Floating Ratio

My 12 threads on @Flexahq & @amptoken $amp

Introducing Coinbase Custom Stablecoins. Create a branded stablecoin for your business, backed 1:1 by collateral custodied by Coinbase. → Earn rewards on activity → Seamless interoperability across chains → Tap into Coinbase’s global distribution

Base Pay is now live across @FlexaHQ's merchant network. Pay at merchants like Chipotle, Regal, Barnes & Noble, and Sheetz, right from mini apps inside of @baseapp.

People in 1993 react to credit cards being accepted at a Burger King

@robbiepetersen_ 👌 made a visual story on this years ago:

Stablecoins are the next logical evolution of closed-loop payment networks Historically, large merchants like Starbucks and Target built out their own internal payment networks in an attempt to circumvent fees paid to card networks and banks Users upload funds onto their app → the merchant monetizes this “float” by investing it into liquid low-risk assets on the back-end → the merchant simply updates their internal ledger when the funds are spent Given this model meaningfully improves their bottom-line, merchants have historically subsidized adoption with rewards However, the tradeoff with closed-loop networks has always been interoperability — my Starbucks dollars aren’t fungible with my Target dollars given they exist on two independent payment networks This has hamstrung the adoption of closed loop networks as users need to on and off-ramp into independent apps each time they want to spend Blockchains and stablecoins however fundamentally change this As open and programable networks, Amazon, Walmart and Target could each issue their own interoperable stablecoins In other words, my Amazon dollars, Starbucks dollars, and Target dollars would all exist in the same wallet on the same open network (perhaps an even better model would be a consortium) Said differently, stablecoins rails offer merchants all the benefits of having their own closed-loop payment network — float income, evading fees — with the same benefits of operating on an open network — interoperability Stripe, Shopify, OpenAI, X, Amazon and Walmart are realizing that blockchains are credibly neutral infrastructure that allow them to own more of the payments stack themselves While the incentives are there for merchants, the open question is whether consumers will overcome the path-dependent inertia of card payments

The vision at Coinbase in 2013 was every merchant would use crypto for online payments. The vision is now here. We thought it would be Bitcoin, but its stablecoins on Ethereum.

Many in D.C. and the media are rightfully energized about stablecoin payments -- finally! -- thanks to the promise of stablecoin legislation. No doubt this is exciting, long overdue, and something we at Flexa have been working for since 2018; I, personally, have been to 50+ Senate and House offices, had 250+ meetings, all for the greater good of authenticating/legitimizing the biggest technological breakthrough of our lifetimes with meaningful, if not perfect, regulation -- regulation that will trigger full scale adoption for merchants, and for all of commerce. Honestly, I cannot over emphasize how massive this is, and I very much look forward to time proving this to be absolutely correct. But now I want to pause, before the legislation hits and the world reacts as if stablecoin payments are something new, and congratulate the entire Flexa team on the eve of this legislation becoming a reality. Why? Because Flexa has been powering stablecoin payments since 2019. Because Flexa already enables enterprise grade merchants like Chipotle, Regal, Sheetz, Ulta Beauty, GameStop (and many new merchants coming soon™) to accept stablecoin payments -- now -- launched years before other payment platforms, and prior to even a hint of this needed regulation. Because unlike any other payment platform, Flexa provides its merchant partners with fraud proof and immediate payment solutions for any digital asset from any wallet, with payments contractually guaranteed, all thanks to the genius of Amp, the only neutral collateral token on earth, which for the first time in the history of human commerce has entirely decentralized risk, obliterating the need for 2000+ person credit/debit fraud departments that needlessly contribute to total U.S. social cost of payments exceeding 2% of the U.S. GDP each year, which equates to the U.S. lighting ~$700B on fire annually, for no reason, all because it relies on analogue debit/credit rails invented 30 years before the internet (and by the way, yes, those are the same rails MasterCard, etc., are still using today with their alleged stablecoin payment platforms). Because the ridiculously cool stuff we've already built but haven't launched will power a future of payments beyond stablecoins; meaning, Flexa is poised to power the post-stablecoin, next generation of payments today, 5 years before everyone else, just like we powered stabecoin payments 5 years before anyone else. That said, I could not be more excited about the incoming stablecoin legislation and its impact on the future of payments, which will not include credit or debit rails, and which will at long last be fully open commerce for all, unbanked and underbanked included, equally, all brought to you by Flexa, and all powered by Amp.

@trspalding @spenders_club @ampera_xyz 👍 + then just sunset the name ‘Ampera’ and revert all related accounts back to ‘AMP Token’, the more clarity, the better!

🚀 With the insane growth of @spenders_club should @ampera_xyz just focus exclusively on $AMP?

