Stripe's trillion-dollar bet: How stablecoins are rewriting the global payments landscape

Original Title: Stripe's Trillion-Dollar Bet: How Stablecoins Eat Global Payments

Original Source: Bankless

Original Compilation: Ismay, BlockBeats

Editor’s Note: In many crypto narratives, stablecoins are often treated as supporting characters. They are not sexy, cannot bring tenfold or hundredfold returns, yet stubbornly exist behind almost all transactions and payments. This conversation shifts the focus to the true stage of stablecoins.

Zach Abrams has a unique identity. He has experience in private equity and fintech companies, participated in the productization of USDC at Coinbase, and later founded Bridge, turning stablecoins into API-based payment infrastructure, ultimately selling the company to Stripe in 2023. He has witnessed the entire process of stablecoins being questioned, to gradually being accepted by fintech, enterprises, and governments.

There are three noteworthy threads in the interview.

First, the engineering challenges of payments.

The narrative around stablecoins is often grand, but when it comes to payment scenarios, it boils down to mundane issues like "how to pay salaries to thousands of people at once."

Bridge encountered a situation where it sent tens of thousands of aid payments on Stellar, taking eighteen hours to complete just a portion, accompanied by a large number of failures. They also faced the challenge of opening wallets for millions of users on Solana, where the cost of preloading SOL alone was hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The real challenge is to keep the system running stably under these real-world loads.

Second, the positioning of Tempo.

With the push from Stripe, an EVM public chain named Tempo is being built, emphasizing high throughput, sub-second finality, and privacy. It is a chain tailored for payment scenarios, not for trading or speculation.

Stripe does not see it as a private chain but hopes to turn it into shared public infrastructure.

Third, the market structure of stablecoins.

Zach's judgment is that in the future, there will be very few stablecoins with external brands, such as USDT and USDC, which will continue to exist due to liquidity and the network effects of trading pairs.

At the same time, many companies will launch their own internal stablecoins for fund allocation, settlement, and profit distribution.

Imagine the flow of funds within Walmart or Robinhood, which may not necessarily rely on USDC but could very well use their own issued "company dollars." In this scenario, the role of clearinghouses will become important, as they can facilitate end-of-day settlements between different stablecoins.

The conversation also extends to possibilities in the next five to ten years, such as whether local currency stablecoins will fill the gap left by the dollar, whether AI agents will become the largest users of stablecoins, and whether banks will gradually revert to a purely clearing layer in the new system. These questions have no answers today, but they are gradually moving toward our reality.

The greatest value of this episode lies in its pragmatic perspective, stating that stablecoins do not need to be exaggerated or glorified; their significance comes from the most ordinary flow of funds. Whether it’s Stripe or Bridge, what they are doing is enabling these funds to reach their destinations faster, cheaper, and more reliably. It is this seemingly mundane goal that may determine the shape of future payment systems.

The following is the original dialogue content:

Ryan: Welcome to Bankless, a show exploring the forefront of internet money and internet finance. I’m Ryan Sean Adams. I’m here to help you get closer to a "de-banked" future.

All fintech companies will go through what I call the "crypto transformation." Stripe is one of them. This is a private payment giant valued at $90 billion, processing payments equivalent to 1.3% of global GDP each year. They are undoubtedly at the forefront of this crypto transformation and are moving very quickly. They have invested heavily in stablecoins. And after the Genius Act was just signed, they are doubling down.

A key figure in Stripe's transformation is Zach Abrams. About a year ago, Stripe acquired the stablecoin company Bridge, which he co-founded, for over $1 billion. Since then, they have made more crypto-related acquisitions, including companies like Privy.

This conversation with Zach gives us a glimpse into how large fintech companies think about this transformation and how they will evolve in the future. This is completely different from the discussions we usually have on Bankless from a crypto-native perspective, and that’s why this conversation is particularly valuable. It is also Zach's story—an indomitable entrepreneur who formed his own conclusions around stablecoins and persevered through very difficult times, ultimately leading his company to complete this significant acquisition.

Not long after we recorded this episode, Stripe announced some new information—they are supporting a new Layer 1 project. Some in the outside world are calling it "Stripe Layer 1." However, our guest explained that it is more like a consortium chain called Tempo, an EVM chain driven by a group of fintech companies.

We also discussed why they chose not to pursue the traditional path of Layer 1 or Layer 2. The bigger question is: what is Stripe's next step in the crypto space? How will each fintech company respond? Today, Zach Abrams will help us answer these questions. So let’s get into it.

I’m very pleased to introduce our guest today—Zach Abrams. Zach, welcome to Bankless. First, I have to say at the outset: congratulations on selling your co-founded company Bridge to Stripe. The deal was announced last October, if I’m not mistaken. This acquisition is rumored to be over $1 billion—I don’t know if you can confirm that rumor, but in any case, it’s a massive acquisition for Stripe. Your company has thus entered the ranks of crypto unicorns, which is quite an achievement, congratulations again.

Zach: Yes, thank you very much. A lot has happened since then. It feels like a hundred years have passed.

Ryan: Yeah, I’ve always found it interesting that Stripe acquired a stablecoin company before the Genius Act. You know what I mean? Buying a stablecoin company before the act was passed shows a lot of foresight.

Zach: Well, you know, that was still before the election, when a lot of things started to change. Strictly speaking, it was before the Genius Act and before a lot of things. But I think for them, and for us, the main point is: you could already see this thing starting to work. The changes were happening very quickly. Two or three years ago, its performance was still quite poor.

Ryan: You mean the overall situation, right?

Zach: Right, from a business perspective, the overall development of stablecoins. At that time, we had also gone through the events of Terra, Luna, and FTX.

Ryan: Oh right, I almost forgot.

Zach: Yeah, looking back now, it seems like a long time ago. But at that time, some real results were already starting to show. There were actual payment companies and fintech firms building products based on what we created. If you squint at the future, you can vaguely see it becoming very important.

Ryan: Yeah, that’s fascinating. I think that’s the genius of the Collison brothers. They always seem to squint and see the future and bet right this time. I want to talk about them later. But before that, let’s talk about you. Can you share your experience as a crypto entrepreneur? You can start from anywhere. Where did your story begin? How did you get to where you are now, working at Stripe and completing this acquisition that might be worth a billion dollars?

Zach: Well, for me, the starting point of this journey might be different from most crypto entrepreneurs—it started with auto parts.

When I graduated from college, my goal was actually to become an operating partner at a private equity firm, which sounds a bit strange, right? I got into private equity because I thought turning around companies and increasing revenues would be interesting. So I joined a private equity firm that acquired some distressed companies in 2009. At that time, the auto industry was in complete turmoil. We acquired an auto parts company, and I, at 22 years old, was sent to be the CFO of that company.

However, that experience was quite bleak. You can imagine, a 22-year-old kid, like a nerd, was sent to Canada to announce to all the workers that we were going to close the factory there. Then I was sent to Mexico for a ribbon-cutting ceremony. I thought, this is not at all what I want to do. What I wanted was to "create," and this was the opposite. So I left private equity. At that time, I heard that people on the West Coast were starting to become entrepreneurs. But I was at Duke University, and the year I graduated, there were only about seven or eight real computer science graduates from the entire Duke.

Ryan: What were people studying instead?

