Why 2026 is The Year of Unification with Sam Kazemian

Transcript

the products that actually the stable coin products that have full integration and payments in in neo banks and have use cases in the real world and have onchain uh liquidity holders and and growth. They will be the ones that have uh a breakout. >> You know, there's kind of these uh this synthetic dollars and then and then real, you know, digital money. Um where does this one fall and do you think it's poised for growth? Do you think we're going to see more states? Do you have any predictions? any personal predictions for 2026, whether it be for Fracks, for stable coins, or just generally like further how you see like what core themes you see really happening this year.

>> Welcome back to another episode of Stabled Up, our premier weekly show covering the ins and outs of digital dollars, stable coins, and the future of decentralized finance. show is made possible by FRA and FRA is powering the financial engine of the internet powering FRXUSD and genius compliant stable coins. This is the stablecoin super cycle made possible by FRA. Now enjoy stabled up our weekly stable coin show. All righty guys, welcome back to episode 15 of Stabled Up, our weekly premier stable coin show with our lovely friends at FRA. Today we have Sam, the CEO and co-founder of FRA to kick us off for 2026 first episode of Stable Up. Happy new year, Sam.

>> Happy New Year to you guys, too. Uh it's good to be back. Uh first full week of 2026 right? >> Yeah. I told I told Rob it feels like um syllabus week this week, which was like the first week when you're back in college and it's kind of like, you know, you're getting your syllabus. Everyone's like circling up, you know, let's schedule a call, let's circle up. And so it's kind of getting back into the motions here. >> Yeah, definitely. And and then there's uh there's a lot of things in Q1. I think that uh people especially us at Fracks, but I'm sure we're not the only ones uh that have signed these deals, exclusive deals, and they're all like, let's not go public with it, uh you know, right before Christmas and and and

stuff like that. And I think uh that really applies to the stable coin payments and uh DeFi space because even though we have a bunch of huge stuff to roll out, I think we're not the only ones. And I expect to see a lot of uh big rumblings especially from what I've been hearing. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. It's exciting times and we've we've been thinking a lot about this even over the holidays thinking about how you know what coming into 2026 what what are some of the trends and narratives to watch out for and stable coins payments obviously are going to be a really really important part of this new uh what we're calling Neo finance which is sort of this this evolution of we're kind of like leaving behind the legacy crypto infrastructure era leaving behind legacy finance and you know

traditional banks and that sort of thing and and kind of these two things are converging in this neo bank sort of world. Stable coins payments are really important piece of that. What are some of the things that you sort of ended off 2025 on? When you're looking ahead to 26, like what are what are some of the big stroke ideas that you're excited about? Yeah, I I I think 2025 was I obviously the the the genius year uh with legislation and stuff, but it was a building year for uh a lot of the industry, but us at Fracks, but also institutions that were like, "Okay, let's get something started. Let's actually uh get teams, the digital asset team, uh sign deals and things like that." that I think 2026 is the hockey

stick year especially for uh people institutions projects products that have laid the foundation. Um basically a lot of these things they were just getting started right and so if you look at you know the classic hockey stick chart of like startups right it's very very very slow right and it's linear and then there's like an inflection point that literally turns it exponential right and I think 2026 is the year of the exponential I think hib had this like long post uh the exponential he mainly me meant it for like the uh L1 stuff it was like a monadcentric post But I think there will be a few breakouts in 2026 in the stable coin space and the NEO

finance that's a good category name uh that you guys have that um I think obviously FRA and FRAUSD will be one of those. I have my eyes on a few. I think also just from in terms of partnerships that I can uh talk about like I think Stripe, Bridge and Tempo. So like we're very uh big partners with with Bridge. They're actually working on uh full orchestration uh internally with PRAUSD as well. There aren't that many stable coins that uh directly you can just do it. Usually you have to go through like USDC and USDB uh in in their systems. And so this is one of those uh and we have a really big uh use case that we're going to uh announce publicly in in Q1 that I think is um no one else has uh this particular use case. So it'll be

