"Founder of the First Stable Coin Stock": How did I All in Stable Coin 7 years ago

Circle, the world's second largest stablecoin giant, will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange tonight and start trading. This is the second largest native US-listed company in the cryptocurrency industry after Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency trading platform in the United States in 2021. Four years ago, Coinbase’s listing ushered in the peak of Bitcoin, and four years later, it happened to be the time for a bull-bear cycle of cryptocurrencies. Circle’s listing allowed everyone to see the new narrative of cryptocurrencies

• stablecoins.

Simply put, a stablecoin is the tokenization of the US dollar, and the value is anchored to the US dollar, 1 token = 1 US dollar. For a detailed interpretation of stablecoins, you can see "About stablecoins, the Federal Reserve understood them 3 years ago."

The concept of stablecoins, and the extended RWA (real-world asset chain) that is derived from behind, have been significantly different from previous years since the beginning of this year. The benefits of the US stablecoin policy and China's Hong Kong stablecoin policy, coupled with Wall Street's attention to the RWA project represented by Wall Street giant BlackRock, and the current situation of a group of old money entering stablecoins, have quickly made the concepts of RWA and stablecoin quickly emerged. Circle was not so optimistic in the past. With the support of BlackRock and Wood sister Cathie Wood scrambling to buy IPO share, the IPO valuation has been rising again and again, from US$5.4 billion to around US$7 billion now.

In the Bitcoin white paper, the definition of Bitcoin is: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. But now Bitcoin has long become a financial commodity, and no one will use Bitcoin for payment. The only one that can be used for peer-to-peer electronic cash system is now the only stablecoin that can be used, which is the real imagination space for stablecoins.

And Jeremy Allariie, the founder of Circle, saw it all seven years ago.

The following is a self-reported summary of Jeremy by Rhythm BlockBeats.

The "seller" in the Web 1.0 era

In 1990, I began to get involved in the Internet. What really interested me was to experience the power of open networks, distributed systems, decentralized architectures, open protocols and open source software. I often call these "the DNA of the Internet."

During that time, I was also paying attention to the process of the collapse of the Soviet Union. I was deeply shocked by this structural change. At the same time, I began to study technology in depth, and increasingly believe that the Internet will change the world.

By 1994, the first graphical web browser technology was released. At that time, I suddenly realized that we finally had a software that could display content, applications, and various things on web pages, which gave birth to the concept of "Web as an application platform".

So my brother and I co-founded Allaire and launched ColdFusion, the first commercial web programming language.

Although there was Perl and someone else would write dynamic page logic in C on a web server, ColdFusion really made web application development simple and easy to use - as long as you have an idea and about a thousand dollars, you can use it to create a web application that can be used interactively in your browser.

In 1995, this was already a big breakthrough. With the rise of websites, e-commerce, and online content, we caught up with this wave. Allaire has also developed a complete set of tools, and millions of developers around the world are using our software.

As the market continues to mature, we successfully listed the company in early 1999.

It was a bit "alternative" at the time because we were listed for profit -that was during the Internet bubble, most companies were in losses when they went public. But we are more like the "seller" in the Internet 1.0 era, providing basic tools for the entire industry.

After its listing, we merged with Macromedia, which was also a giant that built Internet and content development tools at the time. After the merger, I became the CTO of this new company and began to promote the application of Flash. It was a very powerful software at the time, allowing web pages to achieve more complex multimedia presentation and interactive experiences.

"Political Economist on the Sofa" fell into the encrypted rabbit hole

Back to the opportunity when I first came into contact with the Internet, I was originally studying international political economy, focusing on the comparison of various economic systems and political systems, and I was very interested in macro issues such as the international economic system. Then I became excited because of the Internet and was deeply attracted by the changes in information transmission and software distribution methods brought by these open networks.

In the Macromedia era, back in March 2002 (yes, 2002, not 2022), we added the ability to play videos seamlessly in Flash Player, making video playback everywhere on the Internet.

