We are watching the financial guardrails of the global system begin to change in real time, but the shift is subtle enough that it still looks like a series of isolated decisions.
Great analysis and report - and I love your weekly youtube videos - but honestly, I had a hard time getting through all the AI writing. Not because of comprehension - I am intelligent and I am an editor professionally - but bc it all sounds the same and it's always so loooong and, well, artificial.
Jordi I appreciate your insight and much of your macro views but are these programable blockchains/money truly decentralized or just decentralized in name? A very big difference between Bitcoin and stablecoins in how changes can be made on chain, who truly has the control? Ten31 Research wrote a thought provoking essay addressing Stablecoin, Blockchains and the Future of the Digital Dollar and it challenges what you wrote.
As always, I enjoyed your insights and perspective. If I could, I like to make a request for a bit of drill-down on your point about the float… Can you pull the string on what the overnight rate, or even the notion of central banking means in a world that seems to be imminently upon us? Your thoughts here may be valuable for investors and policymakers alike.
I enjoyed this piece. I like the way you tied together what seems like totally separate events into a theme. However, I am unclear what's actually changing. I get that stablecoins are programmable, but I don't understand how they will create the utopia you describe. Are they instant? I thought most of them are built on Eth - so do they involve Eth blockchain activity? Are the stablecoins centralized? By the company in question (DoorDash?) or by the financial institution that created them (Morgan Stanley)? Are stablecoins free for a company like DoorDash to use? And how can they be global if they are stable to USD? This means that global companies using them (like DoorDash) will still experience risks with exchange rate fluctuations. Lastly, and this is the big one, does the rise in stablecoins built on Eth impact BTC, and if so, how?
Nice piece you assembled here. The linear Lego blocks of recent historical corporate adaptations are key to unwrap for an utterly ahistoric generation of readers.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the digitization of a global banking system that still runs on COBOL has been a revolution in slow motion since the advent of utility driven blockchain tech, fiat neutral bridge tokens and now, stablecoins - an agonizingly slow battle between the incumbents and the genies seeking to revivify the necrotic flesh of a broken correspondent banking system.
The signal you discuss is there, even as we move through the noise. A process much the same as AT&T fighting an enforced breakup into the "Baby Bells". And in turn, their pitched battle to lobby against fax machines and the advent of cell phones. It always seems to take about 20 years. Maybe this bell curve will be faster. Everyone says no one knows what the world looks like in 5 years, so who knows.
The elephant in the room that almost none of the recent crop of investment bankers cum conventioneers care to ever mention is Ripple Labs, not Uber, Door Dash, Stripe or Morgan Stanley.
But keep at it. You're focus is true north and locked on the future. Your points are well stated, true and on point. There's great and urgent value in what you bring to the table. Carry on.
The sequencing is the strongest part of this analysis. Stripe identifies, Uber recognises, DoorDash executes, Morgan Stanley aligns. That's not a trend. That's a supply chain for a new financial architecture, and each participant validated the layer beneath it.
The part worth watching now is who loses. The float isn't just friction. It's revenue. Banks earn billions from money sitting in transit. Correspondent banking networks charge for every hop. Payment processors take a cut for every batch they reconcile. Programmable money doesn't just make those processes faster. It makes the businesses built on slowness obsolete.
That means the resistance to this transition won't come from technology limitations. It will come from the institutions whose margin depends on settlement delay. And those institutions have regulatory relationships that a stablecoin issuer does not. The last mile of this shift isn't technical. It's political. Whoever controls the regulatory definition of "programmable money" controls how fast the float actually dies.
Excellent depth on programmable money and institutional adoption of stablecoins. The convergence narrative you present across Stripe, Uber, and major financial institutions is compelling.
Love this perspective! At 3versetv we've been exploring ways to make Bitcoin culture more accessible and relatable to everyday people — not just traders and investors. We recently ran a campaign called Bitcoinwood where we reimagined Hollywood's most iconic films with Bitcoin in the title. Sounds silly but the engagement has been wild. Drop by our Pinterest if you want a laugh and a crypto lesson at the same time
The DoorDash example is the clearest real-economy demonstration of what programmable money actually does. Banks have always profited from float — the gap between when they collect and when they pay out. That gap is where they generate yield. Stablecoins don't just make payments faster, they structurally eliminate the float arbitrage.
What strikes me is the order of operations you've outlined: infrastructure → operators → execution → institutions. That's not how most tech adoption narratives are written, but it's exactly how financial system change actually happens. Institutions don't lead, they ratify.
