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Sovereign Debt Goes On-Chain

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Stellar, Surus, and M1X present a special edition of The Stable Pulse, recorded live at Stablecon Salon during New York Fintech Week on April 30, 2026.

What happens when a sovereign nation chooses the blockchain over banks?

In March 2026, the Republic of the Marshall Islands became the first nation to issue sovereign debt natively on a public blockchain. USDM1 is a U.S. dollar-denominated sovereign bond, fully collateralized by U.S. treasuries, with on-chain settlement powered by Stellar. It also serves as the distribution mechanism for a universal basic income paid to citizens of the Marshall Islands.

Principals of the three organizations that built USDM1 sat down for an intimate conversation with Justin Friedman, Head of Policy at Stablecon:

​Their discussion explores the genesis of USDM1, the potential for institutional adoption and financial inclusion, and what this model unlocks for governments as well as capital markets participants. The panel unpack the key distinction between a “stablecoin” and a “stablebond” such as USDM1, how coupon payments and yield change the economics, how a Brady Bond-style structure brings a legally tested framework into tokenized finance, and what the long-term trend of dollarization means for central banks and independent monetary policy.

Listen in for a spirited discussion about why this experiment could reshape access to capital and redefine trust in sovereign debt.

Headlines And Live Panel Setup

Patrick Murck

Passage of the stablecoin legislation drafted by the Senate, dubbed the Genius Act, because analysts say a wave of competition could complicate things. Stablecoin issue of debut right here at the NASDAQ today.

Justin Freidman

Welcome to the Stable Pulse. We have a special episode for you recorded live from StableCon Salon at the offices of the Stellar Development Foundation on April 30th, 2026, during New York FinTech Week. I'm Justin Friedman. I'm head of policy at Stablecon and your host. I'm joined by three leaders who will introduce the world to a brand new type of financial instrument, which may just transform the way governments raise and disperse funds. With us today are Raja Chakravorty, Raja's Chief Business Officer at the Stellar Development Foundation. Thanks for hosting us, where Raja oversees strategic partnerships and investment activities in support of the mission to expand equitable access to the global financial system. Welcome, Raja.

Raja Chakravorti

Thanks, Justin. I'm thrilled to be here, and you did a great intro for me. So thank you. You're welcome.

Justin Freidman

Next to Raja, we have Patrick Mark. Patrick is founder and CEO of Sheriffs, a full-stack financial infrastructure platform that provides digital asset builders with qualified custody, reserve management, stablecoin issuance, asset tokenization, and fund administration. Don't miss Patrick's monthly podcast, Form and Structure. Patrick, welcome. Humbled and honored. Thank you. Finally, we have Mark Lorrie. Mark is co-founder and CEO of M1X, a global sovereign financial infrastructure and technology company bringing public finance to on-chain capital markets. M1X operates in partnership with the Republic of the Marshall Islands, coordinating the legal, compliance, technology, custody, and institutional infrastructure necessary to integrate sovereign digital instruments into global markets. I'm so excited for this conversation. Welcome, Mark.

Mark Lurie

Thank you very much. And thank you to Stellar for having us here. And thank you all for coming.

Marshall Islands Payment Rails Break Down

Justin Freidman

What happens when a sovereign nation chooses the blockchain over banks? The Republic of the Marshall Islands turned to blockchain infrastructure to tap into the capital markets while addressing the practical challenge of delivering a universal basic income to the planet's most geographically dispersed population. With fewer than 50,000 residents at the last census, the Marshall Islands is one of the world's smallest countries. Yet these 1,200 islands are spread across an area of the Pacific Ocean nearly the size of Mexico. As a result, many households lack reliable access to banks and cash. Today's panel will explore a pivotal moment in the history of public finance. Governments can now issue debt natively on-chain. The Marshall Islands worked with M1X to develop USDM One, a US dollar-denominated sovereign bond that is fully collateralized by U.S. Treasuries and natively issued on the stellar blockchain. It went live this March. Shuris serves as the regulated U.S. space trustee, custodian, and collateral agent for holders of USDM One. The result is a high-quality digital asset that anyone from individuals to regulated banks to corporate treasurers can hold, just like they do today with U.S. treasuries. Proceeds of the bond will fund aid to be distributed to the citizens of the Marshall Islands through a digital wallet, promising to reduce their dependence on cash. Coindesk hailed USDM1 as a new model for digital public finance and universal basic income in underserved regions. Let's dive into our discussion to explore how this experiment could reshape access to capital, redefine trust in sovereign debt, and open new pathways to financial inclusion. Mark, start with you. Tell us a bit about the Marshall Islands. What is the constraint that they were solving for with USDM one?