For the first time, anyone can easily embed videos into their browser. The YouTube outbreak is based on this technology - it was first implemented based on Flash Player.

Later I started another company called Brightcove. Brightcove's concept is still based on the underlying genes of the Internet: open networks, open protocols, and distributed systems.

My thought at the time was - can any company, any media organization, be able to publish videos and TV content directly on the Internet? You should know that it was 2004, when broadband was just beginning, Wi-Fi was just beginning, and there were no smartphones, but people are already talking about the future of "connected devices".

It is very clear that I can see that in the future, there will be a large number of connected devices, including Wi-Fi and mobile broadband, and video propagation will be completely liberated.

So we have created an online video distribution system - which can be understood as an "online TV platform".

This is an extension of the Internet capabilities: it is becoming more and more abundant and more realistic to realize what people imagined in Web 1.0 back then, and Brightcove's business was also very successful, and it was finally launched in early 2012.

Why found Circle?

When the financial crisis in 2008 occurred, it inspired my thoughts in my early academic period. I became a "political economist on the sofa" and read all kinds of information about the nature of money, the central bank, the international monetary system, and the partial reserve system. While I was thinking, "What's going on?" I also began to think about whether there is a better monetary system? Is there a better way to build an international financial system?

Of course, this is not the kind of thing you wake up and say, "I'm going to start a company that subverts the global monetary system." It was 2009 and 2010, and there was no realistic and feasible path to achieve these things, but I was just constantly studying them.

But in 2012, shortly after Brightcove went public, I came into contact with cryptocurrencies and since then I have plunged into this rabbit hole.

Jeremy Allariie of the Brightcove era

I am a person who is a technical and product-based person. After entering this field from a technical perspective, I saw some shocking things: this is a real technological breakthrough.

Some computer science puzzles have been solved, and these solutions are extremely powerful. For the first time, I synced the Bitcoin blockchain on my laptop and completed a peer-to-peer transaction through it—a transaction directly on the internet, completely relying on open protocols. That moment was like the first time Mosaic browser opened a web page - I thought to myself, "Oh my god, this is the really missing Internet infrastructure!"

Next, my co-founder and I became more and more researched, especially in the tech community at that time, we were exposed to a lot of people discussing:

In addition to Bitcoin, can other types of digital assets be issued on such networks? Today we call it "tokens" or "digital assets". I have done virtual machines, programming language development and other work before, so I naturally participated in the discussion:

• How to make these digital assets "programmable"?
• How to implement "programmable currency"?
• How to build a smart contract?

At that time, these things were just concepts on napkins. Some white papers had just appeared, but we were very clear that these would be realized, and it was just a matter of time.

So we combine all these ideas with another question: How to build a safer and more open financial system? These thoughts come together and become the only thing in my mind. I almost became obsessed and finally decided to start Circle.

Our original intention is to create an HTTP-like protocol for "money"? Can we create an open Internet protocol suitable for the US dollar? This protocol is open, programmable, and more.

This is what we thought ten years ago, and now it has come true and has become a true "killer application" in the crypto space. Although it took a long time to build this system, it has now reached a considerable scale, although it is still in its early stages.

The rise of USDC

In the spring of 2018, the crypto market experienced a sharp pullback, and then the entire industry fell into a severe cold winter, with almost the entire market falling sharply. The products that could have brought revenue and profit at that time either turned into a barely balance of revenue or broke down or started to lose money, so we began to burn money at an extremely fast speed.

By 2019, the deepest part of that cold winter, financing became extremely difficult. At the same time, our operating costs are out of control and cash is about to burn out - if we don't take action, we will face bankruptcy.

It was also at this time that we officially launched USDC in October 2018.

