
Talking with Xiao Feng about stablecoins again: returning to the technical essence and avoiding conceptual misunderstandings
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Talking with Xiao Feng about stablecoins again: returning to the technical essence and avoiding conceptual misunderstandings
There is significant global attention on stablecoins, but beneath the hype, a large number of misconceptions, distorted information, and even misleading views have emerged.
Original Author: Meng Yan's Blockchain Thoughts
On July 18, the GENIUS Act was officially signed into law by President Trump, triggering global attention toward stablecoins. After a decade of advocacy by pioneers in the blockchain industry and repeated shifts in mainstream discourse, discussions have finally broken through into broader circles. Suddenly, stablecoins have become the hottest topic not only in internet circles and traditional finance but also in macroeconomic policy debates. People are beginning to rethink the impact and disruption that large-scale adoption of digital currencies could bring to the internet, artificial intelligence, finance, and even geopolitical and economic landscapes. Yet amid this surge of interest, widespread confusion, misinformation, and even misleading narratives have emerged, spreading rapidly via self-media channels and creating cognitive distortions. At its root, these issues arise because most discussions remain superficial—failing to recognize stablecoins as products of blockchain technological innovation and neglecting to analyze their nature and applications from a technical perspective. For this reason, I’ve once again engaged in dialogue with Dr. Xiao Feng to explore these matters.
Meng Yan: Dr. Xiao, since our last conversation, developments have progressed rapidly as anticipated. Now that the GENIUS Act has passed, I’ve noticed a sharp rise in interest around stablecoins within Chinese-speaking communities—almost reaching a level of nationwide discussion. A friend who just returned from Hong Kong told me everyone there is talking about stablecoins—it’s truly “a situation I’ve never seen before.” Being based in Hong Kong yourself, you must feel this even more deeply.
Xiao Feng: Indeed, it’s a scene we haven’t witnessed in many years. It’s not just talk—action is also accelerating. Hundreds of enterprises and institutions are lining up to participate in stablecoin initiatives, and news about RWA-related activities updates daily. We’re receiving countless partnership inquiries every day. The significance of the GENIUS Act goes beyond formally establishing the legality and sovereign attributes of "dollar stablecoins" within the U.S. legal system; it sends a clear signal that blockchain and crypto assets are transitioning from gray areas into the mainstream financial system—the launch of a new revolution in financial infrastructure. Given Hong Kong’s status as a global financial center, its sensitivity to this emerging trend is entirely expected.
Seeing this situation, I do feel a sense of reflection. Historically, those who actively embrace and boldly experiment with new technologies almost always reap tremendous rewards. History consistently sides with those optimistic and proactive toward technological advancement.
Meng Yan: But I also see some underlying concerns—the current wave of stablecoin opportunities arrived so suddenly that many were unprepared, resulting in significant knowledge gaps. Some people only heard of stablecoins three months ago, absorbed fragmented information secondhand, and now begin positioning themselves as experts on self-media platforms, amplifying views—some of which, I believe, may be misleading.
Xiao Feng: I’ve recently seen a vast amount of self-media content and share your concern. That said, I’m genuinely pleased with the current atmosphere of discussion. Isn’t this exactly the kind of broad societal engagement we’ve long hoped for? From now on, the industry is entering a major era. In the coming years, stablecoins, RWA, token economics, token-stock convergence, and the integration of crypto with AI will all become vibrant and exciting.
Yet precisely at such moments, we need to stay calm and consolidate our understanding. Based on past experience, when spring arrives and temperatures rise, all sorts of seemingly plausible but fundamentally flawed ideas tend to flourish. Sensationalist and incorrect views easily spread, planting seeds of risk in the market. Cognition and conceptual frameworks matter greatly. Past cycles of dramatic rises and falls in the crypto market, industry detours, and emotional volatility were ultimately rooted in mistaken beliefs.
First, we must make appropriate assessments of the environment. Many assume that because the U.S. has passed legislation, Hong Kong or even China’s crypto industry will immediately open up fully—and they begin strategizing accordingly. This is unrealistic. Regulators still face numerous unresolved issues, which will take time. Any final implementation will necessarily follow rules and structure—it won’t be a free-for-all. Let me give one example: if stablecoins operate outside the banking system, could they enable easier money laundering? Therefore, any responsible regulator will impose strict anti-money laundering requirements on stablecoins.
