Author: James, Ecosystem Lead, Ethereum Foundation
Compiled by: Chopper, Foresight News
Original link: https://www.techflowpost.com/zh-CN/article/30617
Disclaimer: This article is a reprint. Readers can obtain more information through the original link. If the author has any objection to the reprint format, please contact us and we will modify it according to the author's request. This reprint is for information sharing only and does not constitute any investment advice, nor does it represent Wu Blockchain views or positions.
Last year, I spoke with Tony McLaughlin for the first time. He had recently left Citibank to found Ubyx. What impressed me most was that this man, who had worked at one of the world's top banks for 20 years, spoke about public blockchains with the conviction of a crypto native, while every argument was grounded in the real mechanisms of check clearing and agency banking.
As a veteran in the payments industry, McLaughlin genuinely believes that the infrastructure he built during his career is about to be replaced.
McLaughlin is not the kind of startup founder we might imagine. He is a seasoned executive in the payments industry, from one of the world's largest banks, and his approach to running a company reflects this: propose an idea, bring it to market, and let the market tell you if it's right or wrong.
How can stablecoins truly become ordinary currency—the kind of currency that appears in your bank account and is equivalent to cash?
His answer involved an extremely mundane infrastructure that most people in the crypto world had never thought of, while those in the traditional banking sector hadn't realized they needed it.
Build the system yourself, then turn around and leave.
Let me first give a brief overview of McLaughlin's career trajectory, as his background is crucial to this story.
He worked at Citigroup for nearly 20 years, rising to Managing Director of Treasury and Trade Solutions, focusing on emerging payments. During this time, he became the principal designer of the Regulated Liabilities Network (RLN), arguably one of the most influential institutional-grade blockchain concepts of the past five years.
RLN proposes a shared private ledger that allows central banks, commercial banks, and electronic money institutions to issue tokenized liabilities on the same platform, representing a response from the regulated industry to public cryptocurrencies.
McLaughlin completed a proof-of-concept with the Federal Reserve and the British Financial Institute, an idea that also influenced the work of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) also acknowledged that RLN inspired its "unified ledger" concept. Project Agorá, in collaboration with seven central banks and over 40 financial institutions, adopted a similar architecture. From any perspective, this represents heavyweight infrastructure.
Then, McLaughlin resigned and withdrew from the project completely.
For years, he has been dedicated to demonstrating that private permissioned blockchains are the future of regulated currencies. The technology itself is not the problem; the problem is that no one can solve the cold start problem.
You're asking all the world's major banks and central banks to join a network that doesn't even exist yet, and nobody's willing to be the first to act. In a podcast, he called it the "startup problem": you have to start the network before others will use it, but nobody's willing to help you start it because nobody's using it yet.
Public blockchains have already solved this problem. They have users, liquidity, and developers. Cold starts are a thing of the past.
The moment that finally made him see the light was the 2024 US presidential election. Observing the political landscape, he concluded that stablecoin regulation was inevitable, meaning banks would eventually be allowed to operate on public blockchains, since stablecoins reside on those blockchains. The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, proved him right.
He described the decision in his usual straightforward manner: "From that day on, I decided that I would never again spend a second of my life promoting the adoption of private permissioned blockchains."
He left Citibank and founded Ubyx in March 2025.
Misconceptions about stablecoins by banks
On March 3, 2026, President Trump publicly accused Bank of America of "undermining" the GENIUS Act and "hijacking" his cryptocurrency agenda. The crux of the conflict lies in the returns.
Banks have been lobbying heavily against interest-bearing stablecoins, arguing that they would draw deposits away from the traditional banking system. The Bank of England is also considering capping its holdings of stablecoins for the same reason.
This fear is real: global stablecoin issuance has surpassed $300 billion. If this represents deposits leaving commercial banks' balance sheets, the impact on lending capacity will be enormous.
But McLaughlin believes the question is asked backwards. Over the past year, he has maintained only one argument in all his appearances and podcasts: stablecoins are not a threat to deposits; they are a great gift to income.
The starting point of cognitive errors is how people categorize this tool.
