![[IMG_3695.jpeg]] Zach Abrams, of Bridge, [[Why you'd issue a branded stablecoin like McDonaldsCoin#^09222d|describes]] stablecoin as an L2. Efficient, unconstrained, but designed to settle back to the “L1” of the traditional finance system. Henri Stern of Privy (the wallet-as-a-service startup Stripe bought after Bridge) recently [described](https://open.substack.com/pub/cheekypint/p/stablecoin-special-zach-abrams-bridge?selection=ba7cf06b-9532-459c-abbf-dc6efbbc4fed&r=ksfr&utm_medium=ios) it as “zero gravity” — once you get something *into* zero gravity, it can be moved absurd distances trivially. If you use stablecoins for serious, commercial purposes — you’ll find this to be materially true. This is not just marketing. The basic international remittance flow is usually the “stablecoin sandwich”, in which funds enter via fiat on-ramp, convert to stablecoin, and then exit through a fiat off-ramp somewhere else in the world. It’s actually pretty ergonomic in practice; Bridge even lets you *compose* those on and off-ramps pretty flexibly. See their docs on [virtual accounts](https://apidocs.bridge.xyz/platform/orchestration/virtual_accounts/virtual-account) (on-ramps) [liquidation addresses](https://apidocs.bridge.xyz/platform/orchestration/liquidation_address/liquidation_address) (off-ramps). The thing is, their high-level framing — the idea of a special zone in which value moves around more trivially — doesn’t exclusively describe crypto. It’s really the premise of every fintech app that tries to store your money. Wise — to take a major player in international remittance as an example — works by: - holding foreign currency in a variety of global accounts (or working with partners who do) - collecting currency A from sender into balance A - disbursing currency B to the recipient from balance B They’re not actually sending your funds to a different country; they're taking in your funds, adding them to their cross-currency “book”, and paying out your counterparty out of that same book. In the abstract, not dramatically different than what is happening in the “stablecoin sandwich” — on-ramp and off-ramp, with a magic ledger in the middle. Wise itself is also a special zone in which payment distances between two geographies collapse: **a zero-gravity field, just like stablecoins**. ![[9808DA91-3C4D-4041-A27B-43D790C16412.png]] This is why they’ve been indifferent to stablecoins — they’re doing something not too dissimilar from stablecoin challengers, with a 10+ year head start, and their surface area already captures the biggest markets. Startups like Bridge are still catching up to much of Wise’s moat — building their own network of cross-currency liquidity and licensure, globally. What Henri in the interview would describe as “ground stations” — the hard part. As I was doing some digging for his previous remarks, I found this from Kristo, Wise’s CEO, from just a few days ago during their earnings call ([Nov 6 2025](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4839061-wise-plc-wizey-q2-2026-earnings-call-transcript)): >if we ask about stablecoins in that context of money transfers that goes just beyond moving U.S. dollars between wallets, then it's these regulated on and off ramps into those local currencies, how do you get the money into the USD stablecoin and out of that USD stablecoin. And that's actually the hardest thing to achieve reliably, which is exactly what we built Wise Network -- or this Wise infrastructure for. > >Then of course, we have the best on and off-ramps to make use of this new technology across the world. And furthermore, if these challenges improve, I'm actually personally quite excited if we can add something like this to move U.S. dollars next to Fedwire and Zelle and Venmo and other options that are out there today for our own customers Fiat ramps are both the hard part and the immediate-term value prop — Wise’s moat — which is why Bridge is building them, as a prerequisite to accessing the B2B payments market at all. It’s similar to why Brian Armstrong had to pivot from building Coinbase as a Bitcoin wallet to a Bitcoin exchange — you need “realer” money to be able to enter and exit, at least until it is more productive within the ecosystem than outside. **The *breadth* of the zero-gravity field is where all the edge materializes.** Wise — zero-gravity as it may be — is a single company. If you’re willing to look past the confines of the “stablecoin sandwich” — on-ramps and off-ramps — stablecoins have an infinitely broader field to work with. I think, contrary to current normie fintech appetite, “international remittance” is still a smaller opportunity than the original ambition of an diverse ecosystem that money can instantly, and programmatically, tap in and out of. Maybe it’s analogous to an “email” moment. I don’t even think the ecosystem needs to be a bunch of novel smart contracts or protocols. Centralized fintech is already equally capable of taking in this money and offering its centralized financial products (this eg. feels like an obvious way in which unsecured credit makes its way onchain). I can already send my dollars from Paypal to Coinbase to Ramp to Fidelity to MoneyGram to Aave, all within a minute. I can send dollars to anyone, anywhere in the world — wrapped in “payment links” that are lightweight