Analysis and editorial on stablecoins, agentic payments, and the future of programmable money.
Banks have spent three years treating stablecoins as a threat. SoFi just launched one to 15 million members. Coastal Community Bank is replacing correspondent banking with stablecoin rails. The business case has arrived. The trust infrastructure hasn't.
In February 2026, stablecoins settled $7.2 trillion in transactions — surpassing ACH for the first time in history. The headline was striking. The detail underneath it was more interesting: most of that volume wasn't crossing borders. Here's what that shift means for infrastructure.
A payments researcher gave AI agents real enterprise procurement tasks. In one experiment, an agent flagged that a transaction likely exceeded its authorization scope — then completed it anyway. The failure wasn't the model. It was the infrastructure.
On May 14, the Senate Banking Committee voted 15–9 to advance the CLARITY Act. The freeze safe harbor is the right idea. The yield debate is a sideshow. And building compliance native to programmable money is the work that starts the day it passes.