important aspect of it, especially when it comes to consumer apps, the funds of the people. So yeah, I would double down on what Goldi has also mentioned in this current space and time of all the AI type of security things that are happening right now.

But yeah, simply being a consumer app, and with all of the things that we are right now working on, a lot of things, and what also Pooja has mentioned, there are agentic payments, StableFX, cross-border payments and so on, I think it's just making the product cooler. At the end of the day, we just need a lot of new cool features to be delivered to the users. And yeah, I think this component, the last component of the stack that we are having in this cycle, it's really important to enable real use cases for the people.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 52:33

Okay. Yeah. So Pooja, you're closing the loop. So I spent my money in a coffee shop, and the merchant now needs to redeem cash to their bank account. So you're coming back to DDSC. I don't know if you work with the digital dirham, but speaking about the redemption, where do you see money get stuck with the data, or other issues that may happen on this leg?

Pooja Shah, Rain · 53:01

Yeah, for sure. And Alex, yes, we should chat. We're working on some cool things, so maybe there's an opportunity there. But I hear you completely. A lot of folks have mentioned and just emphasized security. I think that's something, as the space has become more... we just have a bigger target on our backs now. And I think that that's something that everyone does have to be taking a lot more seriously. So definitely agreed with that. That's something that's a really, really big focus for us at Rain as well.

And in terms of the next leg, there's a few things, actually. So today, Rain, there's actually, before we even circle back to DDSC, but just our corporate treasury exists on products like Fireblocks as well, right? There is this corporate treasury layer even for companies like us at Rain, that is something that just having those layers feel really secure. And then increasingly, in certain markets that we are launching in, the regulators that we work with there expect those layers to also be licensed. So that's something that, even if these are non-custodial treasury products, that's something that we have seen. And it makes a lot of sense to me, because as stablecoins go mainstream, just integrating with the existing guardrails that exist in traditional finance will start to increasingly become very important.

And so that's... we haven't really talked a lot about licensing on this call, but something I know a lot of folks are starting to think about. And then when it comes back to the stablecoins and actually being able to redeem that for dollars or cash in a bank account, local currency in a bank account, we still need... this is another form of bridging into traditional finance, we still need great on and off ramps. And I think increasingly it's a very unsexy part of the space. I think people have been talking about on and off ramps forever. But I think we need more, cheaper, faster, more flexible on and off ramps that can work for institutions to directly be off-ramping their own treasuries, but also to be able to serve third parties doing that safely and securely.

Pooja Shah, Rain · 55:20

And I think it'll be interesting to think about what are the ways that we can collaborate together to do that. I think the big concern that folks have had in providing off-ramp services for third parties in the space is just the risk, and how do you get the data you need, especially given that one leg of the transaction is onchain and you don't really know who are the parties that have transacted up until the point of the off-ramp. How do you do that in a way that's compliant and secure? And so I think the space does still have to evolve more infrastructure around that, so that we can bridge these worlds really seamlessly, and then it all just works.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 55:55

Awesome. Yeah, time is almost up, and I have to skip my another 50 questions that I prepared and come to my final one. So picture the head of payments at the mid-sized bank or payment company who watched this. Name one thing that she thinks stablecoin cannot do today that actually can, or one things that she thinks she can but she actually cannot. So yeah, please, 30 seconds everyone. Let's start with you, Alex.

Alex Radu, Pulsar Money · 56:38

I think pretty much up to this point, people at banks, I think, have realized these things. And I just want to acknowledge that I can see that a lot of banks are taking some initiatives and so on. Of course, the industry is moving a lot faster than that, but I think they are familiar with a few things up till this point, after so many years.

I think they don't know that you can have different type of products associated to stablecoins, that you basically can empower other types of products built around stablecoins, from basically trading apps to Hyperliquid type of things or Polymarket type of apps that have been built around stablecoins, and basically other use cases of stablecoins apart of just being an onchain currency. And then the thing that she knows that can... can you repeat the second question, sorry?

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 57:47

Yeah, that's one. What she believes she cannot do, but she can, or something that she believes she can, but she cannot.

Alex Radu, Pulsar Money · 57:58

Okay. I'll stop with this one question to give time for the rest of the people.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 58:01

Alright, okay, sounds good. Yeah, thanks Alex. Goldi, what's your take?

