CHOOSE YOUR LONDON Episode 3 'THE INTERN'

It's been interesting and puzzling to witness the problems with accuracy in UK economic statistics over the past few years. (See the links in the next tweet for more.) It seems that the Office for National Statistics, ONS, now struggles to effectively measure basic figures such as employment, trade, and inflation. This resulted in a quite scathing government report published last summer, where Robert Devereux, a former permanent secretary, concluded that "most of the well-publicised problems with core economic statistics are the consequence of ONS’s own performance." There's a lot of discussion about the travails facing the UK these days (including this big piece in The Atlantic a few weeks ago[1]), and the problems with the ONS feel like an unsettling microcosm of diffuse decline in broader institutional competence. Anyhow: at Stripe, we became curious about the UK's published entrepreneurship data. While we observe a boom in many parts of the world, official figures don't show a similar increase in the UK. In the latest Stripe Economics post, we dug into the data, and, as far as we can tell, the official figures are probably misleading. The good and the bad news (mostly good, I think!) is that the UK is almost certainly witnessing an unmeasured boom in entrepreneurship: stripeeconomics.com/p/is-the… UK-specific issues aside, I suspect that this measurement question is illustrative of forthcoming econometric challenges. Keeping the world's macro indicators up-to-date in response to the faster-than-usual changes wrought by AI will be both increasingly difficult and increasingly important in the coming years. [1] theatlantic.com/magazine/202…

We've brought a fifty-year-old book on the history of Scottish banking back into print. For over a century, Scotland ran a stable banking system with no central bank. Banks issued their own notes, redeemable on demand. Competition kept them honest. Banknotes circulated so widely that gold and silver nearly disappeared from circulation, and in a crisis, rival banks would hold each other's notes to keep the whole system standing. We're financial history obsessives, and early Scottish banking is the closest precedent we've found to what stablecoins are today: private money competing in a free market system for people's deposits. Checkland called it banking in its purest form. The whole story is in the book. Scottish Banking: A History, 1695–1973, by SG Checkland, expanded with a new foreword from Steakhouse. On sale now. Find out more at books.steakhouse.financial.

non-USD stablecoins growth curve bending up on @base

The future of DeFi in the UK shouldn't be decided without the people building it. Today, we submit our response to the FCA's perimeter consultation. Backed by 20+ founders, all pushing for rules that can give DeFi a home here. We fight for the progress we need. 🦾🇬🇧

New research with @Visa: "Beyond Dollarization" Everyone tracks USD stablecoin supply at $300B. Almost nobody is tracking what's happening in local currencies. We partnered with Visa to go deeper: → Non-USD stablecoin supply grew 3x (outpacing overall stablecoins supply) → Holder addresses: 40K → 1.2M (30x) → Transfer volume: $600M → $10B/mo (16x) → ~80% is payments and treasury flows, not DeFi → Weekend drops that mirror payroll cycles

Introducing Codex FX. The new standard for moving between fiat and stablecoins. Anything to anything.

Banking as a Service / embedded finance seems like a no-brainer frontier for crypto. Essentially bundling stablecoins, yield, and compliance.

Really excited to share the agenda for Stablecoin Frontiers next week We have a super awesome group of builders and investors joining, register below if you'd like to get involved @chuk_xyz @andy_agant @jackchong_jc @kevinzhangTO @EtherfuseDave @AlexLWitt @rparekh

the stablecoin space exists because early teams moved quickly and proved that digital money not only works, but solves real problems. they took meaningful risks to make that happen, and the ecosystem owes them tremendous credit. that said, many early builders optimized for speed-to-market. robust compliance, controls, and governance had to wait. and as a result, failure examples were inevitable. we’re now seeing the consequences surface in accumulated compliance debt across custody, controls, governance, and risk management. this pattern isn’t new to emerging fintech. we’ve seen it before with Synapse, FTX, BlockFi, and many others… teams that proved demand and scale first, only to discover later that building and maintaining trust is harder than building tech. given our space’s pockmarked past, caution is warranted as the next phase unfolds, especially as banks oscillate on how much power they’re willing to grant stablecoins. the omnipotent presence of demand shouldn’t be mistaken for the market’s maturity. this is where second-mover advantage matters. while early builders created the space, teams building now have the benefit of hindsight. we have to design systems where compliance, durability, and trust aren’t bolt-ons. compliance, which has notoriously been a bottleneck in fintech, can actually be a moat. the challenge is balancing rapid onboarding that delights users with controls that satisfy regulators & balancing taking on well-justified risks, while saying “no” to certain use cases. the enduring value, though, comes from compliance programs built to sustain platforms for decades. some platforms attempted to bypass these constraints in pursuit of faster growth, only to find themselves ultimately throttled by regulatory reality. that history should be instructive for teams building today. we’re still in the early innings. early teams proved what was possible; second movers will determine how far the space can actually go

A wee swally!!🍺👍

Excited to share more details on Stablecoin Frontiers next month in SF We're focusing on those pushing the next leg of stablecoin growth: -Non USD stablecoins -Onchain FX -Agentic payments Huge thank you to @stablecoin for sponsoring 1/ More details on speakers below

"No one is surprised when banks and other financial incumbents argue against measures that might promote innovation. But the argument that stablecoins are a source of instability — and interest-bearing ones especially so — is a bad one. The opposite is quite likely to be true."

New on Fintech Brainfood 🧠 The stablecoin industry is on notice. Compliance is not optional

“He who is tired of London, is tired of life” If you can’t catch a good time in London for Breakpoint, you need to look (at yourself) harder. Honestly. @KASTxyz will guaranteed throw the most epic party. Already hunting for venues. Get set! Full quote: “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” — Samuel Johnson, Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1777)