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The evening was kicked off by a data-rich keynote from Aaron Landeros, co-founder of R2 Labs, who set the stage for our panel by mapping out the current landscape and future opportunities in the stablecoin.

Here’s a summary of his talk.

The “Killer App” is Already Here

While the conversation often jumps to future possibilities, Aaron began with a grounding poll: only about 30% of the expert audience regularly use stablecoins. This shows just how early we are.

But “early” doesn’t mean “small.”

What began as a “little experiment” in 2014 with Tether is now a financial behemoth. Aaron defines stablecoin as “WhatsApp for money”—a borderless, 24/7, digital currency that operates entirely outside traditional banking rails.

The numbers are staggering:

• $300 Billion: The total market cap of stablecoins today, up from just $5 billion in 2020.
• $10 Trillion: The annual settlement volume on stablecoin rails, which has already surpassed Visa.
• Top 2 Buyer: Tether (USDT) is now the second-largest buyer of US treasuries in the world, holding more than entire countries like Germany and Canada.

This is no longer a niche “crypto” tool. It’s a systemically important piece of new financial plumbing.

Not All Digital Dollars Are Created Equal

A central theme of Aaron’s talk was that not all stablecoins are the same. They all face the “Stablecoin Trilemma,” forced to pick two out of three key attributes: Decentralization, Stability, and Capital Efficiency.

This choice creates distinct models:

1. Centralized (USDC, USDT): These prioritize stability and capital efficiency. They are run by single entities, fully collateralized by assets like US treasuries. Aaron contrasted their go-to-market strategies: Tether used a “bottom-up” approach, becoming a lifeline for US dollar access in emerging economies like Argentina and Nigeria. Circle (USDC) took a “top-down,” regulatory-first approach, becoming the choice for institutions. As Aaron put it, it was “Freedom versus the Compliant… and both succeeded.”
2. Decentralized (DAI): This model prioritizes decentralization and stability, but at the cost of capital efficiency. Because it’s backed by volatile crypto assets, it must be over-collateralized (e.g., you must deposit $150 of ETH to mint $100 of DAI).
3. Synthetic (USDe): Newer models, like Ethena’s, use complex, delta-neutral financial strategies to maintain their peg.

The New Whales: Why Amazon Could Dethrone Tether

The real game-changer, Aaron argued, isn’t just which stablecoin wins, but who will issue them next.

With new regulations like the EU’s MiCA providing clarity, the “whales” (major institutions) finally have a green light to enter.

Aaron offered a powerful thought experiment: Amazon.

Forget Amazon accepting crypto. The real strategy, he proposed, is Amazon paying its massive global supply chain with its own stablecoin.

Think about it:

• Amazon sources the majority of its products from Asia-Pacific, where factory owners strongly desire US dollars.
• If Amazon offered to pay them instantly in an “Amazon Stablecoin” rather than through the slow, costly traditional banking system, they would accept.
• If Amazon issued $300 billion of its own stablecoin, it would instantly become the largest issuer in the world. More importantly, it would capture the 4-5% yield from the $300 billion in US treasuries backing it.

The takeaway was stark: “The stablecoin game is just starting… the players that are playing now, maybe in five years, will become irrelevant.”

Why Now? The “Great Alignment” of Three Forces

Why is this explosion happening now? Aaron pointed to a “great alignment” of three major forces for the first time in history.

1. US Geopolitics: There is a clear strategic interest in promoting the digital dominance of the US dollar. Distributing US government debt globally through stablecoins to retail and small businesses is a powerful way to diversify debt holders and maintain global financial influence.
2. Macro-Economics: For the first time, we have a “real yield” of 4-5% from US Treasuries, the safest financial product in the world. This makes holding the underlying assets of a stablecoin highly profitable.
3. Technology & Regulation: The infrastructure is finally mature, and for the first time, technology, economic incentives, and regulation are all pointed in the same direction.

The Future: “Yield-Bearing” Money and the “Zero-Click Internet”

This all leads to the next great evolution: Tokenization.

Aaron put it best: “In a few years, holding a stablecoin that doesn’t give you any kind of yield will feel like having a phone without internet access.”

Why would anyone hold a digital dollar that pays 0% when the underlying asset (a US Treasury) yields 5%? They won’t. The future of stablecoins is inherently yield-bearing.

This is where R2 Labs operates—tokenizing institutional-grade assets to make their yield accessible to everyday users. When you tokenize an asset like a stock or a treasury, it becomes “software”—liquid, composable, and productive 24/7. We’re already seeing this with Robinhood tokenizing stocks on Arbitrum to be used as DeFi collateral.

This new, tokenized plumbing is what will ultimately power the AI revolution. Aaron pointed to Stripe’s collaboration with OpenAI as the blueprint for agents that can “self-drive” a business, autonomously paying subscriptions and taxes.

