Circle CEO Urged Watchdogs to Accept That People Want Digital Cash

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The Circle CEO continued to push the adoption of digital currencies as he viewed cash’s features, including portability, privacy and role in securing individual sovereignty, are what could make digital cash alluring to people.

“Cash Is King”

In a panel discussion hosted by the World Economic Forum, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire elaborated his bullish thesis on the power of physical cash, saying that economic sovereignty is the predominant feature that makes people prefer it over mobile money. Digital cash systems, he added, need to incorporate the feature of cash to make it attractive to people. Allaire emphasized the importance of preserving digital cash on the premise of an open Internet. The head of the second-largest stablecoin by market cap considered excessive regulatory scrutiny as the major barrier to the payment industry. Cryptographic messages, at one point, were seen as controversial in the eyes of regulators, he said, but now they have been widely used and adopted on the Internet as companies did defend such a form of communication as part of human rights.

“A lot of the policies and regulatory issues that limit the power of moving money have to do with stripping off people’s economic freedom…Governments have to accept that people want digital cash, and this is a product they want. “

Responding to the view that the lack of solid infrastructure underneath digital wallets may deter the adoption of digital currencies, Allaire compared the future of cross-border payment as easy as sending emails or making international calls. He further touted that as WhatsApp and other messaging networks were able to revolutionalize the phone calling businesses, digital currencies like USDC could fundamentally transform how one access international payments.

“If I can go to a cornerstone, buy a sim card, and put it in my phone, then I can participate in the global Internet and have an identity to communicate… Why can’t I take that mobile identity, download a peer-to-peer digital currency wallet, and use something like USDC?”

Allaire’s Comments on Terra’s Collapse

In an interview with Bloomberg last week, Allaire said his team had monitored the Terra ecosystem closely in the past six months. It had concluded much earlier that UST is extremely high-risk due to its over-collateralization mechanism, suggesting that multiple scenarios could have led to the “death spiral” the market recently witnessed. He also expressed surprise over how quickly the collapse occurred, viewing the fallout as a “triggering mechanism” of the risk-off altitude recently adopted by the broader crypto market.