Jeremy Allaire: 3 Things That Will Transform Stablecoins

1. 0:00 – 1:45

   Introduction & Why Stablecoins Matter

   1. NENemil0:00

      [upbeat music] Hi, everyone. I'm super excited to have Jeremy Allaire, the Chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Circle. Circle is a stablecoin issuer and the issuer of USDC, a nearly $80 billion stablecoin. He's a serial entrepreneur, and he's also someone that I've been excited to collaborate with over the years. The reason he's here is YC is insanely excited about stablecoins and Fintech 3.0. Stablecoins have grown from $0 about a decade ago to nearly $300 billion today. We see everyone from shopkeepers in Argentina to big Wall Street banks in New York using stablecoins, and we see builders from developers in San Francisco to policymakers on Capitol Hill paving the way for stablecoins to be used. YC has a request for startups out on stablecoins. We're super excited to fund and support stablecoin startups, and we recently announced that we're funding-- we're offering teams the ability to receive their funding in USDC. Really excited to have you here today, Jeremy.

   2. JAJeremy Allaire1:03

      Thank you. It's really awesome to be here.

   3. NENemil1:06

      I, um, first met you actually in 2016. I don't think I've shared this. In 2016 at the MIT Bitcoin conference.

   4. JAJeremy Allaire1:12

      Oh, okay. Yeah, I sh- I, I met a lot of people there. [laughs]

   5. NENemil1:15

      Yeah.

   6. JAJeremy Allaire1:15

      I remember that. Yeah.

   7. NENemil1:15

      And it was a bunch of nerds-

   8. JAJeremy Allaire1:17

      Yeah

   9. NENemil1:17

      ... I think on a Saturday morning in a winter in Cambridge.

   10. JAJeremy Allaire1:19

       Totally.

   11. NENemil1:20

       Um, but I think what's really inspiring for me was just seeing your founder journey.

   12. JAJeremy Allaire1:24

       Mm.

   13. NENemil1:25

       Um, from the early ideas for Circle to where you ended up with-

   14. JAJeremy Allaire1:28

       Yeah

   15. NENemil1:28

       ... stablecoins. And I'm just-- I, I think-

   16. JAJeremy Allaire1:29

       Yeah

   17. NENemil1:29

       ... a lot of people don't know that you're a serial entrepreneur, have taken a p- company public before.

   18. JAJeremy Allaire1:33

       Yeah.

   19. NENemil1:34

       Were the head of product at Macromedia for a while. Just really excited-

   20. JAJeremy Allaire1:37

       Yeah

   21. NENemil1:37

       ... to hear a little bit about the Circle, um, founding journey.

   22. JAJeremy Allaire1:40

       Yeah.

   23. NENemil1:40

       Uh, especially as it relates to other founders, you know, who are starting their own idea.

   24. JAJeremy Allaire1:44

       Yeah. I'm

2. 1:45 – 7:10

   Jeremy's Background & Circle's Origin

   1. JAJeremy Allaire1:45

      very happy to share that. I think, um, you know, a c- couple things. I think the first is, like, um, I, I got very involved in, uh, early internet infrastructure back in, like, 1990, so before the web. Um, and, um, you know, became very interested in, in sort of open networks, open software, uh, distributed c- computing models. Kind of the, the early DNA of the internet got me really excited 'cause it was, like, a new paradigm for how computing could work. And I spent, you know, really a couple decades building internet infrastructure software. Um, you know, lots of different stuff, programming languages, virtual machines, client software, server software, and content media, communications, a lot of the stuff that was going on those first couple decades. I'm always interested in, in, in kind of how can we apply that kind of DNA of the internet to solve broad kind of problems in, in society, right? And, um, that kind of, you know, led me to, uh, my work in, in crypto. Um, but, you know, along the way, I had, uh, f- co-founded and taken two companies public prior to Circle. Um, and, um, but in, in, in 2012, became really enamored with crypto and, and, and Bitcoin as, as a technology, um, at the time. Um, but was also interested in just from kind of prior experience and interests in, um, understanding how the global financial system worked or didn't work, um, after the great financial crisis. And so I had, um, originally had a background in international political economy, um, that was my academic background. And so I found after the great financial crisis, I just became obsessed with what is the nature of money? How does the international monetary system work? What is central banking? What is fractional reserve banking? Like, what is all this? And, like, what went wrong? And is there a better way?