This is the “Zero-Click Internet,” where AI agents make machine-to-machine micropayments without any human intervention, all running on the stablecoin rails being built today.

The key message from the evening was clear: stablecoins aren’t just a faster way to trade. They are a fundamental rebuilding of our financial plumbing—and the revolution is just getting started.

We then moved on to a panel discussion on the regulatory and risk management aspects of stablecoins in the hands of AI agents. Moderated by Priit Lätt, Partner at TEGOS Legal, the panel includes three speakers:

– Pavel Ruban, CFA, Head of Finance at Ready Player Me

– Kate Voogla, Head of Sales at CryptoSwift

– Kirsti Pent, Partner at TEGOS Legal

The Future of Money: Stablecoins, Regulation, and the Rise of AI Agents

Tradition Meets Innovation

The discussion opened with contrasts between traditional finance and crypto pioneers. Kirsti Pent, a long-time advisor to banks, admitted being the “dinosaur in the room,” while others represented the new wave of fintech founders and crypto operators.

Paul from Ready Player Me—an Estonian startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz — described how his company builds cross-game avatars and how crypto concepts like interoperability and digital assets naturally intersect with gaming economies. Kate from CryptoSwift added a payments-sector view, recalling the painfully slow settlements of early mobile payments and how stablecoins now promise near-instant value transfer.

Why Stablecoins Matter

Despite the hype around blockchain and NFTs, stablecoins appear to be the first crypto innovation with real traction. Panelists noted that:

• Stablecoins now move trillions of dollars monthly and represent $300 billion in circulation.
  
• They enable instant settlements, always-on liquidity, and programmable finance.
  
• For companies paying international contractors or selling subscriptions globally, stablecoins can dramatically cut friction and costs.

However, Paul warned that stablecoins remain tethered to fiat risk: “If the underlying banking system wobbles, so do stablecoins.” The 2023 Silicon Valley Bank collapse illustrated this vulnerability—instant withdrawals could trigger liquidity crises even faster.

Europe’s Regulatory Tightrope

A major theme was the contrast between Europe’s MiCA regulation and the U.S. Genius Act.

• MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets): heavy compliance, mandatory EU establishment, and strict cross-border limits.
  
• Genius Act (U.S.): lighter-touch, innovation-first, allowing foreign equivalence instead of requiring local incorporation.
  

Panelists agreed that Europe risks becoming uncompetitive due to over-regulation and administrative complexity. Still, MiCA’s passporting rights—once a license is granted in one EU state, it applies across the bloc—were seen as a rare advantage.

Estonia’s own history shows both sides of the coin. Once praised for its digital governance, it initially took a hard-line enforcement approach toward crypto before swinging to liberal licensing—creating 2,000 service providers and later, regulatory headaches.

AI and “Agentic Payments”

The conversation then turned to AI in finance, with talk of “AI agents” triggering or managing micropayments autonomously. Companies like Stripe, Coinbase, and Google are already piloting such systems.

Still, the panelists agreed that AI adoption is early, and legal questions around liability remain unsettled. Under the EU’s AI Act, high-risk systems require human oversight, meaning that for now, humans remain accountable for the actions of AI payment agents.

Key Takeaways

• Stablecoins have moved from hype to utility, especially for cross-border payments.
  
• Europe’s MiCA provides legal certainty but may stifle innovation compared to the U.S. approach.
  
• AI-driven payments are emerging, but regulation must clarify accountability before mass adoption.

In sum – the financial world is converging, so traditional and crypto players alike are learning that regulation, technology, and trust must evolve together.

The post The Stablecoin Revolution is Just Beginning appeared first on CryptoSwift.

On 21 October, against the backdrop of Oslo Innovation Week, CryptoSwift, K33 and the Nordic Blockchain Association gathered at the Embassy of Estonia in Oslo to dissect one of the most pressing topics in modern finance: the rise of stablecoins. The event brought together experts from Norway’s central bank, the largest commercial bank DNB, decentralized finance (DeFi) pioneers from Riften Labs, and executives from the crypto space.

The core question was simple, yet profound: Are stablecoins the killer use case for blockchain, and how should we—as societies, banks, and innovators—go about issuing, using, and governing them? The discussion unfolded in two parts: an orientational discussion on the mechanics of issuance and a high-stakes panel debate on who will ultimately control this new form of money.

Part 1: The Fireside Chat — Deconstructing the Issuer

The afternoon kicked off with a fireside chat between Torbjørn Bull Jenssen, CEO of the research-driven digital assets company K33, and moderator Uve Poom, COO of CryptoSwift. The conversation cut revolved around architectural choices behind stablecoins: who should be allowed to create them?