Mark Lurie

So uh the Marshall Islands is a small country that's about halfway between Hawaii and Australia. And it's a former US territory. It's actually very similar to the US in a lot of ways. They uh speak English, they use the US dollar, they serve in the US military, they're still domestic for postal services. Um and so uh it has the institutional stability uh and kind of legal system that you might benefit from in the US, but uh they have real problems with everyday payments, right? And these are people who are free to come and work in the US, and yet sometimes cash runs dry in the ATMs. Why does that happen? Well, the problem is that for the Marshall Islands and for a lot of small countries, it's not really worth it for correspondent banks to serve those markets. And so they de-risk and pull out, right? And as a result, it can be quite hard to get money in or out of the country. There are local banks without correspondent banking relationships, right? And so in that kind of environment, how do you actually get money? Uh and if you're spread across islands, you don't necessarily want to travel to just a you know deposit or withdraw a check. And if there's not central check clearing, well, you can't really have online banking or transfers. And so it creates a very unique environment where there's a really big need in an environment where you have the institutional stability uh similar to the US. That's a really unique opportunity for blockchain to play a really big role. And I think the Marshall Islands really wanted to try to solve this problem, which has been an issue for many, many decades. The uh I think that the problem can really be identified in in what's happening with universal basic income, right? Where about 25% of the checks haven't been picked up because people can't get to them, right? It has 10,000 checks sitting there. I mean, and this needs to pay for groceries and goods and children. It's it's an important thing. Now, the Marshall Islands considered things like stable coins, but the problem is to get a stable coin, you need to send a wire into the country. And if you want to deposit a stable coin in the bank or convert it to cash, well, that bank can't hold stable coins. So it has to send a wire to offer anything. And that defeats the whole point of avoiding a reliance on correspondent banking systems. And so they thought, how can we reclaim our sovereignty and reduce our dependency on international financial institutions who don't really serve our interests, right? Not that they're uh ill-meaning, but it's not their priority. Uh, and the answer was um do it ourselves. And so USDM1 is a sovereign bond, but is also fully collateralized by US Treasuries. So you have the uh legal structure of a sovereign asset, but you also have the creditworthiness of US Treasury. And that's something that banks can hold, and that helps solve their correspondent banking problem, and that helps solve their payment problems.

Why USDM1 Is Not A Stablecoin

Justin Freidman

Okay, hang on a second here. Uh you said they looked at stable coins. USDM1 kind of looks like a stable coin to me. Are you telling me it's not a stable coin? What is it?

Mark Lurie

Well, a stable coin is not a dictionary-defined term. Uh, and it can mean many different things. I mean, we refer to stable coins as circle, as tether, as uh Athena. I mean, these are very different things. So the truth is it doesn't mean much, right? There are certain types of things. There's now payment stable coins as a result of genius. There are uh algorithmic stable coins, um, there's fiat back stable coins in other ways, right? And so all of these are actually different things, and they have different legal treatment, different regulatory treatment, and that really matters for how it's actually used. This is not a stable coin, it is sovereign debt. And sovereign debt is a thing unto itself.

Justin Freidman

Raja, I'm gonna turn to you. Where does this distinction actually matter?

