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 🫡

until we get more adoption, the gift card breakage racket will be tough to break

light takes on why they might

most realistic use cases will be similar to amex points programs

- more dynamic cards / automated rewards: "spend 50 of BrandCoin and automatically receive 5 BrandCoin back."
- purchasing power - 10% discount on spending
- larger ecosystem play (branded partnerships)
- risk falling behind if don't do it

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

Except you can't refund a gift card.

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

I thought the stablecoin bill was going to specifically restrict these types of companies from issuing stables, no?

Starbucks has $1.77B in unused gift cards they are just sitting on. Ain't gonna wanna give that up

And that's fine. They are coming onchain.

i agree that as "stablecoins" these are useless, but as far a gift cards are concerned, being able to call 'balanceOf()' and to split them, combine them, transfer them, trade them onchain sounds like a huge step forward

They're definitely big enough to get in the Stablecoins game... 🤔