The discussion considered pros and cons of different issuer models. A Central Bank (CB) issuing its own digital currency (a CBDC) offers maximum security but may lack the agility for rapid innovation. Conversely, a consortium of commercial banks might seem like a stable middle ground, but history has shown them to be slow-moving and often bogged down by competing interests.

This led to the single-issuer model, which itself is split. Can a licensed financial institution (FI) innovate, or is this the domain of agile, non-bank fintechs? If so, should the issuer be centralized (like Circle’s USDC) or decentralized (like MakerDAO’s DAI)?

The dimensions for comparison are clear. Fintechs promise high innovation velocity and rapid market penetration, but they introduce significant issuer counterparty risk. If a fintech issuer fails, what happens to the peg? This is where mitigations come in. The panel explored ideas like strict capital requirements, or even “synthetic CBDCs,” where a private entity issues the coin, but all backing assets are held 1:1 in a custodial account at the central bank.

Torbjørn, however, brought the entire high-level discussion back to a single, critical point: “Some players may be positioned better or other worse to issue stablecoins, but a simple question is at the heart of the matter—what value is the user getting out of it?” If a stablecoin doesn’t offer a cheaper, faster, or more accessible service than the current system, the technical model is irrelevant.

Part 2: The Panel — “Tokenized Trust: Who Controls the Future of Money?”

The second block was a full panel titled “Tokenized Trust – Who Controls the Future of Money?” Moderated by Magnus Jones of the Nordic Blockchain Association, the panel featured a perfect cross-section of the new financial landscape:

• Peder Østbye, Director of Analysis at Norges Bank
• Lars Marius Sæverhagen, Business Developer for Tokenized Finance at DNB
• Halvor Bakke-Veiby, Co-founder of Riften Labs

Magnus Jones set the stage by noting the growing interest from major banks, referencing the recent project by a consortium of 10 global giants, including UBS, Citi, and Goldman Sachs.

The Banks’ Dilemma: When do we get on the bandwagon?

Lars Marius Sæverhagen from DNB provided a candid look inside the banking world, echoing Torbjørn’s skepticism about consortiums. He noted that while stables promise 24/7/365 settlement, banks are traditionally more concerned with profit and risk management than just speed. He also shared key takeaways from the recent Sibos financial conference in Frankfurt, where the hot topic was “tokenized bank deposits” versus stablecoins—the former being a far more comfortable, bank-controlled evolution.

The MiCA Gauntlet: Innovation vs. Regulation

The conversation inevitably turned to the EU’s landmark Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation. Peder Østbye of Norges Bank explained the central bank’s position: MiCA provides a much-needed regulatory framework, but their primary focus remains systemic risk. He highlighted the complexity of regulating entities like Circle, which issues its stablecoin across multiple jurisdictions, and that yield-bearing stablecoins issued by private companies can increase systemic risk as consumers will flock to private issuers who promise a return, but may well go under.

Halvor Bakke-Veiby went on to explain how their DeFi project, the decentralized stablecoin Moria by Riften Labs, had to exit the EU precisely because its innovative model isn’t covered by MiCA. This sparked the central debate of the night: Is MiCA killing innovation?

The panel largely agreed that regulation is a double-edged sword. It brings legitimacy and security (which DNB and Norges Bank require) but can stifle the very innovation that makes DeFi compelling. This was highlighted by MiCA’s restriction on paying yield for stablecoins, a stark contrast to the US.

Geopolitics and the Future of Money

The panel then zoomed out to the geopolitical landscape. Today, 99% of stablecoin value is pegged to the US dollar. How do issuers like Tether make $13 billion in profit? By holding massive amounts of US T-bills. This creates an enormous, non-bank demand for US government debt.

Will MiCA help the Euro stablecoin market catch up? The panel was skeptical. The dollar’s dominance is a powerful network effect. In the end, the question “Who controls the future of money?” had no single answer.

The consensus was a future of parallel systems. One, a government-controlled, regulated, and bank-driven system (tokenized deposits, synthetic CBDCs) offering safety and legitimacy. The other, a permissionless, high-risk, high-reward DeFi ecosystem growing larger and more innovative at the edges.

In sum: the stablecoin revolution is not a distant concept. From shipping companies paying crews in USDC to projects in Africa using USDT for solar-powered charging stations, the “digital and physical infrastructure” is already melting together. Financial history is in the making.

The post Stablecoins on the Rise: Who Will Control the Future of Money? appeared first on CryptoSwift.

To get a clearer picture of the current landscape, I had a chat with Benjamin Zemmour (BZ), Head of Sales at Scorechain – a leader in blockchain analytics – to discuss the key challenges and future of Know-Your-Transfer (KYT) compliance.

Our conversation highlighted three critical areas: the evergreen data race, the unique challenges facing traditional finance, and the prospect of stablecoins.

