Banking Meets Stablecoins

Jeremy: Hello, I'm Jeremy Allaire. Welcome to The Money Movement, a show where we explore the issues and ideas driving this brave new world of digital currency, and blockchains. This week, we're going to be talking about banking meets stablecoins. Just to set the context a little bit on this, clearly a lot of the impetus for cryptocurrency, the broader digital currency movement, this money movement, as we say, it's really anchored in the idea that we're building a new kind of financial system. A more open, more inclusive, more global, internet-based financial system.

A lot of times, certainly from the early origins of this industry, and even today, this is often positioned as crypto and blockchain and digital currency is threatening to banks, that this is anti-bank in some way. I think what we're seeing and what we're learning is that fundamental innovations that are happening in this space, the use of public blockchains as a secure transaction processing and settlement infrastructure, the incredibly rapid rise of innovations such as stablecoins, may actually turn out to be the ultimate path to banks using crypto.

We recently saw guidelines from the national banking regulator in the United States, which offered that national banks in the United States could hold in custody crypto on behalf of customers, and we wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come. Meanwhile, at Circle ourselves, we're seeing accelerated interest from neobanks, challenger banks, FinTechs, global banks, lots of firms that want to use things like USDC as a payment rail, and as an infrastructure, which is very, very exciting.

Then obviously, outside of payments, which is a lot of what people often think about when they think about things like stablecoins, what about the real business of banks, so to speak, which is borrowing and lending? We're also seeing very rapidly evolving stablecoin capital markets. That's happening through DeFi or decentralized finance and CeFi, or centralized finance models where billions of dollars of loans and borrowing in stablecoins is taking place and that's rising at an incredibly fast rate.

With this theme of banks meet stablecoins, we're going to be joined by several excellent guests who are at the frontlines of this convergence of banking and stablecoins. Joining us now are Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, the founder and CEO of BCB Group, a European neobank that is embracing stablecoins as a core payment medium, and Julien Hawle the head of Blockchain Lab at Bank Frick & Company AG, similarly a fast-growing European neobank that has adopted USDC in their broader digital asset brokerage platform. Welcome, Oliver and Julien.

Oliver: Thanks very much, Jeremy, for that intro. It's great to join you on this conversation. Stablecoins are an extremely exciting part of this space. Looking forward to the conversation.

Jeremy: Excellent. Welcome, Julien. Nice to see you.

Julien: Hi, Jeremy. Thanks for having me [unintelligible 00:03:58] and very looking forward to the show.

Jeremy: Excellent. Let's get started. Julien, I actually want to start with a little bit about Bank Frick. I think I met your founder in Zurich many years ago, as you were literally, I think, quite de novo at the time. You've really been a tremendous example of a challenger bank that is built for this new world, built with the digital currency and blockchain ecosystem in mind. Maybe you could just share a little bit of the Bank Frick story first, and then I want to maybe also talk a bit about the role of USDC today and where you see it going. Let's just start with a little bit of the story.

Julien: Definitely, yes. Bank Frick started about 22 years ago. It's an original bank from the traditional world, so a lot of focus on the traditional private banking sector. With more competition in Liechtenstein, Bank Frick started to diversify its business model. First went into acquiring and processing of credit card payments, then ecommerce, and with that line of business, blockchain was first the logical next step. We started in 2016 to offer services to blockchain companies, however, traditional products, company bank accounts, payment accounts, and so on, and then soon realized that just with bank accounts, the show is not really done.

There needs to be a lot broader range of offerings, especially in the way of custody and [inaudible 00:05:35] A lot of institutions need professional counterparties where the bank as a regulated bank can step in and facilitate this. From that step forward, we continuously develop new products, narrowing down the customer group. We have, by today, specialized products for exchanges, for brokers, but also in regards to token offering, miners and see that, yes, we went pretty well with serving specific needs of niches or customers that have a very clear problem which can be solved with banking.

Jeremy: That's great. I think you're obviously an example of a bank that has really leaned in, into this space and into the digital asset space. I think you made news recently, and obviously, we're very aware of it, but this step towards adopting and supporting stablecoins as a bank. I think it's a bigger theme. It's one of the key things that we're talking about here today, but maybe just talk about the first steps that you've taken with USDC and then maybe share a little bit about your thoughts on where you see that going and where you see that value.

