I had an interesting moment in my conversation with John that challenged a very common narrative around stablecoins.

We often say stablecoins are faster and cheaper. But that’s only partially true.

As John pointed out, if you send USDC and then pay 8% to convert it back into fiat, the system didn’t get cheaper. The cost just moved somewhere else.

And that’s the real insight.

Stablecoins don’t automatically reduce cost. They reconfigure where cost sits across the stack. The last mile, banking relationships, regulatory trust, and treasury operations still matter. In many cases, they matter even more.

Where stablecoins start to make sense is not just in payments, but in treasury.

That’s where speed, programmability, and global liquidity can actually compress costs and improve efficiency. Not because the rails are cheaper, but because the system becomes more flexible.

So the question is no longer “are stablecoins cheaper?”

The real question is: where in the financial stack do they actually create net efficiency?

aThat’s still playing out.