Zach: Basically, everyone was studying economics and going to investment banks after graduation. So there was no entrepreneurial atmosphere around me. So I decided, forget it, I’ll do it myself. I thought I could do it. The first company I wanted to start was actually a "buy now, pay later" model, a bit like Klarna or Affirm, but that was in 2010. At that time, starting this kind of business was almost the hardest thing: you needed to secure large partners and deal with a bunch of issues like credit, fraud, and risk.

I went to raise funds, thinking the process was like this: first make a PPT, go to VCs, they give you money, and then you hire an engineering team to build the product. But when I ran around VC offices, the response I got was always: show me the product first. At that moment, I was completely disappointed.

Ryan: So you weren’t an engineer by background? You hadn’t studied computer science?

Zach: Right, I had never studied computer science, didn’t know what engineers did, didn’t know what designers did, and had no idea what product managers did. You could say I was one of the least suitable people for entrepreneurship. Then I went through a painful year: trying to start a company but realizing I had to learn to code first. So I went to a coding school in New York. Later, I found out I needed a co-founder, so I started what you might call "co-founder dating." You can imagine, it was like going to a bar, with a hundred people like me, and only one engineer.

Ryan: And that one engineer became the most popular person.

Zach: Exactly. Eventually, I met Sean, who is now my co-founder at Bridge. He also graduated from Duke. I met him about nine months after that journey began, and I persuaded him to start a company with me. After that, we finally managed to raise funds and started to gain some momentum. Later, I moved to the West Coast, but that company ultimately didn’t make it, and we sold it to Square. But that’s how I got on this path, even though the starting point was completely in another direction.

Ryan: So that led you into the fintech space. While selling the company to Square might not count as a huge success, at least it got you out of the pain of entrepreneurship, so it was an exit. After that, you not only worked at Square but also had experiences at Brex and Coinbase. So your resume has both fintech and crypto backgrounds.

Zach: Yes, that’s absolutely correct. In fact, every time I was looking for my next job, I would look back and realize that I was really just very interested in fintech. Theoretically, I had a bunch of options in front of me, but every time I would pick from the same category on the menu, which was fintech companies.

Around 2016, I applied to join Coinbase. At that time, I was really excited about cryptocurrencies. In fact, when I first moved to San Francisco to start Evenly (that was our first company), Bitcoin had risen to $1,000 and then crashed; that should have been around 2012 or 2013. That was also when Sean and I first bought Bitcoin.

At that time, we went to various meetups where everyone was discussing mining, hardware companies, and all sorts of new things around Bitcoin. These experiences sparked my interest in crypto. By 2016, after I left Square, I had a very strong sense of excitement, feeling that this was going to become something very important. I can’t pinpoint what triggered that feeling, but I just felt that something big was going to happen in the future.

So I joined Coinbase. At that time, the company had about 60 to 70 people. You have to know that Coinbase was a very strange company; it wasn’t like today’s startups that can have 70 employees in three months. Coinbase had been around for about five years, and when I joined, I was the 200th employee, but there were actually only about seventy people in the company because Coinbase had gone through many transformations and directional shifts.

When I joined Coinbase, it coincided with a bit of overlap with Stripe. At that time, Coinbase had just realized that using Bitcoin for payments and shopping on the internet was not going to become the next big trend. Their biggest clients at that time were Stripe and Overstock.com.

Ryan: Was Stripe using Coinbase back then?

Zach: Yes, at that time, Stripe was using Coinbase’s "pay with Bitcoin" feature. Just when I joined Coinbase, we gradually realized that maybe this wasn’t the future direction. The real potential was actually in the exchange model—buying and selling crypto assets on exchanges could develop into a big business.

Then in 2017, everything changed completely. Coinbase went from a very niche company to one of the mainstream financial service companies in the U.S. almost overnight.

During this process, one of the last major things I worked on at Coinbase was USD Coin (USDC). Although the actual technical implementation of USDC was handled by other teams, I was responsible for Coinbase’s consumer business, and our goal was to find use cases for USDC and make it useful. It was during the productization of USDC that we began to form a view: it could become the first global store of value.

We also thought about turning Coinbase Consumer into a neo bank-like product, exploring many possibilities around USDC, but ultimately it didn’t really materialize. After that, I left Coinbase and went to Brex.

Ryan: So you returned to the fintech space and then founded Bridge?

Zach: Yes, that’s absolutely correct. Leaving for two years actually helped me—it gave me time to reflect and allowed me to see many of the problems Brex was encountering clearly. Brex was trying to expand internationally, and I was involved in a lot of related product work, clearly seeing that some local problems that had already been solved in developed markets were not addressed at all in international scenarios.

Ryan: Zach, your resume is particularly interesting; you have both fintech and crypto experience, and you ultimately founded Bridge. You are one of the few who can connect both sides. My own observation is that many traditional fintech professionals are skeptical of crypto, while many people in the crypto space don’t understand or even take fintech seriously. So the two sides have long operated independently: crypto on one side, fintech on the other.

I think this cycle is starting to change, perhaps from 2023 to 2025, this trend will become more apparent: fintech and crypto are moving towards integration. The financial world and the crypto world—are they different, or will they eventually merge? I think this is one of the important themes of this episode.

So how did you bridge that gap? You are in fintech but not entirely skeptical of crypto; conversely, you are in crypto but understand fintech. What did you see that other fintech people didn’t?

Zach: First of all, I completely agree with the premise of your question. I think one of the biggest unique advantages we had when we founded Bridge was that we were in the middle ground. We had a deep understanding of the financial system while also recognizing the possibilities that crypto technology could bring. And that combination was very rare. Now, of course, there are more, but at that time, I felt we were almost the only team truly standing at that intersection.

You were either the kind of person who believed in crypto almost like a "faith," thinking that the existing financial system was a complete failure and would inevitably be replaced; or you were in the traditional financial system, believing that crypto was purely speculative and even ridiculous.

Ryan: Scams, money laundering, drug trafficking, crazy JPEGs—it's all speculation, with no substance at all.

Zach: Exactly. And the overlap between these two circles is extremely small, but it is this intersection that created opportunities for us. It was also very difficult at the beginning. Because we were at this intersection, we had to deal with banks and sell products to non-crypto companies. This made it particularly challenging in the early days because there was no one else in that position. Even today, challenges still exist, but the situation is much better than it was back then.

Ryan: You founded Bridge in 2022, right? And that year was a dark time for crypto, and 2023 was the same. All the momentum that had built up and the public goodwill towards the crypto industry collapsed with the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. The subsequent sell-off and the political goodwill needed to push for stablecoin legislation also completely disappeared.

Of course, Bankless listeners know that in the following years, there was the "Choke Point Operation" and a series of crackdowns. During such a time, you had to build a bridge between traditional finance, fintech, and crypto. What was that experience like?

Zach: As you said, it was that bad, even worse. Because don’t forget, Terra Luna also collapsed at that time. It almost cast a shadow over the entire stablecoin space. Meanwhile, a number of so-called "crypto-friendly banks" ultimately went bankrupt. Those institutions standing at the intersection of both circles were almost all punished. Signature and Silvergate collapsed.

Ryan: That was probably early 2023, right?

