Great thread here by @ccatalini I like to view this through the lens of The Innovator’s Dilemma, and see blockchain as the last major feature in the long process of how the internet is transforming banking and money. These processes usually unfold over decades or even centuries, so it’s plausible to frame it this way. Stablecoins, as the latest piece in this transformation, can be understood as either: a) Disruptive – shifting competition in banking and money to entirely new paradigms and valuation metrics. Users adopt the system based on performance metrics that didn’t matter before, and most of the new players are not incumbents. That means banks are sidelined, replaced by fintechs (Stripe being a prime example) and new players yet to be created. Value networks of partners change as well. Disruptive tech is hard for incumbents to implement because it requires different thinking and often starts from niche markets. b) Incremental – here, the largest incumbents remain dominant. Some fintechs may rise to the same level, but only a small number of new companies break into the market. The value networks of partners remain mostly unchanged. Incremental tech is easy for incumbents to adopt because it fits their existing paradigms. Forecasting whether a technology will be disruptive for a sector is very difficult. I tend to see the arc of internet → blockchain → stablecoins as disruptive. Many signs point in that direction, and I hope to contribute to the wave of players replacing the old incumbents in this long cycle. If the disruptive thesis holds true for stablecoins, then regardless of market strategies, interoperability and competition will remain. Attempts to replicate today’s banking models will fail, because users will inevitably want something different.

1/ Can crypto scale without losing its soul? Short answer: yes—if competition and interoperability are real. Longer answer in 🧵:

This thread from Christian is burying the real point he makes. Robinhood, Coinbase, Circle and stripe all have an incentive to build the broadest possible networks. The success metric isn't owning your own chain. It's that chain becoming hyperacaled infrastructure like AWS

Powerful point by @ccatalini on Stripe's new chain: stablecoin issuers will either try to commoditize chains by issuing on all & running their own mint-burn 'metachain' (CCTP) or they'll launch a chain themselves to maximize payment/interchange fees. Whole thread worth reading.

As you cross from early adopters to the early majority, you’ll ship things some power users won’t like. That’s the cost of scale.

2/ The bar for attention keeps rising, and AI raises it faster. Anyone can summarize now. The new muscle is being the *unpredictable, but clearly correct next token.*

you have to be blind at this point to not see the future. the era of traditional software, as a stable object with version numbers, roadmaps & feature sets, is pretty much gone. we’re prolly just slow to admit it. future systems will be fluid, ambient, entangled with context. e.g. you summon capabilities, no real “apps”. you speak, gesture, or hint but never have to learn a single interface again that’s not personalized for you. the end of software as we knew it is here, not near.

1/ T-minus 2 hours to GPT-5. The real suspense isn’t just what it can do, but how it will accelerate automation. AI devours anything that can be measured—and each iteration redraws the map of what can be measured.

1/ Africa’s FX drought in three numbers: dollars trickle in, but ~$750 bn of imports, ~$90 bn in debt coupons, and a stealthy ~$89 bn in illicit flows suck them right back out. End-game: everyone queues for the last $20 in the till.

1/ AI slashes the cost of accessing deep expertise—especially where things are measurable. Specialists still benefit from superior taste and curation skills for now—but increasingly, they'll seize the opportunity to become generalists.