Stablecoin and the Stable Genius: Donald Trump’s Plan to be the Central Banker to the World

SEIGNIORAGE

noun

seign·ior·age /ˈsānyərij/

Profit made by a government by issuing currency, especially the difference between the face value of coins and their production costs.

Elon Musk tweaking out in the Oval Office. DOGE obliterating federal agencies. Immigration terror ripping apart communities. Bombing foreign nations. Endless lawsuits. Firing tens of thousands of government workers. Declassifying the MLK assassination files. Accusing Barack Obama of sedition. Ginormous flags on the White House lawn. Pardoning insurrectionists. Gutting Medicaid. Erratic trade and tariff wars. Canceling Black History Month and Pride Month.

And of course, the “Epstein Files.”

It’s tempting to think the Epstein Files don’t belong on this list. Like maybe this one is getting away from Trump, which is why the barrage of new distractions are coming our way. Allow me to offer another perspective.

I’m not saying the Epstein Files shouldn’t be released or that they’re merely a distraction. And it probably is getting away from Trump. Whatever is contained in those files either confirms our worst fears about power and sex trafficking, or worse. And whoever is in those files should be held to account. We owe that much to the victims of abuse. But what I do know is that when distractions reach a fever pitch it’s often by design. It’s page one of the con artist or magician’s playbook.

I have a big ask for you today. Like, huge. Don’t look over there at the misdirection and chaos, look here. Because I have a story so unbelievable it reads like fiction. The story of a heist, perhaps the greatest of all time, happening under our noses but in broad daylight.

Again, the Epstein files may or may not be a deliberate misdirect but the timing of this now decades-old scandal bubbling to the surface while Congress just created a pathway for Trump to become the wealthiest man on the planet is convenient.

Oh yeah, that’s the story, by the way.

It begins with the word “seigniorage.” An arcane term that defines how central banks make money. Well, Trump and the GOP-led Congress—with the support of several key Democrats—just cleared a path for Donald Trump to become one of the central bankers to the world. The only thing that makes this hard to believe is that they told us they were doing it; they told us how and why, and then they did it.

All Trump has to do now is sell it. That’s right, the greatest salesman in the world just has to sell it. Not to us, mind you. That part is over. Congress gave him the capability to make this happen. Now he has three and a half years to sell it to the world while he still has the power and authority of the presidency. After that, all bets are off.

So settle in. It’s story time.

There are only three moving parts to the modern GOP playbook. Cut taxes. Deregulate. Steal resources. No matter what else is accomplished under a Republican administration, you can bet these three are at the top or are the sum total of said list.

Donald Trump’s first term was chaotic, undisciplined and corrupt. But even they managed to secure tax cuts. In the four years that followed we, along with many others, cautioned the Democrats to pay attention to the base and do more on economic issues because the only thing that could deliver a second Trump term was a population in economic precarity. As the Biden administration wore on, calls from the progressive left to move them toward economic policies to benefit the lower and middle classes grew louder and louder because we knew what lay around the corner. A second Trump term would be catastrophic for the vast majority of Americans. How did we know? Because they wrote it down. It’s all there in Project 2025.

Instead, the Democrats ran on joy, a hard right immigration policy, January 6 and tax credits. All Trump had to do was acknowledge that the economy was busted and the White House was his for the taking. The other thing that became obvious was Trump 2.0 would be just as corrupt but far more disciplined. They had a plan and they had the people who could bring it to life. Scott Bessent, Stephen Miran, Stephen Miller and Russell Vought. All the rest are sycophants from Kristi Noem and Marco Rubio to Pete Hegseth and Linda McMahon. Wind up dummies who follow orders and compliment the President.

So back to the agenda. Cut taxes. Deregulate. Steal resources. The first item on the agenda was to enshrine Trump’s original tax cuts and extend them where possible. Check. The other two proved more elusive in Trump’s first term because the GOP Congress was more of a wildcard and Trump hadn’t yet completely taken over the party. This time it’s Trump’s world from stem to stern and they’re pressing forward with all deliberate speed.

Stealing resources used to come in two ways. Dollar diplomacy or gunboat diplomacy. For 250 years the American diplomatic playbook was one or the other. Either you make a favorable financial deal with us or we take what we need by force. In many ways Trump’s tariff policy is the perfect blend of the two approaches. It’s economic terrorism designed to destabilize the world’s economy while pouring money into the U.S. government coffers. And it’s working. The economy, as it is currently oriented, is pouring tariff revenue into the federal government at the expense of the U.S. consumer and the long-term economic arrangements of our trading partners.

So that leaves the third act of the GOP playbook. Deregulation. The attack on federal agencies is de facto domestic deregulation. Can’t regulate much if there’s no one there to do it. And now that the Supreme Court has given the administration the greenlight to dismantle agencies entirely without Congressional approval, the government is Trump’s to reorder. But there’s a bigger deregulatory gambit that impacts the entire world. And they just pulled that off too.

So understand what they just did, we have to zoom out and talk about the global order of currency.

And if you hold this framing in your mind—cut taxes on the wealthy, hoard resources, deregulate—the heist will fit neatly into our story.

Chapter One

How the Global Order of Money Evolved

For 80 years, the architecture of global finance has been built on the foundation laid at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. To really grasp the importance of this conference, we have to first trace the evolution of money itself through three distinct eras.

Prior to 1944, the global monetary system operated on what economists call the classical gold standard. Currencies were directly pegged to physical stores of gold, creating a rigid but theoretically stable international framework. When you held a dollar, a pound, or a franc, you held a promise that could be redeemed for a specific amount of gold. This system provided certainty but also imposed severe constraints on national economic policy. In other words, there could only be as much money in circulation as there was gold held in central banks as collateral. It’s why countries ran out of money during economic shocks and wartime.

