The founder of Airwallex is wrong with what is the problem with stablecoins?

Author: Charlie Little Sun, Lion on Dune Road

Let’s talk about the conclusion first: In the G10 golden corridor like the US dollar-Euro, Airwallex’s “second to + one-tenth rate” is indeed almost full score; but the financial world is not just this highway. Stripe bought Bridge, Visa, connected stablecoin settlement into its own network, and Circle staged an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange - these actions together outlined a larger map: whoever can dig through the "last mile" of money will have the opportunity to rewrite the next round of payment base.

1. The halo of "0.01%+seconds" can only cover 15% of the territory

Jack Zhang posted a long article on X, and his core point is very direct:

• Price—Airwallex has pushed the USD→EUR rate to 0.01%;
• Speed ​​- real-time settlement of funds, and the chain may not be faster;
• Implementation - Stablecoins are expensive and have a card for supervision, and no hard-core use cases have been seen in 15 years.

He is not boasting if the stage is limited to London ↔ New York ↔ Frankfurt. The problem is that 85% of the world's cross-border traffic is not on the G10 road. In the eyes of Argentine freelancers, banks still start in three days and 3% handling fees start at 3%; Kenyan vendors supplying Nigeria, they have to wear two corresponding banks "winding mountain roads"; Turkish importers want to pay deposits on Friday night, but when they encounter banks, they can only wait behind closed doors on weekends. In these corners that are ignored by the "mainstream", the size of stablecoins tripled in half a year and grew like wild weeds.

Second and third curves to explain "why is it a stablecoin"

1. Latin American curve: The dollar shortage gave birth to the on-chain US dollar. In 2021, stablecoins in Latin America were only US$20 billion; by 2024, it had reached 68 billion, and rose to 75 billion in the first half of this year. High inflation, dollar shortage, and weekend shutdowns are indispensable to pushing funds to the chain - not to save 0.01%, but to "receive the account at this moment."

2. The giant bet curve: Stay at the Internet and don't let money escape Bridge was just taken into Stripe for $1.1 billion, and Visa immediately spread the link into Ecuador, Peru and Colombia. What they value is never FX spreads, but the expansion dividend of "money stays in their own ecosystem" -once the money does not have to be put into the bank, payment companies can transform into custody banks, financial supermarkets and credit entrances at the same time.

3. Wall Street Valuation Curve: Circle can print money by interest rate spread. Circle made a net profit of US$780 million based on interest rates on USDC positions alone; the stock price more than tripled in three days of IPO. What Wall Street pays for is a cash machine with the "on-chain USD + Treasury bond interest rate spread", and it is also a precursor to the realization of the network effect: for every additional company to collect USDC, the withdrawal demand will be reduced by one point, and the rate dispute will be a little lost.

3. In addition to "cheap" and "fast", there are more difficult costs

Many people are staring at the rate table, but ignore the T+2 liquidity hidden behind the report, Nostro pre-deposit, and KYC long review. These are the black holes that swallow cross-border profits.

When these frictions are crushed into "code logic", the 0.01% rate advantage is soon not enough to see.

4. Three scenarios that can outperform banks in the moment

USD→ARS Salary

Bank foreign exchange control + weekend shutdown, transfers will have to wait until working days. The USDC wallet arrives in 5 minutes, and the actual comprehensive fee rate is ≈ 1% - the employer is stable and the employees are willing to collect it. KES↔NGN Small and Medium-sized Products

There is no direct liquidation between Kenya and Nigeria; the P2P on the chain rolls 24 hours, with a rate of 1–2%. Global liquidity scheduling over the weekend

Banks will enter dormant mode after get off work on Friday, and funds will be stuck; the Finance Department can Sweep to BUIDL in the chain in seconds, earn 4% safely, and transfer salary immediately as soon as the working day. These are not "sexy", but they are the long tails with the thickest profits and lack of banking services.

5. How to accelerate the flywheel before 2026

Bank-based issuer: After MiCA comes into effect, at least ten regional banks in the continent will copy Société Générale's EUR stablecoins. Super App Portal: Grab, MercadoPago, etc. have been tested in the USDC wallet in Grayscale; once enabled by default, tens of millions of users will immediately enter the chain world. On-chain closed-loop formation: merchants collect, supply chain payment, employee collection, financial management and earn interest, all completed on the same network, and the Off-ramp handling fee will naturally become zero. Corporate financial migration: Deloitte predicts that 10% of the idle cash will be stopped in the income stablecoin account in 2027, and most of the bank's current situation will be taken away in a blink of an eye. Then we will talk about 0.01% of the G10 corridor. Just like the telecom giant in 2010, it was still reducing the long-distance fee by 1 cent, but it could not stop WhatsApp's free calls and adds millions of new users in one day.

6. The last sentence left by Circle IPO

Circle uses a beautiful interest spread account book and a rapidly expanding network effect to tell the market: "cheap remittances" are just the prologue, and rewriting the financial foundation is the main drama.

Airwallex makes the G10 almost the best, which is the championship posture in 15% of the world; but 85% of the market are changing tracks and scoreboards. At the next stop, money will fly everywhere like emails. Who will care about whether the mail stamp is 1 point or 0.1 point? Sit and watch the pattern reshuffle, don’t tie your hands and feet at the starting line.