Raja Chakravorti

Uh okay, so there's like so much to unpack, which is like so awesome, by the way, what you guys created. And so let me try to I'll I'll get to like what it means. But I'll say the first time I met Mark, um, he he approached me, and there was this just like audacious idea that you've got, you know, all of these islands that are disparately, you know, like out in the middle of the Pacific, and you have to be able to get assets between people. And that the existing system was effectively like bartering because there's no access to cash. So, okay, that's wild. And it's not like there's a plane where you can fly from like island that is like on the Cancun side to, you know, the Port of Ayurta side. And if you're looking at Mexico, like, you know, you have to vote. And so that's like really severe friction. And so, in so many ways, a digital asset is the thing that makes the most sense. Um, the reality is when I think about like banking and how banking has evolved, just this idea that the correspondent banking network effectively like fails in that place actually kind of follows what happened. You know, obviously, I live in the United States, and so I'm taking a US centric point of view. But over the past several years, you're starting to see this kind of evaporation of local banks, you know, different bank branches, because it wasn't really a creative for the way in which people were going to the banks. It wasn't necessarily profitable, and you're starting to see this like loss that was happening there. I think that's probably exacerbated when you look at an island scenario and then you take COVID on top of it. And I think the banking system probably like, you know, all of the banks disappeared. And so finding that mechanism is super, super valuable. So I just think kudos to you guys for having done a solution like this. Um, but to get to your question, the difference between this structure, I think is it's it's really exciting because a stable bond product, which is what we're describing here, has so much embedded value that I think stable coins have solved very clear problems, but stable bonds take it to the next level. And so in a stable bond, you've got kind of like your principal element and you've got your coupon element. And that coupon element provides interest. And that interest is something that is incredibly valuable because structurally you can start doing really, really interesting things, particularly as you know, uh like a collateral perspective, as something that literally earns you a yield. So you don't have what I describe as like a lazy asset sitting there within a system. And so you're actually unlocking incremental value as we talked about, like developing financial access. And I think that's probably the place where we're gonna see this innovation actually start to like seep into innovation across how people are thinking about stable coins broadly, right? Like you are going to have that first stable coin, that first use case was hey, let me use, like let me have a dollar denominated bank account, I guess, in an emerging market where you have, you know, um you have risk from currency, you have risk from inflation, you have all of these different risks. But now you've got a sovereign bond product and it is fully collateralized by the US government, plus it's got this coupon, and so it's just creating all this opportunity to create more more uh innovation. So huge, huge opportunity.

Legal Plumbing For Sovereign Debt

Justin Freidman

Patrick, uh you're a corporate lawyer. Um He looks the part too, doesn't he? Yeah, obviously. For those who are listening and not watching, by the way. For those who are listening and not watching, uh, he he very much looks the part. And uh so Patrick, my question is why is this distinction so important to holders of the asset? The difference between a stable coin, a stable bond.

Patrick Murck

Yeah, I mean, again, like these terms are so fluid that you know take it all with a grain of salt. But um, what's interesting about this particular asset and what makes it unique is that it is sovereign issued and it in the US qualifies as what's called a Brady bond. And so when you hold this asset, unlike a payment stablecoin under Genius, what you actually have is something that is is basically a look through to the treasuries that are being held behind it. So they function like those treasuries, and that has practical implications. It means that unlike a security in the US, um, which is typically how you would get yield from an asset, it can transform more, transfer more freely. Um and then unlike a stable coin, which can transfer freely, you get yield. So it's like got this like combination of the best of both things at the same time. And that makes it a very unique product. And then if we wanted to like get into the more wonky legal stuff, which I don't know, reads no kidding. Nobody wants to go too far down this rabbit hole. I know that. Um the bars open, maybe. Um so the other implications are it's more institutional braid than a lot of other offerings that are out there to settle the cash flake, like other stable coins and things like that. Because it's sovereign debt, because it's registered with the SEC, and because it's technically a security. So under the UCC, which is how we govern sort of transfers of property, it's state level, and every state has their own version of it. UCC8 applies to securities and it creates a very clear framework that has stood the test of time and decades of use to decide how ownership is transferred between these different assets. Um whereas with stable coins, it's still a bit of an emerging area. And for other digital assets, there are only a handful of states which have passed the UCC amendment to even provide any sort of clarity on it. So you get that clarity too, and it can be rated by ratings agencies. There's all sorts of like things that make it really interesting for institutional actors. And Mark and I were talking, it's very it's kind of like it's weird, right? Because like usually if you make a product and you're like, man, this is really gonna help the bankers, right? Fine, you that's okay. But it usually doesn't help the Marshallese people. And if you make a product that's like to help the Marshallese people, it's usually not something that helps bankers, too. And this is just a weird, that's just weird, man. It's weird, right? Like, because it helps both.

