BlockTalks: Books, Stablecoins and Privacy, with Jillian Plomin

But the landscape's changing, right? We had quite the evolution, especially in the US, but also around the world, not only in crypto in general, but more particularly in stablecoins directly, right? We're recording this early July.

And the last month, the FCA here in the UK came up with their own regime for stablecoins, which was long overdue.

Still not ideal, but at least it's something that people can build upon.

And the registration process as well for licenses.

So I think this is a testimony to, I wouldn't say even resilience, but the stubbornness of the industry to just keep banging on that door until they open and listen to us.

And all of a sudden, what we're seeing now is also the arrival of what I call the suit coiners, right? We don't have the hoodies are leaving and the suits are coming and I am changing my wardrobe personally.

So not that I look great in a suit.

What is your perception as a builder, especially in this moment, building this momentum? Is this what is enabling you to pursue the bigger, better things we're going to talk about? Is this just the tail link you guys needed? What else do you need? Give me a little bit of like this more contextual aspect of being a builder in crypto 2026, especially in the context of a stable coin.

You know, it has gotten a lot more mainstream, you know, TradFi.

We were originally hoping that blockchain would be more of a blend of decentralized finance and traditional finance.

And I think what is actually happening is that traditional finance is simply taking the technology and continuing on as business as usual, which depending on how cypherpunk you are you may be happy or sad about that but their involvement does mean there's a lot more money in the space and there's a lot more opportunity in the space and there's a lot more things are moving quite quickly a common thing to say is we move fast and break things that's not how cardano works that's not how a stable coin should operate um it's really not how um financial technology at all should not take that approach.

We've had, I don't know, countless numbers of hacks at this point on Ethereum and, you know, we're learning lessons the hard way.

So that is kind of a challenge being more cautious, I guess, and conservative in terms of making sure that the security stack is there, making sure that, you know, financially, all the protections are there off chain.

And also, you know, from a regulatory standpoint, we've been slow to open up to certain jurisdictions just because, you know, the regulations aren't there yet or they aren't favorable.

And we don't want to, you know, overstep any bounds anywhere and make sure that the reputation of the companies is definitely an asset that's worth protecting.

So we're not going to rush in and do something before the foundation is laid.

But I feel a lot of pressure to do exactly that, especially with investors breathing down your neck and when's the next thing going to roll out and that sort of thing.

But it's a balance.

It's a balance.

So...