Spark is nearly done. The team has been locked in for months. First announcements dropping shortly.

Stablecoins: Payments Without Intermediaries The internet made information free and global. So why is it still so hard — and expensive — to move money? The early internet promised a future where anyone could publish, build, or transact without permission. Protocols like email and the web were open and neutral — and they sparked an explosion of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. But somewhere along the way, we veered off course. Today, the global financial system resembles a patchwork of corporate networks: centralized, closed, and extractive. Behind every transaction is a Rube Goldberg-machine of intermediaries — points of sale, payment processors, acquiring banks, issuing banks, local banks, correspondent banks, foreign exchanges, card networks, and others — each taking a cut, adding latency, and imposing rules. These networks levy unnecessary taxes on commerce and curb innovation. They turn what should be neutral plumbing into high-friction bottlenecks. Stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies pegged to stable assets like the U.S. dollar, are a way out, a reset — a way to bring the internet’s original vision to money. The Disruptive Opportunity of Stablecoins The current payments stack wasn’t built for the internet — it was built for a world rife with fee-taking middlemen (who had been necessary to manage local partnerships, fraud, and operations). Even today, international remittances can cost up to 10% in fees. (A $200 remittance cost 6.62% on average in September 2024.) These aren’t just friction points — they’re effectively regressive taxes on some of the world’s poorest workers. The system we’ve inherited is slow, opaque, and exclusionary, and it leaves billions of people underserved or entirely cut off from the global financial system. For many businesses, the inefficiencies of traditional payments are also massive. Stablecoins could dramatically improve the situation. B2B payments from Mexico to Vietnam take 3-to-7 days to clear and can cost anywhere from $14-to-$150 per $1000 transacted, passing through as many as five intermediaries along the way, each of whom takes a cut. Stablecoins could bypass legacy systems, like the international SWIFT network and associated clearing and settlement processes, and make such transactions nearly free and instant. This isn’t theoretical — it’s already happening. Right now, companies like SpaceX are using stablecoins to manage their corporate treasuries (including by repatriating funds from countries with volatile local currencies, like Argentina and Nigeria). Other companies, like ScaleAI, are using stablecoins to make faster, cheaper payouts to global workforces. Meanwhile, on the B2C side, Stripe is the first widely used service to offer crypto payments and it is already offering 1.5% on checkout — half what incumbents charge. This could drastically improve certain businesses’ profit margins: As a16z crypto’s @SamBroner has shown, for a very low margin business like a grocery store, a 1.5% improvement could potentially double net income. (And in a competitive, blockchain-based market, I would expect transaction fees to go much lower.) Unlike the old financial stack, which evolved in silos, stablecoins are global by default. They live on blockchains: open, programmable networks that anyone can build on. There’s no need to negotiate with dozens of banks across borders. You just plug into the network. People are already recognizing the advantages. In 2024, stablecoins moved $15.6 trillion in value, effectively matching Visa’s volume. While that figure mostly represents financial flows (versus retail payments), its magnitude still suggests we’re on the verge of a financial infrastructure shift, one that doesn’t rely on duct-taping 20th-century systems together. Instead, we can build something new, something truly internet-native — or what Stripe calls “room-temperature superconductors for financial services,” where rather than lossless energy transmission, you get lossless value transmission. The WhatsApp Moment for Money Stablecoins are our first real shot at doing for money what email did for communication: make it open, instant, and borderless. Consider the evolution of text messaging. Before apps like WhatsApp, sending a text across borders meant paying 30 cents per message. Even then, you were lucky if it actually got delivered. Then came internet-native messaging: instant, global, free. Payments are now where messaging was in 2008: Fragmented by borders. Burdened by middlemen. Gatekept by design. Stablecoins offer a clean-slate alternative. Instead of stitching together clunky, costly, and outdated systems, stablecoins flow seamlessly on top of global blockchains. These systems are programmable, composable, and designed to scale across borders. Already, stablecoins are slashing the cost of remittances: Sending $200 from the U.S. to Columbia using traditional methods will cost you $12.13; with stablecoins, it costs $0.01. (Fees to convert from stablecoins to local currencies can range from as high as 5% to as low as 0%, and prices continue to fall due to competition.) Just as WhatsApp disrupted costly international phone calls, blockchain payments and stablecoins are transforming global money transfers. Regulation: From Bottleneck to Breakthrough It’s tempting to frame regulation as an obstacle — but smart legislation is actually the unlock. Clear rules of the road for stablecoins and crypto market structure could finally allow these technologies to move out of the sandbox and toward widespread adoption. For years, decentralized finance (DeFi) was trapped in a kind of self-contained, circular, “crypto-for-crypto” economy. Not because the tools weren’t useful, but because regulators made it incredibly difficult to bridge into traditional financial systems. That’s changing. Policymakers are now actively shaping rules to recognize and regulate stablecoins in ways that maintain U.S. competitiveness, protect consumers, and allow innovation to flourish. Thoughtful regulation — like frameworks that differentiate network tokens from security tokens — can protect against bad actors while giving good actors the clarity they need to build. In fact, a forthcoming bill clarifying this regulation could pave the way for even broader adoption and integration into the global financial system. (Congress is hashing out the details as I write.) Building Public Goods for Everyone’s Benefit Traditional finance is built on private, closed networks. But the internet showed us the power of open protocols — like TCP/IP and email — to drive global coordination and innovation. Blockchains are the internet’s native financial layer. They combine the composability of public protocols with the economic strength of private enterprise. They are credibly neutral, auditable, and programmable. Add stablecoins on top and you get something we’ve never really had before: open money infrastructure. Think of it like a public highway system. Private companies can still build the vehicles, the businesses, the roadside attractions. But the roads themselves are neutral and open for everyone. Blockchain networks and stablecoins are doing more than just cutting fees. They’re enabling new categories of software: - Programmatic payments between machines: Imagine AI agent-powered marketplaces automatically brokering deals for computer resources and other services. - Micropayments for media, music, and AI contributions: Imagine setting a budget with some simple rules and leaving it to “smart” wallets to disburse the payments. - Transparent payouts with full audit trails: Imagine using these systems to track spending in government. - Global commerce without a mess of intermediaries: Imagine settling international transactions instantly at negligible cost — in fact, you don’t have to imagine it as it’s already happening. The moment for blockchain networks and stablecoins is now: Technology, market demand, and political will are lining up and making these applications a reality. A stablecoin bill could be on the floor this year, and regulatory agencies are weighing frameworks that finally align risk with the right oversight. In the same way that early internet startups were able to thrive once it was clear they wouldn’t be shut down by telcos or copyright lawyers, crypto is ready to cross the chasm from financial experiment to infrastructure backbone, with stablecoins leading the way. We don’t have to patch the old system. We can make a better one.