Zach: Yes, early 2023. There was also a bank called BankProv that many people haven’t mentioned. It was also one of the crypto-friendly banks, lending a lot of money to Bitcoin miners, and those loans ended up losing a lot, and the CEO was fired. Almost everyone or every institution at that intersection was punished to some extent.

For us, one thing was crucial. Many entrepreneurs hit a windfall when starting a business. For example, now everyone wants to start an AI company because that’s the so-called "hot project." When the external environment is constantly giving you positive feedback, entrepreneurship seems easier. But ultimately, whether a company can succeed almost always depends on a core belief of the founders or early team—they feel that this thing must be created.

So starting a company at our time was, in a sense, a good thing. Because whether we could stick to that belief and push it into reality was tested almost from the very beginning. We always had a very core belief: stablecoins represent a superior way to build financial products. The reason is not ideological but because they can really make the flow of funds faster, cheaper, and more accessible. Essentially, it is a more efficient way of transferring funds.

A typical example: many people may not have thought about it, but when you transfer money via ACH or wire transfer, you don’t get any confirmation at all; you have no idea whether the money has arrived. You just send it out and hope it gets there.

Ryan: Zach, have you ever encountered a lost wire transfer? I have. It actually happened recently when I wired money from one place to another. I am still doing some traditional finance business, and I have a bank account, so it’s not completely "de-banked," just to clarify.

Zach: Wire transfers often have issues, yes.

Ryan: Right, that wire transfer didn’t arrive at all. I waited 24 hours, 48 hours, and the money still didn’t arrive. I was freaking out. Then I started to investigate: had this wire transfer settled? Where was its ID on FedWire? I spoke to at least five or six people. This was still a transfer between a brokerage account and another account.

Later, they handed the issue over to the wire transfer tracking team, telling me it would take 48 to 72 hours to process. I asked if this kind of situation usually gets resolved. They said most of the time it does, but not guaranteed. I thought to myself: if you can’t even track a wire transfer, that’s ridiculous.

Zach: Yeah, that’s absurd. When you send a stablecoin through the blockchain, you can see when it was sent, when it was confirmed, when it was received, and even if it doesn’t arrive, you can know immediately. These are the most basic functions.

Beyond costs, there are more complex factors that make us firmly believe that currency will eventually be tokenized. Whether individuals, businesses, fintech companies, or banks, they will all eventually see the value of this new payment track. And we are preparing for that future. We always held onto this core belief.

Moreover, my fintech background actually helped a lot. I’ve seen too many times that successful fintech products succeed for very straightforward reasons. It’s not like in the consumer internet space, where you have to guess why Instagram won or why Facebook won.

The logic of fintech is more direct. Why did Robinhood win? Because it offered commission-free trading, while other platforms charged $5 per trade. Why did Square succeed? Because before it came along, small businesses had to spend thousands of dollars a year and pay 5% fees to process credit card transactions, while Square made registration instant and cheap. Stripe follows a similar logic.

Financial products ultimately have a pattern: over time, people will make rational choices. So at first, the market stigmatized stablecoins and thought they were risky. But at the same time, building and using stablecoins can bring very tangible benefits. What we are doing is moving towards a future—in that future, perceived risks decrease, and people can truly experience these actual benefits.

Initially, these users were often the most risk-tolerant, like startups. Now, as regulation becomes clearer, users further down the risk curve—including large enterprises and even governments—are starting to use stablecoins. This is particularly exciting. But all of this stems from our initial core belief: stablecoins are financially logical and worth building.

Ryan: Right, that was the core belief you held onto in 2022. At that time, this point was neither obvious nor popular. After the collapse of Terra Luna, many people thought stablecoins were "dead," and that crypto could no longer be played with. Coupled with situations like Tether, everyone was questioning how AML and KYC were being handled. Was it a bit gray? What exactly happened?

So I think this is your kind of "unshakeable conclusion." Zach, I would even say you are the closest person I’ve seen to a "stablecoin maxi." You know that there are all sorts of "religious factions" in the crypto space. But you might just be the representative of stablecoins. Because I’ve heard you say that even though you are skeptical of many value propositions in crypto, once it comes to stablecoins, you firmly believe they are "the next evolution of money."

I remember you said something like: "I’m not in crypto to liberate the world from centralization, nor am I trying to build a libertarian utopia, but because I love financial services, and I believe this new platform can be used to create better products."

Some crypto-native Bankless listeners might think, "Hey, Zach, that sounds too pragmatic. What we’re doing is not this." But you are very straightforward; you believe the greatest value proposition in crypto is to build a better fintech system based on stablecoins.

So for those who don’t understand the situation, when they mention stablecoins, they might think of Circle or Tether, believing stablecoins are those issuers. But what you are doing is actually different. Although I know Bridge also has a stablecoin, fundamentally it is more like a stablecoin payment platform. What exactly did you build between 2022 and the acquisition? What is Bridge's mission?

Zach: I think one of the biggest takeaways from my experiences at Square, Brex, and now Stripe is that money is unimaginably important in people’s lives. Even if it’s just to improve efficiency a little bit in how people receive payments, manage funds, or transfer money, I can see the huge changes it brings to people’s lives.

Take Square as an example. They made a small card reader that made it easier for small merchants to accept credit card payments. Before that, many could only accept cash. But Square enabled millions of merchants to sell more products, turning previously unprofitable businesses into profitable ones, allowing them to capture transactions they would have otherwise lost. This change fundamentally altered many people’s livelihoods.

Stablecoins are similar, but their impact will be much larger.

You know, the significance of stablecoins is that they can be used and stored by people all over the world. With stablecoins, people have real choices that didn’t exist before in every country. You can transfer money between different countries using stablecoins, and the cost is just a fraction. This will create huge opportunities, and the applications people can build based on it will be very profound.

So we have always held onto this long-term belief. I am particularly driven by this belief, believing in the possibilities and ultimate outcomes of stablecoins. Of course, there will be moments of doubt. For example, a particularly typical moment was the week we launched the API, which coincided with the week Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed. I remember telling Sean, "I still believe we are right, but maybe this path will be delayed by ten years; the timeline might be completely off."

Ryan: As a result, you didn’t expect that at that time, you thought it was the lowest point, but you only needed to wait another 24 months for the U.S. to pass the first crypto legislation, and it was stablecoin legislation. This means stablecoins would gain legitimacy overnight and experience explosive growth. You thought the prospects would be delayed by ten years, but in reality, the turning point was only two years away.

Zach: It’s incredible. In fact, experiencing these setbacks early on made us particularly vigilant. At that time, our biggest concern was "how to ensure the next meal," because the first 18 months of the company were almost a constant cycle: we finally signed a bank partnership, and the partner quickly went bankrupt; we signed another client, and they quickly ran into problems. Even when things finally started to improve, we still thought, "Wait, this can’t last too long, right?"

Ryan: When did things start to improve? Closer to 2024?

Zach: I would say things started to improve around June 2023.

We founded the company in early 2022, so it took about 18 months for things to start getting better. Back to your earlier question: what Bridge does is facilitate the flow of funds using stablecoins. Our view is that the current fiat currency system already exists, and stablecoins are like an "extension layer" built on top of the fiat currency system. You can think of our mental model as: stablecoins are like Layer 2 on top of the Layer 1 fiat currency system. Funds need to be "on-chain" in tokenized form to enjoy the benefits of greater efficiency, but ultimately they will continuously "fall back" to Layer 1.

