EN | Stablecoin Solutions for Banks | MERGE São Paulo

It's my pleasure to welcome Monica Ramirez and David Lawant. Hello everyone. I hope you're enjoying the conference. My name is David. I'm head of research at Anchorage Digital and I'm here with Monica who is from our stablecoins team and we're going to do quick intros very quickly.

I'm Brazilian and speak Portuguese. Monica speaks speaks perfect Spanish. So we could either do this in Portuñol or in English. We we chose English. Uh so maybe we can start.

I can do a quick intro on myself and then Monica, you you you can go. Uh yeah, I'm David head of research at Anchorage. Uh I've been with the firm for just a few months. Uh before that I've developed a career in quite a few uh crypto institutional firms both on the buy-side and on the sell-side uh always in head of research or research roles. Uh before that I used to work in traditional finance, investment banking and equity research covering Latin America for large banks like JP Morgan and Itaú, some of the larger banks here in the region.

Uh so that's it on me. Monica, why don't you give us an intro? Hi, good morning, good afternoon. Uh my name is Monica Ramirez Arellano. I'm a managing director on the stablecoins team leading the the program that's called stablecoin solutions for banks.

Uh joined been at Anchorage for over a year now building the team and happy to be here. Awesome. So um I'm going to start very quickly just describing Anchorage and then I'll ask some questions on Monica mostly around our stablecoin offering. Um Anchorage as some of you might know is one of the leading crypto institutional infrastructure providers. The firm started in 2017 as a custody um a custody provider and over the years we've been adding a ton of services around We are definitely a market leader on custody and settlement and doing things like governance and staking.

But then over time we started to add a bunch of other services. Perhaps the most noteworthy of those is that 5 years ago we were the first crypto company to have a federal banking charter in the United States. We just celebrated the 5th anniversary of our charter. As Monica will make very clear, this is very important. I think I'm just going to skip the Anchorage part all together.

Maybe it's not bringing us luck. But just to summarize, Anchorage is one of the leading crypto institutional infrastructure providers. Have a very big custody settlement business. We have a big banking division which is very relevant for things like stablecoin issuance. And we also provide prime services which is what I do.

So things like spot trading, derivatives trading, prime lending. We have the full gamut of institutional services that a player needs to engage with the industry. Monica, let's move to you. Let's talk about stablecoins. We all at Anchorage believe that stablecoins are going to be this new core of global finance, core infrastructure of global finance.

So tell me a little bit more about that. Great. Thank you. So the we started the stablecoins team at Anchorage last year. And part of it was because we started to see that Anchorage already had the key foundations to issue stablecoins safely.

So as a regulated custodian we have the ability to hold assets for the digital asset world and able to scale greatly with our clients. The second is we have a big distribution network. By having the largest institutions in the world as our clients we're able to transform and share these stablecoins around the world. The third is our relationships with blockchains and protocols also allows us to build stablecoins that are in multi-chains and multi-assets in order to have a lot of diversity in how these transactions work. And then finally, having the connectivity with fiat as the first OCC charter crypto bank, connecting the fiat with the on-chain activity is also very important to issue a high-quality stablecoin.

So, as we were starting to build the team and the capabilities, we found that these key inputs were super necessary in order to have that infrastructure so we can have stablecoins that can actually transform the future of finance. Awesome. And this is obviously a very interesting time to talk about stablecoins. Uh stablecoins have been around for quite a long time. Tether launched in 2014 if I'm not mistaken.

But the reason why we're talking about this right now when we have this type of conference with this level of uh attendance is that uh we had a landmark legislation um event in the middle of last year in the US, which was the genius act. This is the basic uh stablecoin uh legal framework that was approved. Uh in the US, we're still going through a rule-making process that might take us until maybe early next year, maybe end of this year. So, there's still a lot to be done. There are There are still a few lingering questions that are now uh standing with the crypto market structure bill, which is a different legislation, a different uh bill that is being discussed in Congress right now.

So, we're in the process of having some discussion, especially around stablecoin rewards uh being ironed out. But the amount of regulatory progress that we had over the past 12 to maybe 15 months uh regarding stablecoins in the US is absolutely astounding. So, this speaks a lot about why we have been seeing that much interest in stablecoin in in stablecoins in just so many slots of the market. So, Monica, talk us a little bit about why we developed a solution for banks specifically. Do we think this is going to be a core user base for stable coins?

