So are the pump and dump chat groups, the sandwiching syndicates, and paid market manipulation KOLs. Guess which team will win?

I love it when critics of stables (like the FT) try to call them dangerous...as compared to banks. As if Credit Suisse, literally an official "Global Systematically Important Bank" didn't blow up few years ago, requiring a massive bailout. Like, what planet do these people live on? Banks are the real danger to the economy.

it’s perfectly right and reasonable to criticize the fed and its “independence” first, article 1, section 8 of the US constitution authorizes congress “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof..” money printing is the people’s prerogative, delegated (abdicated?) to the Fed by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, but that doesn’t mean congress (the people) forever give up that constitutional power. second, the fed has an awfully bad track record of forecasting economic and monetary developments. it printed enormous sums during covid, causing the worst inflation in decades. early on, “inflation is transitory” was the mantra post covid, which they later admitted was wrong. and this was just the latest in a slew of practically neverending miscalculations. see this clip from omid malekan’s legendary 2010 youtube video “quantitative easing explained.” third, the fed inflates the monetary supply perpetually, and the cantillon effect describes how the beneficiaries of that money printing are always those closest to the spigot: banks, government and its contractors, asset holders, etc. newly created money enters the economy unevenly, distorting relative prices and redistributing wealth based on the path it takes through the economy. the neverending monetary expansion benefits wealthy asset owners almost always at the expense of working people, creating headwinds to prosperity for real americans, creating structural distortions in the economy, and giving credence to dangerous socialist or communist ideological critiques of the economy. fourth, the Fed is notoriously unaccountable and detached from reality. the Fed is comprised almost entirely of unaccountable technocrats, has its own police force, doesn’t get funding from Congress, doesn’t need any approvals of its policies or budgets, has never been audited, and its regional banks are owned by the banks themselves. indeed, the only members of the Fed subject to any U.S. government involvement are the 7 members of the board of governors, who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. but none of their operations or decisions are subject to any executive or congressional oversight or supervision. fifth, the Fed utilized its examination criteria to enact political censorship on banks at their customers through “operation chokepoint 2.0”. the Fed famously has a “dual mandate” - to manage monetary policy in ways that reduce inflation and maximize employment. but it also possess significant (if not supreme) bank regulatory powers. these powers are often duplicative of those powers possessed by agencies much more accountable to the people, like the OCC and FDIC. why should the Fed be charged with both monetary policy and bank supervision, especially when it has a history of using supervisory powers to deny banking access, such actions are not subject to congressional oversight? notwithstanding whether Jay Powell has been an effective Fed chairman (i believe that he has done a very good job, given the circumstances), it’s completely reasonable for the people to criticize the Fed, call for reforms, or even suggest or take steps to remove its leadership. here’s a contrarian opinion to what i hear from many of my friends in markets: while i don’t think using the cost of the Fed’s renovation as justification for removing Powell makes sense, particularly given that the Fed doesn’t even use money from Congress for this, i’m not convinced some of the issues i described aren’t sufficient cause to remove a Fed chair. it’s never been done, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t or shouldn’t ever be done. what does it mean to have a job where you can’t be fired for performing poorly? why should any government (or Congressionally authorized) job, like the Fed chair, be unaccountable to the people?

My friend Valla Vakili (formerly of Visa & Citi Ventures) has written a provocative piece about what stablecoins actually represent, which is "finance's first real digital format change." It's one of the most unique treatments of the subject I've ever read and a must read for people trying to wrap their arms around what this transformation will look like. He's not on Twitter so I'm quoting the most salient paragraphs here: The history of digital format shifts reveals more about stablecoin potential than debates about whether stablecoins are "real money." Focusing on monetary properties is like imagining the future of music by staying locked in arguments over MP3 audio quality. The breakthrough insights come from understanding what kinds of businesses digital formats enable. Format changes create outsider moments. Hollywood couldn't imagine Netflix because they thought in theatrical windows, not on-demand streaming. Record labels couldn't imagine iTunes because they thought in albums, not songs. Finance has never had a true digital format change, so innovation has been constrained by existing infrastructure—limiting the kind of creative repattern by outsiders that transformed music and video. Stablecoins let the outsiders in. This doesn't mean digital money is identical to digital media—money is regulated, and people experience earning, spending, and losing money very differently than consuming content. But digital money will need to go through the same fundamental steps: changing customer behavior and building enduring businesses around new user experiences. Among other reasons, his arguments further bolster my belief that we should be skeptical of stablecoin implementations by financial "insiders" like banks and even FinTechs. To me, JPM is highly unlikely to figure any of this out, and to a lesser extent, neither is Stripe. Circle and the other crypto-natives coming after it are the ones to watch. They are not wedded to the old format, economically or otherwise. The entire piece is worth a read and a further discussion. What's the future of fiat money? Not as a finance thing but as a user experience? Link below

The Federal Reserve has been on the wrong side of every major economic event in my lifetime - as measured by their own predictions. Those who treat them as beyond reproach are likely biased (e.g., they work for a bank that got bailed out). Glad to see this

Didn't we agree that we wouldn't call USDE a stablecoin due to the additional risks of it's structure? Yet this company is called Stablecoin_x?? I know I know, hot topic and Circle's IPO mooned etc etc. But still - we shouldn't confuse TradFi even further. What say you @CampbellJAustin ?

Let's start differentiating where stables trade in the secondary market vs what they can be redeemed for in the primary. Temporary depegs that can be arbed are normal. But it's unclear what this means for tokenized deposits where the secondary market could trigger a run.

That ONDO is a scam is something almost universally known in crypto. But few dare speak up about it, particularly prominent VCs who otherwise hold themselves out as important thought leaders. Step up and be a real leader. This project is a liability for all.

It’s amazing to think that the discounted cash flows of Ethereum have doubled in like a week. But they must have, because markets move on math only. Things like narratives and sentiment don’t matter, as many said when ETH was down. BTW the DCF of XRP had spiked even more.

The most important thing to remember about fiat going on chain (via stables or tokenized deposits) is that unless the solution changes the current architecture of payments, it doesn't achieve anything. It's a step backwards. This is not some anti-bank ideology. It's a practical recognition that the tech, cryptographic, and incentive soup that forms a blockchain is only beneficial if it enables a more P2P settlement layer. If it doesn't then it's pointless complexity and cost. A bank doesn't need a blockchain to offer real-time 24/7 payments to its clients. Banks have been offering that service for decades. Also, a bank consortium (or government) doesn't need a blockchain to allow real-time 24/7 payments across banks. Many countries have had RTP/Fast Payment systems for decades. All the defenses of why permissioned blockchain solutions make sense only see that there's a problem. "Bank systems are too slow" or "wire transfers take too long." But you can solve both to a great extent with faster databases and newer shared infrastructure. The blockchain is only beneficial if it's used to get rid of someone - a bank or a correspondent or or clearinghouse. And that only happens if the system is permissionless. There's a reason why after a decade of attempts and likely over a billion dollars invested, not a single permissioned solution has ever achieved anything other than questionable headlines If you still don't believe me, maybe you can be convinced by my (likely) late friend S.N. Most people think of him as the inventor of a new currency, but he was also a keen observer of the fundamental flaw of intermediated & permissioned systems: