Cross-border money still moves through chains of banks, separate ledgers and settlement cut-offs. Where correspondent banking has retreated, access can matter as much as speed. Can stablecoins provide the needed infrastructure?
Jonas Gross and guest host Jonathan Knoll welcome Nick Philpott, co-founder of Zodia Markets, to BFRR's digital money interview series. Drawing on his years at Standard Chartered and his work on Libra, Philpott explains why stablecoins address problems that look very different from London, Lagos or Singapore.
His journey begins with client dinners in Nigeria paid for with bricks of cash, and a brother mining Bitcoin to buy virtual spaceships. Those experiences lead into a discussion of fragmented payment networks, currency controls and the gaps left by banks withdrawing from certain markets.
Philpott makes the case for putting cash on-chain before expecting tokenised securities markets to deliver their full benefits. The conversation examines where stablecoins, tokenised deposits and wholesale CBDCs fit, and why moving to 24/7 settlement requires changes to treasury operations, liquidity management and the repo market.
Dollar dominance is another central theme. Philpott sees opportunities for non-dollar stablecoins where local currencies are difficult to access, time zones constrain settlement or regional trade creates demand. Their success, he argues, may depend more on transaction velocity than market capitalisation.
Zodia Markets offers a view of wholesale execution: Philpott reports an average transaction size of $2.4 million and describes a $120 million trade settled in 90 minutes. He outlines plans for more currency corridors, payments, on-chain FX and tokenised money market funds.
The episode closes with a revealing observation from banking conferences: some executives debate stablecoins in public while using them privately. For banks, restrictive risk policies can also conceal demand as clients move their transactions elsewhere.
Standard Chartered - Non-USD Stablecoins Report
Zodia Markets - The 200-Year-Old Stablecoin Debate Jonathan Knoll LinkedIn
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