Stabledash Live - The Pilot - 2/10

We're live. What's going on, Drew?

Here we go.

Alright. You are watching stable dash live. This is our first episode show all about modern money.

I'm your host, Rogers, and I'm joined here by the amazing Okay. Zach Fowler. Zach, how are we doing, man? We're doing this thing. Dude, it's so excited to be here. I mean, one, it feels good to get out from I I'm even on behind my desk. Normally, I'm just sitting here writing copy, posting videos, and it's good to be back here making videos now with you. We've talked about this for, I think, a the better part of the year, the last year.

Well, it takes a long time to build what you are watching in front of us. Our team has been working really hard on this. Shout out to Andre and Sava and everyone who's been involved in this. We think there's a really interesting, we'll talk more about the vision of the show after we get into a little bit of the news for the day. But, yeah, we're really excited to enter this new season of of the show.

And, just as we kick off, thank you to, Defense, our presenting sponsor, who's really helping us get the show off the ground. We're super, super excited to to see where this goes. If you're just tuning in, whether you're actively building with stablecoins today and you're working in the space, this is familiar to you, or you're just starting to make sense of everything that we'll talk about here, we really are architecting the show for you.

Starting every Tuesday and Thursday, our goal here is to spotlight top builders and the stories behind them that are moving tokenized money forward. As we've mentioned, today is the first day we've actually been streaming live. We've tested a handful of things in recent months, but we're actually doing this in real time. So please bear with us as we've, built what you're seeing in front of you from from scratch. Quick disclaimer as we get started.

The views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests of StableAsh live are solely their opinions and do not constitute legal or financial advice. As always, do your own research. So we're gonna kick off with the daily yield, and, we'll dive right in. Been embracing and building for years, preparing for this moment. The genius does seem to be shifting somewhat to stablecoin. Yes. We welcome the competition, and we certainly welcome the change in Washington. Stablecoins are finally happening.

They're really used to it.

Alright. So for our first story, Aave Labs just published a case study showing that the covered agent protocol or CAP has deployed more than $360,000,000 in USDC onto Aave, making it one of the largest single depositors on the entire protocol. Our second story is all about the White House, which is hosting its second closed door meeting today on the Clarity Act.

We'll dive into this, which is all about major banks and crypto firms that are coming back to the table to resolve disputes over what everyone is talking about and what everyone cares about, stablecoin yields. And finally, for our third story, Tether recently announced a $100,000,000 strategic investment in Anchorage Digital, America's first federally chartered crypto bank, valuing the company at 4,200,000,000. So for our first story, Aave Labs, let's dive into this a bit.

So they just released a detailed case study on CAP. In the case study, we see that since launching in August, CAP has already grown to 500,000,000 in total value locked or TVL. We'll try our best as we, you know, use terms like that to continue to not use too much jargon in this show. So we'll we'll do our best there. According to the case study, CAP issues cUSD, which is their stablecoin, a fully backed redeemable stablecoin, collateralized by regulated stablecoins and tokenized money market funds.

It also offers STCUSD, which is the yield bearing version of it you receive when you stake CUSDs. Those two things are related but different. The case study shown explains that yield is generated by institutional operators such as banks, high frequency trading firms, and market makers who borrow from CAP's credit engine. Every loan is protected by risk underwriters who post escrowed capital in CAPS financial guarantee market.

In the case study, which we will attach if you're watching this on social in the clip, Aave has highlighted from really two powerful use cases here. So one, CAPS smart con CAPS smart contracts automatically deploy idle reserves into Abe's what they call v three core on Ethereum to earn yield for STC USD holders while maintaining liquidity buffer for redemptions. And then two, in addition, Abe's live USDC supply rate serves as the benchmark for CAPS hurdle rate.

