The U.S. Dollar Goes Digital: Stablecoins' Moment Of Truth

Stablecoins are going mainstream but need far better infrastructure

Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire (La Montagne Sainte-Victoire), 1892–1895. For a few years of his career, Cezanne painted multiple copies of a mountain in the south of France, where he was from, almost to the point of obsession. He even inspired writer Emile Zola: “Love is missing you and the way your skin brushes mine the way Cézanne painted so many Mt. Algiers, different every time but with the passion of the first. It’s feeling incomplete without you,”

Thanks for reading the “Cashless” newsletter, an insider’s view on Asia’s fintech, CBDC, and AI for anyone striving to understand “the Asia Century.” I’m Rich Turrin, and these are my hard-hitting insights designed to educate and inform. Subscribe to get these emerging trends directly in your inbox every Sunday. Every week, I scan thousands of articles to find only the best and most valuable for you. Subscribe to get my expertly curated news straight to your inbox each week. Free is good but paid is better.

Topics:

• Digital Dollar Spotlight: Tokenized Deposits vs. Stablecoins as CBDC Out

• 2025 Is the Year of Stablecoins—Start Building Today

• UBYX: Putting the "Stable" in Stablecoins to Make Them Ubiquitous

• The Cashless Revolution Is Here—And Emerging Markets Lead

• GenAI: No Magic Fix for Banks' Productivity Struggles

• Bonus Read: Breakthrough: Proof AI Makes You and Your Team Smarter

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Welcome back to a BIG read!

This edition is special as we’ve got four articles focusing on stablecoins.

The Trump administration has decreed the death of a US CBDC and declared that the US will have a digital dollar based on stablecoins. That’s why this week's edition zooms in on stablecoins and looks at the good, bad, and ugly.

We begin with an opinion piece I wrote that I call a “recommended read,” as it sets the scene for the following articles. I examine the U.S. use of stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits to digitize the dollar, expressing support while briefly outlining my reservations about both.

Regardless of my reservations, the GENIUS Act will likely be passed in the US in a few months, and stablecoins will have their chance to digitize the dollar.

That’s why I recommend that all readers start familiarizing themselves with stablecoins. If you work for a bank or anywhere that takes payments, you should start investigating stablecoin solutions now, not later.

Stablecoins are coming whether you’re ready or not, and whether stablecoins are ready or not!

While crypto bros will tell you stablecoins are ready to go, stablecoin infrastructure is simply unsuitable for mass market use. Do you think ordinary people will be willing to buy and sell stablecoins on an exchange and take a gain or loss? No way, no how.

That’s why we have an article covering UBYX, a new company formed by banking industry veteran Tony McLaughlin, launching a platform that will greatly assist in making stablecoins “ubiquitous.” The trick is simply valuing all regulated stablecoins at $1.00 with backstops for price variations and a serious depegging.

We will need solutions like this that make stablecoins “easy to use” if they will deliver mass digitalization of the dollar as they predict.

Next, we shift to the root cause of the need for a stablecoin dollar, as the BIS shows how digital payments continue to grow with emerging markets in the lead.

Interestingly, the emerging markets with QR payment codes, which were laughed at a few years ago, have leapfrogged the West and are now making more digital payments than advanced nations!

Regular readers will not be surprised for one second! I’ve been writing about this for years, and we’re watching a historic transition.

Departing from the digital dollar, I take another swing at AI hype. McKinsey examines the deplorable state of bank productivity and proposes GenAI as a solution.

While GenAI may help bank productivity, the root causes of their productivity problem are so deeply ingrained that GenAI alone cannot possibly be a “miracle cure.”

Finally, in our “Bonus Read,” I have a “breakthrough” paper from Harvard Business Review that shows how human-AI collaboration delivers a big boost in performance.

Thanks once again for reading. I appreciate each and every one of you opening your inbox for me!

Rich

PS

Thanks for sharing with your friends! It’s a great way to say thanks.

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Digital Dollar Spotlight: Tokenized Deposits vs. Stablecoins as CBDC Out

Then, there were two: stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits are now vying for their role in the future of the US digital dollar, given a Trump executive order banning a US CBDC.

This long read provides an overview of where the US is going with the digital dollar and is the most important read in today’s newsletter. It sets the scene for the reads below.

2025 Is the Year of Stablecoins—Start Building Today

Deloitte has a straightforward and informative report tells companies to ask themselves how they want to engage with payment stablecoins (PSC) and get building NOW!

Read why this is sound advice, given the likely passage of the US GENIUS Act this summer.

UBYX: Putting the "Stable" in Stablecoins to Make Them Ubiquitous

This is simply the best idea yet to help stablecoins go mass-market. It's simple: Connect stablecoins directly to your bank account.

Let’s face it. Most new stablecoin users are intimidated by using different blockchains and variable off-ramp and on-ramp exchange prices, greatly inhibiting mass market adoption.

Read why regulated stablecoins will need a substantial infrastructure rebuild if they are to go mainstream in the US.

The Cashless Revolution Is Here—And Emerging Markets Lead

The BIS shows how the world is going “Cashless,” with the use of credit transfers and e-money growing worldwide as emerging economies take the lead.

This report from the BIS has fabulous graphs, and I encourage you to open up this PDF and take a look.

GenAI: No Magic Fix for Banks' Productivity Struggles

Bank productivity has been a dumpster fire over the past 13 years, with negative growth of 5% when overall US labor productivity was up 20%, and GenAI will not fix it.

Read why GenAI will not be a “magic fix” for banks’ productivity problems despite the hype.

Bonus Read

Breakthrough: Proof AI Makes You and Your Team Smarter

Harvard Business School: The Cybernetic Teammate

2.18MB ∙ PDF file

Download

HBS has the best study yet showing how AI enhances our productivity and makes us smarter! It's a fabulous read and proof that human-AI collaboration is beneficial.

Download

I don't use the term "breakthrough" often, but this HBR paper shows conclusively that individuals and teams working with AI get a substantial performance boost compared to those working without.

🔹When working without AI, teams outperformed individuals by a significant amount, 0.24 standard deviations (Teamwork really does help).

🔹Individuals working with AI performed just as well as teams without AI, showing a 0.37 standard deviation improvement over the baseline. AI replicates a team; with AI, you're not working alone!

🔹Teams with AI performed best overall with a 0.39 standard deviation improvement. Interestingly, individuals and teams with AI performed similarly, bolstering the AI is a team hypothesis.

🔹 But don't count out human teams working with AI so fast, as they were the most likely to produce the highest-quality solutions.

🔹 As if the above AI benefits aren't enough, both AI-enabled groups saved 12-16% in time spent compared to non-AI groups.

🔹 Your specialization won't save you from AI! Groups working without specialist workers scored the same as those with.

🔥🔥 People using AI reported significantly higher positive emotions (excitement, energy, and enthusiasm) than those working without AI. 🔥🔥

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• FIVE OF THE TOP TEN FINANCIAL CENTERS ARE IN ASIA! This is a treat for my PREMIUM subscribers! If you’re here for “the Asian Century,” you’ve got it with this report. With Seoul, Korea, entering the top 10, half of the world’s top financial centers are in Asia! Do you see the trend?? Hong Kong ups its lead over Singapore. Think HK is dead?

• HKMA: DLT in Finserv As I led off with a story about Hong Kong let’s look and see what they’re doing with DLT. Check out page 22, which discusses HSBC’s tokenized deposit solution!

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