Plasma’s Trillion-Dollar Bet: Building the Rails for Global Stablecoin Settlement

Interview transcript (clarity edits; meaning preserved).

Source: When Shift Happens w/ Kevin & Paul (Plasma).

Original interview: https://x.com/KevinWSHPod/status/1968353315017920515 https://youtu.be/Ff7SOQQ6H6U?si=8Pw1CmmBAZVQpW63

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Interviewer: Why did you decide to focus on stablecoins? Paul (Plasma): I think stablecoins are the single most interesting sector in all of crypto. The number one use for blockchains is to move value around globally and efficiently. I stablecoins are the best means of achieving that.

Interviewer: Can you go through the evolution of stablecoins throughout the years? Paul (Plasma): Sure, absolutely. Paul Fex is the founder and CEO of Plasma. Building stablecoin infrastructure for a permissionless global financial system. Previously, he shaped derivatives at Deribbit and co-founded Alloy.

Interviewer: What is the $300,000 opportunity? Paul (Plasma): Stablecoins taking. meaningful market share of global commerce in terms of payment flow and volume. That is the trillion dollar opportunity. We are at 250 billion, basically 100 % probability. We’ll have a trillion dollars and now it’s sending stable coins very soon. Explain to me Plasma simply. Plasma is a blockchain still for stable coins.

Interviewer: Why does the word need Plasma? Paul (Plasma): You can make very different choices if you only focus on stable coins.

Interviewer: What is Plasma Vision? Paul (Plasma): Winning stable coin settlement globally.

Interviewer: What does Plasma success depend on? Paul (Plasma): Crypto is an incredible execution game. You need to be very good at executing.

Interviewer: What’s the big risk for Plasma? Paul (Plasma): Building anything in crypto has inherent risks. You have to be paranoid about security. security. We very much are as a very long list of risks to overbuilding.

Interviewer: What’s the end game for Plasma? Paul (Plasma): The true end game is we can become the number one chain for stablecoins and we can have the highest market share and in settling stablecoins on Plasma. So one of the key requirements for future infrastructure is a fast and cheap and you even said ideally free USD transfers.

Interviewer: How do we get free USD transfers? Paul (Plasma): By making USDT transfers gasless on Plasma. We reserve part of every block specifically for USDT moves and let users send without paying gas. The hard part is spam-resistance, so we enforce a minimum balance and add controlled allow‑listing at the start; we’ll iterate on the mechanism over time.

Interviewer: How does that work in practice? Who pays for the transactions? Paul (Plasma): It’s effectively free to the end user. The foundation (and any validator who opts in) runs the reserved USDT lane. Because the lane is isolated, normal blockspace isn’t congested; validators are compensated at the protocol level, while guards (min balance + allow‑listing) prevent abuse.

Interviewer: How are you feeling? Paul (Plasma): Good. Good.

Interviewer: What goes on through your mind when you see a billion dollar in deposits in a couple of minutes? Paul (Plasma): It’s scary. It’s stressful. I mean, I genuinely don’t think I’ve been… I we opened deposits. I was in London in our office and we opened the pre-deposits at 2 p.m. And I think at 1.58 p.m. was probably the most stressed I’ve been in my entire life.

Interviewer: Because… you’re just so paranoid about going, things going well, right? Paul (Plasma): But the front end might get exploited, the smart contract might get exploited.

Interviewer: And you spend months leading up to that and then going through audits and then doing everything you can, but pushing the big green button is just always scary because there’s just so much at stake, right? Paul (Plasma): And then it was all over so quickly. Yeah, yeah. No, I think it was a minute and a half or something. And then it was over. And then so the, Yeah, I mean, I was still, it didn’t really…

Interviewer: You don’t feel relieved right away, right? Paul (Plasma): We’re, it’s still in the stress state of, oh, we launched this and, we didn’t know what would happen truly. we made zero private deals. We had no pre-commitments. then so no one on the team knew what would happen basically. And we had the initial 250 million cap and that was filled in. a couple of blocks and so we increased it right away and no one knew how quickly it would fill, if it would fill at all. But you had a plan initially, you were saying if we get that filled that quickly then we will go to 500. Yes, yes, we didn’t have that plan.

Interviewer: How did you feel after these 500 million were filled in within what, three minutes or four? Paul (Plasma): A mix of relief and responsibility. The contract was suddenly holding a lot of value, so paranoia kicks in — keys, multisig, monitoring. We’d partnered with VEDA on the vault contracts (they’ve built multi‑billion systems), but even then you stay on high alert.

Interviewer: Inside? Paul (Plasma): Inside the team it was adrenaline. We were all in London watching the site; the first cap filled in a couple of blocks, we raised it, and it filled again. My main worry was uptime under the traffic spike.