really exciting to um you know highlight that once we're able to go public with it. And so the important thing is these big integrations that finally come together with uh a few of these large companies. We're also on on tempo building for for the uh day one uh genesis of of the chain um with their new technology and FRAUSD will be there with um flywheel uh tokconomics yield streaming um bringing that uh famous DeFi type of uh economics as well as the T bill underlying uh reward system using Tempo's own tip 20. Uh it's actually really really cool system. um Dan Robinson and those guys over there have

uh really cooked in terms of how the the tech stack there works. So, it's a few of these things hitting uh critical mass and it's it's uh it's going to be a few projects, right? And I'm looking and I have some some opinions on uh who else it's going to be and I think by the end of Q1 people will see kind of who will will dominate the next six months. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think this like this neo finance category is like this this convergence point where legacy finance companies and cryptonative companies meet. You know, we had Mike uh Mike Novagratz uh the Galaxy CEO talking about a shift from these narrative driven tokens to businessdriven tokens uh with measurable value and profits.

you know, expecting this general structural transformation where wallets and exchanges may evolve into these neo bank type platforms. You know, you've got uh this kind of new super set of fintech where got these very easy to use consumer frontends, DeFi backends, business-driven tokens, institutional bids for these kind of DeFi blue chips with sensible value acrruel. you know, there's this focus on this persistent buybacks, financial discipline, transparency, openness. Um, and and yeah, it just seems like these stable coins, RDAs, lending, asset management, vaults, these types of categories kind of leading this this year's charge like like it it it's like this evolution of DeFi and it's really like this uh

convergence point. And I think a great example is exactly what you said with with this or orchestration work that you guys are doing with Stripe and Bridge is again like this this kind of convergence where it's like you got this Chad Neo finance versus like the Virgin high float low FTV L1 with no kind of like you know product market fit not a lot of use case act activity and then you've got a lot of differing opinions um but you know our throughine this year is definitely that this general sector and there's a lot of kind of like subsector tokenization, stable coins, payments, vaults, neo banks, cards, etc., right?

Um, issuers, right? These all these little subsectors of this broader idea we think is going to be the, uh, the biggest area of growth and interest this year. Um so so passing back to you with this context in mind also with your kind of road map in mind do you have any predictions any personal predictions for 2026 whether it be for fracks for stable coins or just generally like further how you see like what core themes you see really happening this year. >> Yeah for sure definitely I think that there's like two two main uh parts to it. One is I think this year is going to be the year of unification. Um and and there's multiple uh ways to describe it.

one is the economics of tokens or equity or equity like tokens whether they're buyback burns. I think uh you know putting aside the stable coin products and and and stuff for a second I think everyone uh saw you know the um a clarification governance proposals the um other things of like you know does does a token have IP and and all these things. Um, is there, you know, one token? Is there multiple like the subdow model and and all these things? Do do burns and buybacks actually work? Uh, you know, there's a lot of posts I saw that um, you know, people are like, look, everything uh, the altcoin space didn't have that as as good of a, you know, 2025 as people thought. Even the ones like Pump and others that are like

buying back and burning, you know, millions of dollars uh, every few days. I think it's going to be the year of unification in the sense like all this stuff is going to get clarified. All this stuff is gonna um for the good tokens, right? Like for example with the the FRA token it does represent the entire intellectual property of like the FRA DAO and and all these things and we have have always said these these things and they it gets the entire uh income there there's no uh there's no uh labs entity which usually I actually described you know unis swap as an example and then they fixed it and then the major major props to unis swap in fact unification proposal and I I think I want to say that this is the year of uh a lot of important tokens that will

do well uh you know investments that will do well will have this kind of uh clarification whether they do buybacks all the time or whether the buyback or it will all be unified and clarified right and and I think those are the most important things so I'm I'm like glad that uh the a DAO is uh taking care of that um unis swap major props to them uh the good thing is with fracks we've always been very clear uh one token one vision um one mission and uh that I think that that's one of my predictions. The the best tokens will have um clarification on the product side. I actually think that there's going to be um products that are endtoend which means like the the products that

actually the stable coin products that have full integration and payments in in neo banks and have use cases in the real world and have onchain uh liquidity holders and and growth. they will be the ones that have uh a breakout uh and and so for example, you know, Athena is really really big onchain and I'm interested to see what they what they do offchain for like FRAUSD. Uh we actually have a a really big partnership uh proposal going through a governance right now. Um and I can talk about it because it's public. And so we have this unique uh risk-free yield streaming system into uh a so that lenders actually earn uh a lot more by by

lending fraud and then borrowers it's cheaper because the lenders are getting more so borrowers have to pay less. And then we've done a lot of work with Mark and uh and and and the ACI uh group to make sure that FRAUSD's settings are identical to the big two USDT and USDC the the emote settings the collateral settings the reserve factor all of these things so that all things being constant which they are we we've worked with them on uh then it is objectively better this genius compatible stable coin that is redeemable is a digital dollar why wouldn't this become the the economic engine of lenders and borrowers in A.