Additionally, there are significant misunderstandings—even errors—in how people understand stablecoins, RWA, and blockchain technology. This development came abruptly, and indeed many are “newly entering the industry while already standing at the风口 (tipping point),” full of enthusiasm and traffic, yet cognitively undercapitalized, lacking time to catch up, leading to crude judgments. We have a responsibility to point this out.
Discussions About Stablecoins Must Not Ignore Their Technical Nature
Meng Yan: Most current discussions about stablecoins focus solely on financial narratives, rarely touching on technology. Do people really think blockchain technology behind stablecoins has matured to the point of being invisible? In conversations with traditional financial professionals, I’ve found most have little to no hands-on experience with blockchain products, are unfamiliar with DeFi, and have never experienced lost keys or hacking incidents. Yet when discussing building stablecoin applications and systems, they express extraordinary confidence—as if blockchain were a tool they could manipulate effortlessly. Many enter this completely unfamiliar dark forest with the arrogance of “mainstream forces,” filled with familiar processes, models, and regulatory frameworks from traditional finance, assuming these can be directly “transplanted” onto the chain. But they overlook a fact: blockchain represents an entirely new computing paradigm, with operational logic, system boundaries, risk structures, and user behaviors fundamentally different from traditional finance. They seem unaware that blockchain technology remains far from mature, facing ongoing challenges in user experience, security, and compliance support. On-chain environments are fraught with danger—from private key management and smart contract vulnerabilities to phishing attacks, cross-chain bridge exploits, oracle manipulation, regulatory arbitrage, and gray-market fund flows—any single weak link could trigger systemic risk. Without understanding these technical details and mastering real on-chain operations, even the most elegant business strategies and imagined ecosystem loops will likely collapse under waves of user complaints, compliance failures, and security breaches once implemented.
More importantly, blockchain technology itself is still evolving rapidly. Today’s leading protocols and products may be disrupted tomorrow by next-generation architectures. Modular blockchains, zero-knowledge proofs, account abstraction, on-chain governance, re-staking economies, MEV management—these key technical directions and mechanism designs continue to reshape existing understanding. Even we veterans who’ve worked in this industry for over a decade find our knowledge outdated if we stop learning, and our designs quickly become obsolete. Without thoroughly understanding and tracking technological progress, winning in this fierce global competition is impossible.
Xiao Feng: Your reminder is crucial. Recently, I’ve seen many biased or outright incorrect comments about stablecoins and RWA tokenization, rooted precisely in divorcing them from underlying technical logic. People must understand: first came blockchain technology, distributed ledgers, and new financial infrastructure; then came various tokens—including stablecoins—and only afterward did RWA and DeFi emerge.
I am a typical finance professional—a Ph.D. in economics trained after China’s reform and opening-up, working in finance since graduation. So let me offer my peers in finance a sincere suggestion: prioritize studying technology. Discussions about stablecoins cannot ignore their technical attributes, or they’ll become castles in the air.
I first encountered blockchain in 2013. What truly captivated me, after deep study, was discovering the subtle yet powerful alignment between blockchain’s foundational technical architecture and the deep structural elements of financial systems. Over the past decade-plus of practice, I’ve come to realize even more profoundly that this industry today is technologically driven. You might have financial intuition, but without understanding technology, you’ll hit roadblocks quickly in practice. That’s why I’ve spent enormous effort over these years learning blockchain’s underlying principles and cutting-edge technologies.
I’m still learning today. I constantly remind entrepreneurs around me: you don’t need to write code, but you must possess technical judgment. Especially in DeFi, future competition won’t be about licenses or brands, but about protocols, architectures, and system efficiency. Those who continuously iterate in areas like account systems, cross-chain capabilities, clearing and settlement efficiency, privacy protection, on-chain compliance, and risk control modules will gain stronger market positions. Conversely, if you fail to understand blockchain technology or keep pace with its evolution, your strategy becomes detached from reality. This isn’t exaggeration—it’s the true picture of today’s industry competition. Under these conditions, technology isn’t just a competitive edge; it’s a lifeline. Failing to grasp this foundational logic risks severe misallocation of resources in business practice. All your seemingly brilliant ideas will stumble and crash repeatedly in execution.