The 1944 Bretton Woods Conference fundamentally transformed global finance by establishing the U.S. dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency, still pegged to gold at $35 per ounce. This system granted the United States what would later be called an “exorbitant privilege”—the ability to print the world’s money and export inflation to other nations. Every other currency was pegged to the dollar, which was pegged to gold, creating a pyramid with American monetary policy at its apex.

On August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon announced what was supposed to be a temporary suspension of dollar-to-gold convertibility. That “temporary” measure became permanent, ushering in the era of pure fiat currency. The dollar remained the global reserve currency, but now it was backed not by gold, but by the belief that the United States government would remain stable and honor its debts and obligations in the world. By hook or by crook, by trade or by force.

The good old gunboat and dollar diplomacy as it were.

In practical terms, imagine a manufacturer in Rwanda wants to buy an industrial boiler from a Canadian supplier. The Rwandan firm would negotiate with the Canadian company, each contemplating the value of the transaction in their own currency but negotiating the contract in U.S. dollars. But the transaction would occur through their banks who would settle it in U.S. dollars and convert to their respective currencies after settlement. It all happens on bank ledgers and through banks that hold reserve currencies in multiple denominations, but most notably U.S. dollars because everyone involved has faith in the long-term price stability of the dollar. It’s a shared global recognition of uniform and stable value.

Today, we stand at the threshold of a fourth era: a new digital layer on top of the traditional system; digital tokens tied to stores of value, whether the U.S. dollar, gold, or mixed holdings. Something called a stablecoin. It’s probably helpful to briefly describe the crypto ecosystem because when you talk about crypto most people associate it with Bitcoin. That’s just a fragment of the ever-evolving system and not the base case for this discussion.

The cryptocurrency ecosystem has evolved dramatically since Bitcoin’s inception, sprouting various specialized digital assets such as stablecoins, memecoins, exchange coins and payment coins. Memecoins—like Elon’s ridiculous Dogecoin—are nonsense vehicles inspired by internet jokes and trends with little inherent utility beyond speculation.

Exchange coins are issued by cryptocurrency exchanges to provide utility within their platforms. Their value is intrinsically linked to the success of the issuing exchange.

Bitcoin stands apart as a payment cryptocurrency or “payment coin.” In regulatory terms, Bitcoin is often classified as a commodity in the United States, similar to gold, due to its scarcity and use as a store of value.

Stablecoins are designed to maintain consistent value by pegging to external assets like the U.S. dollar or gold, and are designed to facilitate everyday transactions.

Beyond the coins and trading vehicles, there is a complex web of digital layers from blockchain infrastructure, digital security protocols, exchanges, wallets, custodians, issuers and payment processors. While the progenitors of the system envisioned pure peer-to-peer transactions that were instantaneous, transparent, and independent of financial and government interests, some of that libertarian spirit has predictably dissipated over time with major financial institutions and central banks getting into the game.

Nowhere is the tension between public interests, crypto purists, private industry and government entities more evident than the role of stablecoins.

Chapter Two

Keynes versus Hayek: The Philosophical Foundation

The current stablecoin revolution can only be understood through the lens of one of economics’ most enduring debates: the clash between John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek over the proper role of money in society.

At the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, John Maynard Keynes proposed a radically different international monetary system than the dollar-based framework ultimately adopted. Keynes envisioned a supranational currency called the “bancor,” issued not by any single nation but by an International Clearing Union (ICU).

The bancor would serve as the primary unit of account for global trade, effectively acting as a global reserve currency managed by an international institution. Member countries’ central banks would hold accounts at the ICU, which would monitor trade imbalances and settle payments among nations using bancor rather than national currencies.

Keynes’ vision was fundamentally about stability through rules and institutions. The ICU would monitor and penalize both excessive saving (surplus countries) and excessive borrowing (deficit countries). Automatic adjustment mechanisms would discourage imbalances and prompt countries toward more sustainable trade policies. This was monetary policy as social engineering—using currency to achieve broader economic and political goals.

Friedrich Hayek offered a radically different vision in his 1976 work “The Denationalisation of Money.” In it Hayek proposed abolishing government money entirely in favor of private currency competition.

Under Hayek’s system, any private institution—banks, businesses, even individuals—could issue their own currency. No legal tender laws would force acceptance of government money. Instead, currencies would compete in an open market, with users naturally gravitating toward those that best maintained stable purchasing power.

Today’s stablecoin system represents the closest real-world implementation of Hayek’s vision but with a sprinkle of Keynes. I imagine neither man would be entirely pleased. Private entities issue digital currencies that compete for adoption based on their ability to maintain stable value. Users can choose among USDT, USDC, USD1—the three primary coins we’re going to talk about today—and dozens of other options, voting with their wallets for the issuers they trust most.

Yet there’s a crucial irony: most stablecoins achieve stability not through Hayek’s preferred commodity baskets, but by pegging to government fiat currencies—primarily the U.S. dollar. That’s how the two men’s visions have come together.

This philosophical tension explains why the stablecoin revolution has generated such fierce political opposition. Central bankers trained in the Keynesian tradition see stablecoins as an abdication of government responsibility for monetary stability. They worry about financial stability risks, reduced policy effectiveness, and the potential for private entities to capture the seigniorage—the profit from money creation—that has traditionally flowed to governments.

Crypto advocates, whether they realize it or not, are fighting Hayek’s battle against government money monopolies. And, in fact, many crypto enthusiasts pray to the altar of Hayek. They argue that competition will produce better, more efficient monetary systems than government bureaucracies ever could.

