2022 was a different world for crypto. And right in the thick of post-hype, pre-collapse volatility, Matt Levine at Bloomberg published what many considered the definitive chronicle of crypto with The Crypto Story. It was thorough, smart, and biting. And, it was published in October — just months after the Terra/Luna collapse, weeks after major lenders like Celsius and Voyager filed for bankruptcy, and only one month before FTX would collapse into one of the biggest stories in financial history.
The crypto market was already deep in a bear cycle, public trust was unraveling, and regulators were circling. It was, in short, a moment of reckoning. Amid the noise, Matt zoomed out to examine the actual mechanics of how crypto worked (or didn’t), including a deadpan, insightful breakdown of stablecoins.
I was in the early days of blockchain infrastructure, and I (like many others at the time) relied heavily on that section about stablecoins. In it, he described them as “wrapped dollars” — a workaround that lets you keep the vibe of crypto while still buying a sandwich. They were “just banking, but in a particularly clear way,” and yet — somehow — still felt like a joke.
This week, two years later, Matt revisited the topic. Only this time, the punchline has changed. Circle is filing for an IPO. BlackRock is holding most of its reserves. Stablecoins are no longer a clever hack — they are a serious financial layer.
So, what changed? And what didn’t?
I’ve been watching this world shift from the inside out, and have gone from curious about crypto to an outright advocate for stablecoins while working at Rail — a payments infrastructure company that uses stablecoin rails alongside traditional banking to help businesses move money globally. And this “2 years between stories” window feels worth pausing on.
Let’s unpack how stablecoins evolved, what Matt’s writing tells us about that evolution, and what we’re seeing on the ground.
2022 Matt: “Stablecoins are ‘wrapped’ dollars, dollars that live on the blockchain.”
2025 Matt: “Circle is not an unregulated bank; it is a tech front-end for US banks and asset managers.”
That shift in vocabulary represents a shift in worldview. In 2022, stablecoins were an abstraction. Today, they’re connective tissue. They bridge banks, blockchains, treasuries, and trading desks. They’re infrastructure.
This is the exact transition we’ve seen firsthand. It’s no longer about “using crypto.” It’s about getting your dollars where they need to go—faster, cheaper, and more transparently. The mechanism doesn’t matter, it’s the outcomes.
2022 Matt (on Tether): “They probably have the money, more or less, but they seem to be going out of their way to seem untrustworthy.”
2025 Matt (on Circle): “BlackRock is BlackRock. It is a giant regulated US financial institution.”
In 2022, the dominant question was: Do they really have the money? Today, the question is: Who’s holding the money — and how transparent is the system behind it?
This shift reflects a broader truth: trust in stablecoins is no longer about belief in a brand. It’s about compliance, transparency, and institutional-grade architecture. That’s something we’ve leaned into hard at Rail. Multiple banking partners. Real-time reporting. Third-party audits. Built-in redundancy.
Because clients who are new to stablecoins don’t ask how the blockchain works anymore — they ask how we make sure the money gets where it needs to go, and what happens if something fails.
2025 Matt: “We are offering them interest-bearing stablecoins.”
“The old model of stablecoins is a ludicrous business… but it probably can’t last.”
For a long time, stablecoins operated under the assumption that no one needed interest. But rates have risen. Treasury yield matters again. And businesses are paying attention.
That’s why I think we’re going to see a wave of stablecoin 2.0 products — things like tokenized money market funds and tools that give businesses real yield without sacrificing access or liquidity.
Stablecoins are no longer just a medium of exchange. They’re an instrument of strategy.
2022 Matt: “The stablecoin thing is nothing new. It’s just banking… purified in smart contracts.”
2025 Matt: “Stablecoins are not crypto anymore.”
I laughed when I read that line. Because it feels so vindicating to see the new reality immortalized.
What we’re seeing isn’t the death of crypto—it’s the quiet absorption of its best ideas into the existing financial system. Stablecoins are at the center of that shift. They’ve gone from being the “weird crypto workaround” to becoming a better way to send dollars, manage treasury, and build programmable finance.
So what do two years between these stories tell us?
They tell us that when the foundation tech is there, hype gives way to utility. That regulation doesn’t kill innovation — it refines it. That trust is no longer a vibe, it’s a requirement. And that the future of finance will be written as much in APIs and settlement engines as it is in whitepapers and tokens.
Stablecoins may have started as crypto’s least ‘exciting’ innovation, but they’re becoming its most important one. And we’re just getting started.
A reflective look at how stablecoins — and the broader financial narrative around them — have evolved between Matt Levine’s The Crypto Story (2022) and his 2025 'Stablecoins are Growing Up'. Learn about the shift from speculative chaos to institutional infrastructure, with insights from Rail’s front-row seat to the transformation.
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