Julien: Definitely. For us, we either select new crypto assets on customer demands, or if we see an efficiency gain or some new products from our side. The US dollar coin, we need it for our product offering which we plan to roll in the future. We need to use the stablecoin, it just makes a lot of sense. There were different stablecoins out there for us. Only, of course, regulated ones, where the backing is audited, came into question and the US dollar coin was the way to go for us.

We integrated it into our custody infrastructure as well as trading offering. This is the normal step how we roll out new currencies. We included into custody trading, and then from there, on the second level, build out specific products.

The roadmap for USDC looks pretty nice. Maybe to highlight it, the ambition which we have or where we want to go is pretty much to have the same offering, which we currently have for a Euro or US dollar fiat currency to offer that same thing for the US dollar coin.

Jeremy: That's awesome. We're going to come back to some of the themes that you touched on. Maybe turning to you, Oliver, likewise, you're a rapidly growing neobank. You're serving these digital asset markets. Give us a little bit about your journey.

You guys have been doing some stuff recently where USDC as a payment medium has become core. We'd love to hear you talk about what role it plays and where you think it's going as well, but maybe just start again with a little bit of the journey.

Oliver: Absolutely. Thank you for that, Jeremy. Julien, it was great to hear how that path evolved. What I observe here is a convergence to the center, so where Bank Frick is a great example of a bank who come from more traditional routes and then embraced the blockchain business and developed products and services around that. We've come at it from the opposite direction. In 2017, when we opened shop, our primary business was in secondary markets, buying and selling crypto on behalf of customers. First as a broker, and then more towards the prime broker model, and then lately more towards the market maker model.

It was in trying to move money around, especially dollars, which was super difficult at first, that it became clear that we needed to be part of the solution to moving money at scale. About 18 months ago, we added the second critical vertical to our product line, which is this banking service, offering transaction banking mostly for UK and European market makers, exchanges, et cetera, just to clear those pathways for moving money.

We've seen the stablecoin evolution and how that really facilitated trading at scale in the past and it's become extremely clear I think to anybody in this market that stablecoins are the future of money. Now is a great opportunity to get in. One particularly vivid illustration of this is, I'm looking at your latest USDC in circulation at 1.1 billion. Now, that sounds like a large number to some, but it's like the foothill of the mountain. I'm looking at the money markets of which there was like a trillion dollars in issuance alone. Imagine the shift today from money market instruments in denominating USDC towards money market instruments. It's enormous. We're at the precipice of a massive revolution.

Jeremy: We certainly believe so as well. That's great. Maybe we can just shift to some of the specific themes. If I'm a bank or I'm a FinTech or a neobank, what are the advantages of stablecoins? What are they going to get? How's this going to be beneficial to their business customers, to their end users? There's lots of benefits that we talk about, global cross-border, cost speed, et cetera, but I'd love to hear you each talk about, as professionals that are in the banking industry, have been in this infrastructure for a long time, why is this so superior? Why is this going to grow so fast?

Julien: Maybe I start. When we look at the traditional financial world, we are very limited in regards to opening hours. Bank Frick, for example, operates from 9:00 to 5:00. We have a lot of public holidays in Liechtenstein, but we have, on the other hand, the blockchain world which is run 24/7. At the end of the day, I firmly believe that we are developing into a digital 24/7 basis society, also the financial market.

For us, it helps to bridge the gap between the say traditional 9:00 to 5:00 system and then the 24/7 blockchain world, where we can use the stablecoin, which is not really volatile in the sense, to facilitate the payments in the sense to bridge the gap where our traditional world is not operating in.

Jeremy: Oliver?

Oliver: I absolutely agree with that. I'm going to take this from the point of view, from what are the risks that are perceived in the stablecoin market. Around this time last year, the BIS, Bank for International Settlements, published this paper on the risks of stablecoins. Literally all of the risks that they listed are actually advantages that stablecoins can offer. They're talking about legal certainty, governance, AML, market integrity, data privacy, tax compliance. All of these things are actually way more easy when you have a transparent blockchain-based system of money.

They also talk about the impact on monetary policy, on financial stability and fair competition. I think all of these risks which were highlighted in this report are all of the assets. They've done the stablecoin a massive favor if you actually read the report properly.

Jeremy: Obviously, we believe it's a superior form of money and is ultimately something that will not just for the efficiency and so on, but that this is actually a more transparent, more secure, more auditable mechanism. Ultimately, as a full reserve model, it has more underlying integrity vis-à-vis safety and soundness than commercial banking money does in many ways. It solves some of the complexity in cross-border payments of the time delays, the costs, et cetera. It really allows us to move at internet speed as well.