Operators must pay the higher of CAPS internal rate or Abe's current rate. Visuals will help with things like this. The latest the latest numbers in the case study as of late last month in January show over 80% of CUSD reserves, more than 360,000,000 supply to Abe. So this makes CAPP one of the largest single USDC depositors on the protocol, which is no small feat for Aave. Over 50% of CUSD is staked into that that version of STCUSD, which has now distributed over $4,000,000 in cumulative yield to their holders.

The average ninety day hurdle rate sits at 5.2, and Abe accounts for more than 90% of that yield. For our second story, moving into the White House, it's hosting its second closed door meeting today focused on stablecoin yields. Representatives from major banks, including JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, the big three, are participating alongside the newcomers, the the Coinbases of the world, Ripple, and Circle. It's kind of an interesting three v three there.

The discussions are centered on a long standing point of disagreement and proposed crypto market structure legislation. The treatment of interest or rewards is commonly used in recent years to sidestep and and be creative with wording, paid on stablecoins. The key sticking point remains whether stablecoins should be permitted to pay interest or rewards, an issue that could shift significant liquidity between traditional banks and crypto platforms.

So on one side, banks have expressed real concerns about competition and financial stability, feeling encroached and and feeling a little challenged with with what this would, entail, while crypto firms on the other side have argued that such yields support user adoption, equity, and innovation. These discussions follow an earlier meeting on February 2 and come amid growing political pressure. There's a lot of tension going on with this, and so today's a big day for this.

Well, and I think it's interesting when you compare it, you know, with we've just talking about cap with s t

c u s d and how it is bringing in an alternative yield source besides t bills and money market funds to give higher yields to consumers, where that's a perfect example of a stable coin that right now is on the fringes, especially in The US would that banks would really push back and and see as a threat, especially when you look at cap trying to go outside of, the typical model of just passing yield from generally safe sources like t bills to consumers. They're looking and saying, hey.

What what are the alternative sources to give higher yields more than three, four four, 5%? And you definitely see a wide range of support. You know, you've seen quotes from Brian Armstrong saying with this bill that he'd rather have a bad no bill than a bad bill. Then you see other people for, like, Brad Garlinghouse, Clarity beats chaos. So I'd say it's just as somebody from looking from, at one point, the outside in, now a little bit more on the inside.

It's it's almost feel like a new wave of operation choke point. It's almost like we got some clarity, but it's like, hey. Let's let's put on the brakes again. And it's almost like because they see there's they feel that this is inevitable, that this is coming, but, you know, it's it's adopt or die at this point. Yeah. I think we've we've definitely seen recently in

the last couple years, this type of yield infrastructure will happen regardless. It's just a matter of if it's gonna be, you know, based here in The US and and regulated in a in an equitable and fair way.

I I, though, I think something for the show and just for people who are listening in the early days of this, something to just call out is that we really something that is, in my view, one of the most misunderstood and high risk parts of this industry is how things like stablecoin yield are generated and the the backing of these types of assets and where that yield comes from. And there's not one size that fits all of those things.

There's such an intricate, complex approach that so many companies are taking different ones. And I do think it's important that that Washington is taking a very serious look at this. But I think, of course, the Coinbase the Coinbase PR team is making this out to be something that banks are hating crypto. I think it's probably somewhere in the middle. We've already seen even even late last year some pretty big stablecoin

blowups due to this due to this ongoing issue. Yeah. And it's it's a nuance issue when you're looking at just the general model for how much yield banks generate with your deposits, and they're not generating those just from money market funds. You know? They're lending your money out for various credit lines, whether that's credit cards, whether that's a mortgage, whether it's an auto loan. Consumers want that yield.

You know, I think when you you there's the recent interview with Matt Hogan from Bitwise that you did at Breakpoint where he says, you know, banks have been robbing people for going over a century, and stablecoins provide a avenue to truly democratize that yield. And I think there's a growing consumer base that wants wants those alternative sources besides their high yield savings account that's at three or 4%.

Absolutely. So if you're just tuning into this, some just some context on the Clarity Act because this this has been fairly you know, in some ways, this is recent news, but it's actually been going on for quite some time. So if you're just getting up to speed, let's let's go into this a bit.