A typical example is cross-border payments: funds initially come from fiat currency because the business itself operates in fiat; then the funds rise to this extension layer and become tokenized; after cross-border movement, they fall back to the recipient and revert to fiat.

Ryan: So in this example, Layer 1—the fiat layer—refers to bank settlements? Ultimately, it will fall into systems like FedWire?

Zach: Exactly. Today, most fund flows switch back and forth between Layer 2 and Layer 1. This is also how many practical use cases operate. A good example is: Bridge allows people around the world to store money in dollars, but in the form of stablecoins.

For instance, we work with Scale AI, which provides data labeling for AI models. Scale’s business is settled in dollars—fiat dollars. They send funds to Bridge, which converts those funds into stablecoins and then distributes the stablecoins to data labelers around the world.

So the funds initially exist in the fiat layer, we tokenize that money, and then distribute it to users, allowing them to enjoy the benefits of stablecoins.

Ryan: So the essence of Bridge is to build a bridge between the fiat Layer 1 (the traditional banking system, ultimately settling to FedWire, etc.) and the stablecoin Layer 2 (the tokenized world). You are right in the middle. And the API you mentioned is the interface connecting the bank layer and the tokenized stablecoins, right?

Zach: Exactly. And we are basically built for developers. Today’s developers are mostly fintech companies, banks, or startups. They want to use stablecoins for cross-border fund flows, or accept stablecoin payments, or allow customers to store tokenized dollars, or even issue debit cards on top of stablecoins.

We package all these capabilities into a simple set of APIs, allowing developers not to have to study the various details of the crypto world and fiat world, or navigate the complexities of KYC and compliance. They just need to call the interface to deliver the final value to their users.

Ryan: So do you also have a stablecoin? Similar to USDC?

Zach: Yes, we have a stablecoin. Going back to your earlier question: June 2023 was when we really got things running smoothly. Our first core product is what we call orchestration APIs. Its role is to enable the flow of funds between the fiat layer and the stablecoin layer. The first scenario we successfully ran was using stablecoins for cross-border payments.

The first real customer was Zulu. They were our first "real customer." The situation was quite interesting: I sent out a tweet, they saw it, and reached out to us. But the negotiation process was extremely difficult; they pushed us hard on fees. I almost wanted to give up a hundred times because I had never sold anything before. In the end, they still integrated with our platform.

Their need was to convert Colombian pesos into stablecoins, and then someone needed to help them convert the stablecoins into dollars and send the money to a bank account in the U.S. In other words, they needed a service that could run a cross-border payment process to convert Colombian pesos to dollars.

We created a very simple product for them: assigning a crypto address to a bank account. For example, you just need to send stablecoins to a certain Ethereum or Solana address, and that address will automatically convert it into fiat and send it to the associated bank account via ACH or wire transfer. For them, the product was very simple: just call the API, create an account, deposit the money, and the system would store it in their bank account.

After signing with Zulu, they grew at a rate of 50% to 100% every month. As a result, Bridge also grew at the same rate. The state of a startup is quite strange: looking at it from one angle, our company at that time might have been super fragile, with almost only one customer, not really a product-market fit. Although there were some other customers, the core was relying on this one. But looking at it from another angle, you could say we really made it work because the company was growing exponentially every month. Zulu helped us get through the first three or four months.

I often think, what would have happened if we hadn’t found Zulu at that time? Today, when people look at Bridge, they think it’s successful: we are now part of Stripe, stablecoins have become a trend, and it seems everything was destined to succeed. But at that time, the difference between us and "no progress, zero customers, zero feedback" was just one customer. It’s incredible. It was this one customer that gave us the confidence to try for the next customers. As it turned out, our next big customer was the U.S. government.

At that time, there was a government aid program to distribute funds to frontline workers in Latin America. These aid payments had previously been distributed via stablecoins, executed by Silvergate. But when Silvergate collapsed, they could no longer distribute the funds because the process was very complex. You needed to first receive funds from the government, convert them into stablecoins, and then issue thousands of stablecoin payments. This was not something that could be done manually.

Ryan: Essentially, it’s still a dollar payment, right? When I hear you tell this story, I think of the previous U.S. "stimmy checks." You remember, right? Every American received them, but the process was very strange and clumsy. I received mine via ACH, and some people got paper checks; if you didn’t have a bank account, you might not get it at all.

Stablecoins are actually similar: you just want to quickly airdrop funds to a specific group of people or organizations. But in the existing fiat Layer 1 system, this is almost impossible because the entire process is too cumbersome.

Zach: And the costs are extremely high. You have to convert dollars, which are "U.S. formatted" funds, through a U.S. partner into local currency formats, like Argentine pesos or Brazilian reais, which costs money. Then you have to deposit it into local bank accounts, which incurs another cost. Every step has fixed and variable fees. For small amounts, there’s almost no way to distribute efficiently. That’s why they chose to use stablecoins to complete the distribution before finding us.

Ryan: Let me ask you a more macro question. If we view Layer 1 as the settlement layer for banks and fiat, and Layer 2 as the layer of tokenized stablecoins combined with crypto-native platforms, how do you see this?

If more and more businesses start to occur on Layer 2 because it’s more functional and user-friendly, then global fintech applications—whether in emerging markets or the U.S.—will be more inclined to use Layer 2 directly rather than relying on Layer 1.

If this continues, I see the result being that the existing bank settlement system will be bypassed to some extent. At least, real application scenarios will increasingly occur on Layer 2, while the banking system will gradually degrade into a "dumb settlement layer." They will no longer do those interesting and valuable things, nor will they build applications, but will be marginalized, leaving only the settlement part.

So I wonder, if the trend is indeed like this, will there be conflicts with the existing traditional banking system—like institutions such as JPMorgan? I recently saw Jamie Dimon say something similar. He mentioned Plaid, which you should be familiar with. Plaid connects to the global banking system via API, allowing developers to easily access banking data.

Jamie Dimon said they don’t want Plaid to scrape their customers’ data, even if the customers authorize it. They want to limit Plaid and charge extra fees. His point is clear: they don’t want to be relegated to that "zero-profit dumb settlement layer."

So I’m curious, if more and more businesses move towards Layer 2, leaning more towards crypto and fintech, will banks tolerate this? Or will they push back? Do you see this trend now?

Zach: I think they will. I think some banks will definitely do this. If we completely eliminate regulatory factors and the world becomes a "libertarian paradise," then funds will increasingly flow through stablecoins. In other words, if you see the stablecoin layer as a layer above the bank layer, over time, more deposits will settle into the stablecoin layer, and more users will interact solely through the stablecoin layer. Meanwhile, the bank layer—today it is still large and the main channel for fund flows—will gradually shrink over time, while the stablecoin layer will continue to expand.

I think this is a natural evolutionary direction. The reason is very practical: building applications on the stablecoin layer will be easier; whether as consumers or businesses, you will get better economic benefits on this layer; the cost of fund flows is lower, and settlements are simpler. So, more and more transactions will naturally shift here.

However, I think the real big question is: all fund flows and financial services must ultimately comply with regulatory requirements.

