Stablecoins are no longer a thought experiment—they’re becoming production infrastructure. In this episode of Bitcoin, Fiat & Rock and Roll, we sit down with Max von Wallenberg, a builder who’s seen markets from every angle: trading floors at Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, leadership at Börse Stuttgart Digital Exchange, and now stablecoin plumbing at scale at MoonPay (after MoonPay acquired his company IRON).

Max explains what “running stablecoins” really means once you move beyond headlines: connecting on-chain money to the messy world of bank accounts, compliance, and regional payment rails. We dig into why UX still matters even in infrastructure, how developer experience becomes a moat, and why DeFi-native teams have an edge—because today’s rails were battle-tested in trading long before they became mainstream payments tech.

You’ll hear how IRON compresses what used to take months of integrations with multiple banks and PSPs into a single API: virtual IBANs/accounts that auto-convert fiat into stablecoins, plus global payouts into dozens of currencies. Max shares lessons from integrating into MoonPay’s licensing stack (including MiCA) and why regulation is increasingly “table stakes” while operations and distribution decide winners. He also weighs in on Stripe/Tempo, why new “payment chains” are mainly go-to-market plays, and what’s still unsettled around stablecoin yields and uneven enforcement across jurisdictions.

We debate incentives vs. liquidity, the rise of custom-issued stablecoins, and whether branded tokens will stick. Finally, Max looks ahead to a world where we stop saying “stablecoins” and simply call it money—because the blockchain layer fades into the background.

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