   2. NENemil3:39

      Yeah.

   3. JAJeremy Allaire3:39

      I didn't know anything about crypto 'cause there was no crypto at the time. I mean, may- I guess there was Satoshi's, you know, white paper and stuff.

   4. NENemil3:45

      Yeah.

   5. JAJeremy Allaire3:45

      But I was not aware of it, um, un- until later. And then, you know, really crystallizing the founding of Circle, like, there was this long-standing interest in sort of how could the international monetary system evolve with, you know, what I saw with Bitcoin, which was sort of the kernel of a new technology infrastructure layer of the internet. Like, a missing infrastructure layer of the internet.

   6. NENemil4:08

      Yeah.

   7. JAJeremy Allaire4:08

      And I-- And as someone who'd worked on infrastructure layers, it was very apparent to me, like, this was, this was a, a computer science breakthrough, and it was, um, you know, at the time, you know, people kind of writing papers about smart contracts or writing papers about extensibility of blockchain networks and other things. 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. We're gonna be able to build, um, basically self-running machines running software that, uh, are, are, are programming and intermediating economic activity on top of those protocols for dollars on the internet." And sort of had this big vision, ten, twenty-year vision of, like, you could actually rebuild not just the financial system, but the broader economic system on the internet natively. And that's what motivated the, the founding of Circle. And so the cr- the core idea of, of what we'd think of today of USDC was the founding idea. An HTTP for money. How can you build a protocol for dollars on the internet? And, and in particular, given the kind of grounding in monetary philosophy, the belief was like, this needs to be full reserve money, not fractional reserve money. It needs to be v- very, very safe. Um, and, and that's, like, the right base layer. And so the asset itself, but then the way it's expressed is more like an internet protocol where anyone can connect to it, anyone can build on it. And so it-- that was not-- none of that was possible in 2013. Uh, and so, you know, we, um, we dev- we developed ways to express that idea, um, on top of the Bitcoin network-

   8. NENemil5:55

      Yeah

   9. JAJeremy Allaire5:55

      ... which was very problematic. Um, and then obviously, when Ethereum came out, um, you know, w- w- it was like, okay, we have the building blocks. We can actually execute this. Um, and, you know, started work on that in 2017, and then obviously got together with Coinbase in 2018 and got this, you know, really off the ground as well. So but that was like-From a kind of vision of the company, a little bit of the background coming in. Yeah.

   10. NENemil6:18

       And I think, like, one thing I don't think people realize today is how controversial the idea was of dollars versus Bitcoin as the-

   11. JAJeremy Allaire6:24

       Yeah. Well, I got a lot of hate for a very long time.

   12. NENemil6:27

       Yeah.

   13. JAJeremy Allaire6:27

       'Cause we were always... We, we, we, we talked about, like, hybrid models, right? Where we can connect the regulated money system to these public computing infrastructures, to these public networks, and that we can have both the technological benefits and utility of this and, you know, even permission-less access to use it and develop on it. Um, that was controversial too. When I-

   14. NENemil6:50

       Yeah

   15. JAJeremy Allaire6:50

       ... when I was sort of out there saying, like, "We're gonna do a st- this USDC, and we're gonna do this thing that's on public networks," everyone said, "No one'll let you do that. The governments are gonna shut it down," you know, [laughs] because it was pretty radical.

   16. NENemil7:02

       Yeah.

   17. JAJeremy Allaire7:03

       Even, even that. But yeah, I mean, I was booed out of a lot of rooms because I was not a Bitcoin maxi towards that.

   18. NENemil7:09

       And I'm curious,

3. 7:10 – 11:22

   Top Use Cases for Builders Today

   1. NENemil7:10

      like, uh, for builders, like, what are the types of use cases that you're seeing that have been really compelling? Um, you mentioned, you know, people just using it day to day-

   2. JAJeremy Allaire7:17

      Yeah

   3. NENemil7:17

      ... in different parts of the world. I'm just curious, like, yeah, what, what are the ones you're most excited about?