He said, "If regulators define stablecoins as 'crypto assets pegged to fiat currency,' I think they're making a fundamental mistake. To me, that's tantamount to saying 'a check is a piece of paper pegged to fiat currency.'"
His point is that regulators made a mistake with stablecoins that they would never make with checks: they defined the instrument with the technology (crypto tokens) instead of its actual function (the promise to pay at face value). The technology is secondary; the promise is the core.
Whether you write "I owe you $10" on clay tablets, paper, or an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, the legal tools are the same. What matters is who makes the promise and whether the promise is enforceable.
In his framework, stablecoins are not a novel, crypto-native invention. They are the latest manifestation of one of the oldest tools in commercial law: negotiable instruments.
He likened it to the American Express traveler's checks of 1891.
If you're under 35, you've probably never used or even heard of traveler's checks. Before debit cards and ATMs became ubiquitous, traveler's checks were the primary way people carried cash when traveling abroad. You'd buy them from American Express or a bank before your trip, pre-paying the face value. Then you could spend them like cash anywhere in the world; merchants or local banks would accept them at face value because clearing networks guaranteed they would receive the money from the issuer.
I remember using them while backpacking in Asia, and the thought of it still gives me a headache: queuing at the bank counter, signing and then re-signing, waiting for staff to call the issuer, and the exchange rate was terrible. No wonder traveler's checks disappeared almost overnight once bank cards became widespread.
However, it has the same attributes as stablecoins: a dollar instrument, non-bank issued, pre-deposited, fully collateralized, interest-free, transferable to holders, and redeemable at face value.
McLaughlin's analogy was valid, but most of the audience didn't truly grasp it. The reason most people couldn't see the liquidation problem of stablecoins was precisely because most had never used the tools that solved that problem back then. Traveler's checks are gone, and the liquidation infrastructure behind them is forgotten history. So when McLaughlin said, "Stablecoins need what traveler's checks had back then," the audience simply nodded politely, without truly understanding.
Once you look at the problem from this perspective, the question is no longer: "How do we protect deposits from stablecoin shocks?" but rather: "How do we deal with stablecoins in the same way we've dealt with all other negotiable instruments over the past 200 years?"
That tedious yet crucial part
Traveler's checks are accepted globally at face value not because the paper itself is special, but because American Express, Visa, and Thomas Cook have built a clearing network that ensures any merchant in any country can exchange checks for cash at face value.
When the acceptance network collapsed, the use of traveler's checks collapsed. It wasn't that the tool failed, but that the distribution channel failed.
Stablecoins are currently in the exact same situation. They can be crossed across borders on public blockchains in seconds, but there is no universal mechanism that allows you to redeem them at face value through a regulated financial institution.
If you're a stablecoin issuer, you have to build your distribution network from scratch, negotiating bilateral partnerships one by one. If you're a bank looking to accept stablecoins for your clients, you have to negotiate with each issuer individually. The complexity increases exponentially.
McLaughlin's favorite example is credit cards. With thousands of banks issuing credit cards worldwide, it sounds like a mess. But you almost never walk into a store and are told, "Sorry, we don't accept your card."
This fragmentation is invisible to users because Visa and Mastercard are in the middle, making each card usable anywhere.
Stablecoins are fragmented, but lack a clearing network. This is precisely the gap that Ubyx aims to fill.
How exactly does liquidation work?
The mechanism is very simple in design, and its difference from crypto exchage is the core of the problem.
On exchanges, stablecoins are bought and sold at floating market prices, with no guarantee of redemption at face value. Exchanges are trading venues; when demand falls, the price falls accordingly.
Ubyx doesn't do that. It operates on a collection model, not a buying and selling model. The goal is to redeem at face value, just like you deposit a check into a bank.
You don't care who issued the check or which bank it came from. You hand the check to the bank, the bank deposits it into your account at face value, and the clearing system collects the money from the issuing bank behind the scenes. If the check is returned, the bank returns it to you—it's that simple.
The process for Ubyx is the same:
Customers deposit stablecoins (such as USDC) into the bank's custodial wallet. The bank then submits the tokens to Ubyx.
Ubyx transfers the rights to the publisher (Circle in this case).
