The Coming Layer of Money Everyone’s trying to issue the next big stablecoin. But that’s the wrong race. The real opportunity is building the layer that unites them all. A future with 1,000 stablecoins won’t be chaotic - it’ll mirror what traditional finance already solved decades ago: clearing between private monies. We already live in that world. They’re called bank deposits. A dollar at Chase and a dollar at Wells Fargo are not the same liability. Each carries its own balance sheet risk. And yet, users treat them as identical because the system abstracts the issuer away. Clearing networks like ACH, Fedwire, Visa, and Mastercard reconcile these private monies behind the scenes. They create the illusion of one unified dollar. That unity doesn’t come from regulation. It comes from infrastructure from redemption, settlement, and spendability that work everywhere. Stablecoins will evolve the same way. Regulation like the GENIUS Act defines reserves and redemption rules, but regulation alone doesn’t make assets fungible. It’s the clearing rails that turn many private monies into one experience. We’re seeing the first stages of that shift: – intra-issuer interoperability (m0, Paxos, Anchorage) – cross-issuer clearing protocols (Ubyx and others) Over time, stablecoins will stop competing on brand and start competing on interoperability on how easily they integrate into the global value layer. When you can send, spend, and store value without knowing (or caring) whether it’s USDC, PYUSD, or something else, the mental model collapses into one truth: It’s just money. The issuer fades away.