The resolution of this debate will determine not just the future of digital currency, but the future of money itself. Will the next chapter in monetary history be written by central bankers seeking to maintain government control through Central Bank Digital Currencies (Keynes), or by private innovators (Hayek)?

And because we live in the Upside Down now, one of the central characters in all of this may be none other than Donald J. Trump.

Chapter Three

How Money Moves Around the World Today

The current monetary system is built on decades of incremental additions to the Bretton Woods infrastructure, like a medieval city where each new building was constructed on top of the last. At the heart of international finance sits the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).

Despite a name that implies speed, SWIFT is an archaic digital telegram service that allows banks to send payment instructions to one another. When you wire money internationally, SWIFT doesn’t actually move your money—it moves the message telling other banks to move your money.

A $10,000 wire transfer from New York to London doesn’t trigger the physical or digital movement of $10,000 from an American bank to a British bank. Instead, it triggers a complex dance of accounting entries across multiple intermediary banks, each taking a fee and adding processing time.

Beneath SWIFT lies an even more arcane system: correspondent banking. For a small bank in Ghana to send money to a customer of a regional bank in Nebraska, neither institution likely has a direct relationship. Instead, they rely on a network of correspondent banks—larger institutions that maintain accounts with one another and agree to process transactions on behalf of smaller banks.

This creates a hub-and-spoke system where major banks in financial centers like New York, London, and Frankfurt serve as intermediaries for thousands of smaller institutions worldwide. Each hop in this network adds cost, delay, and risk. A simple international wire transfer might touch six or seven different banks before reaching its destination, with each institution taking a cut and adding processing time.

At the top of this system sit central banks, like our very own Federal Reserve, which maintain accounts for commercial banks and process the final settlement of large-value transactions.

This multilayered system imposes enormous costs on the global economy. The World Bank estimates that remittances—money sent by migrant workers to their families—cost an average of 6.18% in transaction fees. For the approximately $700 billion in annual remittances, this represents more than $40 billion in fees extracted by financial intermediaries for the privilege of moving numbers from one computer to another. That’s why tokenizing transactions has the potential to uplift many struggling areas of the world in the best case scenario. In the worst case, it might simply shift the fee capture from public concerns to private hands.

Perhaps most importantly, the current system is slow. Sometimes it takes days for transactions to settle. In an era when algorithmic trading occurs in microseconds, the idea that moving money requires multiple days seems almost absurd. And within that lag exists both risk and opportunity: risk in that markets can move quickly between transaction and settlement, counterparties can default, geopolitical situations can explode and—as we witnessed in the Global Financial Crisis (GFC)—entire systems can collapse. The opportunity is in replacing the entire system with digital tokens that settle in an instant.

Enter stablecoins.

“There’s a war out there, old friend. A world war. It’s not about who’s got the most bullets, it’s about who controls the information.”

This is from a long-forgotten 1992 movie starring Robert Redford called Sneakers. His character leads a rag-tag group of ex-spies and hackers who work for private contractors but are forced into working for the NSA to track down a nefarious information-stealing criminal played by Ben Kingsley. The movie always stuck with me because it was one of River Phoenix’s last. The above quote, delivered by the Kingsley character, stuck with me as well because it proved so prescient.

The race to build a stablecoin ecosystem is playing out like the competing interests in the movie. The NSA is the Central Bank trying desperately to hold onto its authority, the Sneakers crew are the crypto pioneers who believe in setting information free and Ben Kingsley represents the private stablecoin cabal who know the value of controlling it all for greed and power.

Chapter Four

CBDCs Already Exist—Why Not Just Use Those?

The most obvious question in any discussion of stablecoins is why we need private digital currencies at all when central banks could simply issue digital versions of their own currencies. Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) would theoretically provide all the benefits of digital money—instant settlement, 24/7 availability, programmable transactions—while maintaining government control and eliminating the risks associated with private issuers.

Here’s the thing: CBDCs aren’t just theoretical. China’s digital yuan is already in widespread use, processing billions of dollars in transactions. The European Central Bank (ECB) is actively developing a digital euro, and dozens of other central banks have pilot programs underway. So why the push for private stablecoins instead of simply adopting government-issued digital currencies?

Here’s where we begin building the case that the fix is in.

In the United States, the answer is simple: CBDCs have been explicitly prohibited by Congress. The recently passed Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act prevents the Federal Reserve from directly issuing a central bank digital currency to individuals and blocks the creation of a retail government-backed digital dollar. The bill passed the House with overwhelming Republican support and only two Democrats joining. No Democrats joined in the Senate. That’s how bad this one is and why it was the most important of the trio of crypto bills that recently appeared in Congress.

Republicans, with talking points from the crypto lobby, argued that a retail CBDC would theoretically allow the government to track every transaction, know exactly how much money every citizen has, and potentially control how that money can be spent. The technology could enable negative interest rates (effectively taxing savings), automatic tax collection, and even have the ability to “turn off” someone’s money if they fall afoul of government policies.

In fairness, these concerns aren’t purely hypothetical. China’s digital yuan includes features that allow the government to track all transactions and potentially restrict how the currency can be used. The system has been integrated with China’s social credit system, allowing authorities to restrict financial services for citizens with low social credit scores.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be that severe. Proof that the Chinese example is really a smokescreen to cover for the development of a private stablecoin network is the European approach.

The proposed digital euro would allow the ECB to retain control over monetary policy even as digital payments become dominant. European policymakers worry that without a digital euro, American payment companies and stablecoin issuers could gain excessive influence over European commerce.