Interviewer: Yeah, mean a mix of relief but you still have this a… there’s a responsibility to it, right? Paul (Plasma): Cause you do have this contract that then holds a lot of value obviously. And we built this with VEDA who are fantastic and who’ve helped us on all of the smart contract vault side of things. I mean, they have extremely experienced in building this and then we considered building it ourselves, but then met the VEDA guys who have three plus billion in these… is he yield contracts and so we decided to work with them.

Interviewer: But it’s it just stays scary even after it’s done, right? Paul (Plasma): Because you now have this value and in the contract and you you’re extremely paranoid about where’s your ledger and who’s on this multi sick and it’s just it’s just yeah, it’s stressful, but it all went well and we’re obviously extremely, extremely happy about that. m You were on the right side of the of the history, I think it was February. Yeah, February had been from Bybit just after the Bybit hack. And he was on the other side of the history, 1.5 billion, but not arrived in what two minutes gone in. To be fair, mean, Ben and Bybit seem to be doing fine. then so, mean, they, I think actually they did a fantastic job communicating through all of that. And I mean, it’s horrific. And you, you don’t wish this upon anyone, but. And given the horrific circumstances, I Pipe had handled it extremely well. Absolutely. It was amazing to watch the level of calm of the dude and the level of humor he had also. Yeah, it was crazy. I respect that a lot.

Interviewer: If you had to explain what it is you do and why you do it to someone who’s never heard of crypto or blockchain before, what would you say? Paul (Plasma): I think the easiest way to explain to someone who has no idea about blockchain, who doesn’t know what stable coins is. Or a really high level, mean, I plasma is basically a new, more efficient way to move money globally. I think that is the super short summary, which is very abstract and it doesn’t really actually say much. But you can’t really tell someone, it’s stable coin settlement rails. that, if you have no idea what crypto is, then that makes no sense. Let’s that person tells you, listen, I’m using this thing called Wwise, Frankfurt Wwise or Revolut. I’m happy with it.

Interviewer: Why do need something else? Paul (Plasma): I think both of those are fantastic products. think it really depends on the specific use case. My general view is, think, domestic, especially in the US and in Europe, I don’t think that’s where the most interesting stablecoin opportunity is. sending money from… New York to LA, I think is a fully solved issue, basically. And I don’t think Zablecoins add much to, to be very honest. I think the highest impact Zablecoins have is very much on the cross border payment flow side of things. so if you live in the US, but you have family in South America and you send money to them, that’s still horrifically inefficient and slow and expensive process.

Interviewer: I think stablecoins are the vastly superior stack to build that on. Who are you? Paul (Plasma): I’m Paul, founder of Plasma.

Interviewer: Are you only the founder of Plasma? Paul (Plasma): In this context, yes — that’s the hat I’m wearing. More broadly it’s a big part of my life, so it’s a fair description.

Interviewer: Is this how you define yourself? Paul (Plasma): In this podcast very much so, yes. Generally in life, it’s a very big part of my life. So think the somewhat truthful answer is probably yes. Your previous poker player.

Interviewer: What’s one thing you learned in poker that you still use today? Paul (Plasma): I think a probabilistic frame of looking at the world where you most things aren’t pure binaries, a probabilistic decisions and you have a limited set of things you can control and nothing teaches you that better than poker. Well, the amount of times you just lose with the better hand or you make the right decision and you still lose a lot of money. And that does teach you to deal with. frustration and also with just randomness and variance.

Interviewer: What’s your latest example of frustration due to randomness that you couldn’t control? Paul (Plasma): There are many — on any given day 10–20 things don’t go perfectly. You make the right call and still get a bad outcome; the point is to stay level and keep executing.

Interviewer: I think there’s plenty of examples, right? Paul (Plasma): I mean, we probably have 20 different situations every day that don’t go perfectly well. so I know what the most recent interesting example of that is, but, things don’t always go perfectly and, and, and you have to be,, in a position to, deal with that. Many of your friends went to traditional finance, Citadel, floor traders, but you didn’t.

Interviewer: Why? Paul (Plasma): I almost did. I mean, I, I went to, went to uni, studied computer science and then in business. And I was pretty close to going down there. of TratFi and Path and very happy I didn’t. I mean, I never finished my degree, I was almost done and so that what was the choice to do my own thing. I’ve always liked independence and making decisions on my own and just that’s also why I poker and so… I almost went to one of the larger HFT firms and then last second decided not to because it seemed such a straight career path. you can be pretty certain you have a pretty good, pretty successful outcome, but it’s not really on your terms to an extent. I realize I don’t want that.

Interviewer: What do I do? Paul (Plasma): At that time I was still playing poker and then co‑founded Alloy with a friend from uni — the choice was to stop the degree and go all‑in on building.