   4. JAJeremy Allaire7:22

      We are seeing so many, um, builders working on, uh, what I'll broadly call neobanking type of products, right? And but what's interesting is, you know, there was a, a, a period where everyone was like, "I'm gonna build the, the consumer wallet with, like, stablecoin native, with, like, a Visa card," and, you know, kind of that bundle. And that, and by the way, that continues to proliferate. Like-

   5. NENemil7:44

      Yeah

   6. JAJeremy Allaire7:44

      ... there's tons of those in lots of countries, lots of places. But now we're starting to see more and more builders who are saying, "Actually, like, I wanna build this for businesses. Like, this is really valuable for businesses and organizations." So it's essentially like, you know, abstracting away the features that are needed for treasury management and for kind of pa- payment flows more broadly. Um, so we're seeing a lot of that, um, and that's also from big companies too, like-

   7. NENemil8:12

      Yeah

   8. JAJeremy Allaire8:12

      ... you know, Stripe or Ramp or, uh, you know, uh, lots of others. Um, there's been a big crop of, of companies, some of whom have matured and been bought and sold, uh, that are, that have sort of said, "Hey, this is, like, the ideal, uh, kind of settlement infrastructure for cross-border settlements." So but that, that continues unabated. Like, we, we continue to see so many companies in so many regions and markets sort of building solutions, um, you know, around that. Um, and, uh, you know, w- it's, it's also, um, interesting to see, uh, more and more, um, uh, more and more platforms that are involved in capital formation using stablecoins and wiring stablecoins in, like Y Combinator.

   9. NENemil8:54

      Yeah.

   10. JAJeremy Allaire8:55

       Uh, it's a great example. Uh, and then m- recently, I mean, we started work last year on agentic, uh, you know, uh, p- payments with USDC. We, we were an early contributor to X as well, and, um, you know, I think have always thought, like, kind of machine intermediated would be the future. That's gone into overdrive now.

   11. NENemil9:17

       Yeah.

   12. JAJeremy Allaire9:17

       Um, and so, uh, really just in the last three, four months, it's just been like whoosh. Um, and that's incredibly exciting. And so tons of projects now that are using, you know, our infrastructure, uh, alongside, uh, various types of products and services for agents. Um, and that's... To me, that's one of the most exciting things happening in the world, obviously.

   13. NENemil9:40

       Yeah.

   14. JAJeremy Allaire9:41

       Um, so that's a, that's a major new area, uh, uh, for, for builders. So from a startup perspective, those are some of the themes. Um, and, you know, I, I actually think, and, and be-- it'd be interesting, you know, to kind of see what comes out of these cohorts, uh, here, is kind of programmability of money, um, is a new concept for a lot of people, and abstracting away, um, you know, kind of higher order kind of protocols or services, um, that take advantage of that. You know, for example, like, we've seen startups that are basically working on rewards protocols that go alongside stablecoins because you want to be able to have mechanisms for businesses that accept payments with stablecoins to actually also have kind of fungible, redeemable, but also bespoke forms of, of loyalty systems, um, that is a, a replacement for, like, card loyalty systems. So that's something that you can only really do when y- with that programmable surface.

   15. NENemil10:44

       Yeah. And so I think, like, both Deal and Gusto have announced stablecoin payouts. I think payouts-

   16. JAJeremy Allaire10:48

       Yeah

   17. NENemil10:48

       ... are probably one of the biggest use cases we're seeing.

   18. JAJeremy Allaire10:50

       Payouts, yes. Absolutely. I, I view that mostly as, like, a cross-border example.

   19. NENemil10:53

       Yeah.

   20. JAJeremy Allaire10:54

       Um, but it, it's, it's not just cross-border 'cause it works, you know, for, for people. Uh, I could be an American business paying out to someone in an American, you know, a end user in America as well, but.