The U.S. Congress on the other hand just ceded control to the private marketplace to eventually stand in for the Federal Reserve. The Fed’s existing payment systems like Fedwire and ACH are reliable, but decades behind modern technology. We’ll talk more about the legislation that paved the way for this situation a bit later.

The American prohibition on CBDCs also creates international competitive pressure. If other countries develop efficient digital currencies while the U.S. relies on private stablecoins, those government currencies might gain advantages in international trade and finance. A Chinese digital yuan that settles instantly and costs nothing to use might be more attractive to international traders than a private American stablecoin that charges fees and is subject to the whims of private companies.

This puts the Federal Reserve in an impossible position. As the issuer of the world’s reserve currency, the Fed has a responsibility to ensure the dollar remains the dominant international currency. But it’s been prohibited from issuing a digital version of that currency, potentially ceding the digital payments space to private actors or foreign governments.

Chapter Five

The Crypto Lobby and Legislative Triumph

Let’s go back to Congress to examine how this all came together so quickly under Trump. The transformation of American cryptocurrency policy didn’t happen overnight or by accident. It was the result of a carefully orchestrated legislative campaign that culminated in 2025 with the passage of three landmark bills that collectively reshaped the regulatory landscape for digital assets. Understanding how these bills passed—and who supported them—reveals the sophisticated political machinery that the crypto industry has built to advance its interests.

The crypto industry’s 2025 legislative victory rested on three bills, each designed to address a different aspect of digital asset regulation:

• The GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act) established a comprehensive regulatory framework for payment stablecoins, moving oversight to the Treasury Department and creating a federal licensing system for stablecoin issuers.

• The Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act divided regulatory responsibilities between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), generally moving crypto oversight from the more restrictive SEC to the industry-friendly CFTC.

• The Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act prohibited the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail central bank digital currency, effectively preserving the market for private digital currencies.

The GENIUS Act achieved bipartisan support in both chambers, which wasn’t surprising given many representatives and senators who voted in favor of it represent states with significant financial services industries or technology sectors that stand to benefit from crypto-friendly regulation. But it also reflects the influence of targeted campaign contributions and lobbying efforts that we’ll examine in detail.

The CLARITY Act also passed the House with significant bipartisan support, including 79 Democrats joining Republicans and included co-sponsors from both sides. This might be more concerning on the part of complicit Democrats because it effectively reduces SEC authority in favor of the CFTC. The SEC, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, has generally taken a more skeptical view of cryptocurrency, while the CFTC has been more accommodating to industry interests. (At the end of the essay, I’ll share another example of when this happened with pretty disastrous results.)

But it was the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act that revealed the starkest partisan divide, passing the House with overwhelming Republican support but only two Democrats joining. This bill, primarily sponsored by Tom Emmer (MN) and supported by other House Republicans, represents the libertarian wing of crypto advocacy—the belief that government should stay out of digital currency entirely.

While many Democrats are willing to support regulation that legitimizes private crypto companies, they’re less enthusiastic about legislation that explicitly constrains government options. But knowing these three bills were going to be tied together means that Democrats were eyes-wide-open heading into negotiations on the bills, and should have resisted any efforts to pass them together considering it allows Republicans to literally reorder the power structure of central banking authority and the Treasury.

The Democrats who supported these bills represent an interesting cross-section of the party. Some, like Kirsten Gillibrand and Mark Warner, come from states with significant financial services industries. But there’s another pattern: many of these Democrats received significant campaign contributions from crypto companies and individuals. Gillibrand alone received over $200,000 in donations from individuals associated with prominent crypto firms including Coinbase, Ripple, and Andreessen Horowitz.

The passage of these bills represents more than just a policy victory for the crypto industry—it represents a fundamental shift in how Congress views digital assets. Crypto is no longer treated as a speculative bubble or a threat to financial stability, but as a legitimate part of the American financial system deserving of regulatory clarity and protection.

The transformation of American cryptocurrency policy represents one of the most successful lobbying campaigns in recent memory. The scope of this influence operation is unprecedented: crypto corporations spent over $119 million directly influencing federal elections in 2024 alone, making them the dominant corporate political spenders of the cycle.

To understand the magnitude of crypto’s political influence, consider this: nearly half (44%) of all corporate money contributed during the 2024 elections—$274 million total—came from crypto backers. This means crypto companies outspent every other industry, including traditional heavyweights like oil, pharmaceuticals, and defense contractors. Even Koch Industries, long considered the gold standard for corporate political influence, was a distant second place with $25 million in contributions.

Perhaps one of the biggest losses for the country was Senator Sherrod Brown, the former Senate Banking Chair who lost his Ohio re-election campaign to Republican Bernie Moreno, a crypto enthusiast who benefited from more than $40 million in crypto PAC spending.

Kirsten Gillibrand, the junior senator from my home state of New York, is a perfect case study in how this influence system works. As we mentioned, during the 2024 election cycle, Gillibrand received over $200,000 in donations from individuals associated with prominent crypto firms. In a matter of months, Gillibrand went from being a relatively neutral voice on crypto to becoming one of the lead Democratic sponsors of the GENIUS Act, providing crucial bipartisan cover for the legislation.

And it looks like these efforts are just getting warmed up. Fairshake and its affiliated PACs have raised over $140 million for the 2026 midterm elections, with $109 million raised since the 2024 elections ended. This suggests that the industry views its 2025 legislative victories not as an end point but as a foundation for further regulatory capture.

Chapter Six

How the Stablecoin System Would Work

With the regulatory framework now in place and political resistance largely overcome, we can begin to envision how a stablecoin-dominated monetary system would actually function.