A big bet

In 2019, the DeFi protocol began to be connected to USDC on a large scale, and early PMFs appeared in the market. Although the market was still volatile at that time, on the technical level, Ethereum was already mature enough to truly support these use cases. With MetaMask and other related products, developers can finally start to really use these tools.

Although the transaction volume was still small at the time, the developer community was very receptive to USDC. We saw this and realized that this was the original vision of our company, that was at the heart of us, that was what we really wanted to do.

So, in a very short time, we quickly sold three businesses - selling the Poloniex exchange, selling the Circle Trade over-the-counter trading business, selling the Circle Invest products for retail investors, and also closing and liquidating the payment apps we once launched.

By selling these assets, we obtained the funds needed urgently and completely reorganized the company. Some employees were transferred to these divested businesses, and the company made drastic adjustments as a whole.

By the fall of 2019, we were on the verge of bankruptcy again, but at the same time, USDC began to show early vitality in the market. So we made the decision

• bet on USDC with all our energy, we decided to put all our energy into it, build a complete platform around it, and promote its widespread adoption.

This is equivalent to a decision of a "high-gambling company". At that time, USDC itself did not bring any revenue, and even the entire company basically had no revenue. But I was very firmly convinced at the time that the era of stablecoins had arrived and they would eventually become the core component of the global monetary system, and stablecoins were the most suitable currency architecture in the Internet era.

We had the right products at that time, and as long as we persisted, we would definitely find the right path and make valuable things. So we try our best to advance it.

This is the first real major challenge in USDC's development. Although we have encountered many difficulties before, this moment is a critical moment for the survival of the entire company. Although USDC had early growth momentum by then, it was not enough to support a large-scale company.

We turned all the company's resources to USDC and bet on it. I remember very clearly that we officially announced this strategy in January 2020, when the homepage of the Circle official website was completely reprinted and turned into a huge billboard that promoted "stablecoins are the future of the international financial system." The only operation button on the page is: "Get USDC". With this item, all other functions have been removed.

Then on March 10, 2020, we released the Circle platform upgrade, comprehensively upgraded the USDC's account system, and launched a complete set of new APIs to facilitate developers to seamlessly connect bank, bank card and other payment systems to realize USDC's deposit and withdrawal operations. The entire platform is built around USDC.

And just three days later, on March 13, the world entered a lockdown due to the new crown epidemic. Interestingly, in fact, USDC had already started to grow in February 2020 before our official release. I think this is because users in the Asian market have realized the severity of the epidemic and have begun to respond in advance.

During that time, a very complex interweaving phenomenon occurred: many people began to transfer funds to the digital dollar out of distrust of their own financial systems; at the same time, governments in various countries have successively introduced large-scale emergency stimulus policies to try to inject liquidity into the market to prevent the economy from falling into the "Great Depression."

So you see that there are highly coordinated super-loose policies around the world, causing a large amount of funds to pour into the market. People sat at home with government-issued subsidy checks and began to think, “How should I use this money?”

During that period, the world also experienced a huge turning point - the digitalization process of the whole society suddenly accelerated.

The concept of the metaverse began to become popular at that point in time, and people all "onlined" overnight. All digital products have experienced explosive growth. From Zoom (almost became a representative company of that period), to Peloton, which is home fitness, to e-commerce, online retail, digital payment, and online markets - almost every digital industry has ushered in a five-year growth acceleration at that stage.

At the same time, the adoption of blockchain technology and the digital asset market have also entered a stage of explosion.

The summer of 2020 is called the "Summer of DeFi", and USDC also soared from US$400 million in circulation in early 2020 to US$40 billion in one year, which can be said to be a drastic and explosive growth.

Stablecoin market value growth curve

The premise for popularization of stablecoins

Over the years, it can even be said that just one or two years ago, people often asked, "How can this thing be truly popularized on a large scale?" My usual answer in the past is: we need to solve three key problems. Of course, the "we" here does not just refer to Circle, but the entire industry, and everyone needs to work together to promote it.

