Demetrick, Dr. Corey Petty, and Jesse are back for an episode where the regulated players finish moving in and the outsiders start getting shown the door.

BlackRock, Google, Visa, Stripe, MasterCard, Coinbase, and DBS just announced Open Standard USD. It is called open the same way OpenAI is called open. The reserve yield goes to the participating institutions instead of holders, minting and redemption fees get scrapped, and governance sits under a company collectively owned by the biggest financial players on the planet. The guys break down what happens when the payment rails, the asset managers, and the ad tech giants all agree on the same stablecoin at the same time.

Meanwhile Tether is done in Europe. USDT trading pairs are gone from Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, and Crypto.com in the EEA because Tether refused to seek MiCA e-money authorization. Demetrick reveals he has an open short on Tether somewhere on the internet and would very much like to find it.

The guys also cover the ENS drama that turned out not to be drama at all when the king of the castle stepped in and killed the privacy committee vote from the top. Plus Michael Saylor selling more Bitcoin, and the theory that this is less about strategy and more about staying out of jail.

The back half of the show goes philosophical when Corey lays out an essay he wrote called the paradox of democratizing access. When you lower the barrier of entry to a specialized field, you do not get innovation. You get an army of newcomers who confidently reinvent things the experts already figured out, other people throw money at them because money attracts money, and eight moon markets later you are still watching the same cycle. Cue the pitch for Corey to play the Architect from The Matrix explaining this to a young crypto enthusiast in a gray suit.

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