crypto

A reminder that closed, permissioned stablecoins issued by stores like Walmart and Amazon already exist

They are called gift cards

Award-winning Host of @Coinage covering crypto for a mainstream audience | Fmr. YahooFinance Anchor & Harvard Econ Grad | Co-Own Coinage with me 🫡

Except you can't refund a gift card.

Stablecoin implies they will be able to be swapped, potentially used in other apps.

I struggle to see why a retailer would want to do this.

They already have a great racket going with gift cards that people forget about

GENIUS Act will mean that any at-scale company with a lot of payments—both retail and B2B—will explore how to nudge consumers (and force vendors) to use the payment method.

Under the radar, but Walmart has a neobank that is used by a lot of their millions of employees and increasingly customers to do in-store payments.

The challenge is if you don't already have a balance loaded into an app, you're still going to use a debit or credit card.

Why stablecoins will be more likley a sustaining innovation that benefits incumbents in most cases vs. a disruptive innovation benefitting startups.