   21. NENemil11:04

       Yeah. Do you feel like this first phase is more consumer-- is it gonna be consumer driven, or is it more like... I, I think we've, we heard this term, like, stablecoin sandwich, where basically it's stablecoins behind the scenes-

   22. JAJeremy Allaire11:14

       Yeah

   23. NENemil11:14

       ... but on both sides it's fiat.

   24. JAJeremy Allaire11:16

       Yeah.

   25. NENemil11:16

       Is there, for the next year or two, are you seeing more in one or both, or are they both really exploding?

   26. JAJeremy Allaire11:21

       I mean, I think

4. 11:22 – 13:20

   Consumer vs. Business Adoption

   1. JAJeremy Allaire11:22

      both are really growing.

   2. NENemil11:23

      Yeah.

   3. JAJeremy Allaire11:23

      Um, and, and that reflects a couple facts. I think one is, especially in emerging and developing markets, the businesses, um, that wanna use this, in many cases, they do wanna hold working capital in these digital dollars. Uh, and so they don't necessarily want to go to their local currency. And so they may-- they, they need the ability to go to their local currency 'cause they may have payment obligations in their local currency, but, um, the sort of store value component of it is, is very real, and I think that's the case for individuals as well. Um, but, you know, we've seen with CPN, Circle Payments Network, you know, that's almost all business to business, and it's almost-- it's all international, and it's, it's amazing. Um, and we've just seen, like, rapid growth, and the number of fin-- you know, basically created a network model. We have-As of last quarter, we, we had like 55 financial institutions on the network. We have, you know, a, a lot more coming on, and they're kind of wiring it up, and they're able to go from fiat to stablecoin to, to, uh, to fiat or stablecoin, right? They can kind of go across, uh, these options. And, but it's like SMEs around the world. Um, and it's south to south, it's north to south. It's like all, all these, um, these, these different models. And, you know, businesses are just figuring out that this is a, you know, kind of better, faster, cheaper way to do things.

   4. NENemil12:50

      Yeah.

   5. JAJeremy Allaire12:50

      Um, that's on, on the, on the, on the business side. And, and then, um, yeah, I think on the, you know, on the y- on the end user side, um, very clearly, like wh- I, I sort of say households, but people are, are realizing, like, I can, I can hold dollars. I can hold digital dollars. I can get passive yield on them. I can, uh, I can transact with them, and I have interoperability to like a local payment method as well.

   6. NENemil13:18

      Yeah.

   7. JAJeremy Allaire13:18

      Yeah.

   8. NENemil13:19

      So I think one thing that's

5. 13:20 – 17:54

   Banks & Institutions Enter the Space

   1. NENemil13:20

      re- seems really different, you know, from years in stablecoins has been, uh, for the last... I think for a lot of the early stablecoin journey was a mass movement. A lot of consumers were using it around the world, and what's really changed maybe in the last year, especially in the US, has been the institutional embrace-

   2. JAJeremy Allaire13:35

      Yeah

   3. NENemil13:35

      ... of stablecoins. I'm curious in terms of like banks, fintechs-

   4. JAJeremy Allaire13:39

      Yeah

   5. NENemil13:39

      ... financial institutions, um, beyond payouts, are there other sets of use cases that you're-

   6. JAJeremy Allaire13:44

      Totally.

   7. NENemil13:44

      Yeah.

   8. JAJeremy Allaire13:44

      Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, we, um, as, as you know, like we've sh- we've spent years trying to get regulatory classifications so that, you know, something like USDC is treated as like cash equivalent money in the US financial system.

   9. NENemil14:02

      Yeah.

   10. JAJeremy Allaire14:02

       We're now there.

   11. NENemil14:04

       Wow.

   12. JAJeremy Allaire14:04

       Like it's happening, right? So what's important about that is that once you get that federal treatment, and once you get the SEC, the CFTC, and the bank regulators to sort of say, "This is, you know, from a federal statutory level, this is what this is. And therefore, from a prudential kind of risk perspective, this is how we'll treat this and how you can use this," that's enabling all these participants in capital markets, uh, and in banking to actually say, "Okay, we, we can now start to use this as an infrastructure." And so they'll look at it as an infrastructure that is about speed and efficiency, uh, a- and, and, and interoperability and things like that, but it's, it's very powerful. So we're now seeing, for example, like the CFTC, uh, which oversees, you know, all of the kind of derivatives markets, um, in, in the United States, um, that they're authorizing market participants, the, the derivatives exchanges, and then the, the pr- the market participants that sit on those to actually use USDC as eligible collateral.