And then obviously with A's V4 release, we're also uh discussing things um big there with them as as well. And then this is just the onchain stuff. There's a bunch of off-chain things that you guys uh know that that we're working on. I think the end to end is is what is the most important. I'm really interested to see what products are endtoend. If a stable coin is just in, you know, uh, payments, but it has literally no holders, no use cases onchain, I don't think that that it's going to be a big year for them. If a stable coin is only onchain and it is only, for example, a looping stable coin or something like that. I'm not really sure if that's a a hockey stick year for them in the size that it is for things that are endtoend.

And there's actually a good uh analogy that I I was just thinking of the other day with this and I know Kyle Smani hates analogies but I think this this one is actually very apt because if you guys uh know about like Whimo and Tesla's uh FSD um I was actually looking at listening to Andre Kodkkey on on a podcast and and he said uh most people don't know this but Whimo uh actually has a human in the loop there. there's a 5G connection and then they use maps and additional modules for Whimo self-driving and it is not purely se self-contained end to end uh in and of itself and so uh if you guys saw the news a few weeks ago there was a huge power outage and SF and a bunch of these

Whimos were literally like stopped in the middle of the street because people couldn't connect the the Whimo employees couldn't connect to them or beam in and then also uh the GPS and stuff was was off but then Tesla which is entirely self-contained it's an on uh onchip on on vehicle AI chip with cameras and direct reasoning, right? There's no internet connection. It entirely is uh self-contained full loop. Um they were totally fine. And so uh I think that this is an interesting thing because Tesla built something that's scalable end to end and it's extremely valuable.

even though it looks kind of similar to to Whimo, the the Whimo model doesn't seem to be, at least from what I understand, to be as scalable and uh it's actually much wider distance between like Tesla and Whimo than people think. And so what I was looking at is how are these stable coins actually used? Is it is it end to end from off-chain, onchain, uh DeFi utility? Is there an actual uh utility in every single layer or no? you have to swap to USDC to like you know at checkout or like on Coinbase or do you have to uh swap to USDT because you it doesn't people don't accept it in the geographic region you're you're in or no is this thing fully endtoend an actual digital dollar with utility onchain offchain in

the neo banking layer and it's difficult to do right because usually you start in one place and then you have one niche and then you sort of start expanding uh and you have to expand to the right pairs otherwise you won't uh in my prediction this year you won't get that hockey stick growth so for me I think it's the year of unification uh when it comes to investments economics and and price action and then it's the year of endto-end scalable integrations which the neo finance layer actually solves and finally connects to the real world >> trade on anything economics weather sports crypto and more all on calchry.com 247 for the world's biggest prediction market >> is built for big moments the most fun you'll ever have with your

crypto. Go to yeet.com to yeet into your next game. >> Looking for yield that stands out? Infinify gives you just that. Deposit stable coins and earn far more than the current savings rate. Infinifi is a battle tested, reliable DeFi platform that is ready to go. Head to infinifi.xyz. >> Makes a ton of sense. And I think one way to think about this unification process and this fully endto-end model, this full stack model that you're talking about is is verticalization. And we hear a lot about this, especially as we were kind of coming from this modular world kind of like encroaching upon monolithic.

And so I guess FRA as an example here, does this unification, this verticalization of the stack, does this mean you guys, you know, are pursuing like a neo bank to augment the stable coin, the frack USD stable coin that you guys have or how how when you were looking into this and you were looking at what end-to-end use of a stable coin looks like, what did you end up finding? Did you end up finding like, okay, most of the time it is used in in any particular venue. How can we service those venues better? and and what are you guys doing to help unify the stable coin flow?

