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Jeremy Allaire: 3 Things That Will Transform Stablecoins

Jeremy Allaire is the Chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Circle, the issuer of USDC — a stablecoin with nearly $80 billion in circulation and a core piece of the broader stablecoin market, which has grown from zero to nearly $300 billion over the past decade. In this fireside at Startup School of Y Combinator, Jeremy sat down with Nemil to talk about Circle's founding vision of building an internet protocol for dollars, the wave of institutional and regulatory adoption now reshaping the financial system, and why agentic economic activity — not just consumer payments — represents the most transformative frontier for stablecoin builders in the years ahead. https://www.circle.com 00:00 Introduction & Why Stablecoins Matter 01:45 Jeremy's Background & Circle's Origin 07:10 Top Use Cases for Builders Today 11:22 Consumer vs. Business Adoption 13:20 Banks & Institutions Enter the Space 17:54 Global Regulation Landscape 22:40 AI Agents & the Agentic Economy 26:15 Missing Infrastructure for Builders 27:38 Three Big Predictions for Stablecoins Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

NemilhostJeremy Allaireguest
May 13, 202629mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Jeremy Allaire on stablecoins: UX, regulation, and AI agents

  1. Allaire frames stablecoins as an internet-native “protocol for dollars” (an “HTTP for money”) built on full-reserve principles and open, programmable networks.
  2. He highlights today’s strongest builder traction in business-focused products—treasury management, cross-border settlement, and payouts—alongside continued consumer demand for dollar saving and spending in emerging markets.
  3. Institutional adoption is accelerating as regulatory clarity enables stablecoins to be treated as cash-equivalent infrastructure, unlocking use cases like derivatives collateral, internal bank treasury movement, tokenized asset cash legs, and intraday FX settlement.
  4. Globally, stablecoin regulation is converging via G20/FSB-driven frameworks, with Japan and Europe early, the US late but influential, and many emerging markets now drafting “permitted stablecoin” rules and reciprocity regimes.
  5. He argues AI agents will massively increase the velocity of economic activity, making stablecoins/blockchains the practical settlement layer for an “agentic economy,” but requiring missing infrastructure like identity, dispute handling, and insurance markets.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Stablecoins are being positioned as an open internet protocol, not just a product.

Allaire describes USDC’s core thesis as “dollars on the internet” with permissionless programmability, akin to how HTTP standardized information exchange.

Business adoption is becoming as important as consumer wallets.

While consumer stablecoin+card bundles still grow, more builders are targeting business treasury and payment flows where speed, cost, and global settlement matter most.

Regulatory classification is the institutional unlock.

Once stablecoins are treated federally as cash-equivalent, banks and capital markets can use them for core functions—collateral, treasury movement, tokenized product settlement, and continuous FX risk/settlement.

Cross-border settlement is no longer niche; it’s networked.

Circle Payments Network is framed as a growing B2B network of financial institutions enabling fiat↔stablecoin↔fiat (or stablecoin) flows for SMEs across corridors (south-south and north-south).

Programmability enables new payment-adjacent primitives like loyalty/rewards protocols.

Allaire points to builder opportunities that replace card-era constructs (e.g., loyalty) with programmable, interoperable mechanisms attached to stablecoin payments.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

And I looked at that as a technologist and said, "Wow, this is going to allow for a, a whole new layer on the internet, and it's gonna be a layer where we're gonna be able to build protocols for dollars on the internet."

— Jeremy Allaire

An HTTP for money. How can you build a protocol for dollars on the internet?

— Jeremy Allaire

I was booed out of a lot of rooms because I was not a Bitcoin maxi towards that.

— Jeremy Allaire

My view is that basically, like labor and cap-- the relationship of labor and capital are changing, uh, uh, radically, and we now have, you know, work, uh, conducted by these intelligent agents, and decomposition of work, um, into agents and agents as a service.

— Jeremy Allaire

We're gonna see stablecoins, um, become a- essentially, like, approved and usable in the core guts of the financial system.

— Jeremy Allaire

Circle’s origin story and “HTTP for money” visionFull-reserve digital dollars vs fractional reserve bankingBuilder use cases: neobanking, business treasury, payoutsCross-border settlement and Circle Payments Network (CPN)Institutional use cases: collateral, internal treasury, tokenization cash legRegulatory convergence: G20/FSB, US “Genius” reciprocityAI agents, agentic economic activity, and needed infrastructure

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