At @XRPSEOUL and @token2049 this month, PLC Rails GP @laceywisdom challenged several common assumptions about where stablecoins will create value. In the U.S., undue risk without asymmetric rewards does not make much sense for consumers. Stablecoin yield accounts are a difficult proposition when people can get similar return profiles from insured products. The case is much stronger in emerging markets, where stablecoins can offer FX volatility hedging and USD exposure. Lacey also argued that Visa and Mastercard are the payment networks of tomorrow. That does not mean stablecoins can’t play an important role. It means companies need to focus on hard problems existing payment networks do not (or cannot) solve today — or on upgrading what is still broken. They win by building the things Visa was never designed to do. Even if stablecoins live up to their potential, consumers may never know what a stablecoin is. Most people don’t know what XMTP or RSS are, despite using the stack built on top of these protocols daily. Stablecoin infrastructure will have won when it works the same way: useful, embedded, and largely invisible.