Anthony Scaramucci said banks face Uber-style disruption from crypto firms like Coinbase and Tether. He argued banks can either adopt crypto rails or use Washington lobbying to slow stablecoin features like yield. Scaramucci characterized traditional banks as “cab companies” while naming Coinbase and Tether as “Uber” during Bitcoin Investor Week, remarks highlighted in the Pomp podcast. He told Pompliano, “The banks are the cab companies, and Brian Armstrong and Coinbase and Tether are Uber.” They can adopt, and they can improve their functionality, or they can go to their lobbyists in Washington and say do everything you can to stall this technology, he added.
Stablecoins are becoming more and more of a link between crypto and traditional finance because they are meant to stay pegged to the U.S. dollar, while moving on blockchain rails. As Washington continued to talk about stablecoin regulation, Tether expanded its presence in the U.S. and announced USA₮, a federally regulated, dollar-backed stablecoin designed to work within the GENIUS Act framework. Under disclosures in Circle’s IPO filing last year, Coinbase received a share of revenue generated from reserves backing USDC, including 50% of Circle’s “residual payment base.” A significant portion of distribution costs went to Coinbase under the USDC partnership model. COIN was trading around $171.09, down 0.15% in after-hours trading.
The U.S. SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets said that the staff would not object if a broker-dealer took 2% off the value of its own positions in payment stablecoins when figuring out its net capital. The way payment stablecoins were treated was the same as the way money market funds had to meet their capital requirements.
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