>> Yeah, so as as you guys know like we have the FRANET platform which is basically a a full mint redeem virtual accounts fiat on offramp um and also virtual card compatible system. It's not meant to just you know it's not necessarily uh a UI. It's also you can integrate it with with APIs uh onchain uh transactions and and all these things. In fact, the the stack with FRAUSD is that all the collateral is Genius compatible RWA. So you can actually mint and redeem directly onchain if if your entity actually has the ability to touch RWAs. And so the whole stack is programmable. Our view is that we want all of the top neoank products like we're working with Etherfi

uh to actually have deep uh native FRAUSD spendable and and reward streaming. Uh and and that's something that we're we're really excited about and we'll give like uh really deep details on like how to actually spend it. Um right now like USDC is the only like deep spendable like you can you know stake and then they can pull uh get a loan to to spend but the loan is in USDC right like like you you swipe the EtherFI card uh and then like what actually is spent is uh USDC. We're working with them to actually have FRAUS USDB digital dollars that are uh the second one after USDC, right? This uh other default so to speak. I kind of call it the third default uh money after the big two, right? after USDT and USDC, you need to actually have the the neo

bank utility, the integrations and other platforms and provide the actual infrastructure and utility for everyone to be able to use it like our a integration on chain like the etherf stuff that we're rolling out the orchestration uh that we're we're going to announce soon uh with with bridge and and a few big clients like you can't have a stable coin where you use it in one one small area in in DeFi and then if someone wants to build like a wallet or card, you have to then swap it to USDC because it's not orchestrated by Stripe, you know, World Pay and and there's no banks for it. So then really what you're doing is you're using USDC and then in this tiny, you know, single pool on in on an AMM or like a a lending pair, uh you're using this synthetic

dollar, right? There's a difference between money and uh a synthetic dollar product. And that doesn't mean synthetic dollar products are bad. They make a lot of money, right? they uh they're a good savings or uh looping or like bolts, but there's not going to be that many hockey stick uh digital dollars because they it requires a different set of utility and use cases on on the full stack. And so with FRAUSD, we are looking to be one of the few in my opinion the third default so to speak and and actually PYUSD I've looked is uh is doing some great things and um we're talking to them in in that area uh as well. So there might be a few more maybe maybe you know four defaults uh so to speak in in 2026. So I've been

keeping my eye really really on who is building FSD of stable coins right like from a foundational perspective who's actually building the the thing that scales right instead of kind of uh taping a bunch of things together if that makes sense. >> Yeah. Yeah. Sam I'm curious to get your take on um th this this product called Rain. Uh I'm I'm sure you know Rain that they power a lot of the crypto cards. Uh I've heard a lot about it and and how it's so important to all these crypto cards and how people are expecting a ton of growth there.

um like like like could you just maybe educate us on on what what Rain what Rain's role is in kind of like this Neoank idea and like why you have to have like this like I don't know if it's like a coordination layer or it's like a a facilitation layer for spending like and like is that competitive with FRA? Do you guys work with something like that? How does that work? >> Uh well hopefully this answers your your question that it's actually really uh positive sum with FRA. They have a call with Rain actually in uh an hour after this podcast is is over. Um so we love them. Uh they're also uh Dragonfly Portco. Um really great technology. The way that I would I I think say is that

the exciting thing about 2026 as well is that there will be a lot of new uh onoff ramps or bridges that essentially to the real world that never existed before, right? And those will actually bring on the next 10, 50, 100 million users into crypto through stable coins and through payments and bridge uh that this bridge like basically rain is the bridge for cards, right? Um there's other things that we're actually experimenting with like you know if if people can withdraw PYUSD or crypto from PayPal now, right?

