Jeremey Allaire, the CEO of Circle, stated that stablecoins will soon have their iPhone moment.
The future of programmable money, according to him, is bright. We are already seeing some huge numbers in terms of transactions, something that is likely to increase over the coming years. This week, the United States Senate is set to vote on the GENIUS Act, a stablecoin bill that will establish the regulatory framework for the world's leading economy.
Allaire believes that developers will flock to stablecoins in the same way they headed to the iPhone. We all know the impact programmable mobile devices had on society. Fifteen years ago, few understood what an application was. Today, they are commonplace.
Could we see the same impact on society due to programmable money? Many within the industry believe this is the case.
Jeremy Allaire: Stablecoins To Have iPhone Moment
This is a sentiment echoed by Sam Broner of a16z.
Stablecoins are better because they encourage competition.
“Now anyone can program money - the fixed and marginal costs of building a fintech are lower. More competition = better prices, better experiences, more access,” Broner added.
Speed & cost (< 1 second, 1 cent) matter, but it's the permissionless programmability that's going to change the market
While price action garners most of the attention, the utility with most crypto is still low. With stablecoins, it is the exact opposite. We can see how things are changing quickly, with adoption skyrocketing.
Over the last 12 months, stablecoins have accounted for $33 trillion in transactions.
“To put that into perspective, that’s close to 20 times the volume of PayPal, close to 3 times the volume of Visa, and quickly approaching the volume of ACH,” he said.
We need to focus upon that for a moment. Stablecoin transactions over the last year are 3x that of Visa, the world's leading payment processor. It is now starting to rival ACH, which is the payment system banks use.
Things are only getting started.
Meta Joining The Stablecoin Game?
Meta was one of the early adopters of the idea of stablecoins. It proposed Libra in 2018 or 2019. This was met with stiff pushback, something that eventually led to the dissolving of the program.
That said, there is reason to believe that Zuckerberg has not abandoned the idea of getting into this realm.
How Meta is going to approach this remains a concern to many. In fact Zuckerberg was recently called in front of Congress to question the company's plans regarding stablecoins.
This does not mean Meta will roll out its own stablecoin. The proposed legislation will require Meta and other publicly traded technology company receiving a waiver to bring out a stablecoin.
What Meta could easily do is to incorporate stablecoins into its platforms. This would alter the landscape of payments. With over 3 billion monthly users on all their applications, this would expose a significant percentage of the global population to crypto.
My guess is that, eventually, Meta will have its own stablecoin. It is unclear how this will be achieve or the timeframe. Until we get the full legislation passed, we can't be sure exactly what the law will read.
However, one pathway I see is for the likes of Meta to buy a stablecoin issuer. Unless the bill forbids that, Meta could acquire a small bank, one that issued a coin on its own. After all, the company just paid $15 billion for an AI company.
A company like Meta being involved could certainly make Allaire's vision come true. We might be nearing the "iPhone moment" for programmable money.