Under the new regulatory framework, licensed stablecoin issuers compete for market share based on factors like transparency, reserve quality, redemption reliability, and transaction costs. This creates a Hayekian competition among private currencies, where market forces rather than government fiat determine which monetary systems succeed.

The current market leaders are Circle (USDC) and Tether (USDT), so we’ll focus on them along with the new kid on the block: the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial coin (USD1).

Part of the seigniorage revenue model is the profit earned by issuers through investing the reserves that back their tokens. When users purchase stablecoins, issuers invest the corresponding dollars in short-term Treasury bills or other low-risk assets, keeping the interest income while maintaining sufficient liquidity for redemptions.

This creates substantial revenue opportunities. For reference, the market leader is Tether’s USDT, which generates approximately $122–123 million per week in fees and reserve income, translating to roughly $6.4 billion annually. Circle’s USDC generates about $31 million weekly, or approximately $1.6 billion annually. These figures demonstrate the enormous profit potential in capturing even a fraction of global payment flows.

And now you know what the Trump family is eyeing.

It’s all happening very, very fast. Stablecoins are rapidly integrating with existing payment infrastructures through “on and off ramps” that allow seamless conversion between stablecoins and traditional currency.

Perhaps nowhere are the advantages of stablecoins more apparent than in cross-border payments. Think of our example of international wire transfers that cost an average of 6.18% in fees and can take days to settle. Stablecoin transfers can cost pennies and settle in minutes, regardless of geographic distance or time zones.

There are strong business use cases as well. For example, supply chain payments could automatically trigger when shipments are delivered, or insurance claims could be paid automatically. Businesses can automate treasury management, international suppliers can receive instant payment upon delivery, and complex multi-party agreements can be executed without traditional intermediaries.

As more merchants accept stablecoins, more consumers have incentives to hold them. As more consumers hold stablecoins, more merchants have incentives to accept them. This positive feedback loop could lead to widespread adoption relatively quickly.

But there’s risk with every reward.

A run on a major stablecoin issuer could trigger broader financial instability, particularly if traditional banks hold significant stablecoin reserves or if critical infrastructure depends on stablecoin payments.

The interconnectedness also creates new forms of monetary policy transmission. If a significant portion of economic activity occurs through stablecoins backed by Treasury bills, Federal Reserve interest rate changes could have amplified effects on the broader economy. This is perhaps our first clue as to why Trump is so determined to replace Jerome Powell with Scott Bessent, a crypto believer and Trump ally.

Chapter Seven

What Happens to Central Bank Authority?

The rise of stablecoins represent more than just a technological upgrade to the payment system—it threatens to fundamentally alter the balance of power between public and private institutions in ways that haven’t been seen since the creation of central banking itself. As stablecoins gain adoption and capture an increasing share of monetary transactions, central banks face the prospect of losing control over the levers they’ve used to manage economies for over a century.

Let’s look at the role central banks play in the global economy using our own example. The Federal Reserve’s primary tools include setting interest rates, managing the money supply, serving as a lender of last resort, and regulating commercial banks. These tools work because the central bank sits at the apex of a hierarchical system where all money flows ultimately depend on central bank liquidity.

When the Fed raises interest rates, commercial banks face higher costs for borrowing reserves, which they pass on to their customers through higher loan rates. This reduces demand for credit, slows economic activity, and helps control inflation.

Stablecoins threaten to bypass this entire system. If individuals and businesses hold stablecoins instead of bank deposits, and if transactions settle directly on blockchain networks instead of through the traditional banking system, then commercial banks lose their role as monetary intermediaries—and central banks lose their control over commercial banks.

Consider a scenario where a significant portion of economic activity occurs through stablecoin transactions. Workers receive salaries in stablecoins, businesses pay suppliers with stablecoins, and consumers make purchases using stablecoin-enabled payment systems. In this scenario, traditional bank deposits shrink, interbank settlement volumes decline, and the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decisions have less impact on the real economy.

Perhaps more fundamentally, widespread stablecoin adoption would transfer the profits of money creation from the public sector to private companies.

Tether’s $6.4 billion in annual revenue and Circle’s $1.6 billion represent money that would otherwise flow to the U.S. government. It’s small now, but you can extrapolate the potential over time as adoption increases. This revenue transfer could amount to tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars annually—representing a privatization of what has traditionally been a government revenue source.

If businesses and consumers increasingly operate outside the traditional banking system, changes in bank lending rates become less relevant to economic activity. If significant portions of savings move into stablecoins rather than traditional assets, central bank asset purchases have less impact on prices. If international transactions increasingly use stablecoins rather than national currencies, exchange rate policies become less effective.

While the true “End the Fed” libertarians would celebrate a reduced role of central banks, these banks serve as guardians of financial stability, monitoring systemic risks and providing emergency liquidity during crises.

Consider the potential for a stablecoin run. If confidence in a major stablecoin issuer deteriorates, holders might rush to redeem their tokens for traditional dollars. But if the issuer’s reserves are invested in longer-term assets or if redemption mechanisms become overwhelmed, the stablecoin could “depeg” from the dollar, triggering broader financial instability. This happened once already, in the case of Silicon Valley Bank, which almost destabilized the entire U.S. banking system, necessitating the Fed to stand in to prop it up. More on that one in a bit.

In a pure stablecoin economy, the Federal Reserve has limited tools to address such a crisis. It can’t serve as a lender of last resort to private stablecoin issuers in the same way it can to banks. It can’t guarantee stablecoin redemptions the way it guarantees bank deposits through Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insurance. And it can’t directly inject liquidity into stablecoin networks the way it can into the traditional banking system.