It's technically an instant settlement on offramping, right? before everything was so clunky because you had to have centralized exchanges where you a money and you convert it to crypto or stable coins and then like you withdrew it to you know your wallet or something right but now you can actually use what was in the fintech layer right like maybe you can actually use Robin Hood if you're a trader on Robin Hood you can withdraw uh Robin Hood crypto and then if you can orchestrate those withdrawals to just simply be API endpoints right like let's say you trade some stocks on Robin Hood and then you want to withdraw uh FRAUSD or PYUSD whichever you know they'll they end up uh and then you load it immediately onto a rancard whether it's etherfi whether it's uh something that

uh we co-design with them or all three of us together right it's a lot of composability and and bridging to new user bases that before you had to withdraw to your bank and then you had to go from the bank to like a centralized exchange and then um now it's as simple as an as an API call so rain is uh is an innovator in this area because they literally made Visa cards the onofframp uh for everything. And so we have some really cool concepts to to show them because we're connecting these different onoff ramps. Um, and so like imagine like a a card that you can load from PayPal, spend, and then withdraw to your wallet and then uh go to Robin

Hood, trade, and then withdraw back all in a very very seamless way where it becomes literally the the centerpiece of your your financial life because you can hold crypto, you can spend it, you can trade, and then you can immediately withdraw it on the spot or get a get a loan may maybe through a or fraend or something like that, right? And so it's kind of like the again unification of a lot of functionality in in a single stack. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, know I just heard from Hib on that, but also just been seeing more and more and realizing that all these cards are powered by it and now starting to understand a bit more of like the FRA vision as well as just the general way that the that that the space is likely to progress and um h how important to you is like this

interoperability between different um applications or different uh kind of like consumerf facing apps, right? So you mentioned Robin Hood, you got PayPal, you know, there's things like Venmo, then obviously you've got like the MetaMasks, the Phantoms, and then like the centralized exchanges, Krakens, Coinbase, etc. Like are are you building for a world where it's like very seamless to operate across all these different you know what would have previously been been barriers or or like how is that space developing uh from your perspective a and what do you see there for this year going forward as far as these kind of different silos you know bringing composability together via stable coins you know via cards etc

like how is that going to change this Yeah, it's a good question because I I think I've always had like a stable coin maxi view of uh of this stuff which I actually thought that like stable coins, the ones that are like USDT, USDC, um hopefully this year for axd um they're actually the interoperability packet between all of these places rather than like the an intense framework or some kind of like uh bridging product. the actual economic value packet, right? Like the TCPIP packet of value is these stable coins that are able to flow between all of these places. And it's very difficult, right, to actually get stable coin uh to be money and to be

accepted as a dollar on Robin Hood, on PayPal, uh at at like at Stripe to to orchestrate with it directly, right? Um and so these things will be connected, but only through a a short uh list of real money, right? like the the whole point of the dollar is that it is literally the economic packet uh data packet right between different ledgers and the ones that will do this like value transfer between ledgers um is actually a I think in the next five five to six years is a is a multi- trillion dollar opportunity. It's it kind of um I actually think it'll be similar to how quickly Poly Market got really big because a lot of people and honestly I

I'll admit me me included uh kind of uh down on prediction markets because for like you know since 2015 or 16 when uh Augur was the first Ethereum ICO uh a bunch of people tried to build prediction markets they didn't go anywhere. where it seemed like a seasonal niche of like it just pops off every time there's a really big election or like there's a World Cup or something and everyone wants to bet on like a big game or something like the Super Bowl and then you know it then it just becomes kind of irrelevant. Uh that's honestly what I thought the empirical data showed, but you know Shane and the poly market guys and then also obviously the Koshi guys taking from a different angle, they just stuck to it, right? And then now it's bigger than anything uh you know that that anyone's ever seen in

in crypto and it's probably just going to keep growing, right? It's going to be a year of uh elections, World Cup. Um I think this is how it's going to be where people are going to predict, oh there's, you know, the stable coins are going to be fragmented. there's going to be like, you know, a bunch of like white label stable coins and it's only going to be used in silos or or whatever and it's going to be really popular to kind of dunk on uh the multi-t trillion dollar, you know, generalized money view just like how it was popular to just be like, "Yeah, prediction markets have been tried 10 times. It's not going to work ever again." Like, you know, whatever.