Meng Yan: Yes, the nature of stablecoins is determined by their technical attributes.
Xiao Feng: In fact, historically, every form of money has been strongly shaped by its technological characteristics. Monetary history has seen three pivotal transformations in attributes. The first was natural-attribute money, spanning thousands of years—whether shells, silver, or gold, their value foundation lay in physical scarcity and natural endowment. The second was legal-attribute money, lasting over a century, whose value derives from state-enforced laws and national credit backing. The third, now emerging, is technologically-attribute money—symbolized by Bitcoin and stablecoins—whose value is secured and guaranteed by digital technologies including cryptography, blockchain (distributed ledgers), digital wallets, and smart contracts.
Therefore, when studying stablecoins, we must never forget their origins or reverse cause and effect. First came innovations in blockchain technology, followed by innovations in distributed accounting methods, then the emergence of new financial market infrastructure built on blockchain and distributed ledgers—only then did stablecoins, RWA, and token economics appear. This progression is independent of human will. The U.S. merely recognized this trend and acted accordingly. By legally endorsing crypto’s legitimacy and compliance, the U.S. is setting 2025 as the inaugural year for traditional financial institutions, traditional capital (including pensions), and traditional investors to enter the crypto market through legitimate channels.
Building Stablecoins Without Understanding Blockchain Leads to “Wearing New Shoes on Old Paths”
Meng Yan: Because this mega-trend is so evident, many traditional institutions are now highly enthusiastic. However, in participating in numerous discussions about stablecoin payments and RWA projects recently, I’ve sensed that many underestimate the disruptive potential of stablecoins and blockchain at the financial model level. Their designs largely ignore the unique characteristics of this new infrastructure. Frankly speaking, it’s “wearing new shoes on old paths.” In their minds, stablecoins are merely tools. The same people, same tasks, same models, same processes—the entire system continues doing the same things in the same way, using stablecoins or blockchain only at specific points to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
This reminds me of the early days of internet e-commerce. In the late 1990s, when the internet first emerged, the biggest criticism was “lack of business models.” E-commerce was one of the few internet business models people could grasp, so many companies wanted to jump in. But their understanding of e-commerce treated the internet merely as a tool—a new sales channel, an upgraded version of telemarketing—simply adding a “mall” section on portal websites and creating an e-commerce department, believing that sufficed. Business processes remained unchanged, organizational structures stayed the same, mindsets didn’t shift. Only when platforms like Amazon and Taobao rose did people realize the internet wasn’t just a tool—neither was e-commerce. Consumer behavior, inventory logic, fulfillment systems, and traffic distribution had all fundamentally changed. Over the following decade, traditional retail was relentlessly disrupted by e-commerce, barely able to fight back. I remember around 2013–2014, many executives lamented, regretting they hadn’t understood e-commerce earlier.
Today is no different. Stablecoins may initially serve as tools, but they are far more than that. Once billions of users install digital wallets and start using stablecoins, they’ll gradually discover that stablecoins aren’t just for payments—they connect to an entire on-chain financial system and economic structure. This structure doesn’t require complex account systems; the user entry point is a “wallet,” not an “account”; interaction happens via smart contracts, not manual approvals; connections occur through on-chain protocols, not intermediaries. Under this model, the “intermediary power” traditional institutions enjoy in legacy systems becomes obsolete, while new entry points and hubs rapidly emerge. The stablecoin economy isn’t about upgrading old systems with new tools—it’s about replacing old systems, absorbing them, and ultimately reconstructing the operational logic of the entire financial industry. This is the profound transformation we should truly focus on.
I feel many severely underestimate this shift. Some overestimate AI’s short-term impact—for instance, certain companies hastily laid off staff last year, replaced jobs with AI, and loudly publicized it in media. Months later, they had to rehire. But when it comes to stablecoins, they easily underestimate their disruptive force. When they see stablecoins, they think: “I can use stablecoins this way in my process, add stablecoin support to that service,” failing to realize that once stablecoins are deeply adopted, their processes, services, departments, and even their own roles might become redundant.