So the question is: how much funding and business will migrate to this layer? And obviously, banks will do everything they can to protect their own scale and importance.

Ryan: Let me give you an example. One area that banks seem very eager to protect is treasury yields, especially short-term treasuries. According to the Genius Act, there is a specific provision: stablecoin issuers cannot directly return this yield of around 4% to users; only banks can do this. Of course, I’m simplifying; you definitely know the complexities better. But the general logic is that only banks can directly give customers treasury yields.

But later, the crypto space found a small "workaround." Instead of issuers like Circle directly giving that 4% yield to users, exchanges do it. For example, if I store USDC on Coinbase, I might not get the full 4% (Coinbase takes a cut), but I can indeed get part of the yield. You can imagine that in crypto and DeFi, there will be various ways for stablecoin holders to obtain this yield.

The question is: why not? Why can banks monopolize this 4% yield? Why can’t stablecoin holders enjoy it? Why should this 4% "rental yield" be monopolized by banks? Now, the banking alliance is trying to close this loophole; they don’t want crypto companies to continue to exploit this yield.

Thus, a confrontation has emerged: on one side is crypto and fintech, and on the other side are banks. And banks clearly have a strong influence; they have been deeply entrenched in Washington for many years and hold part of the game rules. This seems to be brewing into a "battle of the giants." What do you think?

Zach: Indeed. But I also want to add that this is not entirely "crypto against banks." For example, Tether does not return yields to users, and Circle doesn’t either.

Ryan: Right, they also have no incentive to return that yield.

Zach: Exactly. This is also something I often think about. Before founding Bridge, I often felt that some reasonable things would inevitably happen. For example, the issue of returning yields to users, in my view, would happen sooner or later because it is simply too reasonable.

But now I understand more clearly that nothing is "inevitably going to happen." It only happens when someone—whether a small group or a large team—works hard to push it. For instance, the "returning yields to users" issue will only change the market landscape if someone builds the corresponding mechanisms and continuously pushes for it.

Even if stablecoins ultimately succeed, if only USDT and USDC exist as the two mainstream stablecoins, then the outcome is clear: Tether will never return yields to users; that’s not their model. Circle and Coinbase might also stop returning yields at some point in the future. That surplus will not flow to consumers or businesses but will be captured by new "Visa/Mastercard-like" giants.

So someone must build new mechanisms. This is also why we want to issue our own stablecoin—the goal is to ensure that the benefits of stablecoins and the economic yields generated by stablecoins can better flow down to end users and end businesses, thereby improving the economic model of the platform.

We think this is very important. This is not just a regulatory game; it’s also a game about the long-term market structure of stablecoins. We must ensure that this system ultimately creates surplus for consumers, rather than just transferring value from old financial institutions to new financial institutions.

Ryan: Exactly. As an ordinary stablecoin holder, I certainly hope these "rental yields" can disappear, allowing more yields to return to users. Now let’s talk about the Genius Act itself.

Currently, the stablecoin space in crypto is almost a "duopoly." Tether holds the dominant share, with USDC following behind. This structure aligns with the logic of "the greater the liquidity, the greater the advantage," appearing to reflect the "power law effect." However, the overall market size is currently only around $270 billion, and it will certainly grow to trillions of dollars in the future.

The Genius Act has opened a whole new door, giving various new issuers the opportunity to enter the market. Some fintech players have already entered, like PayPal’s stablecoin; you also have your own stablecoin; I guess Stripe will definitely have big moves; there are even rumors that Amazon and Walmart might also enter the space.

So after the Genius Act, we might enter a brand new era, seeing various issuers flooding in, various experiments unfolding, everyone competing for liquidity and dominance, and coming up with different paths and ideas.

What do you think about the stablecoin market after the Genius Act? You can start with Stripe’s thoughts, but more generally, do you think there will be a lot of experimental projects, or will there be some clear structure?

Zach: Our view is that there will be many different stablecoins in the future. I believe every platform should have its own stablecoin. We might see a world where the number of stablecoins could reach tens of thousands or even millions.

The differences between these stablecoins will be completely abstracted. So ultimately, only a few "brand-recognizable stablecoins" will be the ones people can actually name, like USDT and USDC. I believe USDT and USDC will be more successful in the future than they are today, and we certainly hope so, as they play a huge role in driving the industry. Their businesses have strong network effects, as they continuously accumulate liquidity and build forex trading pairs.

These are very hard to replicate. PayPal is an example; it spent a lot of money to get PYUSD off the ground and establish liquidity, but the results were not easy.

So, I think there might only be about five or so, or a small handful of such "brand stablecoins" that can really establish themselves in the market. At the same time, when major platforms use stablecoins—like Robinhood, the Amazon you mentioned, or even banks—they will be more inclined to issue their own controlled stablecoins. The reason is simple: these stablecoins are primarily used for internal fund flows on the platform, such as distributing funds to users or settling between different subsidiaries. In this scenario, the external liquidity advantages of USDC are simply not relevant.

For example, when Walmart allocates funds among its twenty-plus subsidiaries in Europe, that’s completely internal transfers. They naturally want to use their own stablecoin because they want to directly control the reserves, rather than handing the funds over to Circle and mixing them with others’ funds. They also want to directly receive interest income and fully control the flow of those dollars.

More importantly, some issuers currently charge a burn fee when redeeming funds. So you can imagine, if you want to transfer a large amount of funds and have to pay an extra fee, that’s worse than using fiat.

So you would definitely want to control your own funds. This isn’t about decentralization; it’s about not wanting to rely on another platform because its interests will always outweigh yours. Especially when the flow of funds is the core aspect of your business.

Ryan: Got it, very interesting. Let me confirm if I understand correctly: the future world you describe would likely be like this—there will be a small handful of "external brand stablecoins," like today’s Tether and USDC. Each will have its own positioning, such as Tether being more favored in international markets outside the U.S., while USDC represents "compliant stablecoins." In the future, there might also be a stablecoin that focuses on "returning yields to users" or other features, but overall, the number of external stablecoins will only be a few.

Meanwhile, every large company will have its own "internal stablecoin." I can even relate it to Starbucks’ loyalty card, which, although it’s not yet an ERC-20 fungible token, essentially already exists as an internal currency on Starbucks’ balance sheet. The world you envision might be that there are only a few external stablecoins, but internally, companies will have thousands or even millions of different "corporate stablecoins."

However, I can imagine they will ultimately need to be compatible with each other. Just like I wouldn’t want to have Wells Fargo dollars that I can’t use at JP Morgan because JP Morgan only recognizes its own JP Morgan dollars, and then I have to exchange them. This entire system must maintain fungibility and interoperability, just like today. Is that the world you envision? Can you help clarify a bit?

Zach: Yes, that’s completely correct. Let me give two simple examples. Suppose in the future every bank uses stablecoins to complete fund settlements, but Wells Fargo will never use JP Morgan’s stablecoin; that’s simply not going to happen. Because the reserves of JP Morgan’s stablecoin are all held at JP Morgan. If Wells Fargo uses it, it means its reserves have to be held at JP Morgan. Logically, that makes no sense, so that situation will never occur.

Another example: suppose you are Polymarket. Polymarket currently operates mainly using stablecoins, allowing users to bet with any stablecoin they want: you can use USDT, or USDC, and in the future, you might even be able to use dollars or other tokens.

