Tony Edward (Thinking Crypto Podcast)

How long until the Circle / Coinbase marriage gets messy? > historically $CRCL = issuer of USDC and $COIN = distributor. Coin pushes USDC, and in exchange gets half the economics w/ some adjustments > but w/ Circle now a pubco, it’s been forced into pitching a much broader growth story to investors -> today that’s become: be the infrastructure layer for global payments + real-world finance onchain > to make that a reality, Circle needs to supercharge itself by owning customers and having their flows live on their new venue, Arc > and the problem is that directly conflicts w/ Coinbase’s own ambition w/ Base to be the exchange + rails for everything, especially payments, settlement & FX > and if you look closely, things have started getting messy: cbBTC vs cirBTC = Circle stepping on Coin’s toes w/ the same product > but Circle / Arc post token raise is a much worse deal. With outside investors underwriting the chain, the incentive becomes drive all your assets + activity from everywhere else (including Base / Coinbase) to Arc: USDC balances, tokenized assets, payments, settlement & eventually FX > the two businesses, which were once symbiotic, are now competing H2H and have public shareholders / token holders to keep track of the scoreboard > inevitable that the relationship ultimately ends in divorce. Circle clearly growing up and planning on moving out of its childhood home