Justin Freidman

That's what I love about this, that it is uh it has such a two-sided mission. Um,

The Real Hurdle Was Will

Justin Freidman

Mark, this project has been underway for years. I I know that you and your colleagues have building a really have been building a relationship with the government of the Marshall Islands for a long time and conceptualizing this. What was the most significant hurdle that they were trying to overcome? And how did you get across the finish line?

Mark Lurie

Well, there was a uh 10 years in the making, um and uh probably two years focused on this, but 10 years exploring how to solve the problem. Um and I would say that the hurdles were not what we expected going in. Um and I think it probably uh calls back to what Patrick mentioned, which is it is surprising that this same asset can is useful for Main Street and and Wall Street, but it shouldn't be because we all hold sovereign assets for Main Street and Wall Street. You can open your wallet, your physical wallet, and you will see sovereign assets. Many people hold treasuries, right? Uh and T-bills, you can get them from treasurydirect.gov. So actually, this is how the financial system is designed, intended, and set up. So we really shouldn't be surprised. And so a lot of the hurdles that one would think would be there were not the ones that uh turned out to be the biggest blockers. Now, not that they were not hard, but um, you know, they were surmountable. I think what was actually the biggest challenge was uh will and faith. So there had to be will from the Marshall Islands government and faith in an entrepreneurial approach to the problem as opposed to a very uh, you know, let's say bureaucratic large institution approach to the problem. I think they were done with large institutions now prioritizing them and willing to engage in an entrepreneurial approach. And faith because they had faith in that entrepreneurial energy and the partners involved, but also faith on the on the behalf of the partners because it's not clear what this would be initially, and yet it took years to of work with uncertain return, uh, just having faith that actually this is a real problem, finally. And there is a real solution that will do real good for people, and it is worth pursuing that and supporting that and putting blood, sweat, and tears in. And it turns out that attracts some of the most brilliant minds and the best people. And uh and that's what happened. If anything, it's selected for that.

Justin Freidman

Um if it wasn't clear that I stole his talking point.

Patrick Murck

I 100% stole his talking point there. Um, but I enjoyed it and thought it was great. And I and you know, so it's good. And they liked tearing it twice, anyways. I will say, like, I've known you for a decade and I almost probably this whole journey, and I will say for at least nine and a half of those years, I thought you were a crackpot you know, for doing this thing. You're like, I went to the Marshall Islands again. And I'm like, man, what the heck are you doing? Where even is this play? So it was having gone there now, I think. Yes, it's amazing.

Justin Freidman

It's uh it's terrific. Okay, everyone on the stage has probably been called a crackpot uh by some of their friends and family for you know not believing in you know what we see as the future of financial services. And it's really exciting to see practical use cases like this coming to fruition and actually answering that call.

Why Stellar Fit The Mission

Justin Freidman

So let's talk about Stellar. There are many blockchains out there, and you chose Stellar. Why?

Mark Lurie

Well, we chose um they have a great bar. Yeah, coffee seats. Yeah. Um nice view. Yeah, nice view. Um, handsome people. Uh and uh you know, first it it was a uh decision we came to with the Marshall Islands, and there was quite an extensive evaluation process. And uh there's some things which were technically beneficial, right? Uh fast transaction times, uh long track record, very low transaction fees. Um those were table stakes. Um but I think what really set it apart was uh was a mission, right? Stellar's mission is financial inclusion. And there are other foundations that say that, but not many that walk the walk. Or talk the walk, walk talk and walk. And uh, uh and they were really enthusiastic, uh supportive, leaned in, and uh and and because of all that, I think there's faith that whatever happens, whatever problems come up, they will find a way to make it work and they will develop the technology in the way that is necessary for uh the Marshall Islands to continue, right? And the Marshall Islands was very uh hesitant to engage with technology run by an institution which had unaligned interests because that's what created the problems in the first place. And Stellar answered that call.

