Why Every Company Will Have a Stablecoin — and Why One L2 Isn’t Enough - Ep. 912
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Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Today, we've got a doubleheader. First up is Zach Abrams, CEO of Bridge, the Stripe acquired startup that just launched Open Issuance, a platform that allows every company to launch its own stablecoin. He explains what this means for stablecoins, payments, and even AI. Then in the second half, we're joined by Kenny Lee, co founder of Manta Network, who reveals why Manta is pivoting away from being just another L2 to focusing on building applications. He makes the case that the L2 wars ar
Hey, Laura. Excited to be here.
Yeah. Excited to have you. So Bridge was acquired last year by Stripe, which at the time was the largest crypto acquisition. It's it's since been eclipsed. We don't have to go
with Didn't didn't last long.
Yeah. I mean, after the election, just everybody was like, getting their horses ready for the race. All right. So since then, Stripe has announced a bunch of things. Like it's blockchain tempo. There's been a lot of eyeballs on their next move in crypto. And today, Bridge is announcing a new platform called Open Issuance. So tell me about it.
Yeah. We're very excited. We actually the the original idea for Bridge was that we thought that everyone was gonna want their own stablecoin. It it turned out back in 2022, the market wasn't quite ready for it, and, we needed we needed more regulatory clarity, but we're extremely excited. Open issuance is a platform through which any business, whether it's a bank or a, you know, marketplace or a fintech, can create their own stablecoin. And we are really excited about this because the market itself you know, we think that, you know, folks are gonna wanna control their dollar, and they're gonna
Yeah. So I understand the problem that you laid out there, but then, you know, when if if I think about a world with many stablecoins, then, it to me sounds like the fragmentation issue that people talk about in DeFi a lot. So describe what this world will look like once this is more widely used. Is it that it'll be one way for the businesses themselves and then everyday users won't know kind of this is happening or yeah. Just talk a little bit about, like, how this will world will look.
Yeah. And and I'll I'll go into that and but maybe before talking about that question, I'll talk, like, more specifically about some of the problems it solves. And and then, you you know, the the sort of flip that question on, like, what it would look like if there were only two, two issuers. And, so one of the first use cases for Bridge was cross border payments. And we had, you know, this company, Zulu. They were one of our first customers. They were moving money between The US or or between Colombia and The US. And so they would they would take, you you know, Colombian pesos, convert them i
And wait. And but just explain explain why that is. That's you're talking about because the the treasuries are held by Circle and Tether. So okay. Got it.
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