Who will say sorry to blockchain?

After the U.S. Congress passed the GENIUS Act, President Trump signed it into law on the afternoon of July 18, 2025, local time.

The United States passes many laws every year, but this stablecoin legislation will definitely be regarded as one of the most important milestones in modern monetary history, comparable to the Bretton Woods Conference and the Nixon Shock.

So far, the discussion of the U.S. dollar stablecoin in the Chinese community has mainly focused on the innovation opportunities and wealth dividends it brings, and has paid far less attention to the challenges it brings. Even fewer people are willing to clearly point out that China has fallen behind seriously in this field and is in a very passive situation.

In fact, it is not just China. Every non-dollar economy is now facing severe challenges.

Due to the technical penetration of blockchain, the nearly 100% dominance of the US dollar stablecoin, and the sudden change of the US face in the stablecoin legislation and the preemptive offensive, for almost all countries outside the United States, a battle to defend monetary sovereignty is inevitable. Some countries in Latin America and Africa, whether actively or passively, have opened their doors, and the US dollar stablecoin has begun to enter and is sinking into the daily economic activities of the people. In Brazil and Argentina, US dollar stablecoin payments have penetrated into life and are extremely common. In Nigeria, there are reports that up to one-third of economic activities are paid by USDT. At this stage, these countries have no ability to regulate this part of economic activities, let alone levy taxes. This means that this part of their economic activities has been separated from their own control at the management and financial level and has been incorporated into the broad US dollar economy.

Most countries cannot sit idly by and watch this digital economic colonization spread, but what should they do? Close the door and do something else, or simply guard against it and ban stablecoins? Many countries have done so in the past few years. It turns out that this approach is not only difficult to work, but also has a more serious potential problem, which is to fall behind in the long-term competition in finance, the Internet, AI and other technological fields. In a sense, the challenges faced by many countries today are the direct consequences of past negative attitudes.

Simple copy and paste is also unlikely to work. Recently, a large number of financial institutions and companies in many countries have announced ambitious plans to issue stablecoins. But with all due respect, the idea that getting a stablecoin issuance license, holding a grand press conference, and then riding the rocket of the stablecoin economy to soar into the sky, or even winning a place for the national currency in the on-chain economy, is too naive. Issuing a stablecoin is simple, but the question is how do you distribute it, overflow your own ecosystem, and convince tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of users to throw away their US dollar stablecoins and use it? How can you attract thousands of innovators to develop wallets, custody, payment, exchange, lending and other applications around your stablecoin? How can you make e-commerce, games, live broadcasts, social networking and other mainstream Internet applications adopt your stablecoin? If competing with the US dollar in the traditional financial field is already extremely difficult, then competing with the US dollar in the field of stablecoins is at least ten times more difficult. To make even a little progress, you must pay an unimaginable huge cost and long-term effort, and maintain extremely sober judgment.

What to do?

Before discussing countermeasures, I'm afraid we should first ask a question: How did things get to this point?

Blockchain is not a new technology that suddenly emerged, and the US dollar stablecoin did not achieve $260 billion and 99% market share overnight. The stablecoin revolution is not a surprise attack, let alone a sneak attack, but a pre-announced major advance. In the past decade, countless experts in the blockchain field have repeatedly reminded that blockchain and digital currency technology have the advantage of dimensionality reduction against the traditional financial system. It is a strategic technology that requires advance planning, early layout, and preemptive opportunities. If we do not actively respond, we will be in a very passive situation in the future. However, the regulatory authorities and industries in so many countries have turned a deaf ear to this and insisted on dragging things to the current passive situation. In contrast, why are all parties so sensitive and eager to catch up with the progress of AI technology, which is equally disruptive and risky? Why can mainstream public opinion be so enthusiastic and optimistic? If blockchain and stablecoins can be treated half as positively as AI, then the situation in the field of stablecoins today will never be that the US dollar dominates the world and other currencies can be ignored. If there are two or three non-US dollar stablecoins that can compete with the US dollar today, then the competition around stablecoins in the next few years will definitely have more variables and excitement.

What a pity! What a pity!

What went wrong?

Did it not attract attention in time? No. Since 2014, the research and discussion on blockchain and digital assets in China has experienced many ups and downs. Whether it is the forward-looking exploration of academia, the technical experiments of the industry, or even the phased research of regulators, the relevant voices and efforts have never stopped. Various think tanks, research institutes, and university laboratories have launched in-depth analysis reports, and the financial industry has also organized many closed-door meetings and sandbox exercises to a certain extent. It can be said that at least at the knowledge level, we are not unprepared, and even the depth and foresight of some views are leading internationally.

Is the reason not clear? No. When Facebook announced the Libra stablecoin plan in 2019, the discussion on blockchain and stablecoins in the industry was already very in-depth. Now if someone goes back and looks at the series of reports compiled by some leading research institutions at that time, such as the Digital Asset Research Institute, it should be said that all the problems that can be seen and thought of today have been seen and thought of at that time. Even the discussion of many issues at that time was much more comprehensive and profound than those stablecoin experts who were trained in three months in short videos today.

Is the expression unprofessional? Not really. Many professionals in the financial industry have been speaking out very early. For example, Mr. Xiao Feng, a doctor of finance, has been discussing the technical superiority of blockchain in very professional language since 2016, especially the technical characteristics of blockchain distributed ledger payment, clearing and settlement in one go. He clearly pointed out that this point alone will bring a hundred times the efficiency and cost advantage, and ultimately lead to an upgrade of financial infrastructure. The general trend is unstoppable. This logic is clear, the argument is professional, and it has been widely disseminated.