Justin Freidman

Raja, what does this prove to the world about Stellar and its mission and its capabilities? Yeah.

Raja Chakravorti

Um, Mark, I appreciate kind of the commentary. And I think as I was mentioning, when Mark first approached me and we described the problem, it was very aligned to what we built Stellar as. And we talked about financial inclusion, financial access as being core to the mission of Stellar, and it is. The design of what we are trying to do, though, is create a very efficient ability to transfer assets at scale globally. And that was really what we built Stellar from the ground up for. I think the things that for me were really resonant in the discussion we had was hey, look, like we really need to be able to have almost instant transfers. We need to be able to do it with very, very low cost, as we talked about. Um, but also just making sure that there's institutional rate uptime. Like the fact that the blockchain itself has been really stable when we prioritize security within the blockchain. I think those are really important components when we're engaging with a government and talking about moving an entire economy on-chain. Like it, these things have to work and be really true. And so I think those were there, there where there's a lot of alignment. As it relates to the access point of view, I have a very strong view that the types of initiatives that we've worked on that are oriented around like financial access, inclusion, the aid work, what it really exposes is those are some of the hardest to deliver payment scenarios. And what we've tried to design Stellar for is being able to solve the most difficult of payment scenarios. So imagine a scenario where you have one country trying to invade another country and you're trying to get aid into the Invaded the country. I don't know if you mean the right terms, but ultimately what happens is a disruption in correspondent banking. How do you actually deliver payment from one side to the other? This is why working with organizations like the United Nations, why they chose a blockchain like Stellar was very important, because we're able to help facilitate the direct transfer of assets in a way that is conducive that is audible, auditable, as well as making sure that it is immune from like the breakage that happens in that. And I think that's where we saw a lot of alignment here, which is look, we have to be able to deliver this scenario, deliver the solution, and deliver effectively deliver this UVI solution to people who are going to be in very, very hard-to-reach places. And so I think what this scenario has demonstrated for me, and Mark and I have had the chance to talk about this, is we're when we're talking about the Marshall Islands, we're kind of talking about it in a little, like a little bit of like a very specific thing. But what we're seeing here and the fact that an entire economy can move on-chain, leveraging an asset that has multiple levels of value beyond just like a stable coin, but actually like drive this like yield profile. That is the type of thing that every government should take a look at and say, hey, look, if I wanted to make the same leap, how would I do it? And I think Marshall Islands is basically driving the blueprint for what we can do next. And that's incredibly exciting from a stellar point of view because it just resonates very well, very well with our mission.

Collateral Goes 24-7 On-Chain

Justin Freidman

Yeah, let's let's pull on that thread a little bit. So beyond this particular use case of USDM1, how could this structure unlock new behavior in capital markets? Like what's what is the next iteration?

Mark Lurie

Well US treasuries are an order of magnitude larger than money supply. Uh they're an order of magnitude larger than money markets. They are the substrate that the financial system works on. Uh they are the collateral that is essentially default. And when you have an asset that uh has the same regulatory framework as a T-bill, because it's a sovereign bond, and has a creditworthiness of a US Treasury, then it can be used like a US Treasury. And that makes it a really ideal collateral instrument. And that lets you mobilize collateral across countries, across time zones 24-7, which is the number one need that uh TradFi institutions have and see in uh in the blockchain, right? It's like use case number one. And and I think this is a great use case for them, and there's a lot of other assets that can be similar that they will end up using over time because sovereign assets are designed for that.