So the SEC and the CFTC, has relaunched what was originally their joint, quote, project crypto, which is what it was originally called, which is really a goal to aim to clarify what we're going into these asset classifications to reduce jurisdictional overlap, really to say which parts of government directly oversee things like stablecoins.

And this bipartisan digital asset market clarity act, which is now called clarity act of last year, aims to provide long sought regulatory clarity by placing most digital commodities under CFTC oversight, which will keep stablecoin related issues primarily with the SEC.

So the bill passed the house late last year, but has been stalled in the senate banking committee ever since, largely because of concerns, like we've said, that are all about yields on stablecoins and how those draw deposits away potentially from traditional banks. So today's meeting is part of an ongoing effort to reach a compromise, hopefully, with the White House reportedly encouraging a resolution by the end of February this month so the legislation can move forward.

If a deal is reached, it could unlock clear rules for yield bearing stablecoins and tokenized assets. And if not, current uncertainty is likely to continue. Just on this point as well, Zach, if you have any other thoughts before we move on to story three, three, please feel free. But just on this point of clarity, if if you haven't had a time, chance to check out crypto in America Mhmm. Jacqueline Melenix show over over there. We can maybe tag this here as well.

This is an they've that team has done such an incredible job covering clarity, the movements about it. I'm sure that they're come putting out amazing content today and tomorrow about it. So shout out to Crypto in America. They've been really going deep on this topic. I guess my my final thought and,

maybe more question for you is, is yield bearing stablecoins, like, in this context the best definition from them? I've heard it thrown around yield tokens, other terms like that. Do you do you have any take on that, Drew?

I think Ondo is sort of flying the flag of yield coins. And I think Nick Van Eck from Agora is, I think, on that team, and, hopefully, we can have both of those teams on on this. I I think YieldCoins is probably a good word for them. It's very different than stablecoins in my in my view in terms of what they're how they're architected and and functionally what they're for.

Payment stablecoins under Genius really are for transfers, settlement, payment use cases, and, I think a lot of what we'll cover in the show is, yes, those payment use cases, but also things that stablecoins provide that, you know, Matt Hogan was talking about, which is the savings and earnings potential of these things on chain. So they're both very similar in some ways, but both very different in some ways. And that that nuance and the differences there can be,

you know, from a regulatory standpoint, very, very important to know. Yeah. I think words matter. Malcolm Clark talked about from Western Union in the interview that we did, you know, their stable coin that they're coming out with USDPT. That was an intentional choice naming it a payment token, so that when consumers do see it in their wallets, it's very intuitive what the purpose of that coin the the token is.

So I think there there is something to the naming convention behind these assets that should speak to their purpose, what they're meant to do. There is a essence of, yes, they're meant to be stable. They're not meant to fluctuate in value. You could go down the, philosophical rabbit hole of, well, the the dollar, you know, is, is inflating. So is it actually stable? But, yeah, I don't know. It is just something that I've been thinking about recently.

Yeah. Okay. Final story here. Third and final story. Moving on, Tethr just made a $100,000,000 strategic equity investment in Anchorage Digital. When I saw this, my my eyebrows went up. I think this is like we've we've kind of been seeing these two firms, you know, really, really be close and strategic. They've had some strategic deals that they've announced with each other, but this this is, you know Yeah. Definitely putting that marriage in writing, if you will.

And so if you're just hearing about Anchorage Digital, this is one of the most crucial companies in custody and has been around for quite some time. They're America's first federally chartered crypto bank. They were founded in twenties 2017, and they operate at the intersection of security, really regulation, and digital asset innovation. So, again, the first federally chartered digital asset bank. It's a huge deal, for The US. The company provides institutions with a whole suite of of services.

They have trading, staking, custody, governance, settlement, stablecoin issuance services as of late, everything that a major institution, you know, in a buttoned up way that really wants to seriously get involved in this space, everything they need to get started. And Anchorage Digital, since 2017, has been operating continuously under this regulatory framework building or excuse me, the last five years under this regulatory framework building infrastructure designed for durability.