1) Fun fact: there are ~280 payment companies today building on cryptorails (!) I've written a piece explaining the current financial system, major use cases for cryptorails, adoption challenges they're facing, and what the future might look like. @archetype/cryptorails-superconductors-for-payments" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">paragraph.xyz/@archetype/cry…

@klarnaseb @Klarna Here an explainer:

I think you shouldn’t exclude to option of BNPL! I believe you can stay true to your core proposition as @Klarna by enabling people to spend FIAT based on their crypto positions within the Klarna ecosystem. Take a look at this POC: empowermint.loans by Innopay (creators of iDEAL!), @douwelycklama, and @trspalding of @anvil. Users lock their crypto in a vault at Anvil Protocol and receive a cash payout in their bank account. In Klarna’s case, this could translate into a spendable balance within the Klarna app. The @anvil_xyz protocol operates in the background, ensuring a seamless UX. I'm sure @douwelycklama or @trspalding would be happy to share more details with you.

Ok. I give up. Klarna and me will embrace crypto! More to come Yes I know! This post will get a huge sigh and 2 views 😂 But it still feels historic. Last large fintech in the world to embrace it. Someone had to be last. And that’s a milestone as well of some sort… 🥳

On-chain store robbery. Although I think in this case this isn’t a single merchant’s balance, it shows the security intricacies of accepting digital assets for merchants.

This is the way. The ultimate adoption catalyst would be wallet apps or in-app wallets auto-converting balances to stablecoins, allowing users to pay with them seamlessly without even realizing it. There are certainly challenges to overcome to scale this, regarding security and regulatory compliance.

@floatingratio @HadickM @stripe's pay with crypto integration is a great example given their existing distribution. Hundreds of thousands of merchants who just need to flip a switch. Merchant acceptance requires consumers to actually choose to pay with stables, this will take time but is growing

You’re right – I think the uphill battle from an acceptance perspective could be much less challenging if merchants could 'just' switch it on like any other payment method, within the audited and compliant environment of their existing payment gateway/POS contracts. This abstracts 'crypto' or 'stablecoin' payments to simply 'guaranteed $/€/£ value coming in,' avoiding the need for new (and often complex) administrative workflows.

@floatingratio I would put that under the 6th category of Merchant Gateway

onchain lending is THE killer blockchain app it is literally THE most important development in finance since the invention of central banking in the 1600s/1700s and maybe derivatives in the 1970s/1980s it is THAT big of a deal most people just don't realize it yet

@dcinvestor Study @anvil_xyz - use your digital assets as collateral to issue LOC (Letters of Credit).