Ran Goldi, Fireblocks · 58:06

Yeah, I think that the one thing that we see a lot of people skeptical about is, I guess, saving on capital requirements of prefunding, especially around not just the banks but also remittance companies. And once they start doing it, again, they don't look back, because they realize there's a lot of savings there. And this is where is value. Again, not because the transfer itself is cheaper.

What does she think that is possible and not possible? Well, some people think that a stablecoin can magically morph into a different currency because of maybe smart contracts or bridging, and they don't still comprehend that there's a lot more happening behind the scenes. Like, can you send me this dollar stablecoin and I get it in euros? Theoretically, yes, there's some stuff in the middle. It's not like a magic thing that happens. I've run into that once. But all in all, let's say it: stablecoins can do everything, right? It is software.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 59:17

All right. All right, yeah, Pooja, what would you answer?

Pooja Shah, Rain · 59:25

Yeah, it's a really good question, because I think, I mean, sometimes what we see people be more skeptical about are just... there's no question that stablecoins are valuable. I think they're more concerned about some of the more unique use cases, that they're payments use cases that they're trying to enable. And so it's a little bit more... people are just trying to really push the envelope in terms of what's possible. And we've seen a lot of customers who are actually not, they're not even in large institutions, and financial institutions that we partner with today, they're actually trying to push the envelope as far as possible with what stablecoins can do. They see it as really the frontier of financial innovation for their business.

So I think I have less to say on what do they not think is possible than... that is actually possible. I think sometimes what we see is that folks do expect, it's a little bit maybe to what Goldi said as well, that all stablecoins interoperate seamlessly, and that all of onchain finance is just sort of, with the magic click of the button, accessible, that all the different providers who are providing services to these companies in the space also seamlessly interoperate. And I think the reality is that it's still a lot of work to pull all of these features and partners together into one cohesive experience.

This is kind of an interesting, very specific one, but KYC is something that comes up a lot, especially when partners of ours are working with many different providers. And they think it should be trivial to basically integrate multiple providers into one solution, and that the KYC just magically sort of resolves itself. But that's just not how it works, as I think many of us realize. So in order to have a really powerful experience that can actually... I mean, yes, it is software. We can stitch all these things together, but in order to do it, it still takes development work and creativity for how to do that and offer a great user experience. And I think the onus is on us as players on the infrastructure side of things to...

Pooja Shah, Rain · 1:01:44

continue making it easier for people to integrate what we're building.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 1:01:48

Alright, yeah, Eric.

Eric Queathem, Velocity · 1:01:51

I mean, I think there's too many banks who think that they can have their own stablecoin and it's gonna actually create a lot of value. So I think that's the one for me that I continue to scratch my head around. The primary use case for stablecoins today is payments. In order for payments to be effective onchain, you need liquidity at both sides. I don't think anybody needs the small town Cincinnati credit union stablecoin for anything related to payment. So yeah, I think there's probably been too much new stablecoin formation. And I think we'll see some changes over the next couple of years, that there may be some practical use cases, but I don't think there's many.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 1:02:36

All right, Kostas.

Kostas Asimakopoulos, DDSC · 1:02:39

Yes, being the last, I think that I don't have much to add, right? I was mostly covered. I would say that from my interaction with banks, as Goldi said and the rest of the panel, I think that they have now understood that they can do most of the things they can do with fiat. The thing is that they think that it works like magic, right? That they don't understand the complexity and also the scale of the projects and the infrastructure required, right? So they just think, okay, something super easy, I will plug in, make a transfer. And this is something that [I] have seen time and again, right?

On the contrary, though, it's very nice to see that now they are progressing, and they have started to get a grasp of what this means, right? But I think that they are up to speed with the use cases. It's just, they thought that we are doing something magical. We can go in and just solve 50% of the problems they currently have. It's not like that.

Andrei Yurkevich, Protofire · 1:03:43

Okay. Yeah. Thanks everyone. We're over time, and thanks for your opinions. Thanks for joining us today. Hope to see you in our next episodes. Have a good rest of the day.

Kostas Asimakopoulos, DDSC · 1:03:52

Thank you very much. Thank you very much, everybody.

Ran Goldi, Fireblocks · 1:03:54

Thank you for having us.

Pooja Shah, Rain · 1:03:54

Thank you. Bye.

Eric Queathem, Velocity · 1:03:56

Cheers.

Alex Radu, Pulsar Money · 1:03:56

Yes, [unclear].