What's What's our rationale around that? So, once you issue a stable coin, you need to make sure that there's very good distribution and areas to accept and trade that stable coin. And we find that banks around the world are well equipped in order to receive and work on the future of finance with cross-border payments. So, stable coin solutions for banks was started with officially launched this February here at Anchorage. And it's the program for international licensed banks that want settlement using stable coins.

So, our three main value propositions of this program is the first one, it becomes B2B. And how we define B2B is bank to bank. So, as the first OCC charter crypto bank, we engage with banks around the world that want access to high-quality stable coins. The second one is that at the end of the day, we're stable coin agnostic. We recognize that stable coins have been in existence prior to our program, and we need ways to be able to accept those and have them trade safely into fiat.

And we also see a future where not all stable coins are going to be USD denominated, so we need to prepare the rails to be stable coin agnostic. And then the third one is these banks get also access primary access to the stable coins that are issued by Anchorage Digital Bank. And those are currently four key key stable coins. The first one is Tether's USAT, which is the US version of the USDT. We also have Western Union's USDPT.

OSL's USDGO. And also Athena's USDTB. So, we find that with these three key partners, and they partners that have entrusted Anchorage Digital Bank to issue USD denominated stable coins, that these will be a integral part of the infrastructure. And for banks, this is very important because having primary mint redeem option, they can redeem one-to-one, right? Which is exactly what the legislation's meant to encourage rather than go to secondary transactions or markets and lose pips.

So, this preserves the on-chain with the off-chain capability in order to have transfers that maintain its dollar value. So, currently we've been engaging with banks in LatAm and around the world, and this is something that we we hope to scale in the future. That's awesome. This is actually great for me because as head of research, I usually spend a lot of time on markets, and now I get to learn a lot more about our offerings. So, this is actually super interesting.

Tell us a little bit more about what sorts of use cases you're seeing maybe among banks or even specifically within LatAm. What were the specific cases that people are reaching out you for, or what are the ones that you think are going to be the most exciting for our audience here? Yeah, great question. The we try to focus on three key flows that are the most popular and the ones that solve the biggest pain points today. The first one is treasury management.

So, we provide the banks the ability to send stable coins and trade them into dollar fiat to do transactions in the United States. So, it becomes a nostro vostro challenger where stable coins becomes a just-in-time rail to be able to do transactions that are USD denominated. The second one is corporate client inbounds. So, we find that around the world large businesses already have access to stable coins, especially ones that are in in cross-border trade, and banks need tools to be able to receive those stable coins for those clients and continue to maintain and grow and bank those clients in in these countries. So, we provide the infrastructure to be able to continue to service those clients and grow together in the digital asset world.

And then the third one is a against uh and MSBs. So, as as remittances companies do the reverse flow of sending from the US into uh their countries, we're finding that there's a big demand to do the first leg in stable coins. So, where the remittances company sends the stable coin directly to the bank, and then the bank, upon receiving the stable coin, can either offer better effects, has just-in-time settlement, and can really optimize their treasury management for that uh opportunity. And when we hear about and talk about cross-border payments for remittances, I think that unlock is already very, very big and large for for the industry. Yes, we can see a world where the stable coin goes from a retail person in in the US into a retail person in into uh a different country, but I think we're still uh a far far away, uh but even just starting the the initial portion with the bank will will provide better rates, better experience, not only for the banks, but hopefully the the end customers.

That's awesome, very exciting. Um so, yeah, I mean, this is a relatively recent push, right? We recently launched our stablecoin for banks uh offering, but is there anything you can tell us? Maybe you hinted a little bit at that in one of your previous answers, but what is next for Anchorage uh stablecoin services? What what else would you foresee?

What are the big market trends that you want to get ahead of? Yeah, so the first one is is issuance, broadening our portfolio of of stable coins. I think that there are other conversations that will materialize in the next uh couple of months. Uh we will see also these partner banks that are not only trust us with the with this cross-border flow, are now interested in issuing their own stable coins in their own uh currency, so becoming good design partners uh in that journey, and then also help with the distribution. Uh so, that convergence of where our clients also now become our our providers when it comes to stable coins and I think that that's a powerful unlock in and growing the relationship together.