The first problem is infrastructure , that is, the blockchain network itself.

My thinking model for blockchain networks is: they are like "the operating system of the Internet." What we need is an operating system-based blockchain network with higher performance and stronger throughput. In the past few years, great progress has been made in this area. We have now entered the era of "third-generation blockchain network" - that is, the high-performance Layer1 public chain and the Layer2 extension network.

This means higher transaction throughput can be achieved, and the cost of a single transaction is extremely low, possibly less than a cent, or even less than a cent.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong also said before that "the trading time is less than one second and the cost is less than one cent." Now we have basically achieved this state. The progress of these high-performance networks is also driving the growth of the entire ecosystem. Because you reduce unit costs, marginal costs, and increase transaction speeds at the same time - this is like a leap from the era of dial-up Internet access to the broadband Internet, from Web1.0 to Web2.0.

The second problem is network effect. Stablecoins like USDC are actually a network-based product platform, and developers will build applications based on them. The more applications you access, the more practical the entire network will be. The more users you have stablecoins, the more effective the network will be, which will form a positive cycle.

At a certain stage, developers will even realize that if the product I made does not support USDC, I may be lagging behind in the competition. So when the infrastructure upgrade is completed, this network effect between users and developers begins to truly play a role.

Next is the third problem , which is also the so-called "availability" improvement, which is actually closely related to infrastructure upgrades. I still remember two or three years ago, if I wanted to use stablecoins, I had to go to a certain platform to buy it first, and then install a browser plug-in wallet. In order to be able to use the wallet, I had to buy Ethereum first, pay an expensive handling fee, and then transfer ETH to my own self-custodial wallet. The whole process was not discussed for seven or eight minutes, and it was also very troublesome. The whole process can be said to be completely unreasonable.

At that time, if someone said, "Who would be willing to use this thing?", it is actually completely understandable.

But now you can directly enter the wallet system through the web interface or mobile app. The whole experience is like registering WhatsApp. It may only require a mobile phone number, a facial recognition or biometric code, no need to remember mnemonics, and no need to make a lot of complicated settings.

All these changes are forming a good use environment, making stablecoins more acceptable and used.

The last ultimate level is government supervision.

What is most exciting is that on a global scale, from Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, to the entire Europe, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States, almost all major legal jurisdictions are gradually introducing relevant laws to clarify stablecoins as legal electronic currencies and incorporate them into the formal financial system.

Once these laws are implemented, the use of stablecoins will expand from early crypto-natives to a wider general population. So we believe that by the end of 2025, stablecoins are likely to become part of the broad legal integration of the global financial system.

Of course, we must also be clear that all this is still in a very early stage. You can use the "crossing the gap" theory proposed by Geoffrey Moore to see the current state: we are like jumping through the "gap" in the air, and we have not yet truly landed, and we may still fail or fall. But I believe we will jump over.

We can see more and more institutions I call "FinTech-friendly banks" or "neobanks" that are beginning to support the use of stablecoins natively. For example, NuBank in Latin America, Revolut in Europe, or brokerage applications like Robinhood.

Of course, it also includes those large crypto companies, such as Coinbase and Binance, which together have more than 400 million users. To some extent, they have actually become "financial super applications": you can save balances, receive wages, bind cards to consume, and the process of obtaining and using USDC has also become very smooth.

We are indeed seeing a trend - people are beginning to use the "dollar" as a unit of stored value, but its underlying form is actually USDC.

And now we are working with Visa and MasterCard, and they all have projects that allow card issuing agencies to issue such cards: Visa or MasterCard on the surface, but actually consume stablecoins, such as USDC.

This model has emerged in emerging markets, with users getting a physical or virtual card through the new bank-style digital wallet app, bound to their stablecoin balance. Because many people want to hold USD, and these cards allow them to continue to spend on traditional card networks, the only way to clean up the background has become USDC.