The Core Challenge: A Never-Ending Race for Data

UP: “Crypto is evolving fast in terms of technology, regulations and market entrants. How do blockchain analytics providers keep up with all the new layers and players?“

BZ: “The fundamental challenges here are data and interoperability. For blockchain analytics providers, the work is never done.”

Benjamin went on to explain the primary hurdles:

• Comprehensive Coverage: The crypto ecosystem is in flux. This requires constant technological and data integration to cover new blockchains, Layer-2 solutions, and different EVMs.
• Accurate Screening: The real art is not just finding and labeling new wallets but doing so with high accuracy to avoid false positives, which can otherwise disrupt business and harm the customer experience.
• Evolving Assets: Compliance is no longer just about BTC or ETH. Analytics must now effectively track cross-chain payments and non-currency assets like NFTs and Real-World Assets (RWAs) to provide a complete risk picture.

Bridging the Gap: Bringing Traditional Finance into the Fold

While crypto-native firms are familiar with these challenges, traditional financial institutions (TradFi) are navigating a much steeper learning curve. Benjamin noted that their needs go far beyond a simple risk report.

“Compliance officers at banks need a lot of support,” he shared. “Their exposure to the crypto space is very limited… we have to start with the basics.”

This educational gap creates two significant problems:

1. Policy from Scratch: Many TradFi institutions lack established policies for crypto risk assessment. They are building their compliance frameworks from the ground up and require significant guidance.
2. The Grey Area of Risk: There is no universal consensus on risk tolerance. Benjamin posed a critical question: “What if the wallet is generally clean, but there are a couple of darkweb transfers? Does that merit blocking the customer’s account?” Regulators across different jurisdictions have varying perspectives, creating a pressing need for industry-wide standards and clear guidelines.

Stablecoins: The Catalyst for Adoption and Compliance

So, where do stablecoins fit into this picture?

From a technical standpoint, Benjamin explained that analyzing a stablecoin transaction is “fundamentally the same thing” as analyzing any other cryptocurrency. The same principles apply.

However, from a strategic perspective, stablecoins are a powerful catalyst driving crypto adoption within TradFi. As banks and large fintechs begin to service digital currency payments to meet client demand, they are compelled to adopt the necessary compliance infrastructure.

This is where the compliance loop closes. Effective transaction monitoring must now include thresholds and rules for all types of digital currencies, including stablecoins. Financial institutions are quickly realizing that a robust compliance framework requires a two-pronged approach: best-in-class blockchain analytics, like those from Scorechain, to understand the history of funds, and a seamless Travel Rule solution, like ours at CryptoSwift, to ensure transactions that are both compliant and fast.

The Path Forward

Benjamin emphasized that a holistic and adaptive approach is the way forward in crypto transactions. The challenges—from data coverage to policy creation—are significant, but they are not insurmountable.

As the digital asset landscape matures, the collaboration between specialized service providers will be the key to building a safer, more transparent, and more accessible financial future for everyone.

The post Closing the Loop on Crypto KYT: Insights from Our Chat with Scorechain appeared first on CryptoSwift.

Uve Poom brings more than a decade of experience in fintech, having built products in cash management and supply chain finance. He also ran Tenity Tallinn, a hub of the Zurich-based VC fund, where he advised fintechs such as CryptoSwift. This mix of product and investment experience will help the company strengthen its market position and scale operations.

“Building transaction infrastructure for digital currencies is a massive challenge and will underpin how economic agents – both human and machine – will be transacting in the future,” said Uve Poom.

“He has a bias to action and a clear view of what works in fintech,” said Indrek Ulst, founder of CryptoSwift. “Adding Uve means we can move faster in building real solutions that help crypto companies manage compliance.”

CryptoSwift’s founders are no strangers to technology’s evolution. Uve built his first website on zone.ee in 1999, while Indrek started moonlighting as a web developer at the tender age of 14, hosting on hot.ee. While the guys consider the 1990s as the peak of internet culture, they also firmly believe that the payments stack from this era should be brought into the new millennium.

Before founding CryptoSwift and taking it from zero to revenue, Indrek Ulst served as CTO of Mooncascade, a leading software consultancy that has worked with fintechs and banks such as Wise and Swedbank. His technical leadership and product vision have been central to CryptoSwift’s early success.

About CryptoSwift

CryptoSwift provides secure infrastructure for crypto Travel Rule compliance across the VASP ecosystem. Built for global interoperability, CryptoSwift’s messaging network helps exchanges, custodians, and wallets meet regulatory requirements with efficiency and data privacy.

For compliance providers such as blockchain analytics platforms, KYC/KYT solutions, and crypto AML services, CryptoSwift offers a powerful Partner API. It enables easy integration of fully compliant Travel Rule messaging into existing solutions.

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