Who will say sorry to blockchain?
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Who will say sorry to blockchain?
The stablecoin revolution was not a sudden attack, but the result of a decade-long buildup, with regulatory agencies in multiple countries responding slowly.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsOriginal author: Meng Yan's Blockchain Thoughts
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 enacts many laws each year, but this stablecoin legislation will undoubtedly be regarded as one of the most significant milestones in modern monetary history, comparable to the Bretton Woods Conference and the Nixon Shock.
To date, discussions within Chinese communities about dollar-based stablecoins have primarily focused on the innovative opportunities and wealth dividends they bring, with far too little attention paid to the challenges they pose. Even fewer are willing to clearly acknowledge that China has already fallen seriously behind and is in a highly passive position.
In fact, it’s not just China—every non-dollar economy now faces severe challenges.
Due to blockchain's technical penetrability, the near-total dominance of dollar-based stablecoins, and especially America's sudden strategic shift toward proactive regulation and preemptive action, almost every country outside the U.S. now faces an unavoidable battle to protect its monetary sovereignty. In parts of Latin America and Africa, whether by choice or necessity, borders have already opened wide. Dollar-based stablecoins are rapidly penetrating everyday economic activities. In Brazil and Argentina, payments via dollar stablecoins have become deeply embedded in daily life and are extremely common. In Nigeria, reports suggest that as much as one-third of economic activity is conducted using USDT. At present, these countries lack the capacity to regulate such economic activity, let alone tax it. This means a portion of their economies operates beyond national oversight and fiscal control, effectively being absorbed into the broader dollar-based economic system.
Most countries cannot afford to allow this form of digital economic colonization to spread unchecked—but what should they do? Shut the door and build an isolated alternative? Or simply ban stablecoins outright? Many countries adopted such approaches over the past few years. Experience shows these measures are not only ineffective but also carry a more serious long-term risk: falling behind in finance, internet technology, AI, and other critical technological fields. In a sense, the challenges many nations face today are direct consequences of past passivity.
Mere copy-paste solutions are unlikely to work either. Recently, numerous financial institutions and companies across multiple countries have announced ambitious stablecoin issuance plans. But frankly speaking, the idea that obtaining a stablecoin license and holding a grand launch event will automatically allow a nation to ride the stablecoin economic rocket—and somehow secure a place for its currency in the on-chain economy—is overly naive. Issuing a stablecoin is easy. The real challenge lies in how to distribute it beyond your own ecosystem, persuade tens or even hundreds of millions of users to abandon dollar stablecoins in favor of yours, attract thousands of developers to build wallets, custodianship, payment, exchange, lending, and other applications around it, and convince mainstream internet platforms—e-commerce, gaming, live streaming, social media—to adopt your stablecoin. If competing with the dollar in traditional finance is already extremely difficult, doing so in the stablecoin space is at least ten times harder. Any meaningful progress will require extraordinary costs, sustained effort, and exceptionally clear judgment.
So what should be done?
Before discussing countermeasures, perhaps we should first ask: how did things reach this point?
Blockchain is not some sudden technological surprise, nor did dollar stablecoins achieve a $260 billion market cap and 99% market share overnight. The stablecoin revolution was not a sneak attack—it was a widely announced large-scale advance. Over the past decade, countless blockchain experts have repeatedly warned that blockchain and digital currency technologies hold a decisive, asymmetric advantage over traditional financial systems. They emphasized that this is a strategic technology requiring early planning, proactive positioning, and seizing the initiative. Failure to act, they warned, would lead to a highly vulnerable future position. Yet regulators and industries in so many countries chose to ignore these warnings, allowing the situation to deteriorate into today’s passivity. By contrast, why have governments and institutions shown such high sensitivity and urgency toward AI—a technology equally disruptive and risky? Why does mainstream discourse exhibit such enthusiasm and optimistic openness toward AI? Had half the same level of proactivity been applied to blockchain and stablecoins, we would not see the current state of absolute dollar dominance with all other currencies rendered negligible. Had two or three non-dollar stablecoins emerged to rival the dollar, the coming years of competition would offer far greater uncertainty and excitement.
Regrettable! Lamentable!
Where exactly did things go wrong?
Was it due to insufficient attention? No. Since 2014, research and discussion on blockchain and digital assets in China have gone through multiple cycles. Whether academic foresight, industrial technical experiments, or periodic regulatory investigations, voices and efforts have never ceased. Think tanks, research institutes, and university labs have produced in-depth analytical reports, while the financial sector has held numerous closed-door meetings and simulation exercises. At the knowledge level, we were not unprepared—in fact, some insights were internationally leading in depth and foresight.
Were the arguments not made clearly enough? Not at all. When Facebook announced its Libra stablecoin plan in 2019, industry discussions on blockchain and stablecoins were already highly advanced. Anyone reviewing reports from leading research institutions at that time—such as those published by the Digital Asset Research Institute—would find that virtually every issue visible today had already been identified and analyzed. Indeed, the understanding back then was often far more comprehensive and profound than that of today’s “three-month crash-course” stablecoin experts seen on short-video platforms.