Um, but then very quickly at the inflection point, it's going to be like, "Oh, oh shit." like three or four of these, these are literally going to be like, you know, the supply is going to be literally above a trillion, two trillion. Uh, and I really think that being patient, being methodical, and being confident that that's how things are going to uh play out, being long-term, just like just like Shane at Poly Market, uh your day will come because the arc of history bends towards uh this exact outcome and whoever's there and has been executing uh methodically. This is not just us, right? It's it's a few teams, right? Uh I think that that's when something even, you know, bigger than poly markets

overnight kind of it it it looked overnight, right? And and it it like zero to nine billion or or whatever, right? But it it was years of conviction, right? And I think that um that's this will be how it'll be. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I'd like to zoom out, guys, and just kind of think about more of like some of the regulatory happenings as well as what's happening in Venezuela and just generally like wi with the the US. We've taken over Venezuela looking like we're getting Greenland. Like this is all happening. I'm not sure how it affects the Fed. We got a new Fed chair coming in in May.

Sam's smiling. I'm sure he's got some takes here. Apparently, we're getting crypto market structure bill voting next week, which would be huge. um as far as uh kind of getting that through. So, kind of like when we're thinking about some of the macro tailwinds here, Sam, are you more positive with regards to stable coins than 2025 for for let's say the first half of 2026? Neutral, negative? Where are you at from the big picture here with with regards to how it affects our little industry? >> Uh I I was smiling because I was trying to think, do I do I put on my like geopolitical analyst?

>> Every man wants to. >> Yeah. Right. like everyone becomes a geopolitical analyst as soon as like the Blackhawks like touch down somewhere, right? But um I I think look um >> Greenland is super fun. I'm going to I'm going to go go off a little bit and uh I I think like what's really interesting about what uh the the Trump admin is is is doing is like these things haven't been tried in this way. um like you know it was it used to be either regime change and nation building or just like leave them alone and like uh negotiate some treaty or something, right? Um but these guys have a totally, you know, different view and it's uh it'll either work really really well or it'll um it

won't. And so like with Greenland actually I keep thinking like what's the point of like undermining a NATO uh ally in in Denmark and uh and why why wouldn't you just you know sign like a NATO agreement right and then I realized like maybe the whole point is like actually even more long-term you know people don't give Trump credit uh of of like you know he's like oh he's not long-term thinker and all this stuff in a world where like Europe is uh on its own or like the US disengages and is only in the American hemisphere, right? Uh you need Greenland to be in the American sphere of influence because if the Europe is in charge of its own security or more so, right? Like these aren't, you know, black and white, but

it's on a spectrum. Uh you don't want Europeans to be able to check American power in the the North Arctic, right? And I'm talking like 15 years from now. I'm not talking next year, not talking like 2030. I'm talking like 10 to 15 years from now where Europeans are remilitarized. They entirely are in charge of their own defense, right? And and the US does not have to uh shield them because they are a civilization and and they've they've produced their own weapons. You don't want the Europeans to have uh Greenland as as a as a stationing base uh against America as a bargaining chip. Not that they're going to like attack them or anything, right?

You want to take that now. And uh how that pans out, I have no idea. Um and I have no idea about Venezuela and how that pans out. But if the entire like macro economy goes the way that Trump's strategy is and they're able to lower rates and this doesn't blow up in in their uh in their face and the the US gets so sovereignty um over Greenland in some kind of like uh pact of free association, which is like kind of adding territory, not a state, uh not not full annexation, right? It's kind of the same way that Guam and the and the Marshall Islands and uh and the Pacific Theater are part of America, but they're a sovereign country. Um if that happens with Greenland this year, if Venezuela

uh ends up, you know, it just being a essentially a flawless 30 minute special ops that gets all the benefits of of regime change without all the uh problems of, you know, nation building and stuff, I I think we're going to pump. I think we're gonna pump massively. Um and then that that's my view. these things blow up in in in uh our faces and if uh there's new conflict in the Middle East or in the European theater and um you know the the rates have to be cut because things are bad that'll just cancel the rate cuts out and and like I think we're going to have a weird year. So I think um I think it was Dave Chappelle I was actually watching something that he said and he's like look whether you agree with uh the president or not whoever is the

president any time you are rooting for him because if you're uh part of the the western world you're an American uh like me and stuff you you are rooting for them to uh do what the what is right for for America. So we'll see uh that's that's how I think about it. >> Yeah. And then with regards to Yeah. Go. >> Well, I I don't have too much to add except for the one thing on Greenland was I I saw an interview with Steven Miller, who's, you know, part of this task force when it comes to Venezuela, helping run the country while there isn't really a president there. And they they were asking him about Greenland.

