<\/p>\n
Explore more conversations like this\u00a0<\/em>From the Block<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Stablecoins have long promised a cleaner, faster financial system. What they have lacked is a convincing bridge to the world people and businesses already use.<\/p>\n In the latest episode of the \u201cFrom the Block\u201d podcast with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster<\/a> and Ryan Rugg<\/a>, the global head of digital assets for\u00a0Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions<\/a>, sat down with Farooq\u00a0Malik<\/a>, CEO and co-founder of Rain<\/a>, to unpack why the future of digital money is being argued not in ideological terms, but in operational ones.<\/p>\n Who can make value move faster, more safely, and with less friction? Who can do it across weekends, across borders, and across regulatory regimes? And who can make all that complexity invisible to the end user?<\/p>\n As Webster framed it at the outset, Rain is trying to \u201cturn stablecoins from something you\u2019d hold into something you can spend anywhere,\u201d a deceptively simple proposition that helps explain why investors have poured hundreds of millions into the company.<\/p>\n Advertisement: Scroll to Continue<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe biggest market in the world is actually money,\u201d Malik said. \u201cIt\u2019s not an industry vertical, it\u2019s not a segment, it\u2019s just money.\u201d<\/p>\n For him and for Rain, stablecoins and tokenized money are not niche financial instruments searching for use cases; they represent \u201ca wholesale upgrading of the global financial system.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re still in the very, very early innings,\u201d he added. \u201cI don\u2019t even think the first pitch has been thrown here.\u201d<\/p>\n Rain\u2019s pitch is that the real opportunity within the stablecoin space is not merely to create another digital asset product, but to build the interoperability layer between tokenized money and the incumbent rails of commerce.<\/p>\n That framing helps explain why the startup has attracted so much capital in such a short period. But the conversation also made clear that the bet investors are making is on infrastructure that can make multiple forms of digital money usable within the same commercial environment. Malik repeatedly resisted the idea that the future will be defined by one winner.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s an either-or,\u201d he said of digital assets like stablecoins and tokenized deposits. \u201cI think it\u2019s an and.\u201d<\/p>\n That view aligns with Citi\u2019s approach. Rugg, whose team is building tokenized deposit products for multinational clients, described a similar design philosophy where clients want better money movement outcomes, not the technical complexity of wallets, keys, reconciliation burdens, or bespoke compliance workflows.<\/p>\n \u201cThey just actually want the utility,\u201d she said, specifically \u201cthe movement 24\/7, 365, but not actually to manage the technology themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Both companies converge on the premise that the real breakthrough is not digital assets themselves, but frictionless money movement embedded in familiar systems.<\/p>\n Rain, Malik said, has built its infrastructure to work across \u201cstablecoins,\u201d \u201ctokenized deposits,\u201d \u201cpublic chains,\u201d and \u201cprivate chains,\u201d precisely because regulatory and market outcomes remain unsettled.<\/p>\n Still, the two executives were not making exactly the same case. Malik\u2019s emphasis was on how tokenized money can restore some of the directness of cash while preserving the programmability and speed of modern networks.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think that in order to have utility for money, you have to be able to use it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Consumers, he argued, do not care about back-end mechanics, only that payments are cheaper, faster and more flexible.<\/p>\n Rugg\u2019s perspective was more institutional. She emphasized controls, simplicity and regulatory continuity.<\/p>\n \u201cInteroperability is key in this market,\u201d Rugg said, paired with \u201cthe controls,\u201d \u201cthe safety and soundness,\u201d and frameworks that forward-thinking clients already trust.<\/p>\n She described a bank strategy built around optionality, where clients can use tokenized deposits, stablecoins or both, so long as the experience is seamless and properly governed.<\/p>\n Discussing regulation, Webster posed a central question: If the user experience converges across stablecoins and tokenized deposits, what advantage remains for stablecoins given regulatory uncertainty?<\/p>\n Rugg\u2019s answer was pragmatic. Stablecoins are useful, she said, if their complexity is hidden. She described earlier efforts to pay suppliers in USDC, which required navigating legal and compliance hurdles. The goal now is to \u201cobfuscate that complexity,\u201d so transactions feel like \u201ccash for cash\u201d rather than crypto workflows, she said.<\/p>\n After all, for large corporates managing operational risk, that abstraction may matter as much as speed.<\/p>\n Malik, by contrast, warned against prematurely forcing different instruments into the same regulatory framework. He was careful to stress that his comments were not an argument for light-touch oversight, and underscored that Rain complies with know-your-customer and reporting requirements; but argued that use cases differ and should not be flattened too quickly.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes letting the clock run is actually the thoughtful thing to do,\u201d Malik said, pointing to the early internet.<\/p>\n Webster, in response, noted stablecoins\u2019 ongoing association with illicit finance risks and the difficulty of assigning liability.<\/p>\n For her part, Rugg underscored that consistent controls are foundational, especially as new rails emerge.<\/p>\n \u201cSame activity, same risk, same regulation,\u201d she said, noting that digital assets should not aim to remake the regulatory perimeter, but that they should modernize money movement within it.<\/p>\n For all the sector\u2019s noise about disruption and replacement, a more durable approach may be one centered on building connective tissue.<\/p>\n Webster worked to pull the conversation back to adoption, prodding both executives to translate technical architecture into commercial reality.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is the structural advantage of stablecoins?\u201d she asked, noting separately that while federal clarity may arrive in the U.S., state-by-state fragmentation could still create major friction.<\/p>\n Malik\u2019s response was that Rain\u2019s real-world volume is already showing that stablecoin-based access to dollars is becoming meaningful not only for crypto-native users, but for global users trying to transact with the U.S. economy.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re the first company ever to settle a payment transaction on a holiday with Visa,\u201d\u00a0he said, adding that looking at Rain\u2019s own transaction data can help suggest where tokenized money may already be outperforming legacy systems.<\/p>\n The built-in seven-day settlement capability of digital assets, he added, can have an immediate balance-sheet effect. Whereas traditional rails may require several dollars of working capital for each dollar of volume because of settlement timing and weekend risk, Rain\u2019s stablecoin offerings can operate with dramatically less. The result is not just technical novelty, but potentially better unit economics for payment and credit programs.<\/p>\n And if infrastructure becomes \u201ccheaper and more flexible,\u201d Malik said, institutions may be better positioned to serve customers previously considered \u201ctoo expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n By the end of the discussion, the most revealing issue was ultimately not whether stablecoins will survive, but what kind of market structure could emerge around them.<\/p>\n Malik portrayed Rain as a neutral interoperability layer, \u201ca money business\u201d rather than \u201ca stablecoin company.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all about interoperability and how we provide that in a seamless way for our clients,\u201d Rugg said.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Explore more conversations like this\u00a0From the Block.\u00a0 Stablecoins have long promised a cleaner, faster financial system. What they have lacked is a convincing bridge to the world people and businesses already use. In the latest episode of the \u201cFrom the Block\u201d podcast with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster and Ryan Rugg, the global head of digital […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424695,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[235,203,210,234,231,232,237,238,236,233],"class_list":["post-424694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blockchain","tag-bitcoin","tag-crypto-currency","tag-elon-musk","tag-ethereum","tag-hyperledger","tag-ibm","tag-mining","tag-nodes","tag-spacex","tag-tesla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":424696,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424694\/revisions\/424696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Can Stablecoins Upgrade Global Finance Without Users Noticing?<\/h2>\n
Stablecoin Utility and Blockchain\u2019s Regulatory Divide<\/h2>\n
Where Stablecoins Get Compelling<\/h2>\n