And on the on the bank side is uh growing the network. I think that uh when we started these conversations last year with certain banks, there was a lot of uh shyness and and education and ramping up. Uh but once uh they get into this journey of having these three use cases of treasury, corporate client inbounds and and settlement against PSPs PSPs, uh the the adoption curve in digital assets becomes much larger and they feel empowered to have a very trusted solution in order to build more of the infrastructure on chain. So, uh think of us as as uh design partners and uh we like the hard stuff and that's part of why the name is stable coin solutions because we help solutioning and not everything is um out of the box and I think that that's an important part of the collaboration. That's awesome.

You also talked a little bit about non-USD stable coins in one of your previous answers. Uh do you feel like that's going to be a trend or are we still going to be a mostly US denominated or primarily US denominated market? I think that there will definitely be uh non-USD denominated stable coins. Uh from my point of view, uh we think that while genius was amazing, it also caught a lot of people off guard. So, it was signed in July 18th, so in the middle of the summer.

And I know that date very well because it's after 4th of July and was expecting to have some nice sun and and some time off, but uh clearly we were all hands on deck uh at Anchorage uh issuing stable coins and working with our name partners. So, that really got us into the end of 2025 and and now um you know, US AT is live, US DPT will go live pretty soon, uh USD Go is live and also uh US DTB. Uh so as as more USD denominated stable coins enter the flow, not only on the international side, but on the US side, I think that there will be more demand uh for non-USD stable coins uh because at the end of the day, like these in order to have a a cross-border transaction, if you can maintain both currencies on chain, that's something that that banks and and partners really want to see. Uh but of course uh the licensing and uh framework really depends and varies across countries, so we we have to be a little patient, but we're we're excited about what what what's coming down the pipeline. Awesome.

We have just a couple minutes left, so I'm going to put my research role and I want to paint a picture of how the future of finance can look like in a stable coin enabled world. Um but a lot of my job is talking to institutional investors, and some of them are venture capitalists, some other are crypto hedge funds, or other are traditional finance firms we're starting to get into the space. So it's a pretty broad range of investors that I get to talk to. And I feel like there is a narrative that is kind of getting drawn out, and I I think it's important to highlight this. Um when you think about the development of crypto and the sort of product market fit that the industry has been finding, stable coins is definitely a a a bright point, right?

We probably have maybe over a hundred million users of stable coins globally today. That is definitely the uh product market fit that crypto that people usually mention when we want to they want to talk about our industry. And and and stable coins are going to be the central pillar around which we're going we're starting to see all these other interesting verticals in crypto development. So things like tokenization, things like decentralized finance. A lot of these things they depend a little bit on the regulatory environment being ready, and I would say we're probably 60-70% there.

Maybe in a couple months we're going to be 80-90% there. So, there's a lot going on here. There's been a lot of technical blockchain infrastructure development that allowed us to get to the throughputs that a big and scalable stablecoin operation like ours would demand. So, a lot of piece pieces had to fall into place for stablecoins to be this kind of primary pillar for this crypto-enabled world. And basically what I the only thing I want to do here is just to invite you to think about how this bigger world of finance could look like when you start to merging things like yeah, stablecoin rails and then maybe tokenization and decentralized finance and vaults.

And if you're not familiar with these terms, I would invite you to look into them a little more because the world of finance is probably going to look very different from what it is today in 3 to 5 years. So, yeah, that's basically it. We have less than a minute left. So, Monica, how can people find us? So, we will be around here for the next 24 hours, but we also have the beautiful email called stablecoins@anchorage.

com. So, feel free to send us any questions or any opportunities and we're happy to to collaborate and work on stablecoin solutions together. I think it's it's Merge does a great job at bringing together a lot of people from around the world and and looking forward to to meeting more of you and and having those conversations. Awesome. That's it.

stablecoins@anchorage.com. I hope you guys have a good conference and if you need to talk to us, you know where to find us. Have a good one.