The deal with Tethr values Anchorage. This is a really important thing. I I was really happy when I saw this. The the deal values Anchorage at 4,200,000,000, up from 3,000,000,000, just a few years ago in its 2021 round and marks major deepening of the relationship that began really when Tethr chose Anchorage, as the issuer of its new US regulated stablecoin, USAT. In this show, we're gonna spend a lot of time digging into Tether, USAT, what what their plans are.

You cannot deny the dominance and the history of what that company has done to stablecoins and will continue to do with stablecoins. But more importantly, in in terms of something I found that was really cool here is that the, investment was structured as a secondary sale with no new primary capital that was raised. So, Anchorage actually used this opportunity.

I'm sure people at Anchorage are happy right now who've been there since the beginning to launch its first ever employee tender offer, which gives the, team members who've been with them for for a while liquidity at this $4,200,000,000 valuation while preserving the company's capital structure.

So a really, really big win for for people who've been, at the company and, you know, this company, again, if you've been in crypto, you've working in the space, seeing things, you know, sell celebration to to those who are, early early OGs at Anchorage.

Yeah. Those will be interesting to see how this plays out, I think, especially in this wave. You know, again, Matt Hogan, if you haven't watched that interview, go go watch that. They talk about a stablecoin ETF that they filed for. It'll be interesting to see how many more IPOs we see in 2026 and 2027 from from leaders in this space. This definitely signals that Anchorage Digital may be going down that route in the next few years.

But, also, I think Tethr's push to you know, as as we're both in The US, we both have this lens that we prefer USDC. At least I can speak to myself two, three years ago. That was almost my default. I see this push with Anchorage Digital, with USAT as Tethr's push and almost reentrance into The US market, especially on the payment token side. So it'll be interesting to see what partners end up developing around around that token because I know I've definitely gone quite a few questions on, hey. What's the difference?

Why is Tethr launching another stablecoin? And it really goes down to who's issuing it, how does it work with the clear with Clarity Act, with the Genius Act.

Absolutely. Final points on Tethr, just some quotes from Paolo and Nathan. So on the Tethr side, we have a quote here. Tethr exists to challenge the status quo and build global infrastructure for freedom. Our investment in Anchorage Digital reflects sharp belief or a shared belief in the importance of secure, transparent, and resilient financial systems.

And and then Nathan McCauley on the Anchorage side, cofounder and CEO, said about the investment, quote, Tethr's investment is a strong validation of the infrastructure we've spent years building the hard way. This alliance reflects shared conviction and regulated foundations, end quote. So to wrap up here by committing serious capital to the most regulated player in The US market and deepening its partnership on USAT, Tether is obviously signaling long term confidence in Anchorage's compliant infrastructure.

This move strengthens the entire ecosystem's credibility with institutions and regulators. It also positions both companies for broader growth as stablecoins continue integrating into traditional finance. I think, you know, something I'm I'm excited to dive into is the appointment of Bo Hines from US government into the the Tethr business and everything that that means.

I think as I personally start learning more about the role of even the Clarity Act and who's really pulling strings and who has influence in that, Bohynes and, you know, someone who held that position before for years is is now entering into the USAT world with with Tethr in such a powerful way.

It's gonna be it's gonna be a big big run for for Tether, I think. I'm excited to see where USAT goes. Well, and you see with some of their other investments. I mean, you think you saw the other day too that they invested in gold.com. You know, their their tokenized gold product, that's been another another theme we've seen throughout the year also with Paxos. I believe it's what? X a u g. I may be getting those mixed up. I think it's also x a u t.

Again, we're seeing stablecoin tickers is gonna be a talent of

Yeah. I it'll it'll they'll preview for future episode. Jiao from m zero with with money is plural because I think there's there's a growing amount of tickers. And I think, again, we're gonna see this diversions in this next year of they may look like they're all the same, you know, when you look at it from the outside. But when you really dig under the hood, you'll see who they're issued by, how they're structured.