Even for these card issuers, the liquidation funds they pay to Visa or MasterCard can now be done directly through USDC. That is to say, USDC has actually been used as a clearing channel between financial institutions and card networks, which is very interesting in itself.

At the same time, we also see some changes happening on the other side - that is, merchant acquirers are also beginning to join in, and companies such as Worldpay, Checkout.com, Nuvei, and Stripe are providing merchants with USDC settlement options.

At the beginning of this year we saw a very cool example: Stripe co-founder John Collison did a "final release" like in previous years at their annual conference. His original words were almost: " Crypto is back, but this time it's not Bitcoin, but USDC, a stablecoin."

He demonstrated the new features in the Stripe Checkout product on the spot -a product that allows merchants to embed Stripe's payment portal directly into their website or app. In the demonstration, USDC has been displayed alongside the credit card as a payment method, and merchants can choose to receive USDC.

Collison excitedly showed the entire process on the stage and said, "This is what payment should look like." In the demonstration, they used the Solana network, and the settlement was real-time payment, and the handling fee was very low.

As the legal status of stablecoins gradually becomes clear, more and more financial institutions will regard them as the basic liquidation layer.

For example, a merchant might say, "I am willing to charge USDC because I can receive money immediately and save handling fees, which is a better choice for me."

On the user side, more and more types of terminal products are emerging -whether it is traditional banks, emerging digital banks, or encrypted super apps, they are all creating a seamless experience, allowing users to complete payments by just scanning the QR code.

There is another big thing I mentioned on Twitter earlier this year: iOS has started opening up NFC for third-party wallets. This means that Web3 wallet may support "Tap to Pay" in the future, and users can directly use the wallet with USDC installed in their mobile phones to complete payment at the physical merchant terminal.

Of course, achieving this requires cooperation from multiple parties, such as payment processors and acquisition agencies (Acquirer) to support on-chain transactions, and wallet developers must integrate NFC functions in their products, and they must also pass Apple's approval.

However, these are already under planning, and it is expected that a larger-scale implementation will be seen in 2025, which is indeed an exciting development.

The policy environment is constantly favorable

The concept from the first day of its establishment was to stand at the intersection between the traditional financial system and the new world of blockchain. To achieve this, the US government had already clarified its legal position as early as March 2013:

If you are a company that connects the banking system and the world of virtual currency, you are a "money transmitter". You must register with the federal government, have a complete anti-money laundering process, and apply for a license in every state with relevant legal requirements.

We are the first company in the crypto industry from the start to obtaining a full set of compliance licenses. We are the first crypto company to obtain an electronic currency institution (EMI) license in Europe, and the first company to obtain the so-called "BitLicense" in New York - the first regulatory license specially set up for the crypto industry. Nearly a year after that, only our family held this license.

We always adhere to the concept of "regulation first" and always choose to take the "most important" route to ensure that we have a good and stable compliance system. By the way, it is precisely because of such a compliance basis that we can achieve another key goal: liquidity.

What is liquidity? It is that you can really create and redeem stablecoins, connect to real bank accounts, buy and redeem stablecoins with fiat currency. If you are a suspicious offshore company and no one wants to open a bank account for you, you can't do this at all. You don't even know where your bank is.

We are the first company to establish a high-quality banking partnership, and have also introduced strategic partners like Coinbase to distribute USDC on a large scale on the retail side, so that any ordinary user with a bank account can easily buy and redeem USDC. We also provide agency-level services. That is to say, we have done everything from transparency, compliance, regulatory frameworks, to actual liquidity.

At the technological innovation level, we have also been exploring what else can the agreement itself do. We see USDC as a stablecoin network protocol and have been thinking about how to work with developers to promote its integration and application. These basic principles are the fundamental reason why we can get to where we are today. We are still building them, not just for the US market.

