Insights: Can stablecoins escape the fintech bubble? - Live from Money 20/20 Europe

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal, everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium, and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox Wireless Controller. Learn more at windows.com/studentoffer.
While supplies last, ends June 30th, in terms at aka.ms slash collegePC.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:31)
When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen, and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

**Ross Gallagher** (1:14)
Hello and welcome to Fintech Insider Insights, live from Money 20.2 Europe in Amsterdam. I am Ross Gallagher from 11FS. Now, if you've walked around Money 20.2 this week, it's hard to avoid one topic, stablecoins. They are everywhere. From cross-border payments and treasury operations to embedded finance and AI commerce, stablecoins have become one of the defining conversations shaping the future of financial services. But here's a question. Are stablecoins actually breaking into the mainstream financial system, or are they largely still trapped inside the fintech bubble?
So in this week's episode of Fintech Insider, in partnership with Formant, we're asking what will it actually take for stablecoins to break out of that fintech bubble?
Now, to help us answer that, we really do have a fantastic panel today. First up, Ayelen Denovitzer, Head of Operations at Formant. Ayelen, great to have you. Welcome to the show. Maybe you can just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're building over at Formant.

**Ayelen Denovitzer** (2:15)
Of course. Yeah. Hi, everyone.
Yeah. Great to be here. Thanks for the invite. I'm Ayelen Denovitzer. I'm Head of Operations at Formant. And essentially, what we do at Formant is that we build a programmable core ledger. I know those are heavy words to use in this context. But essentially, we are asset agnostic. So we bring together on chain assets and connect that to a fiat world.

**Ross Gallagher** (2:42)
Love it. You're definitely... That is the right expertise, I think, that you need to answer the question that we've just teed up.
Also joining us, we have George Davis, founder and CEO of Lorum. George, also great to have you with us. Maybe again, you can just tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about Lorum and the problems you're focused on solving.

**George Davis** (2:59)
Yeah, great.
Thanks for having me. And so with Lorum, what you can really think about us building is New Age Bank of New York for banks. We believe that really the market is structurally disincentivized to build good services for other banks in the correspondent banking side. And really what we see in the market is a flood of smaller community banks making loans or deposits with inherently transient money. And so the thesis for Lorum really was, can we build a 100% reserve backed global custodian bank around the world? Previously, I also co-founded BVNK, so I have some stablecoin experience and pain, but.

**Ross Gallagher** (3:40)
Skies on your back.
All right. And finally, we have Robin Anderson, the head of product at Tribe Payments. Robin, again, welcome to Fintech Insider. Maybe you can just, again, give us a little bit of background on yourself and maybe what you're seeing across the payments landscape.

**Robin Anderson** (3:54)
Yeah, sure. So as I said, Robin Anderson, head of product at Tribe Payments. So Tribe Payments is an infrastructure provider and software provider for financial services companies, banks, acquirers, issuers. Across the issuer processing and acquirer processing space, primarily focused historically on the UK and Europe, but recently expanding out into Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

**Ross Gallagher** (4:22)
Hello there. Well, that is our wonderful panel. I think from the expertise that we've just heard, I think we're very well placed to dive into a little bit more detail where we're at with stable coins right now, and maybe what the future holds. I'm going to start off with maybe the obvious question. Ayelen, maybe I'll come to you first on this.
Where do you think we are with stable coins today? I mean, are we genuinely seeing it break into that mainstream financial system, or is it more pipe cycle and we're still just talking to ourselves largely within a Fintech bubble?