Xiao Feng: To me, the root of this issue lies in inadequate understanding of blockchain—or what we call distributed ledger technology—at the foundational level. Distributed ledgers have actually changed the underlying infrastructure of our financial systems. Many grossly underestimate this change, thinking, “No matter how the bottom layer changes, I’ll keep doing what I do on top.” But blockchain isn’t a “painless upgrade” technology—it’s the kind that triggers systemic change. Everything in the upper layers must be reconsidered. That’s what disruption means.
To truly understand stablecoins, we must first trace their background. Stablecoins are built upon distributed ledger technology—the third iteration in humanity’s millennia-long evolution of accounting methods.
The first was single-entry bookkeeping. As seen in discovered Sumerian clay tablets, this method recorded only income and expenses.
Around 1300 AD, Italy saw the emergence of double-entry bookkeeping, which recorded not only income and expenses but also assets and liabilities. For over 700 years since, calculation methods improved incrementally without fundamental change.
It wasn’t until Bitcoin’s blockchain appeared in 2009 that a new method emerged: distributed ledger technology. The key difference lies in prior methods involving each party maintaining private ledgers. For example, a wire transfer from Beijing to New York involves multiple institutions whose private records must be reconciled—a time-consuming and costly process. In contrast, a distributed ledger is a public ledger where institutions and individuals worldwide record transactions on the same ledger, eliminating reconciliation needs. Payment occurs directly peer-to-peer—this is the core distinction.
After Bitcoin’s blockchain emerged, stablecoins began appearing in 2014. During ongoing engineering experiments, maturation, and optimization of distributed ledger technology, two trends emerged. On one hand, starting in 2009, people created Bitcoin, Ether, and others “from nothing” on the blockchain—termed “digital native.” On the other hand, beginning in 2014, stablecoins like USDT marked another trend: “digital twins.” Digital twins refer to existing real-world assets—such as the U.S. dollar—being brought onto the blockchain and tokenized, digitally mapping established assets onto the chain.
Meanwhile, with the U.S. and Hong Kong approving Bitcoin ETFs last year, a new phenomenon arose: digital-native assets moving from on-chain (On-Chain) to off-chain (Off-Chain). The asset itself remains on-chain, but its financial expression—ETF shares—enters traditional financial trading systems. Bitcoin ETFs are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), allowing investors to buy and sell them under stock-trading mechanisms. While Bitcoin exists on-chain, Bitcoin ETFs exist off-chain. Thus, this process involves On-Chain/Off-Chain conversion and interaction between digital twins and digital natives.
In over a decade of practical experimentation with distributed ledger technology—if viewed as a social engineering experiment—we can observe changes and gradually validate the value of these technologies.
Since 2009, financial market infrastructure has significantly evolved based on distributed ledger innovations. This includes mechanisms for payment, trading, clearing, and settlement. How does the new system differ from the old? What are the features of each?
Current financial infrastructure relies on centralized registration, custody, counterparty trading, and settlement—requiring coordination among at least three institutions to complete clearing and settlement. In contrast, on distributed ledgers, all participants record on the same ledger, enabling peer-to-peer transactions where any two parties can transact directly, eliminating intermediaries.
Existing financial markets use net settlement, whereas distributed ledgers employ gross settlement—each transaction settles individually and instantly upon confirmation, achieving Delivery vs Payment (DvP). On stock exchanges, NYSE plans to introduce 5×23-hour trading by year-end, reserving one hour post-trading for clearing. Nasdaq aims for 5×24-hour trading but cannot achieve it this year due to mandatory pauses for clearing under legacy infrastructure. In contrast, Hong Kong’s virtual asset exchanges already operate 7×24 hours without holidays—precisely because different ledger types result in different financial market infrastructures. This is part of the context for stablecoins: they are built atop new financial market infrastructure.
Since the Bitcoin blockchain mainnet launched in January 2009, this distributed-ledger-based system has operated stably and uninterrupted for over sixteen years. Even judged purely as a large-scale engineering project, it qualifies as a next-generation Financial Market Infrastructure (FMI) that has undergone countless rigorous “destructive tests” and is fully ready for production deployment.
Many think: whether new or old FMI, both must support efficient, secure, trustworthy rules, systems, architectures, and regulatory frameworks for payments, trading, clearing, and settlement—so how does it affect my business model?