In terms of payment stablecoins, all parties in the United States have actually done a lot of work. The Payment Stablecoin Act seems to me to be quite mature. The House of Representatives has bipartisan support and the Senate leadership is also actively involved. We have also seen high attention from the administration level, including the White House, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. This issue has been listed by the government as one of the priorities for several years.

(Translator's note: The U.S. Senate passed a procedural vote on the GENIUS Act of 2025 at 66:32 on May 19, trying to provide federal regulation for the US dollar-pegged stablecoins)

Many key issues, such as how to ensure financial security and robustness while supporting private innovation, how the Fed should play a core role (establish the standards for US dollar stablecoins), and how to provide paths for state issuers and regulators, similar to the current "dual-track banking system" -you can be a state chartered bank or a federal chartered bank - these issues are actually being advanced.

The financial system itself is a highly regulated industry, the energy system is highly regulated, the transportation system is highly regulated, the aerospace system is highly regulated, and the production of drugs is also highly regulated. In fact, most key technologies or infrastructure in society are under intensive supervision.

The software industry may be an exception in the past three decades, with little regulation. But now if you are doing something particularly big and cutting-edge, such as artificial intelligence, hardware combined with autonomous driving, or you are building a global digital currency system -these areas have begun to intersect with traditional high-regulatory industries and they have a huge potential impact on society, it is reasonable to be regulated in this case.

I don't think "as long as it is innovation, it should not be regulated." If something becomes extremely important to the entire society, it requires a matching contractual spirit and social responsibility framework, which is a system that exists in reality. Regulation is light and heavy—for example, global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) are much more regulated than local community banks.

So if what we do becomes systematic and important in the future, not only will our relationship with the U.S. government change, but our relationship with other governments will also change. Of course, these are very distant things in the future and there is no question at the moment.

What we are really concerned about now is how to realize our conception of the Internet financial system and how to make "open, programmable, composable currency" a reality. We hope that this kind of innovation can be truly implemented, not stifled. To do this, policy makers and governments also need to give more space for innovation freedom - just as the Internet has ever gained in other fields.

Circle's business model

I believe Circle is one of the most transparent financial institutions in history. If you look at a bank, insurance company, or other type of financial institution, you will find that they do not disclose the product's operations in real time, nor will they disclose basic data on their balance sheet every day, which is what we have been doing.

How exactly is this done? First, when we receive the USD, these USDs are pre-deposited into the reserve account before minting the USDC. These reserve funds are quarantine accounts established for the benefit of clients according to legal requirements. Legal and regulatory requirements are that we must isolate these funds, and only after the quarantine is completed can we issue electronic currency tools, and the ownership of funds belongs to the customers. Therefore, we strictly abide by it from law, supervision to actual operations.

How to ensure the safety of reserves

So, what are these reserves composed of? Now the reserve is mainly divided into two parts:

Currently about 90% of the reserves are in an account called the Circle Reserve Fund. This is very important. We hope that anyone who wants to know about the USDC can clearly see the composition of these reserves in a regulated structure. Therefore, we have established the Circle Reserve Fund in partnership with BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company.

This fund is essentially a government bond fund, or it can be understood as a government money market fund, whose sole purpose is to hold USDC reserve assets. It is issued in the form of securities, is regulated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and has an independent audit and an independent board of directors.

All assets of the fund are completely transparent to the outside world and are updated every day. If you search for "USDC" online, you can enter BlackRock's official website to clearly see the denomination, purchase time and maturity time of each treasury bond. All government bonds have maturity periods within 90 days, and are extremely liquid and stable US dollar assets.

There are also assets in the form of "overnight treasury bond pledge repurchase", which are guaranteed by the world's largest systemically important banks (G-SIBs), which is essentially equivalent to treasury bond assets.

Therefore, every component of this reserve structure is visible and transparent. Anyone who is familiar with market liquidity and financial assets will tell you: it is completely possible if we need to redeem all assets within 24 hours.

