WHY STABLECOINS (ALONE) WON'T FIX REMITTANCE

Summary from the TLDR Crypto newsletter

Global remittance fees average 6.36% against a 3% UN 2030 target, and stablecoins address only the cheapest of three pipeline segments: a Dubai-to-Manila transfer uses a blockchain in 1 of 6 steps, with the remaining steps requiring FX working capital, compliance, local licenses, and payout rail access. Tokenized liquidity does reduce one structural friction: correspondent banking locks capital per country, while on-chain pools can rebalance across 50 markets in minutes rather than days. Félix Pago's $200M raise for US-to-Latin America USDC transfers via WhatsApp demonstrates that even free-distribution consumer apps still require a balance sheet to operate. Stablecoin fragmentation introduces a new correspondent layer, as Circle, Tether, Stripe Bridge, Sony, Klarna, Cloudflare, and Fiserv stablecoins don't interoperate cleanly, prompting a16z Crypto to lead a $10M round into Better Money for cross-stablecoin conversion, replicating on-chain the same intermediary function blockchains were meant to remove.