Interview: Jack, Kaori
Editor: Sleepy.txt
This year is destined to be recorded in financial history as the "Year of Stablecoins," The current buzz might just be the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface lies six years of undercurrents.
In 2019, when Facebook's stablecoin project Libra exploded like a depth charge, jolting the traditional financial world, Raj Parekh was right at the epicenter, at Visa.
As the head of Visa's cryptocurrency division, Raj personally witnessed the psychological shift within this traditional financial giant from观望 (observing) to entering the game. It was a moment of non-consensus.
At that time, the arrogance of traditional finance coexisted with the immaturity of blockchain. Raj's experience at Visa painfully made him touch the industry's invisible ceiling. It wasn't that financial institutions didn't want to innovate, but the infrastructure at the time simply couldn't bear the weight of "global payments."
Driven by this pain point, he founded Portal Finance, attempting to build better middleware for crypto payments. However, after serving numerous clients, he found that no matter how much the application layer was optimized, the performance bottleneck at the底层 (bottom layer) remained the ceiling.
Eventually, the Portal team was acquired by the Monad Foundation, with Raj taking the helm of the payment ecosystem.
In our view, he is the ideal person to复盘 (review) this experiment on efficiency, as he possesses both deep insights into the business logic of the stablecoin application layer and a profound understanding of the underlying layers of crypto payments.
Not long ago, we spoke with Raj about the development of stablecoins in recent years. We need to clarify the driving force behind the current heat around stablecoins. Is it the feasible boundaries set by regulation, the willingness of giants to finally enter the field, or the more practical calculus of profit and efficiency?
More importantly, a new industry consensus is forming—stablecoins are not just assets within the crypto world but could become the next generation of infrastructure for clearing and fund流转 (flow).
But questions follow: How long will this热度 (heat) last? Which narratives will be disproven, and which will solidify into long-term structures? Raj's perspective is valuable precisely because he hasn't been watching from the shore but has always been搏击 (battling) in the water.
In Raj's narrative, he refers to the development of stablecoins as money's "email moment"—a future where the flow of funds is as cheap and instantaneous as sending a message. But he also admits he hasn't fully figured out what this will催生出 (give rise to).
The following is Raj's account, compiled and released by Beating:
Problem First, Not Technology First
If I had to pinpoint a starting point for all this, I'd say it was 2019.
I was at Visa then, and the atmosphere in the entire financial industry was very微妙 (subtle). Facebook suddenly launched its Libra stablecoin plan. Before that, most traditional financial institutions viewed cryptocurrency either as a geek's toy or a speculative tool. But Libra was different; it made everyone realize that if you didn't get a seat at this table, there might not be a place for you in the future.
Visa was one of the first companies publicly listed as a partner for the Libra project. Libra was very special at the time; it was a very early, very large, and very ambitious attempt that brought many different companies together around blockchain and crypto for the first time.
Although the final outcome didn't land as everyone initially expected, it was indeed a very important watershed event. It made many traditional institutions truly start to treat crypto as a serious issue for the first time, not just a fringe experiment.
Of course, immense regulatory pressure followed. Later, in October 2019, companies like Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe withdrew one after another.
But after Libra happened, not just Visa, but Mastercard and other Libra members also began to systematically formalize their crypto teams. On one hand, it was to better manage partners and relationship networks; on the other hand, it was to actually build products and elevate it into a more holistic strategy.
My career actually began at the intersection of cybersecurity and payments. For the first half of my time at Visa, I was primarily building a security platform to help banks understand and respond to data breaches, vulnerability exploits, and hacker attacks—the core was risk management.
It was during this process that I began to understand blockchain from a payment and fintech perspective, always viewing it as a kind of open-source payment system. The most震撼 (astonishing) thing was that I had never seen a technology that could move value at such high speed, 24/7, globally.