• The issuer verifies the token's legitimacy and releases fiat currency from the settlement bank's pre-deposited reserves. • The USD is returned to the accepting bank via Ubyx, and the bank credits the customer's account (usually after deducting exchange rate differences and converting it to local currency).
If the issuer fails to make payments, the bank returns the tokens to the customer, just like a bounced ticket. The bank does not bear balance sheet risk during the liquidation process.
McLaughlin described the system as a "black box" with three modes:
Stablecoins in, cash out (redemption)
• Cash in, stablecoin out (issuance)
Stablecoin A goes in, stablecoin B goes out (exchange)
It was designed to be independent of issuers, public blockchains, and fiat currencies. At launch, issuers included more than a dozen companies such as Paxos, Ripple, Agora, Transfero, Monerium, GMO Trust, and BiLira, covering USD, GBP, EUR, and emerging market currencies, and spanning multiple public blockchains.
For banks, the cost of technology integration is deliberately kept to a minimum. Most banks will not build their own blockchain infrastructure, and even if they do, they still have to solve the problem of gaining the trust of other banks.
$36 billion
This is where the narrative of fear of deposits takes a turn.
McLaughlin's rough estimate: Assuming the stablecoin market reaches $1 trillion (it's currently $300 billion and still growing). Conservatively assuming 0.5% of circulating tokens are redeemed daily, this amounts to approximately $1.8 trillion in redemptions annually.
If banks charge a fee of 100 basis points, plus a 100 basis point cross-border exchange rate spread, their annual revenue would reach $36 billion.
These are his assumptions, and the calculations are basically correct. For any bank, the question is simply: how much do you want to receive?
For non-US banks, this economic benefit is particularly attractive. Every dollar stablecoin that enters the European or Asian banking system and is converted into local currency represents pure foreign exchange income for the accepting bank. Foreign exchange business is incredibly profitable for banks.
Over the past year, McLaughlin has referred to offshore stablecoins as "gifts" on every occasion.
This model aligns with the central bank's objectives, making it more convincing than simply calculating income.
When stablecoins are redeemed by regulated institutions and placed in custodial wallets, they become visible to the tax system, undergo anti-money laundering/verification screening, and are converted into local currency on the balance sheets of local banks. Central banks gain compliance and monetary transparency, commercial banks earn fee income and expand their balance sheets, and customers receive face value redemption.
McLaughlin's advice to bank CEOs was very specific: accept applications first, then issue them. "In the case of stablecoins, accepting is better than issuing. Why? Because you can make a lot of money by accepting."
The most direct business logic lies in accepting and exchanging third-party stablecoins. Once a shared acceptance network is established, any bank can clear any stablecoin just like it clears Visa transactions, significantly lowering the issuance threshold.
At that time, issuing your own stablecoin will be as simple as issuing a credit card. You won't need to build an acceptance network, just get connected.
Who agrees with this argument?
Ubyx's shareholder list is worth looking at because the names on it tell you which forces endorse it.
Ubyx completed a $10 million seed round in June 2025, led by Galaxy Ventures. The other investors in this round were a "dream team," people who don't usually appear on the same shareholder list: Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Coinbase Ventures, VanEck, and LayerZero.
Silicon Valley libertarian capital, top crypto exchage, and large traditional asset management firms are all investing in stablecoin clearing infrastructure. Many investors are also network participants: Paxos and Monerium are both investors and issuers within the network; Payoneer and Boku are investing as strategic partners.
This "investor is network user" structure is deliberately designed. McLaughlin explicitly compares it to the early equity structure of Visa and Mastercard: the bank that uses the network is the bank that owns the network.
In January 2026, Barclays made a strategic investment. This marks the UK's second-largest bank by market capitalization and its first-ever investment in a stablecoin company. Ryan Hayward, Head of Digital Assets and Strategic Investments at Barclays, stated, "Interoperability is key to unlocking the full potential of digital assets."
The implication is that one of Europe's most systemically important banks has grasped the logic behind stablecoin liquidation and decided to vote with its money.