Raja Chakravorti

I want to double down on one thing that Mark was talking about because the structure of this as a brain bond is very, very exciting in that you've got the the the risk is the US government. Like it is essentially the best rated risk in the world. And you've got the coupon element, and you've got the structure that Patrick was talking about, which is you've got the free transferability plus you've got the yield. So you have the best of both worlds. And so it I agree, it is like the most ideal collateral asset for any institution. And I think that is really exciting because being able to talk to institutions and say, hey, look, like that collateral, it's an on-chain collateral, and it is structured as like T-bills and has all of this ability to go do all of the things you need to be able to do, that creates a new level of innovation. And that is like re-architecting financial services from the ground up, which is ultimately what we're really focusing on doing is like really building that infrastructure out.

Justin Freidman

But I heard you describe this as a Brady bond, which is not a new concept. It's remind me what that is. Go ahead.

Mark Lurie

Uh so a Brady Bond uh is named after U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, um, who uh in the 80s was dealing with a US banking crisis. U.S. banks held a lot of sovereign debt uh from emerging markets. And uh and it's actually those sovereigns that were having a sovereign credit crisis. But that was also a US problem because the US banks held it. And so a grand bargain was struck, and uh the US banks, who are most of the bondholders, agreed to uh and the sovereigns agreed to redenominate all the bonds in US dollar terms. Um, interest rates came down, and the US and the IMF posted T-bills as collateral against those bonds to enhance the creditworthiness. Now, the US banks all held what essentially functioned as U.S. treasuries in a standardized format uh that aligned with their frameworks and their ballot sheets improved, banking crisis resolved, and about $10 trillion worth of brain bonds were traded uh from this financial instrument. Now, they're not common now because the U.S. doesn't post collateral on behalf of sovereign nations anymore outside of a crisis. But uh but there's actually a very long precedent of it being used for exactly these kinds of use cases.

Justin Freidman

Aaron Powell So what I'm hearing is that this is really leveraging a tried and true structure that has been legally tested and relied upon for a long time, and we're just putting it on chain. That's right.

Patrick Murck

So here's the thing, right? Like you're talking about what other uses and things like that. So when you look around the world, right, you have all these central banks out there, and some of them do a better job than others in terms of maintaining their economy and the currency and the balance there. And many of these small countries have a ton of pressure from the US dollar internally, right? That's the dollarization effect. And it's only increasing with stablecoin use. It's not getting better, it's getting worse if your perspective is on a central banker in a small country. The question you have to ask yourself is like, one, should they even exist? I mean, that's I think actually a real question. Many of these central banks, I mean, should they actually exist and be trying to have any sort of monetary control over there? And because they're just going to get dollarized anyway, so why not just jump ahead? Um there is. I told you I'd give you a spicy take, right? Um so maybe we just get rid of most of the central banks anyways, because they don't serve any purpose.

Justin Freidman

Um, but this is something I think about a lot. And I uh it's a fascinating time to be a central banker and to be confronting this potential. And that's the central crisis. It's not just job security, it's a loss of control over independent monetary policy and the ability to set interest rates for your economy. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Patrick Murck

Correct. But you've probably that that ship sailed years and years, decades ago, right? Um and and you're just really clinging on to a fiction in that sense. But what's interesting is so it used to be basically get dollarized and eliminate a central bank or you know, post-capital controls and try and like keep this fiction going that you can control the economy or your own economy, which you can't. And but now there's this like weird alternative because now as a central bank, you can issue your own US dollar. And instead of all the benefits going to the US, actually you retain those benefits. Because when the Marshall Islands is is effectively, they're already dollarized, but they're redollarizing with digital dollars, their entire entire economy, they're all the benefits Mark said. But there's an additional benefit, which is all of a sudden the Marshallese people, the government, take yield that they never had before. So this is actually an income stream for the government to better serve the Marshallese people. So if you're in one of these small countries, you can either face the fiction and just eliminate your central bank because it's kind of pointless, anyways, or you have this new opportunity, the blueprint has been laid, where you could actually take control of the process and reap a benefit for yourself and your country and your own economy by just like absorbing the dollarization effect and like reaping a benefit from it. And that's super unique for this moment in time.