Was the language unprofessional? No. Financial professionals raised their voices early on. For example, Dr. Feng Xiao, a finance PhD, began as early as 2016 to articulate, in highly professional terms, the technological superiority of blockchain—particularly emphasizing its integrated distributed ledger system that combines payment, clearing, and settlement into a single step. He clearly stated that this single feature alone would deliver hundredfold improvements in efficiency and cost, inevitably triggering an upgrade of financial infrastructure—an unstoppable trend. The logic was sound, the argument professional, and the message widely disseminated.
Was public misunderstanding caused by cryptocurrency market chaos? Perhaps for the general public, but this excuse doesn’t hold for true professionals. As early as 2016, Chinese blockchain discussions explicitly distinguished speculative cryptocurrencies from underlying blockchain technology. After 2019, as debates around “industrial blockchain” deepened, the industry had already studied application boundaries and governance principles for blockchain use in verification, ownership confirmation, and value transfer. Had these studies been taken seriously, there would have been no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Then what was the reason?
A few days ago, I heard an account from a high-level closed-door meeting where a financial official admitted that several years ago, they fully understood the disruptive potential of stablecoins and blockchain technology. However, because the Biden administration rejected blockchain, they concluded the technology had no future. They never expected that once Trump took office, he would swiftly reverse course and push forward stablecoin legislation—catching them completely off guard and leaving them in today’s passive position. He concluded that, going forward, innovation must be met with a more proactive stance.
Similarly, in recent months, I’ve frequently discussed stablecoins with traditional financial experts, presenting our developed solutions for stablecoin smart payments and digital bills. One Wall Street expert told me afterward that if such applications were widely deployed, they would fundamentally disrupt traditional banking operations, reconfiguring relationships among customers, capital, and services. Yet Wall Street isn’t blind to this—many major banks have internally used blockchain for years and fully understand its advantages and disruptive potential. However, precisely because blockchain is so disruptive, they believed regulators would intentionally suppress its development “to maintain financial stability.” During the Biden administration, authorities indeed maintained such tacit understanding with Wall Street. Had it not been for an unpredictable figure like Trump—who loves to overturn tables—and unexpected shifts in the relationship between the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, and the White House, it would have been hard to imagine the U.S. government unleashing the stablecoin “tiger” at this moment.
Situations in other countries are similar. In Australia, we participated in the central bank’s CBDC pilot in early 2023 and ranked among the top performers. The central bank highly praised the technical advantages demonstrated by both CBDCs and stablecoins during the trial. Yet afterward, they decided to indefinitely postpone any actual rollout. In private conversations, officials revealed that Australian commercial banks collectively resisted CBDCs and stablecoins, meaning the entire pilot was destined from the start to remain just an innovation showcase without breakthrough impact. In Singapore, after years of tolerance and support for blockchain and digital assets, attitudes shifted following this year’s elections. Analysis suggests the new government is concerned about the potential disruption stablecoins and digital assets could bring to the financial sector.
Thus, it’s evident that everyone already knew about the technological strengths of blockchain and stablecoins and even acknowledged their inevitability. Yet, fearing risks and disruptions to existing interests and institutional frameworks, they deliberately chose numbness and delay. Put simply, everyone consciously pretended to sleep, hoping to prolong the dream a little longer.
Contrast this with AI—this becomes even clearer. Seriously speaking, AI’s disruptive potential exceeds that of blockchain and stablecoins. Its risks are broader, deeper, more potentially destructive, and less predictable. If suppressing blockchain was justified as risk control and stability preservation, then AI should have warranted even stricter caution. Yet in the AI race, Silicon Valley fired the first shot naturally, prompting immediate, full-scale engagement—no hesitation, no观望, no deliberation. Everyone rushed in headfirst. But in blockchain, a strange tacit agreement long prevailed: someone else must fire the first shot that shatters the dream.
Well, now Trump has fired that shot without hesitation—and he knew full well that during the period when everyone hesitated, delayed, and feigned ignorance, dollar stablecoins quietly achieved dominant deployment across the global on-chain landscape, capturing users, use cases, liquidity, and developer networks. The chessboard was set; all that remained was the first move. What Trump did was merely capitalize on this momentum, legitimizing a “supranational dollar network” onto the world stage and slapping a naked declaration of war onto the desks of every non-dollar economy. Externally, it marks the beginning of substantive restructuring in global monetary order; internally, it redefines coordination between the U.S. state apparatus and its tech, finance, and capital markets. For the rest of the world, this is no longer a topic that can be postponed, blurred, or approached with “pilot-and-watch” ambiguity. It has become an urgent, inescapable reality confronting nearly every central bank, treasury department, and regulator.
How to respond to this challenge may be a question requiring years to answer. But before solving it, we must first have the courage to face reality—to admit openly: we missed the opportunity, misjudged the situation, clung to short-term stability with false hope, and turned a blind eye to the ironclad logic of technology.
At this starting point of a new global financial order reshaping, perhaps we should first lay down our arrogance and prejudice and say “sorry” to blockchain—not for emotional release, but to rebuild a foundation of understanding. We must re-examine the productive relations革新 this technology represents, re-embrace the institutional experiments driven by this generation of developers, and re-strategize our position within the global digital value network. Only then might we stand a chance to secure our place in the coming digital economic competition that will shape the future global landscape.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
Yan Meng