A month later, AB Xelerate, the fintech accelerator under Arab Bank, also made a strategic investment. Now, US venture capital firms, European banks, and Middle Eastern financial infrastructure companies are all betting in the same direction.
What problems might arise?
Circle launched its own Circle Payments Network in mid-2025, providing proprietary infrastructure for USDC settlements. Circle has the scale to build its own distribution system independently.
The market question is: will it ultimately be a single-issuer network (Circle route) or a multi-issuer clearing system (Ubyx route)? McLaughlin argues that history favors diversified clearing models. However, Circle's first-mover advantage and dominant market share are a reality.
The revenue dispute between banks and crypto companies remains unresolved. A draft rule proposed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) includes a rebuttable presumption against the revenue-generating mechanisms of stablecoins.
If yields are banned, banks can breathe a sigh of relief, as stablecoins remain less attractive than savings accounts for those holding cash. However, this also means that the application of stablecoins will be limited to the payment and settlement sector, resulting in a smaller market size and slowing down the growth of Ubyx.
If yields are allowed, the stablecoin market will experience explosive growth, directly competing with deposits, money market funds, and government bonds for idle funds. Banks have every reason to rapidly build infrastructure, both defensively (to prevent customer churn) and offensively (to generate foreign exchange and fee income).
Ubyx promises to adopt an open-source rulebook and eventually achieve DAO governance through tokens. This aligns conceptually with the decentralized networks it connects to, but remains an untested model for the regulated financial market infrastructure that banks rely on.
summary
McLaughlin's career can be divided into three phases. The first phase involved defending the fiat currency system against the challenges of crypto. The second phase involved building private blockchains for the banking industry. In the third phase, he concluded that private blockchains could not solve the problem of widespread adoption.
This entire shift stems from his perspective on where funds are stored. On the public blockchain, in wallets, through a set of infrastructure clearing, every regulated stablecoin can be as reliable and harmless as a check.
He believes the key to the entire transition lies in one sentence: banks can handle stablecoins like they handle checks.
If an authoritative figure were to utter this statement, every bank and fintech company in the world would immediately know what to do. Ubyx bets someone will say it very soon.
Compiled by: Chopper, Foresight News
Original link: https://www.techflowpost.com/zh-CN/article/30617
Disclaimer: This article is a reprint. Readers can obtain more information through the original link. If the author has any objection to the reprint format, please contact us and we will modify it according to the author's request. This reprint is for information sharing only and does not constitute any investment advice, nor does it represent Wu Blockchain views or positions.
Last year, I spoke with Tony McLaughlin for the first time. He had recently left Citibank to found Ubyx. What impressed me most was that this man, who had worked at one of the world's top banks for 20 years, spoke about public blockchains with the conviction of a crypto native, while every argument was grounded in the real mechanisms of check clearing and agency banking.
As a veteran in the payments industry, McLaughlin genuinely believes that the infrastructure he built during his career is about to be replaced.
McLaughlin is not the kind of startup founder we might imagine. He is a seasoned executive in the payments industry, from one of the world's largest banks, and his approach to running a company reflects this: propose an idea, bring it to market, and let the market tell you if it's right or wrong.
How can stablecoins truly become ordinary currency—the kind of currency that appears in your bank account and is equivalent to cash?
His answer involved an extremely mundane infrastructure that most people in the crypto world had never thought of, while those in the traditional banking sector hadn't realized they needed it.
Build the system yourself, then turn around and leave.
Let me first give a brief overview of McLaughlin's career trajectory, as his background is crucial to this story.
He worked at Citigroup for nearly 20 years, rising to Managing Director of Treasury and Trade Solutions, focusing on emerging payments. During this time, he became the principal designer of the Regulated Liabilities Network (RLN), arguably one of the most influential institutional-grade blockchain concepts of the past five years.
RLN proposes a shared private ledger that allows central banks, commercial banks, and electronic money institutions to issue tokenized liabilities on the same platform, representing a response from the regulated industry to public cryptocurrencies.
McLaughlin completed a proof-of-concept with the Federal Reserve and the British Financial Institute, an idea that also influenced the work of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) also acknowledged that RLN inspired its "unified ledger" concept. Project Agorá, in collaboration with seven central banks and over 40 financial institutions, adopted a similar architecture. From any perspective, this represents heavyweight infrastructure.
