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.

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