But internally at Polymarket, you would definitely want it to ultimately run on its own PolyUSD, or some internal stablecoin belonging to Polymarket. There are several reasons for this:

First, if Polymarket wants to build its own Layer 2 in the future, then its stablecoin can seamlessly migrate to that Layer 2 without needing to persuade external issuers to cooperate with the migration.

Second, it needs to ensure that there are no burn fees when redeeming, so that zero-cost redemptions can be achieved at any time.

Third, it may ultimately want to program itself to customize the smart contract logic for these dollar stablecoins.

So for Polymarket, controlling its own "dollars"—that is, its own programmable, tokenizable dollars—is key to ensuring it can dominate future development.

Ryan: And if it’s Polymarket, it might also want to share interest income with users, right?

Zach: Yes, exactly. So we believe such a world should exist. But the problem is that this world needs someone to build it. The Genius Act is a very important first step; it makes this world more feasible and increases the market’s acceptance of it. Next, we need to truly bring it to fruition.

Ryan: Now back to your earlier example of Wells Fargo and JP Morgan. If Wells Fargo wants to send money to JP Morgan, how would they do it? Would they need to go through some intermediary stablecoin, like USDC, and then transfer it to JP Morgan? Or would they revert back to Layer 1, the fiat system, to complete the settlement in the background?

Zach: The way I envision it is that there will be a dedicated stablecoin clearinghouse. Every day, stablecoins will circulate among banks in this clearinghouse, and only in the final stages of the day will they actually return to Layer 1 for net settlement, balancing the reserves of all parties. This way, only a net amount needs to be settled each day, rather than the full amount of funds. This is actually somewhat similar to the current settlement logic of the financial system, just with different settlement windows. But I believe that’s how it will operate in the future.

Ryan: Stripe’s moves are quite interesting. It seems we are in an era where fintech companies are fully experiencing a "crypto transformation," and Stripe has signed on to be one of the pioneers in this.

I’ve been following the Carlson brothers; they had previously tried some crypto directions, like Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, but were somewhat skeptical at that time. This time is different; this is the first time we see Stripe truly "all in" on crypto. They started with the acquisition of Bridge (stablecoin payment infrastructure) and then acquired Privy (a crypto wallet infrastructure company), making a big move.

So this is not just Stripe’s story; it’s also a reflection of the entire fintech industry accelerating its crypto transformation. You were one of the early people to foresee stablecoins, and now five years have passed. If we look ahead five more years, after this integration period ends, what will fintech look like? For example, will Venmo, which many U.S. users use daily, become a crypto wallet? Will the balances we have in PayPal be entirely backed by stablecoins? What kind of shape do you think this integration will bring to fintech?

Zach: I believe that most financial assets will be tokenized. The result will be that the foundational module of every fintech company will be a "wallet."

In the future, it won’t be like today, where people feel the crypto world is a new field that requires relearning. At that time, you would just need to call an API, like Bridge’s API, to open an account for users, and that account would essentially be a wallet. In this wallet, you could enable dollars (which would be some stablecoin), enable euros (another stablecoin), enable reais (yet another stablecoin), and further down the line, you could enable stock trading (which would be the tokenized form of stocks), and so on.

I think we are already on a "sliding track" now, unless there are drastic regulatory changes in the future. The most interesting dynamic in this is that on one hand, you will see wallets that originally started in the crypto space gradually moving towards traditional financial services; on the other hand, you will also see traditional financial companies continuously moving closer to crypto. Over time, these two paths will gradually merge.

Take Robinhood as an example; it initially started as a typical traditional financial player, providing stock trading. But later, it increased its investment in crypto trading, and now one of their core strategies is internationalization. So how does a fintech company go international? If I were Robinhood, I would choose to start by "building a wallet," making the wallet the core.

The magic of blockchain is that it is essentially "open-source financial services." For example, if you build on Solana or another blockchain, whenever developers around the world add new features to Solana, that feature can be immediately used by Robinhood.

Ryan: And it’s always open, 24/7. As long as there’s internet connectivity, it can be used in any country.

Zach: Right. The traditional financial service model is that as a company, you have to build everything yourself. If someone wants to replicate Revolut, they have to establish compliance infrastructure, develop new products, and connect to local stock markets in every new country—all of it has to be done by themselves.

But blockchain is completely different. For example, if someone issues a tokenized Brazilian real based on Solana, then Robinhood doesn’t need to develop the relevant infrastructure; it can natively support BRL deposits right away. Similarly, if someone issues a euro token on-chain, Robinhood can directly support euro balances; if someone issues tokenized treasuries, Robinhood can directly provide treasury yields.

So you are essentially "open-sourcing" the entire financial stack to the world, built collaboratively by countless developers, and then you internalize these services into your own products. That’s why I believe everything will eventually go on-chain—shifting from the past model of "a single company building everything piece by piece based on its own capabilities" to a world where "everything is shared and built on the blockchain," and you just need to integrate and internalize these results.

Ryan: This is actually a very simple narrative, but it seems to be happening. As you said, all the bank accounts we use today will become crypto wallets in the future, regardless of whether users know it; and all the assets we hold will also become some form of crypto tokens, existing somewhere on the chain.

Another question is, we see some fintech companies, like Robinhood, and even Coinbase (which is now also shifting more towards fintech), launching their own ledgers—they all have their own Layer 2. Meanwhile, Circle recently launched a Layer 1, which is a public chain focused on stablecoin payments. There are also recent reports that Stripe is going down this path, announcing the Tempo project.

So the question is: how does this position itself in the overall stack? Will banks also move towards a similar model—gradually transforming their originally "private ledgers" in the background into some sort of semi-private/semi-public chain ledger? Will they also launch their own Layer 1 or Layer 2 in the future? What do you think about this evolution?

Zach: For us, this process is actually a very natural evolution. I would say Bridge was one of the earliest companies trying to build payment-level infrastructure on the blockchain. I can’t say we were the first, but at that time, it did feel like we were at the forefront. And this is very difficult; it remains difficult to this day. Blockchain has many advantages, but it does not perform well in terms of "scaling payments."

Ryan: For example, building on Ethereum would encounter issues like gas fees, right?

Zach: Even with Solana—the project recognized for its TPS. We recently encountered a client who had millions of accounts and wanted to open stablecoin accounts for all users. To achieve this functionality, you must generate a Solana wallet for each user and preload it so that the wallet can receive USDC. Both of these steps require consuming SOL, costing about $0.3 worth of SOL per wallet. So just to enable this functionality, the cost would be hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.

The reason is simple: Solana was not designed to handle scenarios where "developers suddenly need to enable millions of accounts simultaneously." In reality, almost no one would be willing to spend millions of dollars to enable a feature that a user hasn’t even started using or tested yet.

Another example involves the distribution of aid funds. In the traditional fiat system, the flow of funds is extremely slow—so slow that we have to layer a lot of infrastructure on top to ensure that funds don’t move around arbitrarily. Suppose you need to pay tens of thousands of people at once; the usual approach is to use PayPal, pre-funding the money into PayPal three days in advance, waiting for the funds to confirm before clicking the button to distribute. But that’s not real money moving; it’s just an update of numbers on a ledger.

