Gordon Liao, Head of Research at Circle, discusses the explosive growth of USDC to a $50 billion market cap. Gordon also explains how stablecoins are revolutionizing cross-border payments, the regulatory landscape shaping crypto, Circle's strategic IPO timing, and why blockchain-based payment rails will disrupt tradfi.

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Notes:

• USDC reaches $50B market cap

• Cross-border payments cost 6-7% traditionally

• Stablecoins settle transactions in seconds

• PayPal launched PYUSD competitor

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:40 Who is Gordon?

02:21 Responsibilities at Circle

05:27 What's unique about DeFi?

11:50 Why is fractional reserve bad?

12:40 Separating lending & payments

13:23 AMM functions

15:20 xy=k (inverse variation)

18:06 Circles's mission statement?

21:16 Arc: An L1 Blockchain for Stablecoin Finance

23:15 Proof of Authority

24:32 Ellipsis Labs Ad

25:19 Staking in dollars?

27:48 Courts & laws as slashing mechanism

28:55 Permissionlessness

32:06 Stablecoin competition

34:24 Smaller banks

36:34 Small bank creating stablecoins?

38:19 Will $1 equal $1?

41:29 Arc's value add

45:11 Arc timeline

45:29 Initial use cases

48:23 Liquidity fragmentation

50:35 Managing Circle's multi-chain operations

53:18 Market volatility

55:52 circuit breakers for volatility

57:42 Auto-deleveraging

58:29 Controlling a decentralized marketplace

59:46 Hedge funds & perps

1:02:29 Will TradFi even participate in these markets?

1:04:46 Degens gonna degen

The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs. Backed by Paradigm, Electric Capital and Haun Ventures. The founders, Eugene and Jerry, have experienced Citadel Jane Street in the Solana Core team since launching their order book DEX, Phoenix. They’ve done over $80 billion in trading volume by making onchain order books competitive with centralized exchanges. 

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