I guess related to that and thinking about the move of banks into this space, more banks wanting to use these rails, support these money formats, a lot of banks make money charging fees, sometimes exorbitant fees, for moving value around. Stablecoins make money, behave more like content and data on the internet. The big question, is this technology, are stablecoins going to do to payments and the payments business model what the internet did to content and communications and the underlying business models that were relied upon by the incumbents there?

Oliver: You want to go first, Julien?

Julien: Yes, why not? I firmly believe so. I think that the technology at the end of the day, the blockchain is the core piece here. We'll see an infrastructure shift which will definitely turn the payment industry upside down. We saw a lot of technical innovation already over the last year without using a blockchain. I think once we shift on there, we'll see a complete upside down payment world where international cross-border payments are done pretty much instantly or within seconds for nearly no money. I think the whole remittance business model is going to be turned around, because that is still a service which is, from a consumer perspective, very expensive.

Jeremy: Even retail payments and domestic payments. If you get a stablecoin that, on these third generation blockchains, can handle very high throughput at a fraction of a penny to transact and settle, that's got to be a threat to people who help coffee shops collect payments too. It goes all the way there, but Oliver, what are your thoughts on this kind of transformation?

Oliver: Definitely echo the efficiency argument. There's also the information argument. You can't put a post-it note on a $100 bill and be sure that the information is going to reach the other side. When you've got this new breed of technology, this is a new possibility and you can put your real world legal contract on there. I think enriching money, if you'll excuse the pun, the possibilities that are within that, we haven't even begun to explore.

Jeremy: It's a great segue to something I wanted to talk with you guys about, which is digital securities. The idea of financial contracts that are written in code that interact with digital cash and stablecoins. This whole promise, it's massive. Banks, obviously, and brokerage firms and others, they're really very heavily involved in the securities space, issuing them, custoding them, lending them, selling them, all these different things. What's the role of stablecoins going to be in the future of financial contracts and of digital securities?

Julien: I think this was one of the large arguments why we integrated US dollar coin. We see especially for digital securities, on the one hand, investing in them, trading them through a stablecoin, but then also corporate action dividends payments. It makes so much more sense from an efficiency perspective to use stablecoin like the US dollar coin for this use case instead of relying on the old fiat railways like SWIFT or [unintelligible 00:18:06] here in Europe.

Oliver: I think there's a lot of evolution ahead of us that's hard to foresee. We embrace obviously clearly the whole stablecoin movement. Looking at the smart contract in a market in general, if and when the tokenized securities market takes off, what we are doing in BCB to future-proof for that scenario is we're integrated with this third party framework called DASL developed by this lab called LAB577. It's based on Corda and it's super efficient at handling these smart contracts.

This is one of several initiatives that we have to make sure that we are ready for what this looks like. Obviously, within that family is USD coin and the BLINC network that we've just released last week, which is this instant settlement network.

Jeremy: It's a really exciting space. In fact, I just saw an announcement today. There's an internet company that is paying dividends in USDC which had done a digital security using smart contracts. I was in a discussion today with a company, without getting into names, that's in the real estate market doing tokenized real estate. Really, stablecoins are going to be critical to how people are able to purchase essentially shares in real estate and also get paid out the equivalent of a note on a continuous basis. These kinds of innovations, tokenization of real world assets, I know we've talked about them for years now, really since 2017, in a significant way. It seems like now that the infrastructure's really getting there, regulatory clarity is coming into place. Stablecoins are kicking into gear as a settlement medium in some of these as well. Which actually touches on another theme, which both of you are regulated financial institutions under a number of different regimes. There's a lot going on there. The FSB is working on its policy recommendations. It looks like the EU is going to put forward at least for discussion, and then ultimately for legislative initiative, a EU-wide crypto policy that'll be inclusive of stablecoins.

The US national banking regulator is issuing guidance to open this up to the financial sector as we speak. Where do you see the regulatory picture for stablecoins and just crypto generally, but specifically the use of these types of digital cash instruments and the infrastructure that we are building on?

Julien: I think it's depending a little bit on a geographic perspective. I think we here in Europe, we are a fan of regulation. We like to have that regulatory certainty compared to other continents, I think, where regulatory is rather on the second end, where you rather try and then see how it works. We in Liechtenstein, we have since the beginning of this year, our blockchain [unintelligible 00:21:29] in law.