But blockchain doesn’t work that way. Everyone has an independent wallet; you must actually send money to each wallet one by one. If you want to send 20,000, 30,000, or even 50,000 transactions on-chain simultaneously, it’s impossible to accomplish—no matter which chain you use.

The first time we did aid distribution on Stellar, we were particularly naive; we clicked the "send" button, thinking we could complete it all at once. But it took 18 hours to process those transactions, and the failure rate was very high. Then a lot of users sent support requests: "Didn’t you say it would arrive by 9 AM? Why hasn’t it arrived yet?"

So we had to build a whole set of infrastructure to optimize, such as prioritizing large transactions over $50 because those users were more likely to check immediately, and setting up seven or eight parallel tasks to batch send, gradually pushing it down. Because there was no way to deliver all transactions at once.

In summary, blockchain indeed struggles with scaling payments. So our approach is to build infrastructure that can solve our own pain points. From the beginning, we were not doing transaction-related things, but simply wanted a system with high throughput that also has the core functionalities required by payment companies and can ensure delivery reliability. Because if someone wants to run banking operations on this track, pay salaries, or make payments to all customers, that deliverability is essential. That’s why building and investing in Tempo has become particularly important for us.

But I want to clarify that Tempo is not a "Stripe-exclusive blockchain." We also don’t believe that so-called "enterprise private chains" will succeed because no one wants to build on someone else’s chain; they want shared, universally recognized infrastructure. Just as we are skeptical about "building on someone else’s stablecoin," you wouldn’t want to subordinate your interests to another company that has its own economic interests at stake.

So, Tempo is actually an independent entity. Stripe is one of the main contributors to Tempo, and Bridge is also a core participant and collaborator of Tempo, but Tempo itself is being built as a neutral blockchain outside of Stripe.

Ryan: So Tempo will be an independent entity, a neutral blockchain, and it’s an EVM-based Layer 1?

Zach: Yes, Tempo is indeed an EVM Layer 1, focusing on high TPS, without "neighbor noise" issues. There won’t be situations where the launch of some "Trump Coin" causes transactions to freeze—this is something we encountered on Solana. It will also support private transactions, which is crucial for all payment companies. Additionally, it will provide extremely fast finality: unlike Ethereum, which requires a 12-minute confirmation, Tempo will have sub-second finality. These features are critical for payment scenarios.

Ryan: So you can achieve scenarios like this: for example, if you need to send a stimulus check to a million people in the U.S., you can complete it directly on this chain. Users just need to use any EVM-compatible wallet to receive the funds immediately. In other words, its scale is sufficient to support such operations, right?

Zach: Exactly. And the key is, it’s not just us who can use it; if PayPal finds it valuable, they can also use Tempo to achieve this. That’s precisely our positioning: we see Tempo as an important public infrastructure for the entire stablecoin ecosystem. Stripe is one of the main contributors, and we are investing in and building Tempo, but we, like any other participant, have the same rights and voice, with no special privileges.

Ryan: So Zach, how do you see this trend evolving? Especially in the Layer 1 space—financial technology companies like Stripe entering the Layer 1 track, and we also see Circle launching its own Layer 1.

In the crypto space, the emergence of more centralized stablecoins has not diminished the status of native crypto assets (like Bitcoin and Ethereum); instead, it has accelerated their development. They are essentially growing in parallel with stablecoins, not reverting to what you call "fiat Layer 1," but forming an independent clearing network.

How do you view the development of Layer 1? Specifically, projects like Tempo— I know you said it’s not Stripe’s exclusive chain, but Layer 1s like Tempo. Will they eat into the market share of Ethereum, Layer 2, and Solana public chains? Or will they form a complement? How will they interact with each other? Do you think the future evolution will see every fintech company and every bank launching their own Layer 1 or Layer 2? Or will there be a "power law distribution" of winners? How will the landscape of the ledger layer evolve?

Zach: I believe projects like Tempo are actually highly complementary. The reason Tempo must exist is that the functionalities it provides are currently absent in the market. Without something like Tempo, the scale of the entire stablecoin ecosystem would be much smaller. Because there is currently no chain capable of supporting "payment-scaled operations," none come close.

So in that sense, I see Tempo as a complement to all existing blockchains, not a replacement. My thinking is that in the future, there will be a few "general-purpose blockchains" that continue to exist. For example, Base will clearly become a winner; the product experience created by Coinbase is very good; Solana is also one of them. There will be a few such general-purpose chains in the future. But if someone wants to create a "general-purpose blockchain" from scratch, hoping to attract a large volume of transactions, I think the difficulty is very high.

We are entering a new phase: people will build chains specifically designed for certain needs, solving problems that general public chains cannot address. Tempo is targeted at payment scenarios; I have also talked with some teams that are building chains for trading scenarios, which require extremely high throughput and low latency, necessitating completely different technical requirements. These types of blockchains will solve highly specialized problems, which general-purpose public chains cannot address.

I also believe there will be a third type of blockchain. For example, going back to the Polymarket example, Polymarket might choose to build its own chain to control its own block space. These would be application-specific chains. So the overall landscape might look like this: a few general-purpose blockchains; a few function/feature-oriented blockchains, like the one we are building, Tempo; plus a large number of application-specific chains. This is my current thinking, though it may change in the future.

Ryan: So there will be a large number of blockchains, meaning a lot of businesses will need to go on-chain. Then five years from now, how will this position fintech, or more broadly, the financial system—whether in the U.S. or globally?

If we look at the underlying layer, the current traditional financial and banking systems are essentially just a settlement layer. I remember they are still running some old systems like IBM mainframes, written in COBOL, with a very chaotic underlying structure, filled with paper documents. Although on the surface it looks digital, in reality, behind the financial operations, there might still be a bunch of office workers handling paper documents. Perhaps they no longer use faxes, but legal documents are still on paper, which makes it hard for me to believe.

Zach: Yes, in reality, they might still be faxing.

Ryan: Right, so can we understand that we are gradually switching out of this old legacy system, slowly migrating to a new crypto/blockchain system? In other words, the user interface of future fintech will no longer rely on the mainframe systems of traditional finance in the background, but will increasingly settle directly on the blockchain.

Zach: Yes, I believe that’s how it will develop. For example, at Bridge, our business initially started with stablecoin orchestration: frequently moving funds between fiat and stablecoins, and between different Layer 1s and Layer 2s. At that time, this was a rigid demand, and it still is today.

I believe our business will increasingly trend towards a segmented service—which is actually the result I hope to see. Because this means that the demand for settlement to Layer 1 will decrease. Just like the bank example I mentioned earlier: in the future, there may be millions of stablecoin fund flows behind every fiat settlement. Today, the situation is still almost one-to-one, or even two fiat settlements correspond to one stablecoin settlement. I hope this ratio can change.

In my view, that would be a sign of success: more financial services can be completed and settled directly at the blockchain level. But the reality is—we are still in an extremely early stage. For example, in the most basic scenarios: sending a large batch of transactions simultaneously is still very difficult at the stablecoin level.

Moreover, there are currently almost no local currency stablecoins; the entire market is 99.9% dollar stablecoins. This is great for the first use case of stablecoins (i.e., trading and obtaining dollar liquidity), but if they are to truly become a core component of the financial system, local currency stablecoins are essential. I am very optimistic that in the next 5 to 10 years, they will become very important. But today, these foundational components are still missing.

