ÜBER DIESE EPISODE
Jan Philipp Fritsche — Strategic Director at Oak Security, a Web3 cybersecurity firm pioneering research on economic and systemic risks in decentralized systems. Co-Founder of Bermuda. https://www.linkedin.com/in/janf/
Jón Egilsson — Former Chair of the Central Bank of Iceland; Co-founder of Monerium, the first company to issue fiat currency on-chain. https://www.linkedin.com/in/egilsson/
The Guest
Max Grabner — Head of Product at Range, a treasury and risk operating system for digital asset users.
Stablecoins have found product-market fit. The question now is: who captures the value, and on whose terms?
In this episode of MetaMarkets, Jón and Jan are joined by Max Grabner from Range to explore the infrastructure layer that will determine whether stablecoins become a tool for financial inclusion or a new walled garden controlled by incumbents.
The conversation begins with what Range actually does: aggregating fragmented views across chains and custodians, screening counterparties, monitoring multi-sig proposals, and increasingly helping treasuries optimize yield. For stablecoin issuers specifically, Range provides business intelligence on token holder behavior, go-to-market visibility on competitors, and sanctions screening capabilities that enable evidence-based compliance decisions.
From there, the discussion turns to where stablecoin demand is actually coming from. Speculative trading remains dominant, but a new wave of inbound is emerging: commodities traders seeking instant settlement, businesses tired of Friday-evening wire transfers that take days to land, and counterparties looking to reduce capital inefficiencies in cross-border payments. The use case is real. The problem is integration: until stablecoins plug into existing workflows, adoption will remain friction-bound.
The European picture is more complex. Retail payments within Europe work well. The pain points are cross-border settlement and trade finance, areas where European banking has underperformed and where stablecoins could deliver genuine improvement. Yet MiCA's design tilts the playing field toward banks, requiring issuers to hold reserves within the banking system and creating structural advantages for bank-led consortiums like Kivalis over Web3-native issuers.
The episode also tackles Tether's positioning: unregulated but operationally responsive, freezing funds faster than regulated competitors while operating outside any formal supervisory framework. Is this a competitive advantage or a systemic risk? The answer may depend on whether you believe enforcement will ever catch up to borderless digital assets.
Stablecoins are no longer competing on technology. They are competing on regulatory positioning, distribution, and trust. Europe's choices in the next two years will determine whether it leads that competition or watches from the sidelines.