Liechtenstein is a completely regulated jurisdiction when it comes to cryptocurrencies, digital securities, and so on. I think for a broader adoption, especially with financial institutions, talking with the context of Europe, a clear regulatory guidance, clear regulatory framework is one of the most important things.

Oliver: In the UK, it's super cool to see the FCA embracing crypto, finally, with the crypto assets regulation, which looks at it from an AML point of view. Sooner or later, the FCA are also going to look at this from a market efficiency point of view. This is where stablecoins actually really shine, because in a highly volatile asset, like the majors in crypto, market efficiency is hard to measure and hard to manage. A stablecoin by definition, when pegged to a national currency, it's a non-issue.

Phase one of this regulation in the UK, looking at AML, super positive step. It's going to bring a lot of people into legitimacy, a lot of businesses into legitimacy. Phase two, when we start looking at market efficiency, stablecoins have really got a head start with that.

Jeremy: Last question for the two of you. Three years from now, what do you think we'll see in terms of neobanks, traditional banks adopting stable coins, storing value in them, facilitating payments with them? How far are we going to go in that period?

Julien: I think we'll see a broader adoption, definitely. I think certain financial institutions are faster than others. Within three years, every financial institution will be somehow has at least research using it. I think in three years, we'll have some definitely a first few concept of central bank digital currency. The use, adoption, as well as market cap size of stablecoins will be increased substantially, I think.

Oliver: Definitely. We're going to see that gap close between-- Circling back to the opening point about the size of the money markets, we've got a billion today. There's a trillion that's there that's going to equalize, in my view, over the next few years. That's from a money markets point of view, but also from a capital markets and a lending point of view, if we look at say compound [unintelligible 00:24:07] I see today, they've got $1.7 billion in total supply, a billion of which is in the total borrow pool, a bunch of which is for USD coin.

The point there is that, again, this is scratching the surface, with negative yields on dollar and these super positive, sometimes double-figure yields on stablecoins, that market is going to explode over the next three years.

Jeremy: We are in agreement on that. It's actually a good segue to our next guest and a partnership that we announced earlier today, which we'll jump to. Oliver and Julien, I want to thank you guys both very much for joining us on The Money Movement this week. I hope to speak to both of you very soon.

Oliver: It's been a great pleasure. Thank you.

Julien: Thank you for having me, Jeremy.

Jeremy: Absolutely. We've seen and expect this significant acceleration in banks, especially as we've heard, FinTech oriented banks, neobanks, players that are moving fast, that are tech-forward. We expect more and more to support digital dollar stablecoins. As just reference, and it's a really good segue, banking is about much more than payments. It's also very much about lending and borrowing.

Over the past six months, we've seen a huge surge in markets for lending and borrowing stablecoins such as USDC. Today, I'm very excited to have as a guest, Michael Moro, the Chief Executive Officer of Genesis, perhaps the largest institutional lending facility in crypto, and whose firm is driving and building very significant stablecoin-based credit markets. Hello, Michael. Hey there.

Michael: Hey. Hi, Jeremy. Thanks for having me.

Jeremy: Absolutely. Welcome. I want to start actually just talking a little bit about our partnership which was announced today. Obviously, from Circle side, we see this tremendous opportunity for yield and credit that's built around stablecoins. We want to provide a way for businesses around the world, for developers that are building FinTech apps on top of our platform and on top of USDC to be able to tap into these emerging credit markets that are built around crypto, built around stablecoin.

First of all, thrilled to be in partnership with you guys, but we'd love to maybe have you talk a little bit about both the partnership and then we'll get into a little bit of how that business has grown for you as well.

Michael: Happy to chat about it. Likewise, I'm thrilled to announce the partnership between our two firms. We've been close as a company for a number of years, but it's really nice to formalize a partnership via the announcement today. Genesis, we're an institutional cryptocurrency-focused prime broker. As a business, we've been around since 2013 on the OTC market making side, helping institutions and high net worth individuals do large block transactions in various cryptocurrencies.

We added our lending business, Genesis capital, in early 2018, to enable folks to borrow and lend crypto and US dollars in stablecoins, and have create a yield-producing product and making holding crypto a productive asset. Whereas previously, you basically have to rely on price appreciation for any kind of gains. The ability to hold on to the upside while earning yield and interest, in the meantime, was a new element to certainly the crypto landscape. Right along the lines of, "Hey, this exists in traditional markets. I can do this and earn interest. Why couldn't you create something similar in the crypto world?" That lending business has been very, very successful and quickly growing. We have over a billion dollars in loans outstanding today, and about a third of that loan portfolio, approximately $400 million or so is in US dollars in stablecoins.

