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Heads up!

Stripe and Advent’s $53 billion bid for PayPal has reopened an old argument: did PayPal ever really try to win with stablecoins?

Alex Wilson, founder of Cyclops and former head of crypto and stablecoins at Shift4, joins Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins to argue that PayPal chose the innovator’s dilemma over disrupting its own checkout business, while Stripe used its richer private valuation to buy up cheap public payments companies outright.

Wilson and the hosts then map the stablecoin distribution war, from Circle’s exposure to bank-led consortiums like OUSD to Robinhood’s USDG, which arrived with a built-in user base and a promotional 7% yield.

Markets and AI round out the show. Ram Ahluwalia explains why SpaceX’s post-IPO round trip is less a top signal than a series of mini euphoric moments unwinding, and why he sees Oracle’s balance sheet exposed as Kimi K3 undercuts OpenAI’s pricing.

Chris Perkins closes on why banks are suddenly pushing for the Clarity Act’s federal preemption, and why the Senate may get only one shot before recess.

Hosts:

Guest:

    • Alex Wilson – Founder of Cyclops, Cofounder of The Giving Block, and former Head of Crypto and Stablecoins at Shift4