Raja Chakravorti

I just well so I actually loved your spicy tape, Patrick. It's great. Um I was gonna think else you want me to say shouldn't exist? Uh no, but you can swear a little bit. That'll be that'll be spicy fucking egg. This is uh the family program. Yeah, absolutely. Um I think there's probably a slightly there's slightly different things I have is that I believe I think we're now seeing a counterpunch, which is that I think a lot of governments are very interested in fighting against dollarization. And so I think we are seeing from our end this emergence of hey, can we build stable coins that are local, locally denominated stable coins in different markets? And while that, you know, the overwhelming majority of stable coins is US dollar denominated, absolutely. And I think this is an elegant way to kind of fight against that. I think the emergence of local stables will continue, and we're starting to see a lot more of those. In fact, I think on Star, we support about 40 different um stables, which is pretty wild. Um, but where I think there's potentially in a kind of a meeting in the middle of these two ideas is that stable bond structures actually allow for potential optimization of FX between a US dollar asset and a local asset, because that if you basically pair that with a yield-bearing instrument on chain, you can optimize FX fee and then transition it to a local stable coin. And therein you can have the most optimized flow as long as you can build an economy that, again, is prevalent now in the Marshall Islands, where you can then off-ramp it appropriately within the local economy. And I think that last mile is the thing that you need to unlock for it. But um, I think the reality is the story has yet to fully be written. Uh, but I do think the technology emergence is giving a lot more opportunities to resolve this issue.

Mark Lurie

Okay, and and maybe one follow-on from that is uh it's so true. And uh in crypto, the narratives don't really take sovereign seriously, right? Because they take their time. Uh and they take their time because they can take their time, right? But when they decide they want to do something, they write the rules. Uh and the biggest curveball that's gonna come to crypto in the next decade or two is like, oh, what happens when actual sovereign assets come on chain? Right. And that is being hashed out right now and starting to happen. And it is happening on stellar. And uh and I I think people should pay attention more than they are, uh, because we all use sovereign assets. Thanks, Mark.

Justin Freidman

So

Dollarization And What Happens Next

Justin Freidman

let's wrap up. No more than 30 seconds. Starting with Mark, then Patrick, then Raja. When you think about the future of sovereign assets, is USDM1 exceptional or is this just the first of its kind?

Mark Lurie

I think there will be lots of sovereign assets. I don't know that they'll be exactly the same. Uh but I think they're coming. And um so I guess I'd say first of its kind.

Patrick Murck

I think that it won't be the only asset that looks like this. I think there will be others, especially as this proves itself out. Um but the question is with a huge first mover advantage, at least regionally, really is there any point in trying to like create another one? And coming back to the fiction that like anybody other than the U.S. and China control the entire economy, anyways, um if you're a central bank in a small country, like there's it's a little bit of game theory, right? Like if you're not the first mover in your region, you might be using another country's central bank like US dollarized uh stable bond, right, as your currency now. So there's going to be I'm wondering how long it's gonna take before the actual like firing gun starts the race. Okay. Raja, what's next?

Raja Chakravorti

Um Well, I'll say I I think it's uh it is exceptional in the blueprint that it has provided. And I think that it is the first of its kind in that it's demonstrating that this is the type of asset that will gain traction. I still think we're writing the story of um uh of this asset um and we're seeing the adoption roll out. I think the trajectory is really phenomenal. Um, but I think the thing that will make it, you know, stand in you know, kind of its own stratosphere is if you can get it to become this collateral asset for institutions, like gaining institutional adoption for these types of assets is the unlock that I think make them scale. And so I'll be really excited to see what happens next year.

Closing Thoughts And How To Follow

Justin Freidman

Okay, that'll do it for us. This wraps up our special live edition of the Stable Pulse. Thanks to Raja, Patrick, and Mark, and to all of our listeners at home for tuning into this conversation. Keep your finger on the pulse of the latest developments in stable coins and the future of money by subscribing to the Stable Pulse wherever you listen to podcasts. We will see you next time. Thank you. Thank you.