The AI agent layer on top of this is where it gets genuinely interesting. Once money can be programmed to allocate on arrival, the distinction between a payment and an investment instruction collapses. I've been tracking the stablecoin regulatory picture closely — the yield ban debate in the CLARITY Act is essentially a fight over who controls that allocation layer. Worth watching closely.
The "death of the float" framing is exactly right, and it's more significant than most people realize. Banks have quietly monetized settlement delay for decades — float income, overnight sweeps, FX spread capture. Stripe/Uber/DoorDash aren't just improving UX, they're eliminating entire revenue lines that traditional finance treated as structural.
The one angle I'd push on: programmable money also creates new control risks. If the logic governing distribution is embedded in the transaction, whoever writes that logic has enormous power. That's fine when it's a DoorDash payout rule. It's a different question when it's a government-mandated CBDC spending restriction. The infrastructure is neutral — it's the governance that determines whether this is freedom or a cage.
I've been tracking the stablecoin regulatory fight closely for Beyond The Coin. The GENIUS Act + CLARITY Act combo creates the legal framework for exactly this infrastructure. The float doesn't just die — it gets reassigned.
The "death of the float" framing is precise. Banks have captured value from settlement delays for decades — not through explicit fees, but through the spread on money sitting in transit. That invisible capture is enormous at scale. The DoorDash model makes it visible by eliminating it. The piece about AI agents managing programmable money in real time is the underdiscussed next layer. Right now, DeFi yield strategies and TradFi investment are separate. Once the distribution layer is programmable, a driver gets paid and their preferences (save X%, invest Y%, pay bill Z) execute simultaneously without any human action. That's not payments innovation — that's behavioral finance infrastructure. I've been writing about how stablecoin adoption changes BTC's role in financial infrastructure — each of these steps (Stripe, Uber, DoorDash, Morgan Stanley) removes one more reason to argue that programmable money is speculative. At this point it's just engineering.
I imagine the increased velocity generated by efficient transactions might countervail the deflationary force of increased productivity.
Let’s grow together and support each other along the way. If you’re also new to Substack like me, let’s subscribe to each other and build together.
Great analysis and report - and I love your weekly youtube videos - but honestly, I had a hard time getting through all the AI writing. Not because of comprehension - I am intelligent and I am an editor professionally - but bc it all sounds the same and it's always so loooong and, well, artificial.
Let’s grow together and support each other along the way. If you’re also new to Substack like me, let’s subscribe to each other and build together.
Jordi I appreciate your insight and much of your macro views but are these programable blockchains/money truly decentralized or just decentralized in name? A very big difference between Bitcoin and stablecoins in how changes can be made on chain, who truly has the control? Ten31 Research wrote a thought provoking essay addressing Stablecoin, Blockchains and the Future of the Digital Dollar and it challenges what you wrote.
https://www.ten31timestamp.com/p/stablecoins
A quote from the Ten31 essay, "They know better than anyone that he who has the ledger makes the rules."
As always, I enjoyed your insights and perspective. If I could, I like to make a request for a bit of drill-down on your point about the float… Can you pull the string on what the overnight rate, or even the notion of central banking means in a world that seems to be imminently upon us? Your thoughts here may be valuable for investors and policymakers alike.
Solid insight!
I enjoyed this piece. I like the way you tied together what seems like totally separate events into a theme. However, I am unclear what's actually changing. I get that stablecoins are programmable, but I don't understand how they will create the utopia you describe. Are they instant? I thought most of them are built on Eth - so do they involve Eth blockchain activity? Are the stablecoins centralized? By the company in question (DoorDash?) or by the financial institution that created them (Morgan Stanley)? Are stablecoins free for a company like DoorDash to use? And how can they be global if they are stable to USD? This means that global companies using them (like DoorDash) will still experience risks with exchange rate fluctuations. Lastly, and this is the big one, does the rise in stablecoins built on Eth impact BTC, and if so, how?
Nice piece you assembled here. The linear Lego blocks of recent historical corporate adaptations are key to unwrap for an utterly ahistoric generation of readers.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the digitization of a global banking system that still runs on COBOL has been a revolution in slow motion since the advent of utility driven blockchain tech, fiat neutral bridge tokens and now, stablecoins - an agonizingly slow battle between the incumbents and the genies seeking to revivify the necrotic flesh of a broken correspondent banking system.
