Stabledash

.@SamBroner spent years at @a16zcrypto studying hundreds of stablecoin-focused startups. Mature fintechs, banks weighing their stablecoin strategy, early teams pitching infrastructure plays. The one pattern that kept surfacing: stablecoins were built for trading, not payments. Before a16z, Broner was an engineer at @Microsoft, where he built the Fluid Framework that helped re-platform Word from desktop to browser. He demoed for Bill Gates two weeks into the project. Spent time at the Boston Fed's stablecoin initiative during MIT Sloan, angel invested in Cursor before most people had heard of it, and kept circling back to the same problem: moving from one stablecoin to another still works like a trade, not a payment. That's when he founded @bettermoney_co - a stablecoin clearinghouse. Any stablecoin in, any stablecoin out, at a fixed price, with a guaranteed time of delivery. Its member issuers include @Stablecoin, @paxoslabs, @withAUSD, @m0, @moonpay, @brale_xyz, and @fraxfinance. Clients include @tryramp, @privy, @turnkeyhq, and @ModernTreasury. The Better Money Company raised $10 million from @a16zcrypto, @BoxGroup, and @seedtosunflower, and came out of stealth last week. Broner's point is simple. You don't sell Wells Fargo dollars at a variable price to get Bank of America dollars. Stablecoins shouldn't work that way either. @SamBroner sat down with @dr3wrogers in Brooklyn. 00:00 - "I was living in Beijing in 2017" 02:24 - Paperwork in payments, and why engineers find it ridiculous 06:49 - MIT Sloan, the Boston Fed, and the stablecoin research scene 09:07 - The Fluid Framework: coding under a podium while Satya watched 13:10 - Why making payments a little bit better matters at massive scale 15:08 - Stablecoins are optimized for trading pairs, not payment flows 17:20 - What a clearinghouse is: from London taverns to hub-and-spoke 21:46 - Guaranteed pricing, guaranteed settlement, compliant clearing 25:41 - "Better money needs to be one to one" 31:52 - Instant payouts for gig workers: a weekend build on stablecoin rails 33:49 - Tourists in the Bazaar: how agents will transact 39:58 - Atomic payments and why faster settlement changes everything 44:01 - Why enterprise agent payments dwarf consumer agent payments 47:38 - Selling shovels vs. going for gold 53:24 - What's next for The Better Money Company Episode 0048, Presented by @altitude

.@lifiprotocol's @PhilippZentner on Intents: "What is so special about LIFI Intents is that it's extremely modular. Swapping, bridging, perps, yield, all of that can be covered." "We are building something that prepares us for the next 10 years." x.com/lifiprotocol/s…

AI can write an investment memo for $1.87, but tokenization lets it act on its analysis. "Tokenize version of SpaceX, and the AI can just go buy it based on its own analysis. You don't have to do anything." - @berhanko, CEO at @keyrails x.com/Nick_Prince12/…

Canada's massive pension funds allocate globally, making CADD a G7 currency pair that punches above its weight. @TetraDigitalGrp's CEO Didier Lavallee on why CADD fills the gap, now with @Anchorage custody behind it. x.com/TetraDigitalGr…

@Apple @Meta @amazon @louisamira @atxp_ai Stableminded | EP. 0046 | Presented by @altitude Watch our full conversation with @louisamira on YouTube ↓ youtu.be/YPMGha2K-zw

The early internet almost became a series of walled gardens where @apple, @meta, and @amazon each had their own rules and no passports between them. @louisamira, CEO of Circuit & Chisel building @atxp_ai, warns that AI agents face this same fragmentation in payments, identity, and discovery. A shared protocol layer solves this by allowing agents to move, pay, and identify themselves anywhere without needing a different passport for every service.

Live at 12:00 PM ET / 9:00 AM PT. Today's lineup: - @HiltnerJim, Co-Founder of @Superstateinc - @PhilippZentner, Founder & CEO of @lifiprotocol - @berhanko, Co-Founder & CEO of @keyrails x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

Watch our full conversation with @adamcreates_ on Youtube youtu.be/jR5I1pKYLNA?si…

FUN FACT: @stardotfun raised $500k for Star on their own platform in 24 hours live on stream. "First 6 days sucked. We raised like $10K. Then we turned on a live stream, put a camera in the room & people saw how much we believed in what we're doing." x.com/stardotfun/sta…

"Quantum computers can break blockchain signatures and back out the private key from public keys. The risk is real, but some estimates put a cryptographically relevant quantum computer at least five to fifteen years away." @gordonliao, Chief Economist at @circle: Europe is already requiring financial infrastructure companies to be quantum-ready by 2030.