As you might imagine, given the popularity and explosion of USDC's growth, a large percentage of that $400 million is also in USDC already. There is certainly a large institutional size demand for further USDC, certainly in the borrowing side. I think it certainly makes a ton of sense to enable the holding of USDC to also be a yield-producing product.

I think the partnership that we announced this morning, about building various lending and yield creation products with Circle, it makes a ton of sense simply because-- We just looked this number up ourselves. We've done over $3 billion of US dollar-based lending since we started our business in 2018. It's a huge number, and that number is only growing bigger and bigger every single day. Really thrilled to be in partnership with Circle.

Jeremy: Thank you, Michael. It's been fascinating to watch the evolution. Clearly, as more and more institutional market participants get comfortable with wanting to hold and utilize things like USDC, that fuels these credit markets even further. I think obviously what started as borrowing facilities and things like Bitcoin is now this sort of stablecoin-denominated two-sided markets that you're facilitating. That evolution's been obviously fascinating. I guess one related question is, as a lender, what are the advantages to using a stablecoin? How is it a superior asset from a lending perspective? What were some of the benefits that you guys see?

Michael: Certainly. As folks who are lending to firms like Genesis, we're fortunate to work with a number of different partners on the funding side of our lending operation. Effectively, I view and I think growingly, more and more institutional investors think of something like USDC and the dollar as being exactly the same thing. Given the regulatory status of USDC and its audited nature, and basically the companies standing behind the product, I think there's certainly growing amount of confidence that USDC of $1 is $1 in your bank account.

The big difference certainly is the availability of lending capital pool that is available in the crypto market today, versus what might exist in other markets. As you might imagine, the traditional lenders, starting with the banks, are not making capital available to companies operating in the cryptocurrency space. I'm sure that'll change, but that might take quite a bit of time. As a result, the interest rates for those products are far superior and much higher than what you might get certainly in the United States, in a low interest rate environment, and certainly across Europe and parts of Asia with a negative interest rate environment, where you are able to earn interest on an annualized basis certainly about 8 to 10 times what you might be able to get in your traditional bank account. Certainly is a meaningful difference as one reason to think about, "Hey, why don't I lend this out in USDC rather than keeping this dollar my bank account?"

Jeremy: Absolutely. For borrowers, you're able to transact with them, you can settle a transaction with them very quickly, they can pay you back very quickly. There's no counterparty risk, it's fast, it's cheap, it's secure. Works around the world. You've got counterparties around the world. Some of the things that the prior guests were talking about. The efficiency of the medium is obviously beneficial for a lending operation like yours as well, I'd imagine.

Michael: Absolutely. Look, we have couple different sides to our business. On the trading side, the ability to settle Bitcoin transactions, or Ethereum transactions and buy/sells instantaneously, 365 days, 24 hours a day is incredibly valuable to not have to wait for banks to wire. You do a transaction on a Friday after the banks close, you got to wait till Monday morning to get your money back, right? 48 hours is forever. The ability to use USDC to settle transactions certainly is attractive.

On the lending side, there are lots of good uses for USDC on the lending side as well, so for levered long plays to borrow some cash and buy additional Bitcoin or get USDC to grow your business from a commercial loan perspective. For lots of reasons, it's certainly an attractive instrument.

Jeremy: That actually leads to the next topic, which is, as you know, the fundamental thesis that we have behind USDC is that this is going to expand much more broadly into mainstream business, mainstream finance, mainstream commerce, that the benefits of this as a payment medium, as a settlement medium are going to be profound. It's going to find its way into more and more areas of the economy and use cases. It seems like following right on top of that are going to be businesses that need capital and individuals that want to take loans against assets, and it will find its way outside of just taking loans against things like crypto and into other areas. This expansion into other sectors, what might that mean for Genesis?

Michael: Sure. The tokenization, the digitization of everything has been a trend that's been going on for quite some time. As the world becomes much, much more of a digital economy, the idea of certainly digital money and a cashless world is becoming true more and more every day. For firms like Genesis, and certainly, through our partnership, I think there's so many different creative ways we can work together to extend lending.

It won't simply be Genesis and Circle working to create yield-producing products, it'll expand the available pool of capital that is available to enterprise customers that Circle may have and other merchants that have businesses that might conduct commerce in USDC. I think we're only touching the tip of the iceberg here in how not just a partnership, but with USDC and its growth can certainly do for the entire business ecosystem outside of crypto.