   13. NENemil15:11

       Wow.

   14. JAJeremy Allaire15:11

       Uh, which is pretty powerful. Um, now what's interesting ironically is that like USDC is eligible colla- collateral on Coinbase or Binance or wherever [chuckles] for, for different things in the-

   15. NENemil15:22

       Yeah

   16. JAJeremy Allaire15:22

       ... in the crypto world. It's like of course, 'cause that's the only thing that's available.

   17. NENemil15:25

       Yeah.

   18. JAJeremy Allaire15:26

       Um, but, but like doing that for like oil futures on, um, on a d- on a classic derivatives exchange is really powerful. And so, um, that's an interesting example. We're seeing global systemically important banks who are using this as a way to actually do internal global treasury management, their own capital movement, doing their own internal capital movement across their international divisions or branches using USDC, which is wild. That's like plumbing of, you know, capital movement in the, in a global bank. Um, we're seeing, um, obviously more and more, um, kind of, uh, traditional asset managers that are creating, um, digital asset products, tokenization products, where, you know, essentially USDC is the, is the cash layer for how you create and redeem all these different types of products. So that's a, that's a thing that's happening. Um, we're seeing, um, you know, uh, global systemically important banks who are basically realizing that they can do intraday, uh, FX, uh, across, you know, m- major currencies and major boundaries using stablecoins in a way that they can't with the existing currency system and currency settlement system. And so risk moves continuously, right?

   19. NENemil16:49

       Yeah.

   20. JAJeremy Allaire16:49

       So, uh, so the ability to kind of collapse the time between, you know, uh, what's happening in a market and, and ultimate settlement is-

   21. NENemil16:56

       Yeah, like the T plus three to instantaneously.

   22. JAJeremy Allaire16:58

       Yeah. Or, or even next day, like we can, we can do continuous-

   23. NENemil17:02

       Yeah

   24. JAJeremy Allaire17:02

       ... uh, kind of stuff. And so like those are like, you know, you know, for, for, for some people they're like, "I don't know what the fuck that is," right? [chuckles] But like, you know, if you actually look at it, it's like this is like really, really critical pieces for how capital moves, how risk is managed, how markets are established, and these are all beginning to happen. But with the regulatory clarity, like there's the potential for this to like deeply penetrate all these things, and that's, you know, that's why, you know, I, I think when people think about what's the TAM for stablecoins, right? There's the, there's the money supply TAM, which is, I, I think trillions of dollars, many trillions of dollars.

   25. NENemil17:41

       Yeah.

   26. JAJeremy Allaire17:41

       But then there's all of the utilities that use that money. All of these are big use cases that are, you know, turning over and using this, and th- those obviously are in scope as well.

   27. NENemil17:52

       Yeah.

   28. JAJeremy Allaire17:52

       Uh, yeah.

6. 17:54 – 22:40

   Global Regulation Landscape

   1. NENemil17:54

      So you alluded to like just the regulations and how much of a sea of change that is in the US.

   2. JAJeremy Allaire17:58

      Yeah.

   3. NENemil17:58

      And just how we've seen, you know, all these institutions that were sitting out-

   4. JAJeremy Allaire18:01

      Yeah

   5. NENemil18:01

      ... coming back in, coming in.

   6. JAJeremy Allaire18:03

      Yeah.

   7. NENemil18:03

      I'm curious like how you see that internationally, because at YC we have like companies in Latin America, and in Asia, and the Middle East-

   8. JAJeremy Allaire18:10

      Yeah

   9. NENemil18:10

      ... that are all excited to build on stablecoins.

   10. JAJeremy Allaire18:11

       Yeah.

