Stablecoin-based payment rails through Coinbase and Circle already offer better functionality than the traditional US banking system — paying ~4% daily on any balance and enabling instant, near-free settlement without moving money between accounts.
Gerstner describes how Coinbase/Circle's stablecoin product lets users earn roughly 4% daily on any balance while transacting instantly, arguing the underlying rails are already working better than legacy banking. ✦ AI generated
Brad Gerstner · BG2 Pod · 2025-10-14 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 39:16
Here, whether it's 10 bucks or or a million bucks, you know, you put it in stablecoin with Coinbase and you start earning 4% daily. And on top of that, and this gets back to the PIX thing, you can transact immediately out of that account.
verbatim transcript · starts at 39:16
39:16stablecoin immediately in microseconds, and it'll cost you a few pennies. It is The rails are there. They're ready. And it's working. And I think the UI is a little difficult, but there's no reason why that won't get better and faster. And so I look up, you know, and I I'm just I wonder what the team at Meta like they might just be kicking themselves. Like with all the money they spent on
39:42that coin, everything they wanted to do on WhatsApp, like they should be running back at it. Like I don't know >> Well, I think so maybe they should, you know, remember the guy who did the the Libra network, David Marcus, has started the lightning network now. It's a startup. Maybe maybe Meta should go buy you know, should go buy lightning and bring David back in house because
40:03you know, all the things they talked about all the things they talked about are now what's happening, Bill. And let me tell you one I think you're onto something big here, but one of the challenges we still have I think first anybody who looks at our current system right, knows that it's dreadfully behind the rest of the world. Right? And we know it's the result of regulatory
40:23capture by not only our issuers, but the banks and everybody else who who likes that who benefit from the status quo. But if you look at Visa and MasterCard today, I think that they're doing something like 50,000 transactions per second. And I checked with our good buddy Vinnie Lingham. And he said, you know, on on both Solana and ETH today, they're still under 4,000 transactions per second. So they're trying to come up
40:46with these solutions to actually make the rails have the functional throughput and efficient settlement required to really become a consumer product. But I think you nailed the other one that you know, Patrick Collison had a tweet on this that I replied to, which is you know, when Genius Act was passed, there was massive lobbying by the banks to prevent the crypto companies from paying interest on stable coins.
41:12So the settlement was that they could pay rewards, not interest. Okay? And um but what the way in which it's manifested itself because Coinbase is not the issuer, Circle is the issuer and they did this deal. So Coinbase is promoting it as though it was interest. So from a consumer perspective, a reward and interest if it's 4% is indistinguishable. No doubt. Right? So I put my money