The signal you discuss is there, even as we move through the noise. A process much the same as AT&T fighting an enforced breakup into the "Baby Bells". And in turn, their pitched battle to lobby against fax machines and the advent of cell phones. It always seems to take about 20 years. Maybe this bell curve will be faster. Everyone says no one knows what the world looks like in 5 years, so who knows.
The elephant in the room that almost none of the recent crop of investment bankers cum conventioneers care to ever mention is Ripple Labs, not Uber, Door Dash, Stripe or Morgan Stanley.
But keep at it. You're focus is true north and locked on the future. Your points are well stated, true and on point. There's great and urgent value in what you bring to the table. Carry on.
The sequencing is the strongest part of this analysis. Stripe identifies, Uber recognises, DoorDash executes, Morgan Stanley aligns. That's not a trend. That's a supply chain for a new financial architecture, and each participant validated the layer beneath it.
The part worth watching now is who loses. The float isn't just friction. It's revenue. Banks earn billions from money sitting in transit. Correspondent banking networks charge for every hop. Payment processors take a cut for every batch they reconcile. Programmable money doesn't just make those processes faster. It makes the businesses built on slowness obsolete.
That means the resistance to this transition won't come from technology limitations. It will come from the institutions whose margin depends on settlement delay. And those institutions have regulatory relationships that a stablecoin issuer does not. The last mile of this shift isn't technical. It's political. Whoever controls the regulatory definition of "programmable money" controls how fast the float actually dies.
Excellent depth on programmable money and institutional adoption of stablecoins. The convergence narrative you present across Stripe, Uber, and major financial institutions is compelling.
Love this perspective! At 3versetv we've been exploring ways to make Bitcoin culture more accessible and relatable to everyday people — not just traders and investors. We recently ran a campaign called Bitcoinwood where we reimagined Hollywood's most iconic films with Bitcoin in the title. Sounds silly but the engagement has been wild. Drop by our Pinterest if you want a laugh and a crypto lesson at the same time
The DoorDash example is the clearest real-economy demonstration of what programmable money actually does. Banks have always profited from float — the gap between when they collect and when they pay out. That gap is where they generate yield. Stablecoins don't just make payments faster, they structurally eliminate the float arbitrage.
What strikes me is the order of operations you've outlined: infrastructure → operators → execution → institutions. That's not how most tech adoption narratives are written, but it's exactly how financial system change actually happens. Institutions don't lead, they ratify.
The AI agent layer on top of this is where it gets genuinely interesting. Once money can be programmed to allocate on arrival, the distinction between a payment and an investment instruction collapses. I've been tracking the stablecoin regulatory picture closely — the yield ban debate in the CLARITY Act is essentially a fight over who controls that allocation layer. Worth watching closely.
The best explanation of how the actual crypto changes are affecting real world companies.
Let’s grow together and support each other along the way. If you’re also new to Substack like me, let’s subscribe to each other and build together.
The "death of the float" framing is exactly right, and it's more significant than most people realize. Banks have quietly monetized settlement delay for decades — float income, overnight sweeps, FX spread capture. Stripe/Uber/DoorDash aren't just improving UX, they're eliminating entire revenue lines that traditional finance treated as structural.
The one angle I'd push on: programmable money also creates new control risks. If the logic governing distribution is embedded in the transaction, whoever writes that logic has enormous power. That's fine when it's a DoorDash payout rule. It's a different question when it's a government-mandated CBDC spending restriction. The infrastructure is neutral — it's the governance that determines whether this is freedom or a cage.
I've been tracking the stablecoin regulatory fight closely for Beyond The Coin. The GENIUS Act + CLARITY Act combo creates the legal framework for exactly this infrastructure. The float doesn't just die — it gets reassigned.
The "death of the float" framing is precise. Banks have captured value from settlement delays for decades — not through explicit fees, but through the spread on money sitting in transit. That invisible capture is enormous at scale. The DoorDash model makes it visible by eliminating it. The piece about AI agents managing programmable money in real time is the underdiscussed next layer. Right now, DeFi yield strategies and TradFi investment are separate. Once the distribution layer is programmable, a driver gets paid and their preferences (save X%, invest Y%, pay bill Z) execute simultaneously without any human action. That's not payments innovation — that's behavioral finance infrastructure. I've been writing about how stablecoin adoption changes BTC's role in financial infrastructure — each of these steps (Stripe, Uber, DoorDash, Morgan Stanley) removes one more reason to argue that programmable money is speculative. At this point it's just engineering.