   11. NENemil18:12

       And I'm just curious, do you see other countries as advanced-

   12. JAJeremy Allaire18:15

       Yeah

   13. NENemil18:15

       ... maybe as we've come in the last few years in the US and-

   14. JAJeremy Allaire18:18

       Yeah

   15. NENemil18:18

       ... what do you think needs to happen?

   16. JAJeremy Allaire18:20

       So it's, it's really interesting. I mean, like m- most people don't realize, but-About five years ago, the G20, through, through the re- the financial regulatory body, the Financial Stability Board, sort of said, "Hey, we need policies on stablecoins because they're gonna happen." And so they came up with a set of recommendations, and the G20 adopted it. So all the presidents and whatever, like signed, said, "We're gonna adopt this."

   17. NENemil18:45

       Yeah.

   18. JAJeremy Allaire18:45

       And what that basically said is, like, here's a set of, of policies that we think G20 members should adopt, and then it goes down to the actual like parliaments and governments and congresses, and however policy's made. And, and so governments started doing it. G20 members started doing it. Japan was the very first. Japan had stablecoin regulations years ago. Then Europe was next. Europe passed the stablecoin regulations. And then you had like Singapore, Hong Kong, UK, uh, UAE, like all basically drafting, doing development on this, and, uh, and then finally the US. So the US was actually late to this.

   19. NENemil19:22

       Hmm.

   20. JAJeremy Allaire19:23

       Um, but you, you may remember, like the, there was essentially the, the heads of all the kind of financial, uh, uh, apparatus in the US, the Presidential Working Group on Financial Markets, basically said, "Here's our recommendations for stablecoins." That was in 2021. That was five years ago. And it, it took almost five years to get a federal law, uh, passed, uh, that, that did this. But it just, it takes years to make laws, right?

   21. NENemil19:48

       Yeah.

   22. JAJeremy Allaire19:48

       So we got to that point here in the United States. So in some parts of the world, they had already put a, a kind of like, you know, pole in the ground saying, "This is what this is." And then we now have the US come in, but because dollars dominate this, it's kind of forcing the rest of the world to basically revisit all of that. And so, um, what we're seeing happen now is not just G20 countries, but huge numbers of other countries, uh, in, in emerging and developing markets all around the world are now working on rules on stablecoins. So I think one thing to note is that, um, there's like gray area. So in many places it's gray area. It's not like, it's not defined, it's not clearly regulated. It might be, might be regulated as like these are basically like other digital assets and, you know, you need to be, you need to have VASPs, uh, you know, or these, you know, intermediaries that kind of deal with this and have money laundering obligations and the like. Um, but in s- in, in other cases they're saying, "No, we need to actually have laws for what are permitted." What... Like in Brazil, like what's a permitted stablecoin in Brazil?

   23. NENemil20:57

       Yeah.

   24. JAJeremy Allaire20:57

       What's a permitted international stablecoin? Are they gonna, are they gonna define that on the basis of the Genius Act and say like, "Things that are defined here"? There's a strong incentive because of Genius to do that because Genius has a reciprocity, uh, provision in it. And so if a regime basically adopts a framework that is substantially similar to Genius, then currencies issued under that regime could be recognized in the US as well.

   25. NENemil21:20

       Got it.

   26. JAJeremy Allaire21:21

       And so really the next, I would say the next two to three years, you're gonna see, um, like a huge number of, of laws passed around the world on stablecoins in local markets, and you're gonna see efforts from the top coordinated G20 type stuff, uh, as well as kind of key individual markets to kind of create... Uniformity might be too strong of a word, but basically create various forms of interoperability, reciprocity, et cetera, so that this can kind of work, um, uh, in a fairly consistent way. So it's big moves happening internationally right now.

   27. NENemil22:00

       Okay.

   28. JAJeremy Allaire22:01

       Uh, yeah.

   29. NENemil22:01

       And are there particular coun- countries you're super bullish on, at least in the next year?