noncustodial wallets — and they can then transfer funds to wherever else accepts it. That’s a real, emergent “internet of money” in which each of these previously-siloed apps is just another client. What emerges is still anyone’s guess; but the rails are credibly there. %% ## Everything is hawala Both stablecoin rails and Wise share the topology — if not the long-term informality — of “informal value-transfer systems”, eg. hawala, feiqian (Chinese for “[flying cash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_cash)”, which is an enviably cooler way to say digital asset), etc. IVTSs feel like primordial analogues to *most* of the payment networks we have today. Card [acquirers and issuers](https://stripe.com/resources/more/acquirer-vs-issuer) and even [nostro/vostro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostro_and_vostro_accounts) accounts are *also* hawaldars by different name. You do the same thing in every instance of scaled, open-loop money movement - move information first, cash second. - Nostro/vostro send SWIFT messages first, rebalance local positions via FX markets second. - Acquiring/issuing involve VisaNet messages from merchant → acquirer → issuer first, and settlement of obligations from issuer → merchant second. - Wise (eg.) sends nostro/vostro-like instructions within its own software, and later rebalances via either SWIFT settlement or local FX markets. - You send someone a stablecoin as an onchain message first, and then they off-ramp - “rebalance” - into actual currency second. The efficient way to do open-loop payments at scale *necessarily* has a cost of capital — the money needs to be in both places at the same time if you’re going to accept from the payer and disburse to the payee without bottlenecking on the more “physical” money you are trying to transmit. ## The “alpha” in stablecoin There’s a lot of nuance re: what stablecoin’s edge actually is, and I think over-indexing on the use cases that Wise and Airwallex solve for today — international remittances and FX — will actually almost entirely neglect that edge. (even if they warm the rails up). Bridge specifically might help Stripe cheaply eat some of Wise or Airwallex’s lunch (which would more than justify their acquisition), but that’s a much different story than the wholesale upgrade of global finance. ### Developer experience You can now embed US dollars that get the US risk-free rate into a 100-line personal website, as a consequence of these rails. This is the innovation of eg. Privy - trivially embed user-friendly wallets, with dollar and yield access, into any app, without an underlying banking construct. To what specific end that’d be useful and economically productive — not obvious — but this is sufficient raw power in the hands of anyone who picks it up, that anyone who followed the last two decades of tech would be remiss to ignore it. In contrast, trying to partner with a Wise or Airwallex to do something like this is sufficiently cost-prohibitive that you’re not going to tinker on something “creative” with their rails. You’ll have to arrive at a discrete business case months in advance, with sufficient funding and existing PMF. The type of business likely to gain access to their rails is not the kind that will do anything exceptionally creative with their offerings. ### Storage I’ve written before about [[Why you'd issue a branded stablecoin like McDonaldsCoin]] - but to distill a bit. The pitch for “custom” stablecoins is that any dollar your app holds with can be a dollar tuned to favorable economics for you. All you have to do is: - issue a custom stablecoin - hold customer funds at rest in that custom stablecoin (even if the money coming in, or going out is not denominated in it) There’s a yield benefit, but the other benefit is that you don’t need a partner bank to offer a wallet/stored value construct. Transmit in and out with Bridge, but store with Ethereum or Solana. It’s expensive and difficult for Wise and Airwallex to do this sort of thing — they’ll do it, but they’re not going to pass through great economics to you, and *access* to this sort of thing will not be remotely trivial. Abrams considers the addressable market here to be all AUM. And it sort of makes sense - this is a convenient wrapper around the sorts of money-market funds that corporate treasurers already use with their balances, without tricky program management with partner banks. ### Global US dollars This one isn’t under-explored, but is worth reiteration. The ability to send payments cross-border is powerful on its own — and both Wise and USDC offer it — but the ability to send US Dollars that can continue to earn the risk-free rate (even while “abroad”) does differentiate stablecoins substantially. You’d instinctively call this regulatory arbitrage, and even though the USG is actually in favor of a corridor like this (in favor of dollar strength), I’d be inclined to agree. The countries *into* which these dollars start flooding as an alternative currency will probably not be happy in the long-term. That being said - this is what retail usage in underbanked markets looks like practically. People transacting in local currency, but “depositing” with and “withdrawing” from brokers who hold and preserve their value in USD stablecoin. A USD account is very valuable abroad. %%