when i left
@Adyen to join
@lightspark, i was fairly convinced that stablecoins would redefine fintech.
the turning point for me was seeing the gap between what modern software can do and what money movement infrastructure still looks like underneath.
companies can launch globally, serve users in dozens of markets, operate 24/7, and build incredibly sophisticated financial experiences. but the underlying rails are still fragmented, slow, expensive, country-specific, and often unavailable.
stablecoins and crypto rails more broadly were interesting because they suggested a different base layer. not a wrapper or an optimization of the old stack, but a different assumption about how value should move.
after seeing this up close at
@lightspark, and spending time with customers from large financial institutions to next-gen platforms, i’m now certain. and the biggest change is utility. for years, much of crypto felt like a solution looking for a problem. that is no longer true.
platforms want to pay creators and sellers globally. marketplaces want faster settlement. fintechs want to offer dollar access in markets where local banking is limited. companies want 24/7 liquidity movement. ai-native businesses will need programmable accounts, permissions, and money movement that can operate at software speed.
these are not theoretical use cases anymore. they are real customer problems i'm hearing from customers every week. stablecoins are increasingly becoming the most practical way to solve them.
big infrastructure shifts usually happen when the old system becomes too limiting for what the next generation of applications needs to do. fax machines worked until email made them absurd. legacy financial rails worked well enough when money movement was mostly domestic and bank-led. but that's not the world we are building for anymore.
the next generation of financial services will be global, real-time, programmable, and available 24/7. the legacy system was simply not designed for that. stablecoins were.
ps. credit should go to the builders who kept pushing through the noise, cycles, skepticism, regulatory uncertainty, and failed experiments to get the industry here. lots of respect!