USDC (USDC)

Circle just lost a fifth of its value in a single day, and the blow came from its own inner circle. Its stock fell 17 percent after a new stablecoin launched, which is normal.

What is not normal is who built it…. the asset manager that runs roughly 80 percent of Circle's reserves, the exchange that co-founded USDC and is paid nearly a billion a year to distribute it, and the bank that holds the money. BlackRock, Coinbase, and BNY Mellon all backed a rival to the coin they help operate. The story is not really about a competitor.

Circle makes money one way, and it explains the whole reaction. $USDC is a digital dollar.

For every one in circulation, Circle holds a real dollar in cash and short-term Treasuries, roughly 74 billion dollars of reserves, and the interest those reserves earn is almost the entire business. About 80 percent of that pile sits in one fund, the Circle Reserve Fund, managed by BlackRock and custodied by BNY Mellon.

To get USDC into the world, Circle pays distributors. In one recent

We’ve had lots of questions from our investor community looking for thoughts on OUSD, and so I thought I’d share my direct views here for anyone.

Stablecoin networks are platform and network effect businesses that are established over a long period of time, tend towards winner‑take‑most market structures, and resemble other internet platform utility markets. There are several layers that drive this.

First, stablecoin networks effectively act as public protocols and software layers on the internet and their network strength is a matter of the number and range of applications and services that integrate to the network. Every time a developer or service provider integrates to the network, it brings more network effects. This attracts more developers and adds more utility and more network effects. This then drives demand for the digital currency itself, which then reinforces these network effects through liquidity network effects.

We have realized this at a massive scale with the USDC network today — thous

We’ve had lots of questions from our investor community looking for thoughts on OUSD, and so I thought I’d share my direct views here for anyone.

Stablecoin networks are platform and network effect businesses that are established over a long period of time, tend towards winner‑take‑most market structures, and resemble other internet platform utility markets. There are several layers that drive this.

First, stablecoin networks effectively act as public protocols and software layers on the internet and their network strength is a matter of the number and range of applications and services that integrate to the network. Every time a developer or service provider integrates to the network, it brings more network effects. This attracts more developers and adds more utility and more network effects. This then drives demand for the digital currency itself, which then reinforces these network effects through liquidity network effects.

We have realized this at a massive scale with the USDC network today — thous