They were obviously trying to bait him into a headline um about using military force against Greenland. And then he he kind of was he turned it back. It was like like who would who would they even fight? Greenland doesn't have a military. Like I guess you'll be fighting Denmark, but you know, Sam, you make a great point when it comes to like, you know, just inking a deal with NATO, but America sort of already runs NATO itself. That is the security guarantee. So, it was sort of a catch 22. It's like, wait, you could kind of just do the same thing with Greenland.

People wouldn't be as happy about it. Maduro is a lot more um problematic as a as a leader. Uh, but there isn't there's probably even less force, military force in Greenland than there is in Venezuela. >> There's there's no one there. There's 70,000 people, right? Like I think the reason people are a little confused about it uh is that they, you know, the admin hasn't clearly uh said its real strategic reason um at least not like publicly um in in like a clear way. The goal I think from how I interpret it is that the US needs to have this for a decade later where uh the the Europeans are remilitarized and in charge of their

own security so that this is not a a European outpost. It is an American outpost and they're not going to do any kind of military like there's nothing to fight like you guys said like and and so the reason they they want this to happen is they want uh Greenland to have a vote for independence right like a totally you know like sovereign democratic vote and then once they're independent they obviously don't have the means to uh have have their own security they need to have some kind of direct uh relationship which is obviously uh they think it's going to be the United States similar to Again, similar to Guam and and the Marshall Islands. These are islands that are sovereign, but they need a security guaranter that has uh security sovereignty, but the people

have representational democratic sovereignty over their their own country. And so that allows the US to not actually have to uh bargain with Europeans anymore on on Greenland. And so it's actually not about NATO. That that's what's kind of confusing because people uh are like, well, yeah, there's just you could put a put a NATO base there. In fact, they have radars and everything for the past 80 years uh since the cold war there. The point is something that is not NATO for the day after that there's a different security architecture in the European theater. That's just my armchair >> political holiday is unified crypto payments. Give your users more wherever they are. Go to holiday.xyz

to never write a smart contract again. >> Not your keys, not your coins. from the team that pioneered cold storage. Treasure has just released its new wallet. Guys, if you are still using hot wallets in 2025 2026, you are missing the entire point. Secure your coins. Get a treasure at treasure.io. Havachi is fast and private per trading secured by ZK with Celestia underneath. Go to habachi.xyz to start trading today. And so when it comes to the more I guess um direct impact of the regulatory regime here, obviously we've got the Genius Act passed, but it needs to be implemented still. Uh and I think you guys are

waiting on that or some sort of like legal clarity as far as like implementation. And then from what I understand, next week is the big market structure bill week. Um Sam, what is going on on Capitol Hill? you know, from your people that you speak to from the FRA perspective, where are we at with the Genius implementation? What should we expect from next week? What are your hopes and dreams for this market structure bill? And then how do you kind of see all this coming together for the stable coin market? >> Yeah, so um I'm pretty uh still in involved in knowing the the day-to-day stuff of Genius. uh less so anymore with uh market structure um because I think that uh it's um it's important but it's

not directly uh to FRA products and and I think FRAUSD uh and all these licensed you know ready to go uh genius uh compatible stable coins will be able to apply sometime this year for a uh federal license or state depending on what what they'll do that I'm pretty confident because the legislation's passed it's it's matter of uh when not if and kind of goes back to on the architecture stuff, the geopolitics, which is if the bill isn't passed by by midterms, I think that it's going to be very very difficult for it to pass in this kind of shape or form because what's going to happen is you're going to have politics, right? The the Democrats want different priorities. For example, they're going to try to block a

lot of things with Greenland or Venezuela or things like that and and they're going to be like, "Don't do this. Just sign a NATO treaty." And and like, you know, don't don't do all all of this stuff. And so the Republicans will have to negotiate and give up some certain concessions that uh Democrats, you know, don't want to happen like the market structure bill the way that it is currently. And so then the odds of the things passing uh in in this way become very very low. So I uh I'm I'm watching it closely. I'm not there in in person um or or anything anymore. Um but hopefully things get passed by midterms because then there's a you know very low chance that uh this becomes the top

priority uh after that. >> And so next week >> it's crazy that you know you take concessions from some random piece of legislature as it relates to Greenland and the concession is made over on the market structure bill. It's like those two things are so disconnected yet the Republicans and Democrats have they have to they there's bargaining chips and they use these things in each of these bill to negotiate. But yeah, >> but Sam, I wanted to ask you one one other thing related to this which is um this FR&T token this uh Wyoming stable coin that came out today.