In the extreme case, large stablecoin issuers could become “shadow central banks,” wielding enormous influence over economic activity without the democratic accountability or public interest mandates that constrain traditional central banks. A handful of private companies could control the monetary infrastructure that enables much of economic activity, giving them power over interest rates, credit allocation, and financial stability that rivals or exceeds that of central banks.

Now imagine Don Jr. and Eric Trump running one of these shadow central banks. That’s what’s at stake here.

John Maynard Keynes became the leading figure at Bretton Woods because of his experience navigating two world wars and the Great Depression. Though he was in failing health, his presence at the conference was a signal that someone who cared about the future of the world and was battle tested to the extreme would have his fingerprints on the global monetary order. The innovations that came from Bretton Woods are the stuff of legend. Modern dollar-backed currency and reserves. The International Monetary Fund. The World Bank. He gave order to a world devastated by chaos, defaults and destruction. And it directly contributed to U.S. hegemony and dominance that has persisted until this day. And perhaps only to this day.

In the background, opposition mounted almost immediately among self-described neoliberals led by Friedrich Hayek—and most closely associated today with Milton Friedman—from the Mont Pelerin Society. Formed in 1947, Mont Pelerin was a gathering of economists who came out of the Austrian tradition and were offended by government overreach and any hint of socialism and collectivism. In their minds the great wars and depression were a response to the rise of socialism, so they established a cabal of free market libertarian economists determined to undermine the Keynesian order and set the markets free. Only the private markets could provide a secure and robust economic future in their minds.

Hayek’s work and that of his mentee Milton Friedman would go on to inspire libertarians and free market ideologues from Alan Greenspan to Peter Thiel. For nearly three decades they toiled in obscurity until the stagflation crisis of the 1970s opened the door for new thinking in the western economies. Keynesian responses had failed us, or so they said. New thinking was required. There with the answer packaged and ready to implement was the Mont Pelerin crew, with the U.S. faction having taken up residence at the University of Chicago.

The true crypto visionaries, many of whom remain anonymous believe it or not, are adherents to this pure Hayekian vision of private currencies and complete decentralization and deregulation. The Trump cabal and other crypto pirates looking to replace central banks for their own gain are much closer to the sellout Chicago school economists and their acolytes. Lost in this equation are the pure Keynesians who understood how private markets led to global instability, greed and corruption, and how these factors can lead to devastating wars and depressions. But it may well be the case when the next era is written about that they’ll be speaking in terms of the Keynes era from 1944 to 1971, and the Hayek and Friedman era from 1971 to 2025. And if you can imagine it, the Trump era from 2025 until the whole thing falls apart. Again.

Chapter Eight

Benefits and Risks of the Stablecoin Revolution

The most immediate and tangible benefit of stablecoins is their dramatic improvement in transaction speed and cost, particularly for cross-border payments. Traditional international wire transfers can take days to settle and cost 6–7% in fees, while stablecoin transfers settle in minutes for pennies. This efficiency gain isn’t marginal—it’s transformational for businesses that rely on international commerce and life-changing for migrant workers sending remittances to family members.

Financial inclusion represents perhaps the most compelling social benefit of stablecoins. Traditional banking requires physical infrastructure, regulatory approval, and minimum account balances that exclude billions of people worldwide from the formal financial system. Stablecoins require only a smartphone and internet connection, instantly providing access to dollar-denominated savings and payment systems regardless of geography or economic status.

Stablecoins also promise to eliminate much of the inefficiency that characterizes the current financial system with layers of intermediaries that each extract fees while adding little value.

This disintermediation could free up trillions of dollars in capital currently trapped in settlement delays. It could also result in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs. And that’s not the only risk.

The most immediate risk is depegging—the possibility that a stablecoin could lose its parity with the underlying asset it’s supposed to track. Take our Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) example.

The March 2023 Silicon Valley Bank crisis provided a preview of how quickly depegging can occur and spread. Circle’s USDC temporarily lost its dollar parity when it was revealed that Circle held about 8% of its reserves at the failing bank. The depegging rapidly withdrew $3 billion from SVB, accelerating the bank’s collapse and demonstrating how stablecoin instability can amplify traditional banking crises.

As stablecoins become more deeply integrated into the financial system, such depegging events could trigger broader systemic instability. If businesses rely on stablecoins for payroll, suppliers depend on them for payments, and financial institutions hold them as reserves, a major stablecoin failure could propagate through the economy much like a traditional bank run.

Unlike banks, stablecoin issuers don’t have access to central bank emergency lending or government deposit insurance. If confidence in a major stablecoin deteriorates, there’s no equivalent to the Federal Reserve’s discount window or the FDIC’s deposit guarantee to prevent a catastrophic run.

Stablecoins also create new opportunities for regulatory arbitrage that could undermine financial stability and law enforcement. As much as transparency is theoretically a feature of blockchain technology, because stablecoins can be transferred instantly across borders without traditional banking intermediaries, they also make it easier to evade capital controls, sanctions, and anti-money laundering requirements. Just because something can be seen doesn’t mean it can be caught if no one is looking for it.

It’s likely that much of this activity would happen in smaller and less regulated countries. More to the point, widespread stablecoin adoption could lead to a loss of monetary sovereignty for these same nations. This “stealth dollarization” could happen rapidly in countries with high inflation, currency instability, or limited banking infrastructure. While this might benefit individuals who gain access to stable currency and efficient payments, it could undermine national economic management and reduce governments’ ability to respond to local economic shocks.

Then there is the environmental concern. Many stablecoins operate on blockchain networks that consume significant energy for transaction processing and security. While newer, more efficient blockchain technologies are being developed, the environmental impact of large-scale stablecoin adoption remains a concern, particularly as transaction volumes grow.