   30. JAJeremy Allaire22:06

       Yeah, I mean, I, I, I mean, there are. Um, we, um, uh, you know, the, the, the places where we've seen kind of concentration have been things like, you know, uh, um, Southeast Asia.
7. 22:40 – 26:15

   AI Agents & the Agentic Economy

   1. NENemil22:40

      of time, I think so far, talking about largely the existing financial systems-

   2. JAJeremy Allaire22:44

      Yeah

   3. NENemil22:44

      ... and how stablecoins can make that better. Uh, we're in San Francisco, and there's just tremendous, tremendous excitement about AI.

   4. JAJeremy Allaire22:51

      Yeah.

   5. NENemil22:51

      And you mentioned agentic commerce earlier.

   6. JAJeremy Allaire22:53

      Yeah.

   7. NENemil22:53

      I'm just curious about the types of use cases that you're seeing-

   8. JAJeremy Allaire22:56

      Yeah

   9. NENemil22:56

      ... in these early years, and is it micropayments that you see-

   10. JAJeremy Allaire22:59

       Yeah

   11. NENemil22:59

       ... as the initial killer use case for stablecoins?

   12. JAJeremy Allaire23:01

       Yeah.

   13. NENemil23:01

       Are there other things that you're seeing that you'd, uh, think would be interesting for builders to be able to help support and build?

   14. JAJeremy Allaire23:07

       Yeah. So I'm super excited about it. Um-

   15. NENemil23:10

       Yeah

   16. JAJeremy Allaire23:10

       ... a- and, and, um, I think, um, I think our view is, or my view I, I should say is a couple things. I think one is, you know, we- we're, we're in a period of very significant, obviously, like technical and economic disruption. And, um, m- my own view is that, um, you know, we're gonna see, um, a, a huge explosion in the number of, uh, you know, AI agents that are both conducting work and consuming the work of other AI agents. And so an agentic economic system is, i- is needed. Uh, we think kind of new economic OS's, blockchains, et cetera, are needed to support that. And the, the requirements are really different. But from a use case perspective, a lot of people when they hear agentic commerce think like, "My agent is gonna shop for me."

   17. NENemil24:02

       Yeah.

   18. JAJeremy Allaire24:02

       Okay. That's like a looking backward view.

   19. NENemil24:04

       Yeah.

   20. JAJeremy Allaire24:05

       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. And so-More and more discrete things are gonna be consumable as intelligence and, and work, uh, at, at an agent level. And in, in that environment, right, you're, you're effectively gonna need to have, um, uh, contracts and economic execution amongst these, you know, you know, potentially billions or even tens of billions of agents that are conducting work.

   21. NENemil24:50

       Yeah.

   22. JAJeremy Allaire24:51

       That, to me, is what a- agentic ... I don't, I don't like to use the word commerce. I like to say, like, agentic economic [laughs] activity-

   23. NENemil24:57

       I was gonna say. Yeah

   24. JAJeremy Allaire24:57

       ... 'cause it's broader.

   25. NENemil24:58

       Yeah.

   26. JAJeremy Allaire24:59

       It also reflects the fact that, um, in such systems, um, part of this is going to be, um, empowering agents to, uh, coordinate work, to have proof of work, to have ways to, um, to kind of store and manage capital, to make decisions together, to provide governance, to have human-in-the-loop governance. Like, all this stuff is what the agentic economic system needs to look like. And so to me, that's not just about payments. It's not just about money movement. It's about the substance of how economic activity is organized. That's a huge opportunity. Um, but my, my high-level view in stepping back is even if you just look at this from a payments perspective, like, the, the velocity of economic activity because of AI agents is going to explode. And, um, and so that economic activity is going to be a, a, a huge increase in the velocity of money and the use of money, and the only viable way to manage that is with stablecoins and, and blockchains. And so, um, you know, we're, we're designing a ton of stuff-

   27. NENemil26:06

       Yeah

   28. JAJeremy Allaire26:06

       ... at an infrastructure level to, like, be ready for that, enable that, et cetera. Um, and it's, you know, um ... Yeah, so that's like big picture.

   29. NENemil26:14

       Okay.