>> It kind of seems like a nothing burger. It launched on Salana. Um, do you anticipate kind of the growth of stable coins that you predicted, you know, going into the first half of 2026, this, you know, there's kind of these, uh, this synthetic dollars and then and then real, you know, digital money. Um, where does this one fall? And do you think it's poised for growth? Do you think we're going to see more states launch their own stable coins? And what would be the better? >> Yeah, I was actually just looking at that earlier today with their announcement. Um, I think this will be a good litmus test. Uh, like you said, whether it's a, you know, nothing burger or it's a it's a great example of how states should should do uh maybe their

own uh digital dollar. And the reason I say that is no one owns I mean obviously it's like day one, but like no one owns this uh stable coin. I want to see if there's any real uh use case onchain uh or even offchain outside of very narrow uh payments or things in the state of Wyoming, right? This goes back to this end to end thing where if a stable coin exists and it's not that useful or no one holds it, you know, does it does it really like actually exist, right? Like is it actually something that that matters? And so this will be a good example of like look, this is a statebacked uh digital. It can't possibly get any

more like legal and tender and safe and and whatever than than that. But does it matter? Does is is that the the main thing that uh is important? And so I think um this is a good example of it's it's really safe. it's used in some parts of payments, but like is it going to be orchestrable in in like the global uh large payment processors like like Stripe and and World Pay and stuff or uh is it going to be on chain um you know is it going to have actual holders because if you think about it like if no one's holding it and no one wants to use it as a reserve asset uh you know for for treasury management all this stuff um it it almost like it doesn't exist right if like a tree falls in the forest

and no one's there to hear it you you know, does it actually exist? Same thing here. If no one holds it, if no one's uh using it uh on on the blockchain. And so, I'm not saying that's how it's going to be. I'm just saying like that's part of the fact that these stable coins need to exist on the full loop on the full stack to to actually be useful. >> Yeah. Yeah, to your earlier point about full self-driving self full stack is uh is necessary in order for everyone to see the tree, hear the tree, make sure it >> and that's that last mile problem that a lot of these companies were trying to solve with stable coins, right? Is it is this like last mile to actually being spent to actually being spent in the real world and we really haven't seen much of that yet. But bas just to come

back to your predictions and then close out unification of token and equity one big thing that that I think we're going to see and then it's this it's this um end toend stable coin stack like it's no longer enough to just be a stable coin in DeFi and a stable coin on centralized exchanges. You need to be in the neo banks in the payment processing in the proof of point of sale systems. you're really looking to create like a full um you know the furthest most non-custodial looping strategy on Pendle using Morpho and some extraneous new DeFi app all the way to like you know mom and pops like uh you know PayPal account that they're using for spending. It's like that whole

stack is what we're looking to to basically replicate and create. So um yeah >> uh we are on Pendle and we will soon be uh orchestraable and uh supported by um bridges stable coin system through stripe and so how many stable coins can can say that right like they're they're on you know pendal a and and stuff and in in payments right it's uh I think I can count it on one one hand right like less than five so that's actually a really Good way to uh put it. Yeah, >> Sam, have a great year, man. Looking forward to your big Q1. I know that that you guys have a lot planned out. Thanks

for joining us. First episode of Stable Up this year. Looking forward to keeping it going. We're we're on our way to the trillions in stable coins. I think uh we had Bondi predicted a 60% year-over-year growth this year, which would put us to about 450 billion if I'm not mistaken, is 500 billionish. Um I think that we can go bigger. Uh, but we're on our way to a trillion men. >> Yes, sir. Always a pleasure to be on and uh I'll I'll take I'll take your side of it. I think we can go a little bigger and also contribute to part of that with Fraxusd.

>> Beautiful. I love it. >> Guys, thanks for watching Stabled Up. We'll be right back. Thanks.