Jeremy: Absolutely. We're seeing obviously some fascinating growth and some really interesting growth drivers with just this theme of dollarization and international customers who are using Circle business accounts that prefer to be able to settle in something like USDC, to hold value in something like USDC, to be able to make international payments in it, which have the utility of the internet.

A lot of these businesses are in jurisdictions where they don't necessarily want their own currency. If they're able to access credit, denominated in stablecoin, or if they have short-term assets and they want to deploy those and hold those and generate yield on them, really, really powerful. Not something that is necessarily readily available to them within their regional banking system. Connecting the dots on some of these bigger international themes, too.

Michael: Absolutely. I think our previous two guests, Oliver and Julien, were going to talk about money market instruments. I think there's certainly a future around, "Hey, money market instruments, actually holding USDC rather than the fiat equivalent," simply because the USDC element might carry a higher interest rate than the fiat equivalent. All of those types of things, to your point, the topic around dollarization, I think presents a tremendous level of opportunity certainly for your business and the ecosystem as a whole.

Jeremy: You mentioned earlier traditional banks not being in this space, either extending credit to certain types of businesses or extending credit against assets like crypto. Obviously, we saw the OCC giving guidance that, "Hey, banks can hold this stuff. They can custody this stuff." Once banks can hold it and custody it, they can lend against it. Those become underlying assets on their balance sheet. We may soon see banks actually getting in the game, at least in the US. I guess I'd be interested to hear what you think that looks like and how do you guys stay out ahead of that as a prime broker, and obviously as a leading lending facility in the space today.

Michael: Here's how I view the world. Looking at just simple factors of supply and demand, where interest rate just intersects, the demand for borrowing dollars versus the available supply of dollars, leading to interest rates that are, as I said, 8 to 10 times higher than what you might get in the dollar market today. If one of the big banks or if one bank does it, my bet is more than one bank does it, is made capital readily available at an effective rate to folks around the world in the crypto space.

If that were to happen temporarily, sure, the supply gates flood and interest rates might come down. My bet is that the demand for that even spikes. I do think if capital are available, that means the biggest banks in the world are making capital available to crypto. That is even further legitimization of the asset class. My bet is that there's going to be more new money flowing into the space to soak up those available capital really, really quickly, so that the interest rates will back again, naturally normalize to what it might be. I'm not necessarily sure that simply the influx and supply might due to demand. I'd argue the demand is going to grow multifold more than the available capital supply.

Jeremy: That sounds really good, Michael. I agree with you. I think that next phase of mainstream adoption is a catalyst for even more demand. Obviously, you guys are well poised. Michael, it was great to have you. Congrats, and of course, thank you as well for the partnership. We're obviously very excited about it and what we're going to be able to do together. As we said in our announcement today, this is part of bringing stablecoins into mainstream finance, and looking forward to working on that with you in the coming years.

Michael: Likewise. Thank you very much for the partnership as well from all of us at Genesis. Really, really excited to come up with all the different creative ways we can come up with and create value for USDC customers.

Jeremy: Thanks, Michael. We'll speak very soon.

Michael: Bye.

Jeremy: Bye-bye. These themes of banking meets stablecoins, banks holding stablecoins on behalf of their customers, using this as a new payment system that has enormous advantages over legacy payment systems. The birth of and the rapid ascendance of capital markets, debt markets, denominated in stablecoins, all these are things that were just a glimmer in people's eyes many years ago and it's just really exciting to see that accelerating. We're going to have this theme of banks, and FinTechs, and others building on this infrastructure, is going to be a very significant theme, I think, in the coming year. We'll have a lot more to talk about that on The Money Movement.

I'm very excited about next week's show, where we're going to be bringing on what I consider to be a very special guest, the legendary crypto trading OG, Dan Matuszewski of CMS Holdings.

By way of background, Dan has been deep in trading crypto since 2012. He built a legendary trading desk here with us at Circle, Circle Trade. He now runs a prop fund with some other significant players out of this space called CMS Holdings. While there's a lot that we could talk about together on that episode, but the theme next week is going to be the stablecoin trade. The history of stablecoins, their role in crypto markets, their current evolution and state, and where things are going.

Dan has probably held and traded more stable coins than almost anyone in the world and has witnessed their explosive growth, has an incredible amount of insights around this space, and so he's going to be providing what I expect to be amazing perspective and what is going to be a lot of fun as a conversation. Until next week, stay well, stay safe and stay informed. Thank you very much.

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