Most crypto payment companies focus on technical integrations: which chains, which tokens, which settlement rails. @Houlgrave, CEO at @WalletConnect, says the harder problem is the person behind the counter: "There's no way that Starbucks wants to educate all of their baristas what a crypto payment is and all the things that can go wrong. It's got to be one click, really fast, really compliant." WalletConnect has been working with @Ingenico across their 40 million devices globally to make that a reality.

In September 2019, the overnight repo rate spiked from 3% to 10% in a single day because the banking system ran out of lending liquidity. That same structural constraint is building again as Fedwire settlement demand grows and Kevin Warsh's Fed agenda pushes to shrink the balance sheet. "Stablecoins are actually one of the solutions in which you could achieve dual policy goals, increasing liquidity in the system and playing that marginal buyer of treasuries." @gordonliao, Chief Economist at @circle | @arc

Convincing someone to move from Fidelity to onchain stocks is an entire waste of time according to @BrianInCrypto. The real opportunity is the 80% of the world that doesn't have access to US equities at all. @glider__ is building for that market, and stablecoins are the gateway drug to get them there. @ondofinance crossed $1B in onchain stocks. Sounds massive until you realize it represents 0.002% of the US equity market. The incumbents like @coinbase and Robinhood are geographically constrained, which is exactly why permissionless systems win long term. Glider is solving this by building a full onchain wealth management layer, not just another stablecoin wallet. Backed by @a16zcrypto, @cbventures, and @Uniswap, the platform gives global users access to tokenized equities, yield, and portfolio management that neobanks can't touch. Here's Brian's conversation with @dr3wrogers and @zdubs33 0:46 - What Glider is building and why wallet UX is the bottleneck 2:27 - From Morgan Stanley to XTX Markets to Anchorage 5:22 - AI agents for portfolio construction and automated workflows 7:02 - Why deterministic execution matters 8:41 - Payments vs. portfolios and stablecoins as the gateway drug 10:16 - Where is the onchain Fidelity? 12:06 - Converting Fidelity users to onchain stocks is a waste of time 15:11 - AI slop and why lazy branding kills trust in financial products 21:36 - The B2B play: embedding portfolios into neobank apps 23:09 - Permissionless ETFs available to anyone globally 25:03 - How stablecoins power the tokenization stack 28:43 - Ondo at $1B is only 0.002% of the US equity market. Live dashboard demo and the Mag-7 ETF 30:00 - Programmable dividends and stablecoins as dominant trading pairs Full segment from @stabledash Live ↓

@johnbabodor @CipherOwl @zed_mart @chainalysis @trmlabs glad you enjoyed it @johnbabodor! 🤍

@stabledash @CipherOwl @zed_mart @chainalysis @trmlabs Watched this episode this morning! Great job guys.

.@CipherOwl Head of Sales @zed_mart explains what you're actually buying with each compliance vendor: "With @chainalysis, you're buying the logo, the name recognition. They've been around the space forever." " @trmlabs hired so many law enforcement experts. If law enforcement is your strong suit, that's a fantastic vendor." "With us ( @CipherOwl ), every one of our endpoints is an API. We're here to build infrastructure for what you're trying to do, not closed-loop black-box systems." The compliance vendor landscape in crypto isn't one-size-fits-all, and regulations are pushing toward requiring more than one vendor.

99% of all X402 payments have been made in $USDC. Agentic commerce is still early, but its default settlement layer is already forming. "Stablecoin usage has been very bimodal. Large settlement transactions make up the bulk of dollar value, but in terms of number of transactions, a lot of it is driven by agentic payments and nano payments." @gordonliao, Chief Economist at @circle | @arc

For years, the crypto wallet landscape was 30 apps with different color schemes and the same functionality. @Houlgrave, CEO of @WalletConnect, on what changed this cycle: "The wallets that know their customer really well are winning. Am I going for the pro person who wants all of that yield? Or the person in a country where they just want to hold a $USD balance and send it to friends and family?" She points to @opera's @minipay as the model; people don't need to understand crypto to use it, because the product team deeply understands their market.

Every wallet screen costs money, and at scale those compliance costs become a barrier to adoption, rather than a safeguard. @zed_mart, Head of Sales & BD at @CipherOwl, on why compliance screening needs to be rebuilt from the ground up: "Screening is a tax on the industry. If you're paying exorbitant amounts per wallet screen, it's just not going to help scale the industry and it's going to stand in the way of adoption." CipherOwl is building inline wallet checks fast enough for real-time transactions so screening stops being a bottleneck.

"Crypto for a while was the antithesis of the tech acquisition playbook. As the industry has matured, you're going to see a lot more @coinbase, @echodotxyz, @payward type startup design. We're in an era of consolidation" @ajwarner90, CSO at @Offchain | @arbitrum on Stabledash Live