Cryptocurrency stocks in the US market

Recently, Circle's IPO and the subsequent surge not only attracted many traditional finance investors to pay attention to stocks of companies related to the crypto ecosystem, but also led many crypto ecosystem investors to focus on such companies in the U.S. stock market.

Among them, Circle and Coinbase have garnered the most attention.

Although both are crypto companies, their businesses and points of focus are quite different.

For Circle, what everyone values is its stablecoin issuance business and the revenue generated from this business.

I saw a piece of data online stating that using stablecoins for payments and settlements can save 85% in fees compared to traditional Visa and Mastercard.

In fact, the use of stablecoins in traditional financial institutions has been around for a long time. In my impression, JP Morgan attempted to use its own defined "stablecoin" for settlements within its internal network several years ago, utilizing Ethereum technology. According to reports at the time, this settlement system was highly efficient.

However, although that settlement system also used Ethereum technology, it was a private chain, fundamentally different from the public blockchains that are being discussed today. Additionally, their "stablecoin" was not a true token but more like a bookkeeping symbol.

Since institutions like JP Morgan experimented so early and recognized its efficiency, why have they almost never tried to promote the development of stablecoins over the years, nor have they participated in early financing of companies like Circle? Instead, asset management companies like BlackRock are vigorously promoting and negotiating with the SEC?

The potential "benefits" brought by stablecoin payments have led to a sharp rise in Circle's stock, while Visa and Mastercard have seen significant declines.

It seems that many investors believe the latter could be disrupted by the former.

However, in reality, Circle's main business is currently just stablecoin issuance and does not involve much in stablecoin payment services, while Visa and Mastercard's main business is payments and does not involve currency issuance.

I believe that the direct conflict with Visa/Mastercard's payment business is not Circle, but Coinbase. Because Coinbase has launched its payment application and is actively working with offline and online companies to facilitate stablecoin payment integration.

Looking at it from a longer-term perspective, I believe stablecoin payments only build payment channels for future application scenarios, but what truly opens up the imagination is not the payment channels but the business scenarios and business models that can utilize these channels.

So what are the business scenarios and business models that can utilize this channel?

It is payment based on AI Agents.

In the future, even if humans use stablecoin payments, the possible scenario may only involve humans triggering specific demands, while the realization, execution, and payment of those demands are still completed by AI Agents.

AI Agents are the true users of stablecoin payments. And this is precisely a direction that Coinbase is developing.

Of course, most of the above ideas are still largely in the imagination stage. How far they will be realized in the future and what actual effects can be achieved, I think we will have to wait for the next Coinbase quarterly report, which is the one in August this year.

I hope to see Coinbase disclose specific profit situations based on stablecoin payments in that quarterly report, so that we can truly see its actual effects and returns.

From this perspective, there is a significant benefit to focusing on crypto companies listed in the U.S. stock market:

We can see the real revenue generated by the applications of the crypto ecosystem from their financial reports—this is something that the vast majority of current crypto companies/projects severely lack.

The revenue situation of many crypto companies/projects is basically a black box for investors, completely opaque, so in the end, they can only rely on storytelling and making grand promises to attract investors and support their market value.

In the future, when crypto companies listed in the U.S. stock market unveil their real financial reports and lift this mysterious veil, it is likely that many projects in this ecosystem that can only rely on storytelling without real revenue will be eliminated in bulk.