Another about 10% of the reserves are basically stored in cash in several global systemic banks, commonly known as "big but not falling" banks. There are currently about 50 such banks around the world, such as JPMorgan. We have publicly disclosed some of these cooperative banks. Due to their huge size and stable credibility, these banks actually enjoy implicit endorsement from the government.

In addition, we have built a global infrastructure to support institutional clients in the creation and redemption of USDCs. And we are able to conduct these businesses precisely because we are a regulated company. Banks and regulators around the world are therefore willing to let us enter the local market.

We have obtained regulatory permissions in Singapore and Europe, and are working with Japan and other places to establish compliant distribution channels, which means institutions can open accounts and create or redeem USDCs in the Singapore banking system, Hong Kong banking system, Brazil banking system, the US banking system and the European banking system.

That is to say, as long as you have a bank account in these countries or regions, whether individuals or institutions, you can create and redeem USDC, and the capital flow will directly enter the aforementioned reserve structure.

Therefore, from the operational level of the local banking system, you have the liquidity to create and redeem; from the perspective of underlying reserve assets, you have the most liquid and stable asset support in the world; at the same time, there is a reserve fund structure registered by the public and disclosed daily, superimposed by the regulatory mechanism of global regulators.

Circle's future plans

You should still remember that before the iPhone appeared, there were about 17 different mobile operating systems on the market: Symbian, Windows Phone, Palm, BlackBerry, and NTT Docomo systems - all kinds, each company was attracting developers to settle in, competing for their own mobile phone systems, and doing distribution.

To be honest, those system experiences are bad and not possible at all. You go to Mobile World Congress and see a bunch of people showing what they developed based on Symbian, and it turns out to be a bunch of garbage.

So what I want to say is, to a certain extent, how to ensure reserve security

• although these systems are very advanced in terms of architecture, they are actually very poor in use.

They are more like an operating system, competing for ecosystems, developer resources, functional friendliness, etc. But I want to say very clearly: we have not yet ushered in the "iPhone moment" of blockchain.

What we really need is a world where blockchain networks do not only carry financial transactions.

It should also support social networking, games, content, intellectual property, traceability of AI data, transaction flow of AI agents, retail-level applications, digital tokens used by the public, etc. - and now none of these are yet to be done. The throughput is insufficient, the system cannot hold on, and the infrastructure is not scalable yet.

In the long run, what we need is a network that reaches the level of transaction processing capacity of millions per second, which is a goal that can be achieved. At the same time, software engineers' development experience and user experience are still very early.

Looking back on my past experiences in the fields of platform software, developer tools and user experience, I feel that we are not fully prepared yet. Of course, I agree one thing-we are very close.

But even if we really have a "click-to-click" blockchain platform, I think new levels will continue to be superimposed on it and more networks will appear.

You can foresee a period of time this state will be like this: For example, you are a large Internet company in Asia with 500 million users, and you now want to introduce digital tokens, stablecoins, and smart contracts to these users. Once you open it, all infrastructure on the market will collapse directly - it cannot carry such a large amount of traffic at all.

But you can imagine that one day, this model will evolve like AWS's "virtual private cloud" (VPC), with a type of "exclusive blockchain" appearing, forming a network model of chain-chain interconnection to support large-scale expansion.这本质上会带来更多「碎片化」，但也意味着更多基础设施的发展。

作为Circle，我们的目标是确保USDC、EURC、CCTP（跨链传输协议）、Gas 费用抽象化等稳定币网络协议可以在这些环境中被轻松调用——对于用户和开发者来说，不需要操心背后复杂性。

所以不论未来支持的是15 条链，还是50 条链，我没法告诉你具体数字，但可以确定的是：我们会继续拓展、部署和发布稳定币基础设施，支持更多区块链网络。

至于「iPhone 时刻」何时真正到来，或是何时进入边际效益递减阶段，我也不知道。

说到货币，我们目前已经推出了USDC 和EURC。我不能说我们未来一定会发行更多币种，但可以确定的是：在全球范围内，无论是新兴市场还是发达国家，稳定币监管法规都在陆续落地，我们也看到越来越多高质量的稳定币项目开始上线。