At the same time, I also saw very clearly that Visa's底层 (underlying layer) still relied on the banking system,依赖 (relying on) Mainframe, wire transfers, and other relatively old tech stacks.
For me, that kind of open-source system that could also "move value" was very attractive. My intuition at the time was simple: the infrastructure that systems like Visa rely on will likely be gradually rewritten by systems like blockchain in the future.
After the Visa Crypto team was formed, we didn't rush to push technology. This team was one of the smartest, most capable builders I've ever seen. They understood both traditional finance and payment systems, and also had deep respect and understanding for the crypto ecosystem.
The crypto world, ultimately, has a strong "community属性 (attribute)". If you want to get things done here, it's hard not to understand and integrate into it.
Visa is a payment network. We had to focus a lot of energy on how to empower our partners, like payment service providers, banks, fintech companies, and on what efficiency problems exist in our cross-border settlement processes.
So our approach wasn't to forcefully push a certain technology onto Visa first, but rather to first identify the real problems within Visa, and then see if blockchain could solve them in certain环节 (links).
If you look at the settlement chain, you see a very直观 (intuitive) problem. Since fund流转 (flow) is T+1, T+2, why can't it be "second-level settlement"? If it could be秒级 (second-level), what would it bring to the fund and treasury teams? For example, banks close at 5 PM, so what if treasury teams could initiate settlements at night? Or what if settlements could happen seven days a week, including weekends when they normally don't settle at all?
This is why Visa later turned to USDC. We decided to use it as a new settlement mechanism within the Visa system, actually integrating it into Visa's existing system. Many people might not understand why Visa would do settlement tests on Ethereum. Back in 2020, 2021, that sounded crazy.
For example, Crypto.com is a major client of Visa. In the traditional settlement process, Crypto.com had to sell their crypto assets every day, convert them to fiat, and then wire it to Visa via SWIFT or ACH.
This process was very painful. First, the time: SWIFT isn't real-time; there's a T+2 or even longer lag. To ensure settlements didn't default, Crypto.com had to lock up a large amount of collateral in the bank—this is所谓的 (so-called) "pre-funding."
This money could have been used to generate收益 (returns) through business, but instead, it had to lie idle on the account just to cope with that slow settlement cycle. So we thought, since Crypto.com's business is built on USDC, why not settle directly with USDC?
So we approached Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered digital asset bank. We initiated the first test transaction on Ethereum. When that USDC moved from Crypto.com's address to Visa's address at Anchorage and completed final settlement within seconds, the feeling was奇妙 (magical).
The Fault Line in Infrastructure
My experience with stablecoin settlement at Visa painfully made me realize one thing: the industry infrastructure was too immature.
I've always understood payments and fund flow as a "completely abstracted experience." For example, you go to a coffee shop, buy coffee; the user just swipes the card, completes the transaction, gets the coffee; the merchant gets the money. It's that simple. The user doesn't know how many steps happen底层 (underneath): communicating with your bank, interacting with the network, confirming the transaction, completing clearing and settlement... All this should be completely hidden, invisible to the user.
So I view blockchain the same way. It is indeed a great settlement technology, but it should ultimately be abstracted away through infrastructure and application-layer services, so users don't need to understand the complexity of the chain.
This is why I decided to leave Visa and found Portal—to create a developer-facing platform allowing any Fintech company to integrate stablecoin payments like an API.
Honestly, I never imagined Portal would be acquired. For me, it was more like a sense of mission. I see "building an open-source payment system" as the work of my life.
I felt at the time that if I could play even a small role in making on-chain transactions easier to use and getting open-source systems into daily use scenarios, it would still be a huge opportunity.
Our clients included traditional remittance giants like WorldRemit and many emerging Neobanks. But as we delved deeper, we fell into a strange loop.
Some might ask, why build infrastructure then instead of applications? After all, many complain now that "too much infrastructure is being built, but there aren't enough applications." I think this is actually a cycle issue.