The impact is massive! The reason distributed-ledger-based FMI is called “next-generation” lies in its revolutionary restructuring of three core rules.
First, decentralized trading eliminates central counterparties (CCPs), enabling true peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions.
Second, gross settlement replaces netting, adopting per-transaction (gross) settlement.
Third, Delivery vs Payment (DvP): instead of relying on offset clearing, smart contracts enable atomic synchronization of asset (e.g., tokens) and cash (e.g., stablecoins), ensuring instant transaction finality.
This architectural revolution brings significant advantages: drastically streamlined steps, sharply reduced fees, and geometric efficiency gains. Real-world evidence shows this efficiency gap: currently, intraday trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq accounts for less than 50% of total U.S. equity trading volume. After-hours trading and dark pools continue eroding traditional exchange shares. Though both exchanges announce extended trading hours to respond, constrained by legacy FMI clearing systems (like the U.S.’s T+2 settlement), NYSE can at best approach 5×23 hours (still requiring ~1 hour daily for clearing); otherwise, chaos ensues. In contrast, crypto asset exchanges, powered by next-gen FMI, have long achieved 7×24-hour, global, uninterrupted trading. This vividly illustrates the chasm between old and new financial market infrastructures.
But it goes further: just as the internet transformed publishing, media, communications, film, education, and retail—not as simple efficiency tools but by changing user access points to services, reshaping business processes, reconnecting market roles, and transforming industry value chains—blockchain will similarly transform finance. Stablecoin economies are no longer about “replacing one segment of the old system” but about building a new system, a new market, a new industry network. This structural shift will render some institutions obsolete while spawning new platform-level organizations and novel financial applications—already at least four are evident:
First, Bitcoin, as a new asset allocation tool, is expanding from household wealth management to corporate treasury functions and even national strategic reserves.
Second, stablecoins, now legalized as revolutionary payment and settlement tools, surpassed $16 trillion in on-chain transaction volume in 2024, with continued high growth. Cross-border e-commerce businesses in China are major beneficiaries of stablecoin payment advantages, as overseas buyers increasingly pay with stablecoins, driving surging inflows to Chinese merchants.
Third, DeFi (decentralized finance), as an efficient financial investment tool. By end-2024, total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols reached approximately $190 billion. DeFi lending markets are active—for example, annualized borrowing rates for USDT on-chain remain around 8%. Its revolutionary aspect: blockchain lending is executed automatically via smart contracts, eliminating traditional financial intermediaries. This slashes trust costs and operational risks while boosting capital turnover efficiency over tenfold compared to traditional lending, with settlement efficiency leaping qualitatively.
Fourth, asset tokenization (RWA)—recently dubbed “real-world asset tokenization”—aims to map traditional financial and physical assets onto blockchains.
I believe anyone designing a stablecoin system, regardless of approach, risks immediate obsolescence—or failure altogether—if they ignore these perspectives.
The Programmability of Stablecoins Introduces Immense Complexity
Meng Yan: Those who recently joined stablecoin discussions likely haven’t had time to grasp the rich on-chain ecosystem, DeFi, “composability,” token economics, or the extremely complex and dangerous on-chain security environment. Thus, they may struggle to understand the vast possibilities—both positive and negative—that emerge once stablecoins and RWA assets go on-chain.
Xiao Feng: To address these issues, we must start from technology and pay special attention to the opportunities and challenges arising from the openness and programmability of stablecoins. Because stablecoins, other tokens, and future RWAs are all open and programmable.
Currently, many discuss stablecoins and RWA as if they exist on isolated “islands,” treating stablecoins merely as more efficient payment tools and RWA simply as systems registering offline assets on-chain—assuming that once technically feasible and compliant, everything proceeds smoothly. But they may not realize these assets are programmable. Once on-chain, they don’t sit statically—they immediately couple deeply with the entire on-chain ecosystem through code, entering a highly automated, dynamic system far more complex than traditional finance.