8. 26:15 – 27:38

   Missing Infrastructure for Builders

   1. NENemil26:15

      And last question on that one, um, is that what infrastructure components do you think are missing? Like, identities, I think one example, and maybe, like-

   2. JAJeremy Allaire26:22

      Yeah

   3. NENemil26:22

      ... chargebacks and things like that might be other examples. But I'm curious, especially for the builders out there-

   4. JAJeremy Allaire26:27

      Yeah

   5. NENemil26:27

      ... like, what of those pieces do you think that really, like, we have to, like, lead to really-

   6. JAJeremy Allaire26:31

      Yeah

   7. NENemil26:32

      ... unlock that economy?

   8. JAJeremy Allaire26:33

      Yeah, I mean, look, I th- I think, um, cl- clearly, like, know your agent, uh, slash identity proofs-

   9. NENemil26:38

      Yeah

   10. JAJeremy Allaire26:38

       ... is, is really critical. Um, I think, um, uh, yes, I, I think, um, m- mechanisms for disputes and, and kind of, uh, failed transactions, other things like that, are very important.

   11. NENemil26:51

       Yeah.

   12. JAJeremy Allaire26:52

       Um, and there's some really interesting things that could be done there, uh, uh, in terms of, uh, you know, um, kind of dispute resolution conducted by AI agents themselves, et cetera. So that's, like, a, a, a really interesting space. What that actually also calls for are ... What, what I believe will be needed are, um, insurance markets. Uh, so insurance markets, um, are gonna be critical, and so you're gonna wanna have insurance against all kinds of stuff that's happening in the agentic economy, not just, you know, a payment settled or not or there was fraud, right? But, but insurance against a number of different types of outcomes. And so I think-

   13. NENemil27:29

       Yeah

   14. JAJeremy Allaire27:30

       ... insurance markets are, are, are, are, are ripe, uh, uh, and tied to, uh, agentic economic activity as well.

   15. NENemil27:37

       Last

9. 27:38 – 29:22

   Three Big Predictions for Stablecoins

   1. NENemil27:38

      question. You know, three things you're excited about for the next year that will really, you know, transform the stablecoin industry. What, what are those?

   2. JAJeremy Allaire27:44

      One is one that we've been talking about, which is just agentic, right?

   3. NENemil27:47

      Yeah.

   4. JAJeremy Allaire27:47

      So I'm, I'm very, very excited about that, and, and part of it is, like, the unknown. Like, we, we know this is gonna be significant, and the unknown of everything that's gonna happen 'cause it moves so fast. So, so that, that's totally something that, that, that I'm really excited about. Um, you know, I'm, I'm excited. I think we're going to see, um, product user experiences that, that really make this beautiful and simple and seamless.

   5. NENemil28:14

      Yeah.

   6. JAJeremy Allaire28:14

      And, and-

   7. NENemil28:15

      So it doesn't feel like a crypto app.

   8. JAJeremy Allaire28:16

      Yeah.

   9. NENemil28:16

      Yeah.

   10. JAJeremy Allaire28:16

       Like, I, I j- I think we're gonna have, we're gonna have, like, the, the, the breakthrough UX experiences, um, that, that happen, and we're gonna see a ton of those. But we're gonna see some that get liftoff, right? That, that, that really start to get, like, PM fit and, and, and growth and the like. So that's really exciting. Um, and, um, and, and now this is more mundane, but I think is really exciting, is, like, we're gonna see stablecoins, um, become a- essentially, like, approved and usable in the core guts of the financial system. And, like, th- that is kind of like, you know, reaching the summit in terms of, like, okay, we've made it. Like, this is now, this is now considered, like, money in the most important infrastructure in the world. And so I think that's, um, that's pretty amazing too.

   11. NENemil29:03

       Cool. Well, Jeremy, it's been so exciting meeting on the journey with you. I think we first met when USDC-

   12. JAJeremy Allaire29:07

       Yeah

   13. NENemil29:07

       ... was maybe less than 100 million in market cap.

   14. JAJeremy Allaire29:09

       Yes.

   15. NENemil29:09

       Really excited to see what's ahead for USDC and the entire stablecoin industry.

   16. JAJeremy Allaire29:13

       Thank you so much.

   17. NENemil29:14

       Thank you.

   18. JAJeremy Allaire29:14

       It's great. [outro music]

Episode duration: 29:23