Former Apple exec has one word response to new regulation

In an interview with TheStreet Roundtable, Ian Rogers, chief experience officer at Ledger, celebrated the Senate’s passage of the GENIUS Act and its promise of clear stablecoin regulation.

“Beginning of July 2024, we were preparing to go to Bitcoin Nashville and launch the Ledger Flex. If I think back to that time, it was almost unthinkable that we could have sane regulation around crypto in the US,” Rogers said. 

He added that crypto was once “persona non grata,” despite offering “somewhat obvious solutions to many problems.” Rogers noted that stablecoins represent “really low hanging fruit” given the billions already in circulation.

Crypto rails transform finance

Rogers highlighted how businesses are shifting from legacy banking rails to crypto rails. 

“Even if you look at my former employer LVMH, who settles transactions in pretty much every currency around the world every single day, that system moves at the speed and the cost of banking rails. Now imagine when that moves at the speed and the cost of crypto rails and it being optimized for the fact that you can easily move a dollar or any fraction thereof or any multiple thereof for less than a penny,” he explained.

He contrasted this with the typical 3 % merchant fee on credit-card transactions, emphasizing his preference for “digital cash settlement.”

Rogers foresees non-crypto companies rebuilding their backends entirely on crypto rails. 

“That technology is here, it’s been here a long time,” he said, and praised regulators for allowing stablecoin use cases to flourish. He acknowledged setbacks like FTX but remained optimistic that “rational thinking and sanity wins out in the end.”

Rogers cautioned that as websites start acting like “Starbucks cards,” holding stablecoin balances for everyday spending, the potential for fraud and theft will skyrocket. 

He urged users to adopt hardware wallets and two‐factor solutions like Ledger to protect “significant value in the form of stored value and stablecoins across many websites on the internet.”