From a DeFi perspective, once stablecoins go on-chain, they’re almost instantly used for lending, market-making, re-staking, liquidity mining, leveraged trading, and even complex derivatives. If a stablecoin lacks robust risk modeling, proper boundary conditions with DeFi protocols, or contingency plans for extreme events like flash loans, it could be manipulated, exploited, or even trigger systemic risk in short order. Similarly, if RWA assets are used as collateral on-chain, they may become part of on-chain financial games. If underlying data lacks transparency, valuations are unclear, ownership is disputed, or compliance is faulty, such “sick entries” won’t generate liquidity—they’ll pollute the ecosystem, becoming latent risk sources.
From a token economics standpoint, stablecoins and RWA aren’t neutral—they dynamically interact with utility tokens, governance tokens, and incentive tokens. Over recent years, on-chain projects have developed sophisticated operational logics based on token design, including liquidity incentives, user growth, and governance rewards. Many newcomers lack familiarity with these models and haven’t witnessed how market amplification of incentives can either rapidly propel an application or swiftly collapse a system. Poorly designed RWA or stablecoins, once triggering trust crises in such systems, can fracture entire value chains at lightning speed, causing massive losses.
From a security standpoint, the on-chain environment is extremely harsh. Yu Xian, founder of SlowMist, compares public chains to a dark forest. Anyone who’s suffered asset loss from attacks knows this well, but many traditional finance professionals lack firsthand experience. Some have worked with consortium or private chains in recent years but lack understanding of public chain complexity. In reality, their stablecoins, RWA assets, and smart contracts, once deployed on public chains, face constant threats: smart contract exploits, cross-chain bridge vulnerabilities, oracle manipulation, wallet phishing, MEV extraction, and more. These aren’t theoretical risks—they happen daily. On-chain security isn’t just about code audits; it involves protocol logic, data interactions with external systems, and unpredictable user behaviors. When risks occur, there’s no customer service, no stop-loss, no reversal—the only safeguard is pre-designed resilience. Every security flaw could cost an unbearable price to detect and fix.
From a compliance perspective, the programmability of stablecoins and RWA presents both major opportunities and new challenges. Traditional compliance relies on post-event audits, manual processes, and centralized controls—but when assets and transactions move fully on-chain, these approaches struggle to adapt to highly automated, cross-chain, globally flowing ecosystems. Programmable assets can execute complex behaviors—on-chain lending, re-staking, leverage—in seconds, leaving traditional compliance processes unable to respond. Worse, differing jurisdictional requirements create regulatory conflicts for globally circulating stablecoins and RWA. Yet within these challenges lie transformative possibilities. “Programmable Compliance” embeds compliance rules directly into smart contracts, enabling rule pre-embedding, real-time validation, and automatic enforcement. This opens the door to designing new regulatory architectures compatible with on-chain ecosystems. As long as regulatory logic is clear and data is on-chain, a “code-as-regulation” model becomes possible, laying the groundwork for secure, efficient, compliant global circulation of stablecoins and RWA. Future regulation may shift from the “visible hand” to “rules written in code.”
So I say: once stablecoins truly integrate with the on-chain ecosystem, things become extremely complex—far beyond listing a few use cases on paper. What we’ve discussed here only scratches the surface. Around stablecoins, new issues and challenges in technology, security, economic incentives, and compliance adaptation will continually emerge. This will be an ongoing exploration requiring collective learning, continuous trial-and-error, and shared evolution across the industry.
Cognitive Upgrades Must Be Driven by Innovation
Meng Yan: I think your approach—grounding understanding of stablecoins and blockchain in technology—hits the nail on the head. But I have a concern. Large-scale stablecoin adoption is unfolding rapidly, inevitably bringing unexpected problems and phenomena beyond our current comprehension. Relying solely on existing theoretical preparation may prove insufficient.
Xiao Feng: Fully agree. Cognition is never instantaneous, especially in a complex, fast-evolving system like blockchain, where many issues only surface in real-world environments. We can’t anticipate all variables through discussion alone. We must rely on a practical cycle of “cognition → innovation → feedback → reinvention” to continuously update our understanding. For Chinese entrepreneurs, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. With sufficient technical accumulation and global vision, if we seize this paradigm shift in stablecoins, organize collectively, and co-found and co-experiment, we can establish our voice and leadership in the global stablecoin economy. Only through practice can cognition take root, deepen, and truly become productive force driving the evolution of new financial systems.
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