Ryan: The U.S. Treasury Secretary recently cited some research, stating that by 2028, the on-chain stablecoin market will reach $3 trillion. Do you agree with that assessment? How fast do you think the growth will be, and how large will the scale be?

Zach: I believe that prediction only refers to dollar stablecoins. If we can successfully tokenize euros, pesos, yen, etc., the scale could easily be an order of magnitude larger. Of course, this entirely depends on the regulatory environment. The good news right now is that the U.S. has rapidly transitioned from being a regulatory laggard to a clear regulatory leader, which allows us to push the market forward more quickly. But we need to see similar progress globally.

Ryan: So what is the biggest issue hindering the entire world and the entire financial system from switching to a crypto system more quickly? You mentioned regulation, and I guess that might be one of the top three obstacles. But beyond that, there’s also the user experience issue. For example, wallets—many times you still have to use mnemonic phrases, and the operational threshold is quite high.

For instance, is there chargeback protection and consumer protection like Visa or traditional credit card networks? In terms of compliance and privacy, do they meet the anti-money laundering (AML) and KYC requirements of various countries? What do you think are the three major missing links to allow crypto assets to reach trillions of dollars and truly go mainstream?

Zach: The most direct answer is regulatory clarity and clarity of accounting standards, which may be the most obvious. But for us, the more specific barrier is education.

One of the biggest problems in the development of stablecoins is that over the past few decades, teams have accumulated rich experience and inertia in the fiat system. In any company involved in fund flows, there will be a large number of people who know how to set up FBO (For Benefit Of) accounts, how to build internal ledgers, and even how to send ACH batch files—these complex operations they have mastered through years of practice.

But when you walk in and talk to them about "enabling an on-chain wallet," the scene is completely different. Everyone’s heads are about to explode, as if you’re asking them to go to Mars. This is an entirely new financial tech stack, completely unfamiliar. And it touches the "lifeline" of every company—fund flows. This naturally makes people very risk-averse.

I want to say that if every company had someone who was very familiar with crypto, our progress today might be 100 times faster.

Another issue is that the number of engineers who understand crypto is extremely limited. The people who truly understand smart contracts and have experience in wallet development are probably one of the smallest engineering communities in the world. In other words, if you are an engineer looking for a field that allows you to have the "most scarce skills," the answer is almost obvious: it’s crypto. This will become an extremely important area for the world, involving the flow of funds for every company and every continent. But right now, the number of people who are truly proficient in this system feels like only a few hundred.

Ryan: Stripe itself has many engineers, and you are now part of a larger engineering team. What about Patrick and John? We previously discussed their early attempts in crypto and their gradually more optimistic attitudes. How do you think their acceptance of crypto is now? How "crypto-pilled" is Stripe overall?

Zach: During the acquisition process, I once went to Stripe’s office to have lunch with John and Patrick. I remember that might have been my first time meeting John. As soon as I walked in, he said, "Can I tell you a joke?" I said sure. He said, "Do you know the difference between banks and Tether?"

I said I didn’t know.

He said, "The difference is—one is a massive institution holding huge amounts of money, but you have no idea where that money is. And if you want to withdraw it, you might not be able to because it’s tied up in a bunch of extremely complex and obscure assets, with no transparency. And the other is different."

Ryan: Well, that makes a lot of sense.

Zach: Yeah. So I think on a deeper level, they are actually very firm believers in stablecoins and understand the potential of this technology very well. For example, they were early investors in Stellar. They also tried Bitcoin but quickly realized that Bitcoin had many issues with payments and was not suitable for large-scale implementation. It wasn’t until they saw stablecoins gradually rise, combined with the specific scenarios that Bridge solves, that some pieces of the puzzle truly came together.

Ryan: Stripe is a massive company with countless partnerships. So what are your expectations for the penetration of crypto within Stripe? How do you hope this fintech company will complete its transformation into "crypto fintech"?

Zach: One of the things I’m most excited about is that no one will use stablecoins just for the sake of using stablecoins. Everyone is willing to use stablecoins, wallets, and our APIs because they bring clear business value: for example, helping businesses enter new markets, serve more users, reduce costs, or open up new revenue streams. There must be tangible benefits for applications to truly take off.

And now being part of Stripe, the biggest advantage is that the feedback loop is greatly shortened. Previously, we had to validate product value ourselves; now Stripe itself is our first and best customer. We can apply and experiment with all new things internally at Stripe first. This is hugely significant for us.

But at the same time, Stripe also has 8,000 employees. Even if John or Patrick says, "We want to do stablecoins," dozens of different departments must genuinely buy into it for things to really move forward.

The teams within Stripe must truly understand these benefits to be willing to allocate resources to do it. If we encounter resistance within Stripe, it’s actually no different from the resistance we face when communicating with external companies like Walmart, Robinhood, Revolut, or Nubank.

So the opportunity now is: in the process of pushing Stripe to deeply integrate stablecoins, we can discover problems faster, understand concerns, find ways to solve them, and then make Stripe the first and best demonstration customer. This way, it can also serve as a powerful proof externally.

Ryan: Sounds just like your first customer, Zulu, right?

Zach: Exactly.

Ryan: In the last question of this conversation, we’ve been treating stablecoin users as humans. But in another future, the largest users of stablecoins might not be humans but AI or AI agents. How do you think Stripe will play a role in this transition? Will AI really become the largest users of stablecoins? If so, how far away is that future?

Zach: A few days ago, Sir Simon Taylor shared a perspective with me (I forgot if I saw it on Slack). He said he spoke with a "monetary historian," and every major technological revolution brings about a new form of currency to drive the development of that revolution.

A universally understood example is the internet and credit cards. Without credit cards, the internet wouldn’t have developed into what it is today; conversely, without the internet, the prevalence of credit and debit cards wouldn’t be as high. In fact, credit cards appeared as early as the 1960s, but they truly exploded in the late 1990s and early 2000s, alongside the internet wave. Today, we can hardly imagine an internet without credit cards because they have become the default means of value transfer. And Stripe itself is an accelerator of this process.

I believe stablecoins will play the same role for AI. For AI agents to form complete economic activities, they will need a new form of currency to support them. The existing fiat currency system presents many inherent barriers for AI, the most obvious being: to store fiat currency, you must be a human.

Ryan: Yes, if you’re not human, that’s indeed a problem.

Zach: That’s indeed a big problem. So I think we will quickly go through this phase: initially, many AI agents will operate under human names, borrowing human KYC identities to function. But over time, they will need to have their own accounts, capable of making their own payment and settlement decisions. And stablecoins and wallets can provide that capability.

Another advantage is that stablecoins and wallets are very suitable for micropayments, variable amount payments, and streaming payments. These types of transactions are almost impossible to achieve in today’s traditional fiat networks because cross-border settlements are both expensive and slow. But in the stablecoin system, all of this can become feasible.

Ryan: Exactly, it’s astonishing. It seems almost obvious to me: the financial system that AI will use in the future will definitely be a crypto system. Their financial stack will certainly be based on wallets, ledgers, smart contracts, and holdable tokens; there’s almost no doubt about it. So perhaps what you need to do next is to build the bridge between the AI layer and the crypto world.