Stablecoins: The Dollar Shouldn't Sleep

The only primer you need to read to learn that while the old system sleeps, new rails are being laid: faster, cheaper, and always on. Sooner or later, the incumbents will feel the pressure.

Every system runs on trust. The current banking system? It was built on it. Not the trust that’s earned, but the kind that’s kind of just … assumed. The trust that your money will be there tomorrow. That slow wires and idle deposits are just part of the deal. That fees are normal. And that two-day ACH delays are acceptable.

And for a long time, we all went along with it. Not because it was the best system. But because there was no real alternative. Today, that could be changing.

Over the years, I’ve sat in the rooms where confidence starts to crack. Where senior bankers talk quietly, not about strategy, but about liquidity. Rerunning models. Stress-testing deposits. Watching flows shift in ways that don’t feel stable. I’ve heard fintech founders speak with conviction, only to ask how the Fed actually works or what a capital ratio is. I’ve watched millionaire crypto traders and $500 an hour consultants deliver eloquent answers filled with nonsense and backed by nothing. And not because they’re malicious, but because they’re still oriented to a map that no longer matches the terrain.

What’s happening now isn’t loud. It’s not a headline. It’s the quiet reworking of core infrastructure. The foundation is being relaid. Slowly. Deliberately. And in my opinion, irreversibly. Will it achieve the potential the enthusiasts proclaim? Maybe, maybe not.

Today though, stablecoins are not a speculative side path. They already facilitate trillions of dollars in value exchange. They are performing functions that traditional banks have long claimed but rarely delivered: near-instant settlement, operational transparency, and uninterrupted availability. No cutoffs. No reliance on business hours. And with the passage of the GENIUS Act, they are no longer operating in the margins, they are being formally integrated into the regulatory architecture. The expectation is not perfection or protection, but stability. They are not insured deposits (I repeat, not FDIC insured deposits). But under the new framework, they offer structured reliability.

In many ways, they represent a more disciplined evolution of digital assets, less volatile than crypto, more sound than fiat. And always available to move, at the click of a button on your iPhone (or Samsung).

The real disruption isn’t the technology. It’s the trust shift. Away from branches and banker hours. Toward code, clarity, and settlement in seconds. Stablecoins aren’t here to burn the old world down. They’re here to show it wasn’t good enough. And if people start moving value without friction, without delay, without asking permission well, it’s already too late to pretend nothing’s changed.

If you want to understand where the money’s going next, keep reading.