Then, McLaughlin resigned and withdrew from the project completely.
For years, he has been dedicated to demonstrating that private permissioned blockchains are the future of regulated currencies. The technology itself is not the problem; the problem is that no one can solve the cold start problem.
You're asking all the world's major banks and central banks to join a network that doesn't even exist yet, and nobody's willing to be the first to act. In a podcast, he called it the "startup problem": you have to start the network before others will use it, but nobody's willing to help you start it because nobody's using it yet.
Public blockchains have already solved this problem. They have users, liquidity, and developers. Cold starts are a thing of the past.
The moment that finally made him see the light was the 2024 US presidential election. Observing the political landscape, he concluded that stablecoin regulation was inevitable, meaning banks would eventually be allowed to operate on public blockchains, since stablecoins reside on those blockchains. The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, proved him right.
He described the decision in his usual straightforward manner: "From that day on, I decided that I would never again spend a second of my life promoting the adoption of private permissioned blockchains."
He left Citibank and founded Ubyx in March 2025.
Misconceptions about stablecoins by banks
On March 3, 2026, President Trump publicly accused Bank of America of "undermining" the GENIUS Act and "hijacking" his cryptocurrency agenda. The crux of the conflict lies in the returns.
Banks have been lobbying heavily against interest-bearing stablecoins, arguing that they would draw deposits away from the traditional banking system. The Bank of England is also considering capping its holdings of stablecoins for the same reason.
This fear is real: global stablecoin issuance has surpassed $300 billion. If this represents deposits leaving commercial banks' balance sheets, the impact on lending capacity will be enormous.
But McLaughlin believes the question is asked backwards. Over the past year, he has maintained only one argument in all his appearances and podcasts: stablecoins are not a threat to deposits; they are a great gift to income.
The starting point of cognitive errors is how people categorize this tool.
He said, "If regulators define stablecoins as 'crypto assets pegged to fiat currency,' I think they're making a fundamental mistake. To me, that's tantamount to saying 'a check is a piece of paper pegged to fiat currency.'"
His point is that regulators made a mistake with stablecoins that they would never make with checks: they defined the instrument with the technology (crypto tokens) instead of its actual function (the promise to pay at face value). The technology is secondary; the promise is the core.
Whether you write "I owe you $10" on clay tablets, paper, or an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, the legal tools are the same. What matters is who makes the promise and whether the promise is enforceable.
In his framework, stablecoins are not a novel, crypto-native invention. They are the latest manifestation of one of the oldest tools in commercial law: negotiable instruments.
He likened it to the American Express traveler's checks of 1891.
If you're under 35, you've probably never used or even heard of traveler's checks. Before debit cards and ATMs became ubiquitous, traveler's checks were the primary way people carried cash when traveling abroad. You'd buy them from American Express or a bank before your trip, pre-paying the face value. Then you could spend them like cash anywhere in the world; merchants or local banks would accept them at face value because clearing networks guaranteed they would receive the money from the issuer.
I remember using them while backpacking in Asia, and the thought of it still gives me a headache: queuing at the bank counter, signing and then re-signing, waiting for staff to call the issuer, and the exchange rate was terrible. No wonder traveler's checks disappeared almost overnight once bank cards became widespread.
However, it has the same attributes as stablecoins: a dollar instrument, non-bank issued, pre-deposited, fully collateralized, interest-free, transferable to holders, and redeemable at face value.
McLaughlin's analogy was valid, but most of the audience didn't truly grasp it. The reason most people couldn't see the liquidation problem of stablecoins was precisely because most had never used the tools that solved that problem back then. Traveler's checks are gone, and the liquidation infrastructure behind them is forgotten history. So when McLaughlin said, "Stablecoins need what traveler's checks had back then," the audience simply nodded politely, without truly understanding.
Once you look at the problem from this perspective, the question is no longer: "How do we protect deposits from stablecoin shocks?" but rather: "How do we deal with stablecoins in the same way we've dealt with all other negotiable instruments over the past 200 years?"