我认为到了2025 年，你会看到像墨西哥比索、日元、澳元、英镑等法币稳定币出现得越来越多。而我们Circle 并不需要去做所有这些币种的发行方，真正需要的是有合规、优质的本地团队，用我们建立的基础设施来发行这些稳定币，从而实现很好的跨币种互操作性，让应用可以在不同币种间轻松接入和使用。

每一个币种的发行都很复杂，背后涉及大量法律与监管问题，还要考虑当地央行的偏好、市场接受度等等。

我们也会评估市场规模，比如这个币种的市场到底有多大，这也是我们前面提到的重点。

我们真心相信，在这个「互联网金融系统时代」，美元的地位只会越来越重要 ，而美元稳定币（USDC）将是其中的核心。所以我们的主要精力肯定还是会放在这上面。

与此同时，我们当然也想在全球不同市场打通入口和出口、建立互联互通，这一点我们会持续推动，也非常乐见其他项目的发展。

但从商业或生态系统的角度看，我们并不认为必须由我们自己来做所有这些非美元币种。

从货币理论的角度来看——无论是从央行的角度，还是从商业银行的角度——其实都有一个叫做「中性利率」的概念。这个利率既不属于宽松，也不属于紧缩。

我们在2008 年金融危机之后经历了一个长期的「零利率下限」时代，当时为了对冲危机，还伴随着政府债务的货币化。后来因为通胀飙升，央行又做出强烈的紧缩反应。利率政策其实就是这样一个周期性循环。

但不管是「名义利率」还是「中性利率」，本质上都围绕一个目标区间在波动。有些经济学家现在认为中性利率可能在2.75% 到3% 左右——这个水平既不会对经济形成压制，也不会过度刺激。

所以，无论你是央行还是银行，高利率其实并不意味着「好」。当然，银行或我们这样的机构，账面上可能因为储备资产利息收入上升而受益一些，但整体上来看，这种环境是紧缩的——经济活动减少、资金流动速度下降、资本投资放缓、风险偏好降低。

而当利率下降时，确实，我们所持有的储备资产利息收入也会下降，这是客观事实。但与此同时，资金变便宜了，流动性增强，资本投资增加，经济运行加快——这对于风险资本市场、实体经济、创业活动，都是好事。而这些也都会反过来促进稳定币的使用和增长。

我们已经经历过宽松周期，也经历了紧缩周期。接下来可能是一个更温和的周期，我们还无法预测。但我们始终认为：

一方面有宏观经济的力量在起作用，这是我们无法控制的，比如全球经济走向、央行决策；

但另一方面，我们自己构建了一个平台网络，有用户增长飞轮、开发者生态飞轮，我们正在打造一种高度实用的数字货币形态，也在打造一个强大的开发平台——这个系统本身具备内在的增长逻辑。

今天，全球「合法电子货币」的总体市场规模是超过100 万亿美元。我认为，其中的一个子集——以美元稳定币、欧元稳定币为代表的稳定币市场——将会不断扩大，不管利率是高还是低。

我们现在看到的是：整个稳定币的总规模才区区1600 亿美元（现在超2000 亿），占比仅为0.16%。这显然还是非常早期的阶段。

如果你认同「互联网级别的效用」曾经如何重塑媒体、通信、出行、软件分发，那么你也会相信，互联网货币这种新形式，未来也可能具有同样的变革性。

如果一切顺利，或许在未来10 到20 年内，我们可以看到全球有10% 的货币变成像稳定币这样的形态。这听起来不夸张——因为互联网产品要做到10% 的渗透率，确实需要十几年、几十年，但也确实会改变世界。

我们希望Circle 能成为这场变革中的一个重要参与者。