There's a variety of different approaches you can take even when you look at people like good one is maybe m zero to to MoonPay. Again, at first, you might have seen that there are competitors, but they're very complimentary on the one's a protocol and the other one's being an issuer from the regulatory standpoint. But where I was going with that is just we're seeing this trend, again, stablecoins as the basis for tokenized finance.

And I think Tethr really leading the charge in how those liquidity pairs are gonna come on chain by owning both the stablecoin, but also have upside in the tokenized assets themselves.

Absolutely. I'm gonna steal the screen here for one second since you mentioned this. We're testing the rails. I'm mainly doing this because I wanna test the rails. You mentioned an interview with Malcolm from Western Union, and I just think it's important. Something we'll try to do on this show is to continue to kind of use the product and use the the platform that we've built.

We've spent a lot of time and and effort building stable-.com to really be a a single place in the market that you can use to navigate this space. So when we reference things that we've done in the past, like this interview, Zach actually hosted with with Malcolm. I'm going here to the media side of our business. It's a stable minded, which is our long form podcast. This was in season six, and you can go here and check out that episode with Malcolm talking all about Western Union and all of the the fun stuff.

This was a season that we produced in partnership with Rain, and so go check that out.

Yeah. Flex flex We'll have Melba on here soon. They're doing some interesting things, like I said, with their stable coin, building out their wallet as well. And like I said, the company's been around for for over a hundred years. So, I mean, you look at the the name of the episode from from Telegraph to stablecoins. I mean, I don't know if there's anybody else out there that has come as full circle as Western Union.

Yeah. So, Zach, I know that we're we're keeping this this short and sweet today. Give us maybe just I'll interview you here a little bit. Oh, we didn't we didn't script this. No. We didn't. What what makes you when you when you think about this show and doing it consistently and and really trying to serve the industry and what it needs for you personally, what what vision or what excites you most about doing this?

And and do you think we wanted what are we trying to build here that is needed that doesn't exist in your mind?

That's a great question. And I told myself I wasn't gonna say that on the stream. But, you know, I started making content just simply to fulfill my own curiosity. I like, that's how I got into crypto, stablecoins, all of that was working in the mortgage industry and just diving down rabbit holes. Personally, that's what I get excited, to do with, like I said, bring on people like Malcolm, like Xiao, Ben from Braille, Chris from defense, bringing on the altitude team, Raj from CAS.

We've gotten to talk with them, but I would love to just hop on the stream for an hour, hour and a half, dive deep into not only where they're at with their business, but how do they how do they look look at look at the world, the impact that their businesses may be having, but how do they see that that shifting? So, you know, I've always thought that your content will perform best when you're making content that you would like.

I think that's my biggest goal here is I think we're both uniquely, just curious individuals, conversationalists. And so to have a platform to, like I said, go deep. Yes. Quick hits are fun. Yes. The news is fun. There's a place for that. But depth with various degrees of builders, maybe people raising their series d to people that are pre seed, to maybe people on the legal team that don't normally come on streams. I think that's what really excites me. Yeah. What about you? We'll turn it right back really quick.

What excites me most yeah. For for me, it's there are so many companies, like like, real companies that are outside of this crypto native bubble. Mhmm. I remember going to the Bitso Business Conference pat this past year in Mexico City, which was amazing. We were planning on going back there this year again and doing exclusive media there and set an ex incredible experience there.

But I remember talking with Lucas, the chief marketing officer at RAIN, as we were kind of leaving that event and talking about what made us both so excited about the moment that we were in and what we saw at that event. It was really this idea of the people in the room for the first time in at least my crypto crypto career, a good majority of them were actually not native to the space. They weren't Right.

Like, building crypto infrastructure or crypto venture venture capital people, or they were just, like, you know, people operating regional banks, local payment companies, people who are are really just leaning in for the first time. And I think for for me, there's a huge void of depth and valuable content and media that can help people who are working at these firms and are building these Stablecoin strategies and are actually going to their teams and asking like, hey.