Chapter Nine

Trump’s Crypto Cabal: The Network of Influence

The transformation of American cryptocurrency policy cannot be appreciated without dissecting the intricate network of relationships, financial interests, and political influence that surrounds Donald Trump’s return to power.

At the center of this network sits World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture that has become a vehicle for both massive profit and potential conflicts of interest. The company’s USD1 stablecoin launched amid considerable fanfare during what organizers described as a “fireside chat” between Eric Trump and Zach Witkoff, moderated by Chinese crypto mogul Justin Sun.

World Liberty Financial has secured deals worth over $2 billion, including controversial investments from entities with questionable transparency. The most striking example is the $100 million investment from Aqua 1 Foundation, an entity that appears to exist primarily as a website registered on May 28, 2025, with no corporate registration or official filings discoverable in public databases. The company’s original social media accounts were suspended, and blockchain watchers noted that its funding appears to have originated from crypto exchanges recently fined for anti-money laundering violations.

Jacob Silverman of the Nation has done the most extraordinary reporting on this thus far. It’s worth a read to understand just how murky and opaque the Trump financial network truly is, though I doubt anyone will be surprised.

Trump’s stablecoin venture represents a direct path to capturing seigniorage.

If just a handful of countries adopt USD1 for significant portions of their international trade, the Trump family could earn hundreds of millions annually from the interest on reserves backing their stablecoin. As it is, they’re said to have pocketed $57 million on the launch of USD1 alone. If the U.S. government shows preference for USD1 in its own operations or encourages allies to adopt it, Trump could potentially become one of the wealthiest individuals in the world through what amounts to a privatized central banking operation.

The Trump administration’s crypto-friendly appointments represent a textbook case of regulatory capture, where former industry executives and advocates are placed in positions to regulate the very sector they previously promoted. There’s Brian Quintenz who moved through the regulatory revolving door from the CFTC to Andreessen Horowitz, only to potentially arrive again back as head of the CFTC, pending confirmation.

Then there’s Howard Lutnick, former CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald who now serves as Secretary of Commerce. Cantor Fitzgerald acts as a major custodian of Tether’s reserves.

Scott Bessent, formerly George Soros’ chief investment officer, has become a champion for crypto integration as Treasury Secretary. Soros Fund Management has significant investments in the crypto blockchain and exchange infrastructure.

Each appointment represents a position where official government policy directly benefits the appointee’s former or future private sector interests.

Perhaps most concerning are the international financial flows that have been designed to obscure their true origins. The $2 billion deal with an Abu Dhabi government fund, facilitated through World Liberty Financial’s token sales, created a direct financial relationship between the Trump family and a foreign government. When combined with Binance’s behind-the-scenes technical assistance for USD1—provided by a company whose founder was charged with money laundering and is now seeking a presidential pardon—the arrangement raises serious questions about foreign influence and financial transparency.

The network extends far beyond the Trump administration to include a constellation of crypto industry figures who have positioned themselves as power brokers in the new administration. Donald Trump Jr. has become a prominent figure in crypto financing, serving as an investor and partner in American Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency mining company that recently raised $220 million.

Michael Saylor, the corporate Bitcoin evangelist whose MicroStrategy has acquired massive Bitcoin holdings, benefits from strategic reserve policies championed by Commerce Secretary Lutnick. And Count Dracula himself, Peter Thiel, continues to exert behind-the-scenes influence through his investments and connections to pro-Trump Silicon Valley networks.

As for Justin Sun, his $75 million investment in World Liberty Financial the day before Trump’s inauguration was followed by the SEC’s decision to halt fraud proceedings against Sun a month later.

The Trump crypto network creates the ultimate accountability gap—a system where critical policy decisions are made by people with direct financial stakes in the outcomes, where foreign money can influence domestic policy through private business relationships, and where the benefits of public policy changes flow primarily to politically-connected private entities.

Behind it all is the bigger question of whether the system can provide the stability, equity, and democratic accountability that monetary systems require. The last time we had a global financial monetary order in private hands was the 1920s. Can anyone tell the class what happened next? Bueller? Bueller?

Getty. Kennedy. Rockefeller—surnames of titans who grew their empires during the Great Depression. There’s a mythology that develops about great men and their fortunes, but the reality is the Great Depression wiped out nearly everyone’s wealth. There were the lucky few who felt a disturbance in the Force and shorted the market like Kennedy. Others like Getty and Rockefeller who had enough capital to feast on the carcasses of dead and dying competitors.

But for the most part, the Depression spared almost no one. Even the giants of the financial world such as Goldman Sachs nearly came to ruin. The house of Morgan—which essentially financed the great powers in World War One behind the scenes—tried to step in to prop up the market during the Depression, but to no avail.

Here’s the thing about money. Whether it’s flowing up, down or around, it’s flowing. For every dollar that flows through the economy there’s someone taking a cut. Today it’s several cuts going to many. Tomorrow it may be one cut split only a handful of ways.

There are those who think it would be a delicious irony if Trump became one of the handful of pockets that were filled, even if he brought about the next Great Depression. A fitting end to the American experiment. Taken down by our own ignorance and xenophobia, pitiless racism and hypernationalism. We put this guy in once and he nearly killed us all by mismanaging a pandemic before promoting an insurrection on his way out; only to invite him back again.

It would be hard to suggest we didn’t deserve it.

A stablecoin regime could artificially prop up the Treasury for a period of time. A few years, perhaps. Maybe a decade. But a deregulated global market means there’s no guarantee that the U.S. Dollar remains the primary asset peg.