That tedious yet crucial part
Traveler's checks are accepted globally at face value not because the paper itself is special, but because American Express, Visa, and Thomas Cook have built a clearing network that ensures any merchant in any country can exchange checks for cash at face value.
When the acceptance network collapsed, the use of traveler's checks collapsed. It wasn't that the tool failed, but that the distribution channel failed.
Stablecoins are currently in the exact same situation. They can be crossed across borders on public blockchains in seconds, but there is no universal mechanism that allows you to redeem them at face value through a regulated financial institution.
If you're a stablecoin issuer, you have to build your distribution network from scratch, negotiating bilateral partnerships one by one. If you're a bank looking to accept stablecoins for your clients, you have to negotiate with each issuer individually. The complexity increases exponentially.
McLaughlin's favorite example is credit cards. With thousands of banks issuing credit cards worldwide, it sounds like a mess. But you almost never walk into a store and are told, "Sorry, we don't accept your card."
This fragmentation is invisible to users because Visa and Mastercard are in the middle, making each card usable anywhere.
Stablecoins are fragmented, but lack a clearing network. This is precisely the gap that Ubyx aims to fill.
How exactly does liquidation work?
The mechanism is very simple in design, and its difference from crypto exchage is the core of the problem.
On exchanges, stablecoins are bought and sold at floating market prices, with no guarantee of redemption at face value. Exchanges are trading venues; when demand falls, the price falls accordingly.
Ubyx doesn't do that. It operates on a collection model, not a buying and selling model. The goal is to redeem at face value, just like you deposit a check into a bank.
You don't care who issued the check or which bank it came from. You hand the check to the bank, the bank deposits it into your account at face value, and the clearing system collects the money from the issuing bank behind the scenes. If the check is returned, the bank returns it to you—it's that simple.
The process for Ubyx is the same:
Customers deposit stablecoins (such as USDC) into the bank's custodial wallet. The bank then submits the tokens to Ubyx.
Ubyx transfers the rights to the publisher (Circle in this case).
• The issuer verifies the token's legitimacy and releases fiat currency from the settlement bank's pre-deposited reserves. • The USD is returned to the accepting bank via Ubyx, and the bank credits the customer's account (usually after deducting exchange rate differences and converting it to local currency).
If the issuer fails to make payments, the bank returns the tokens to the customer, just like a bounced ticket. The bank does not bear balance sheet risk during the liquidation process.
McLaughlin described the system as a "black box" with three modes:
Stablecoins in, cash out (redemption)
• Cash in, stablecoin out (issuance)
Stablecoin A goes in, stablecoin B goes out (exchange)
It was designed to be independent of issuers, public blockchains, and fiat currencies. At launch, issuers included more than a dozen companies such as Paxos, Ripple, Agora, Transfero, Monerium, GMO Trust, and BiLira, covering USD, GBP, EUR, and emerging market currencies, and spanning multiple public blockchains.
For banks, the cost of technology integration is deliberately kept to a minimum. Most banks will not build their own blockchain infrastructure, and even if they do, they still have to solve the problem of gaining the trust of other banks.
$36 billion
This is where the narrative of fear of deposits takes a turn.
McLaughlin's rough estimate: Assuming the stablecoin market reaches $1 trillion (it's currently $300 billion and still growing). Conservatively assuming 0.5% of circulating tokens are redeemed daily, this amounts to approximately $1.8 trillion in redemptions annually.
If banks charge a fee of 100 basis points, plus a 100 basis point cross-border exchange rate spread, their annual revenue would reach $36 billion.
These are his assumptions, and the calculations are basically correct. For any bank, the question is simply: how much do you want to receive?
For non-US banks, this economic benefit is particularly attractive. Every dollar stablecoin that enters the European or Asian banking system and is converted into local currency represents pure foreign exchange income for the accepting bank. Foreign exchange business is incredibly profitable for banks.
Over the past year, McLaughlin has referred to offshore stablecoins as "gifts" on every occasion.
This model aligns with the central bank's objectives, making it more convincing than simply calculating income.