Is it because of the chaos in the currency circle that people misjudge? This may be true for the general public, but for real professionals, such an excuse does not hold. As early as 2016, in the domestic blockchain discussion, speculative digital currencies were clearly distinguished from blockchain technology. After 2019, as the discussion on "industrial blockchain" gradually deepened, the industry has long studied the application boundaries and management principles of using blockchain for evidence storage, property rights confirmation and value transfer. If these studies can be taken seriously, there will be no problem of throwing out the baby with the bath water.

So what is the reason?

I heard a statement a few days ago that at a high-level closed meeting, a financial official admitted that he had fully understood the disruptive potential of stablecoins and blockchain technology a few years ago, but because the Biden administration rejected blockchain, it was judged that the technology had no future at the time. Unexpectedly, after Trump took office, he changed his attitude so quickly and promoted the legislation of stablecoins, which caught people off guard and led to the current very passive situation. He concluded that it seems that we should take a more proactive attitude towards technological innovation in the future.

Coincidentally, I have recently frequently communicated with traditional financial experts on topics related to stablecoins, and demonstrated the solutions related to stablecoin smart payments and digital bills that we developed. After reading it, a financial expert on Wall Street said to me that if these applications are rolled out on a large scale, they will inevitably have a subversive impact on the related businesses of traditional banks and reconnect the relationship between customers, funds and businesses. However, Wall Street is not unaware of this. Even many large banks have been using blockchain internally for many years and are very clear about its advantages and subversiveness. But they feel that it is precisely because blockchain is extremely subversive that the regulators will temporarily suppress the development of blockchain based on the starting point of maintaining stability, "to maintain the stability of the financial industry." During the Biden administration, the authorities did maintain such a tacit understanding with Wall Street. If it weren't for Trump, an extraordinary person who likes to flip the table, coming to power, and if there hadn't been unexpected changes in the relationship between the Federal Reserve, Wall Street and the White House, it would be hard to imagine that the US government would let the tiger of stablecoin out of the cage at this time.

The situation in other countries is similar. In Australia, we participated in the pilot of the Reserve Bank of Australia's CBDC in early 2023 and won the first place. The Reserve Bank of Australia highly praised the technical advantages demonstrated by CBDC and stablecoins in this pilot, but after the evaluation, it decided to continue to keep them in the middle and postpone the implementation plan of CBDC and stablecoins indefinitely. In private communication with central bank officials, they told me that CBDC and stablecoins were collectively resisted by Australian commercial banks, and the entire pilot project was destined to be just an innovation show from the beginning, and there would be no breakthrough impact. In Singapore, after years of tolerant and supportive attitudes towards the blockchain and digital asset industries, the government also underwent some changes after this year's general election. According to analysis, the new government is worried about the disruptive impact that stablecoins and digital assets may have on the financial industry.

To sum up, we have long known the technical advantages of blockchain and stablecoins, and even agree that this is the general trend. However, because of the concerns about the risks they bring and the impact on the existing interest structure and institutional framework, we have made a deliberate numbness and slowness after careful consideration. Or to put it simply, everyone is sober-minded and pretends to sleep in order to make the dream last longer.

Compared with AI, this is even clearer. Seriously speaking, the disruptive nature of AI is even more than that of stablecoins and blockchain. Its risks are more comprehensive, deeper, potentially more destructive, and the consequences are more unpredictable. If the suppression of blockchain development is to control risks and maintain stability, then the same is true for AI. But in the AI competition, Silicon Valley naturally fired the first shot, so no one waited and watched, no one hesitated, no one thought deeply, everyone immediately armed themselves and threw themselves into the competition, working hard. In the field of blockchain, people have formed a strange tacit understanding for a long time, that the first shot that shattered the dream must not be fired by me.

Okay, now Trump fired this shot without any explanation, and he knew very well that during this period when everyone was watching, shirking responsibility, and pretending to sleep, the US dollar stablecoin has quietly completed the dominant deployment in the global chain space, covering users, scenarios, liquidity and developer networks. It can be said that the chessboard has been set, just waiting for the move. What Trump did was to play this trump card that was already ready to be used. With a piece of bill, a "super-sovereign dollar network" was openly pushed onto the historical stage, and a naked declaration of war was thrown in front of every non-dollar economy. Externally, it announced that the restructuring of the global monetary structure has entered the substantive stage; internally, it redefined the coordination between the US state apparatus and the technology, finance, and capital markets. For the world, from now on, this will no longer be a topic that can be delayed, vague, or "piloted while waiting and watching". It will become a top priority on the desks of the central banks, finance ministries, and regulators of most countries in the world, and a realistic challenge that cannot be avoided or escaped.

How to deal with this challenge is probably a question that will take many years to answer. But before we start to solve the problem, we must first have the courage to face reality and have the courage to admit: we missed the opportunity, we misjudged the situation, we covered our eyes with obsession with short-term stability and luck, and turned a blind eye to the steel-hard technical logic.

At the starting point of this new reconstruction of the global financial order, we should perhaps put aside our arrogance and prejudice and say sorry to the blockchain. It is not for emotional release, but to re-establish the starting point of understanding. We must re-recognize the innovation of production relations represented by this technology, re-embrace the institutional experiments promoted by this generation of developers, and re-plan our position in the global digital value network. Perhaps only in this way will we have the opportunity to win our place in this digital economic competition that concerns the future global pattern.