Stableminded · Aug 27 · 48 min

The 2,600 Year Problem With Money, and How Stablecoins Fix It

With Dante Reminick, Halliday

Key takeaways

Dante Reminick says that when he ran an international nonprofit, packing a suitcase full of cash and flying it to the destination was the fastest way to move money.
He calls fintech "lipstick on a pig" and says stablecoins are the most promising way to get instant settlement.
Halliday focuses on universal deposits across onchain and off-chain rails and says it is 100% fully non-custodial.

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0:00Stablecoins promise instant settlement where fintech only polishes plumbing1 of 11

Summary

Reminick traces his move into stablecoins to failed nonprofit transfers to East Africa, and argues that today's fintech still runs on old plumbing.

Dante Reminick, who works at Halliday, says the fastest way to move money around the world, especially when he was running an international nonprofit, was "to pack up a suitcase full of cash, get on a plane, and fly it to that destination." He describes Halliday's mission simply: make money move and operate the way it should in the 21st century.

From email speed to suitcases

Dante Reminick compares money with email. An email reaches anyone in seconds, whatever their provider or language, while money can take a few days to a week to cross borders. He found Bitcoin first, then stablecoins, pointing to Tether as one of the first on the market. He came to see them as a natural evolution in the timeline of money.

“You can build a really, really badass application, a really badass protocol, whatever you want, but if money can't get in there, you're screwed. You're screwed. You're dead in the water.”

Dante Reminick

Money has always followed information

Reminick traces standardized currency to Lydia around 600, then to the Medici's promissory notes and the Rothschilds, whose real innovation he describes as an information system. Western Union, he notes, started as a telegram company backed by JP Morgan, because one of the biggest uses of the telegram was moving financial information.

Lipstick on a pig

He argues firms such as Wise move money cheaply because they hold large stockpiles of cash that they net between countries, not because of a technical feat. He adds that Zelle does not work on weekends or holidays. Stablecoins, he says, settle instantly and serve two purposes: financial acceleration and financial accumulation.

In his article The Clusterfuck of Fintech, he warns that building a neobank from five providers means five MSAs to manage, and that a 3% fee leak is $3 on $100 but very different at $3 billion.

Tens of thousands of stablecoins

Reminick expects tens of thousands of stablecoins. He says hundreds of dollar-backed ones exist now, that MoneyGram and Western Union have launched their own, and that dollar dominance will push governments to issue local-currency coins. He calls dollar stablecoins "defense tech" for the US.

Halliday's answer is orchestration. Users may hold money in a bank, on Apple Pay or in USDT on Tron, and the company focuses on converting it into the target system. He says competitors working in a quasi-custodial way are "starting to get nipped in the butt."

Reminick expects banks to run on stablecoins so rent can be paid on a Sunday, and he thinks the change will barely be noticed. In his view, the next generation will ask why money ever moved any other way.

Bitcoin, Ramp, Altitude, and Western Union come up most.

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