Generally, better infrastructure comes first, which then催生 (gives rise to) new applications; as new applications emerge, they in turn催生 (give rise to) the next round of new infrastructure. This is the "application-infrastructure" cycle.
At that time, we saw the infrastructure layer wasn't mature enough, so I felt切入 (entering) from the infrastructure side was more natural. Our goal was to work on two parallel tracks: on one hand, partner with those large applications that already had distribution, ecosystems, and transaction volume; on the other hand, make it very simple for early-stage companies and developers to start building.
In pursuit of performance, Portal supported various chains like Solana, Polygon, Tron. But绕来绕去 (going around in circles), we always came back to the same conclusion: the ecosystem network effect of EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) was too strong. Developers were there, liquidity was there.
This created a paradox: the EVM ecosystem was the strongest, but it was too slow and expensive; other chains were fast, but the ecosystems were fragmented. We thought then, if one day a system could appear that was both compatible with the EVM standard and could achieve high performance with sub-second confirmation, that would be the ultimate answer for payments.
So in July of this year, we accepted the Monad Foundation's acquisition of Portal, and I began leading支付业务 (payment business) at Monad.
Many ask me, aren't there already too many public chains? Why do we need a new chain? The question itself might be wrong. It's not "why do we need a new chain," but "have the existing chains really solved the core problems of payments?"
Ask those who are真正 (truly) moving large amounts of money. They will tell you that what they care about most is not how new the chain is or how good the story is, but whether the unit economics work out. What is the cost per transaction? Can the confirmation time meet business needs? Is the liquidity deep enough across different外汇走廊 (FX corridors)? These are very practical questions.
For example, sub-second finality sounds like a technical metric, but behind it lies real money. If a payment requires 15 minutes for confirmation, it is commercially unusable.
But having just that isn't enough. You also need to build a vast ecosystem around the payment system: stablecoin issuers, on/off-ramp service providers, market makers, liquidity providers—these roles are indispensable.
I often use an analogy: we are in money's "email moment." Remember when email first appeared? It didn't just make letter-writing faster; it allowed information to reach the other side of the globe in seconds,彻底改变 (completely changing) human communication.
I see stablecoins and blockchain the same way. This is an ability to move value at internet speed, unseen in the history of human civilization. We haven't even fully thought through what it will催生出 (give rise to). It might mean the重塑 (reshaping) of global supply chain finance, it might mean remittance costs dropping to zero.
But the most critical next step is how this technology gets seamlessly integrated into YouTube, into every daily app on your phone. When users don't feel the presence of blockchain but enjoy internet-speed fund flow, that's when we truly begin.
Earning Interest While Flowing: The Evolution of Stablecoin Business Models
In July of this year, the US signed the《GENIUS Act》. The industry landscape is undergoing微妙 (subtle) changes. The certain moat advantage that Circle had built began to淡化 (fade), and the core driver behind this is a fundamental shift in business models.
In the past, the business logic of early stablecoin issuers like Tether and Circle was very simple and direct. Users deposited money, they used that money to buy US Treasury bonds, and all the interest income generated belonged entirely to the issuer. This was the game rule of the first phase.
But now, if you observe newer projects like Paxos to M0, you'll see the rules have changed. These new players are starting to pass on the interest income generated by the underlying assets directly to users and recipients. This isn't just an adjustment in profit distribution; I believe it actually creates a new financial primitive we've never seen before—a new form of money supply.
In the traditional financial world, money in the bank only generates interest when it sits idle. Once you start transferring, paying, that money typically doesn't earn interest during the流转 (flow) process.
But stablecoins break this limitation. Even while funds are flowing, being paid, transacting at high speed, the underlying assets are still continuously generating interest. This opens up a whole new possibility: no longer just earning interest while static, but also earning while flowing.
Of course, we are in the very early experimental stages of this new model. I also see some teams trying more radical approaches, conducting large-scale US Treasury management behind the scenes, even planning to pass on 100% of the interest to users.
