The SWIFT-busters are gathering

plus, GDP, job openings, Russian crypto and more

“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.” – Seneca ||

Hi everyone! I hope the week is treating you well so far. Feeling slightly wistful today – April is my favourite month, and this one felt particularly brief.

My neighbourhood still has no internet, and so today’s newsletter was put together using a spotty mobile hotspot which has been challenging.

Production note: This newsletter will skip publication on Friday as it’s a public holiday here. I know, this is a choppy time of year in terms of publishing – public holidays this week, I’m travelling part of next week, another public holiday the week after that. So there will be skipped days, I’ll flag them in advance, and you’ve probably noticed that the emails have been longer than usual anyways recently, so I figure it averages out. 😁

IN THIS NEWSLETTER:

• The SWIFT-busters are gathering

• Macro-Crypto Bits: GDP, job openings, Russian crypto

If you’re not a premium subscriber, I hope you’ll consider becoming one! You get ~daily commentary on markets, tokenization, regulation and other signs that crypto IS impacting the macro landscape. As well as relevant links and music recommendations ‘cos why not.

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

The SWIFT-busters are gathering

Last week, Circle – issuer of the second-largest stablecoin USDC – unveiled a payments platform to facilitate global payments by coordinating their execution and offering related services such as wallets, smart contracts, billing, settlement and more.

If this sounds familiar, well, just yesterday I wrote about Stripe’s move to do something similar: further broaden payment services for its over 1 million business clients, by integrating its own stablecoin into the user interface.

There are similarities, but also huge differences between the two approaches. Let’s look at those, and also at what the moves say about the evolution of the stablecoin market.