When stablecoins are redeemed by regulated institutions and placed in custodial wallets, they become visible to the tax system, undergo anti-money laundering/verification screening, and are converted into local currency on the balance sheets of local banks. Central banks gain compliance and monetary transparency, commercial banks earn fee income and expand their balance sheets, and customers receive face value redemption.
McLaughlin's advice to bank CEOs was very specific: accept applications first, then issue them. "In the case of stablecoins, accepting is better than issuing. Why? Because you can make a lot of money by accepting."
The most direct business logic lies in accepting and exchanging third-party stablecoins. Once a shared acceptance network is established, any bank can clear any stablecoin just like it clears Visa transactions, significantly lowering the issuance threshold.
At that time, issuing your own stablecoin will be as simple as issuing a credit card. You won't need to build an acceptance network, just get connected.
Who agrees with this argument?
Ubyx's shareholder list is worth looking at because the names on it tell you which forces endorse it.
Ubyx completed a $10 million seed round in June 2025, led by Galaxy Ventures. The other investors in this round were a "dream team," people who don't usually appear on the same shareholder list: Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Coinbase Ventures, VanEck, and LayerZero.
Silicon Valley libertarian capital, top crypto exchage, and large traditional asset management firms are all investing in stablecoin clearing infrastructure. Many investors are also network participants: Paxos and Monerium are both investors and issuers within the network; Payoneer and Boku are investing as strategic partners.
This "investor is network user" structure is deliberately designed. McLaughlin explicitly compares it to the early equity structure of Visa and Mastercard: the bank that uses the network is the bank that owns the network.
In January 2026, Barclays made a strategic investment. This marks the UK's second-largest bank by market capitalization and its first-ever investment in a stablecoin company. Ryan Hayward, Head of Digital Assets and Strategic Investments at Barclays, stated, "Interoperability is key to unlocking the full potential of digital assets."
The implication is that one of Europe's most systemically important banks has grasped the logic behind stablecoin liquidation and decided to vote with its money.
A month later, AB Xelerate, the fintech accelerator under Arab Bank, also made a strategic investment. Now, US venture capital firms, European banks, and Middle Eastern financial infrastructure companies are all betting in the same direction.
What problems might arise?
Circle launched its own Circle Payments Network in mid-2025, providing proprietary infrastructure for USDC settlements. Circle has the scale to build its own distribution system independently.
The market question is: will it ultimately be a single-issuer network (Circle route) or a multi-issuer clearing system (Ubyx route)? McLaughlin argues that history favors diversified clearing models. However, Circle's first-mover advantage and dominant market share are a reality.
The revenue dispute between banks and crypto companies remains unresolved. A draft rule proposed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) includes a rebuttable presumption against the revenue-generating mechanisms of stablecoins.
If yields are banned, banks can breathe a sigh of relief, as stablecoins remain less attractive than savings accounts for those holding cash. However, this also means that the application of stablecoins will be limited to the payment and settlement sector, resulting in a smaller market size and slowing down the growth of Ubyx.
If yields are allowed, the stablecoin market will experience explosive growth, directly competing with deposits, money market funds, and government bonds for idle funds. Banks have every reason to rapidly build infrastructure, both defensively (to prevent customer churn) and offensively (to generate foreign exchange and fee income).
Ubyx promises to adopt an open-source rulebook and eventually achieve DAO governance through tokens. This aligns conceptually with the decentralized networks it connects to, but remains an untested model for the regulated financial market infrastructure that banks rely on.
summary
McLaughlin's career can be divided into three phases. The first phase involved defending the fiat currency system against the challenges of crypto. The second phase involved building private blockchains for the banking industry. In the third phase, he concluded that private blockchains could not solve the problem of widespread adoption.
This entire shift stems from his perspective on where funds are stored. On the public blockchain, in wallets, through a set of infrastructure clearing, every regulated stablecoin can be as reliable and harmless as a check.
He believes the key to the entire transition lies in one sentence: banks can handle stablecoins like they handle checks.
If an authoritative figure were to utter this statement, every bank and fintech company in the world would immediately know what to do. Ubyx bets someone will say it very soon.