You might ask, how do they make money? Their logic is to rely on other value-added products and services built around the stablecoin for profit, not on eating the interest differential.
So, although it's just the beginning, after the GENIUS Act, the trend is very clear: every major bank, every major fintech company, is seriously thinking about how to join this game. The future business models of stablecoins will definitely not stop at simple deposit-taking for interest.
Besides stablecoins, crypto neo-banks have also received great attention this year. Combining past experience in payments, I believe there is one core difference between traditional Fintech and crypto Fintech.
The first generation of fintech companies, like Brazil's Nubank or the US's Chime, were built essentially on top of the local banking infrastructure of their respective markets. Their底层 (underlying layer) relies on the local banking system. This leads to an inevitable result: their service targets are死死限制住了 (firmly limited),基本只能 (basically only able to) serve domestic users.
But when you build products based on stablecoins and blockchain, the situation changes completely.
You are actually building products on a global payment rail, something we have never seen in financial history. The change this brings is颠覆性的 (disruptive). You no longer need to be a single-country Fintech企业 (enterprise). You can, from day one, build a global neo-bank面向 (facing) multi-country, even global, users.
This is what I see as the biggest unlock. In the entire history of fintech, we have almost never seen this level of "global from the start." This model is催生 (giving rise to) a whole new batch of founders, builders, and products that are no longer limited by geographic fences. From the first line of code written, their target is the global market.
Agent Payments and the Future of High-Frequency Finance
If you ask me what excites me most in the next three to five years, it's definitely the combination of AI Agent (Agentic Payments) and High-Frequency Finance.
A few weeks ago, we just held a hackathon in San Francisco on the theme of AI and cryptocurrency. A large number of developers emerged. For example, one project integrated the US food delivery platform DoorDash with on-chain payments. We are already starting to see these sprouts. Agents are no longer limited by human processing speed.
On high-throughput systems, the speed at which Agents move funds and complete transactions is so fast that the human brain might not be able to understand it in real-time. This isn't just about being a bit faster; it's a fundamental转变 (shift) in workflow: we are upgrading from "human efficiency" to "algorithm efficiency," and ultimately towards "Agent efficiency."
To support this efficiency leap from millisecond to microsecond levels, the underlying blockchain performance must be robust enough.
At the same time, the形态 (form) of user accounts is also converging. In the past, your investment account and payment account were separate, but now this boundary is blurring.
This is actually a natural selection at the product level and what giants like Coinbase most want to do. They want to become your "Everything App"—saving money, buying crypto, buying stocks, even participating in prediction markets, all done within the same account. This way they can lock users firmly into their own ecosystem, not handing over deposit and behavioral data to others.
This is precisely why infrastructure remains important. Because only by truly abstracting away those underlying crypto components can DeFi trading, payments, earning yield, and other activities be叠加 (stacked) into a unified experience, with users barely feeling the complexity behind it.
Some of my colleagues have a strong background in high-frequency trading, accustomed to using ultra-low latency systems in CME or stock exchanges for large-scale trading. But what excites me isn't continuing to do trading, but migrating this rigorous engineering capability and algorithm-driven decision-making mechanism into real-world daily financial workflows.
Imagine a financial manager handling跨国资金 (multinational funds), needing to manage vast amounts of money scattered across different banks involving multiple外汇币对 (FX pairs). In the past, this required a lot of manual scheduling. But in the future, if LLMs are paired with high-performance public chains, the system could automatically perform large-scale algorithmic trading and fund scheduling behind the scenes, thereby making the entire fund management operation earn more收益 (returns).
Abstracting the capability of "high-frequency trading" and migrating it into more different real-world workflows. This is no longer the专利 (patent) of Wall Street, but rather letting algorithms optimize every penny of an enterprise at极高的速度 (extremely high speed) and scale. This is the truly期待 (anticipated) new category of the future.
