Written edition
21 Banks Build a Rival to Circle's Dollar Coin
Today's thread is consolidation of power: banks, carriers, and robot makers are all moving to own infrastructure rather than rent it, while frontier AI keeps proving it can do real work, not just demos.
Goldman and Citi lead 21 banks into stablecoin market
Circle's USDC has become the dominant regulated dollar token used for fast, round-the-clock payments on blockchain networks. Now 21 major banks, led by Goldman Sachs and Citi, are building their own joint version so that money moving digitally stays inside the traditional banking system instead of flowing onto Circle's network. That matters because stablecoins have quietly become serious payments infrastructure, handling billions in transfers daily, and banks have watched a nonbank fintech capture that business. If the consortium succeeds, Circle's partners become its biggest competitors, and the real battle shifts from who issues the token to who controls the pipes merchants and institutions actually use to move money. It's a preview of how incumbents respond once upstart infrastructure gets too important to ignore.