How do we actually implement something like Stablecoins into our bank or into our payment service company or remittance company? There's there's so much available, and we've spent the last over a year now covering the kind of picks and shovels and infrastructure and teams and tools and builder tool kits that exist. And there's we're gonna continue to do that.

There's so many amazing teams that are getting funding, that are building amazing tools, that are helping provide what is necessary to build these kind of Lego blocks. But the real problem that I still deeply feel is that the awareness or the instruction manual or the kind of ability to know how to use these things and how to make sense of them and how they're different and how they fit together.

And there's so many people that are are looking to enter the space for the first time, and they're not gonna be the companies that get headlines. They're not gonna be the three companies talking to the White House today. Like, these are just normal mid market enterprise companies or smaller that are realizing that adopting and using on chain money, tokenized money, is going to become an existential crisis for their business if they don't get on base with it. It's gonna become something that I'll say.

Will disrupt them. And we're yeah. I'm excited to be a place where we can stand in that gap for the people who are building, like, the m zeros of the world or the defenses of the world, the brails of the world. There's so many incredible companies that we're working with on the back end of the show to help program it and make it great to really also look to the other side of the demand side of the companies and the builders and people who want to make sense of it.

So it's a unique unique position to live in this middle ground and this gap,

but I'm I'm really excited for this. It'll be a fun journey for us. Absolutely. So call to builders. Let us know what you wanna talk about. I mean, we can sit here all day, follow our own rabbit holes, but at the end of the day, we wouldn't be doing this if there wasn't even if there wasn't a community that cared about what what what we wanted to follow.

But we really want to program this show, yes, around our curiosities, but we want that to be aligned with, what you need to know, what's valuable for you personally in your career. Time is valuable.

I think that's one thing that me and Drew have come back to repeatedly is how do we structure the show in a way that is not just noise on the timeline, but it's something that if you're going to watch for an hour or for two hours that you're gonna leave and feel filled in a way, feel like you took something away from this. And, ideally, somebody you you wanna share with your friends. You know?

Yeah. We getting off the timeline is also something that we've I know we've both talked about just, like, how noisy and distracting and sinister that can be at times. And so for people who actually are just focused on things like stablecoins or tokenized assets or think the conversation that we have here, we also think that there's an opportunity to create a noiseless environment where you can really just have that experience catered and customized for you.

But, Zach, this was fun, man. Yeah. It's good. Should they look forward to? What's what's up next?

So Thursday, we're gonna be doing this again. This is kind of a soft launch day for us. We'll have, a a small but mighty roadshow of guests coming on Thursday to talk about, announcements, fundraises. We'll we'll we'll you know, we have more in store later this week. And something too I'd I'd plug is that, you know, we've had a lot of teams, like PR teams, marketing leads, people who work at companies that you you might see their logos on the screen, for instance.

Like, there are a lot of people who are in the business of trying to get all of the incredible news and announcements and releases that are are native to their teams and what they're building out into the world. We've had, you know, we've we've we also see a really interesting opportunity for us to just partner with those people.

And so we're gonna be, releasing soon a guest experience portal that actually directly ties into the the system that we use here to stream, which will allow for, you know, an entire guest experience and submission experience if you have news coming up, if you have launches coming up, if you wanna book a stream ahead of time. So more on that. But, yeah, we're really excited to to be a a mouthpiece and a voice for all the incredible stuff being built here. Awesome. Any final words from you, mister Zach?

Nope. Ready for next week. Catch us at 9AM Pacific, twelve eastern. That is the goal as long as the tech cooperates.

I think we're still live, so I think I think we're doing okay. I'm looking at Andre backstage. He's smiling. So I think Yeah. Alright. Alright. Andre is celebrating. Yeah. Is. We will we will see you Thursday, 12PM eastern. Thanks for watching stable dash live. See you guys.