Along the way the Federal Reserve’s economic management tools are effectively neutered as well. Who becomes the lender of last resort to pour liquidity into broken markets when the Fed’s dry powder and influence runs dry? The overnight settlement market went into negative territory twice already this year, prompting the Fed to intervene. It intervened during COVID with the largest infusion of cash and interest rate manipulation since the Global Financial Crisis. It stabilized the markets when the Repo markets collapsed overnight in 2019. It purchased toxic assets from reckless banks during the GFC, lowered interest rates to effectively zero for a decade.

Free market ideologues like to play fast and loose. That’s how fortunes are made. And like a handful of the mythologized and lionized titans who feasted on the weak during the Great Depression, they believe there’s always an angle and a way to win while everyone else loses. They’re okay with zero sum. Winner takes all. Economic Darwinism. Whatever you want to call it.

But like every crash before and every crash in the future, it has always been and will always be the result of hubris and greed.

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We’ve seen this movie before.

To wrap this up neatly, I’ll finish with a quick story that should have been the ultimately cautionary tale.

Wendy Gramm was the head of the CFTC from 1988 to 1993 where she championed deregulation and reforms to reduce oversight into risky trading. Shortly after she left, she joined the board of Enron. While she was at Enron her husband Phil was busy preparing two critical pieces of legislation; one to repeal a significant part of Glass-Steagall of 1933 that separated investment banks from commercial bank deposits, and the Commodity Futures Trading Act that deregulated a risky asset class known as derivatives. This allowed companies like Enron to engage in speculative energy trading despite being an energy provider.

When Congress repealed Glass-Steagall with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 it was done under the cloak of darkness during the holidays and signed into law by Bill Clinton. The purpose of the act was to “modernize” the banking system so we could “compete” internationally in the “free market.”

Within two years Enron collapsed under the weight of the biggest trading scandal in modern history. And in less than a decade, the entire global financial system was brought to its knees. The Federal Reserve and The Treasury stepped in and saved the U.S. economy from another Depression.

Did the Fed hold interest at zero for too long? Sure. Did it save institutions unworthy of such largesse and grace? Absolutely. Did it prioritize banks and large corporations over main street and the consumer? 100%. But did it stave off a global depression? Yes.

In an effort to modernize the financial system to be more competitive, Republicans led the charge to create new financial instruments. They created two separate bills, one to deregulate the industry and one to allow these new speculative assets to be regulated by the more Wall Street friendly CFTC. Very few of those who voted for it understood what they were voting on but financial lobbying interests convinced them it would be good for the country.

Let me know if you can spot the difference, because I’m having trouble.

Only next time, the lender of last resort and person holding the fate of the global economy might be Donald Trump. Or if fate and Donald Trump’s arteries have other plans, it could be Eric.

Stablecoin Resources

• The Coin Republic: Tether Leads Crypto Revenue Chart With $87M Weekly Fees
• Corporate Finance Institute: Tether
• Cointelegraph: Tether made $5.2B in 2024: Here’s how stablecoins make money
• Onchain: How Businesses Generate Revenue With Stablecoins
• Webisoft: How Do Stablecoins Make Money? [The Crypto Finance]
• Binance: How Do Stable Coin Issuers Make Money?
• Gemini: What Is USDC? How Does It Work?
• White Paper: SoK: Stablecoin Designs, Risks, and the Stablecoin LEGO
• White Paper: Stablecoins: Fundamentals, Emerging Issues, and Open Challenges
• White Paper: Hybrid Monetary Ecosystems: Integrating Stablecoins and Fiat in the Future of Currency Systems

Regulation and Legislation Resources

• Federal Reserve: Federal Reserve Board announces the withdrawal of guidance for banks related to their crypto-asset and dollar token activities and related changes to its expectations for these activities 
• Yahoo Finance: Trump signs stablecoin bill into law, capping string of ‘Crypto Week’ victories
• Associated Press: Senate passes crypto regulations, sends to House without addressing Trump’s investments
• Congress: S.394 - GENIUS Act of 2025
• Politico: Crypto industry amasses colossal war chest for elections
• Public Citizen: Big Crypto, Big Spending: Crypto Corporations Spend an Unprecedented $119 Million Influencing Elections
• AInvest:  Senator Gillibrand’s $217,000 Crypto Donations Fuel GENIUS Act Debate

Trump & Crypto Resources

• Bloomberg: Binance Aided Trump Crypto Firm Before Founder CZ Sought Pardon
• Binance Academy: What Is World Liberty Financial USD (USD1)?
• American Bazaar: World Liberty Financial, tied to Trump, grows ETH holdings to $275 million
• BingX: What Is USD1 Stablecoin Launched by the World Liberty Financial (WLFI)?
• MEXC: What is USD1? Complete Guide to World Liberty Financial’s Revolutionary Stablecoin
• Common Dreams: How GOP’s Crypto Bills Would Benefit Trump and His Family
• New York Times: What to Know About the Three Crypto Regulation Bills in Congress
• NPR: A ‘Crypto Week’ win: Congress passes 1st major crypto legislation in the U.S.
• TOKEN2049: A Fireside Chat with Eric Trump and World Liberty Financial

Definitional Resources

• Brookings: What are stablecoins, and how are they regulated?
• The Block: What are the advantages and disadvantages of stablecoins?
• Binance: Stablecoins vs. Fiat Money: Why are they a good option?
• Polkadot: CBDCs vs. Stablecoin: Competing visions for digital currency
• Fireblocks: State of Stablecoins 2025

International Resources

• Atlantic Council: Central bank digital currencies versus stablecoins: Divergent EU and US perspectives
• Reuters: Crypto firm Tether and its founders finalizing move to El Salvador
• BIS: The next-generation monetary and financial system