Interviewer: What did you do? Paul (Plasma): I helped funds set up proper crypto operations — custody, key management, infrastructure — which led to founding Alloy because most firms underestimated the full‑time setup required.

Interviewer: What did I do? Paul (Plasma): Yeah. I mean, back then I was still playing poker quite a bit and then founded a company called Alloy with a good friend of mine from uni. so that then was the choice on one hand not to finish my degree fully and to just go down the entrepreneurial m path. or was this ILO business, I think you told me they called you, your friend called you the crypto guy and through these experiences that you actually build this company.

Interviewer: Yeah, I mean, it was basically came into being because most of the, was the 2021, 2022 era of crypto, right? Paul (Plasma): But things were super hard. Things were going up and it was extremely volatile. And so A bunch of my, TradFi oriented friends ask, how do we do crypto basically in the fund and in a professional manner and I would send them these very long explainers of how to set up custody, how to manage private keys, how to basically build an entire system around that and relatively quickly realized that that requires an insane amount of work and an insane amount of just set up and basically you need someone. Oh, you need a team full time to really build a good crypto setup if you want to trade it professionally and relatively quickly realized that that is probably a limiting factor for a lot of entities who otherwise would be interested in entering things and crypto.

Interviewer: And so decided to build that. became quickly disillusioned with this company trying to implement blockchain in the business world, right? Paul (Plasma): B2B. Yes. very much B2B.

Interviewer: Why did this not work out the way you wanted or you imagined? Paul (Plasma): I think in the enemy, we saw that very much. I my background is very crypto native on chain. That a lot of things in that corner of the world. initially, alloy was extremely crypto native too. And we then pretty quickly realized that the biggest demand is very much on the more grown up institutional regulated side of things. And so it made sense to just fully focus on that, given that that is where demand was. And I think this is still us. then so was it real demand or was it demand because these institutions or these companies need to show their investors or their clients that they’re actually doing something in this blockchain space without actually really knowing what the fuck they’re doing. It’s probably a mix. A bit of both. I mean, I think there’s one set answer to that. And all of the alloy clients were in it for the right reasons and fantastic people, Obviously.

Interviewer: You mentioned the other day, you don’t have to go as deep as you want, right? Paul (Plasma): But you mentioned some of the nonsense that you have to deal with to bring crypto to traditional finance, to still show people.

Interviewer: And this was a couple of years ago, right? Paul (Plasma): But it’s probably still the same today. There is a lot of nonsense to be able to bring crypto to traditional finance players. What’s some of the example of the nonsense that can actually make people who are watching this podcast grateful about the companies that are pushing this towards traditional finance because it’s really not easy. Big money might be there, but to get access to this big money is actually a mega challenge. No, 100%. I mean, I don’t think this is a crypto specific thing, but it’s just, I think it’s a fact of life that selling B2Bs to very large organizations is not easy. I have deep respect for… anyone who does it at massive scale and succeeds in doing it. Because you do have a lot of politics to navigate. have a lot of just complexity that feels removed from the actual product or business. And that is just basically random distractions around the core of what you really want to do. it might also be a European thing to an extent, right? a German company does come with quite a bit of just bureaucracy m around everything. then so you spend a lot of time on just doing stuff that you feel doesn’t contribute an insane amount of value to what you’re actually trying to achieve. Without mentioning any client’s name, you have an example of things that you had to do. Yeah, that makes absolutely no sense. And that ultimately made you stop or exit this company to build something else. I think, mean, in the end, it has this long list of stuff. is, you sometimes just have frustrations with how quickly things happen. Well, things are decided and then implementation takes six to 12 months, even though it could very easily take four weeks. so that’s one set of frustration there. I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault. think that that’s just a… function of very large companies having very established processes and going through, extremely structured procurement processes. I mean, we had a bunch of, all of these ESG and compliance things to worry about, Well, I remember for one contract, we had to sign that half the team is diverse and half the team very much wasn’t diverse, but it was mostly white males. then so, is this just enough for We had a conversation that everyone needs to be diverse now and make up a reason. so you just that’s just something that doesn’t. I think most of that stuff comes from the right place and is something I actually I’m probably, I think the outcome that is trying to be optimized for something I’m very much aligned with. Sometimes you just marvel at the inefficiency of how to get there.

Interviewer: How did it end up for your company, Alloy? Paul (Plasma): We realized the best demand was institutional/regulated, shifted focus, then concluded the ROI wasn’t ideal for us. Alloy was acquired by a European asset manager — fine outcome, not spectacular.

Interviewer: How did you escape this bureaucratic nightmare? Paul (Plasma): Yeah, look, I don’t want to say escape because that’s too negative and I’m still very much available to have helpers needed. But in the end, think we it, I and my microphone or two just came to the conclusion that it’s probably not the highest. m upside m ROI m thing to do really. And m I think, yeah, I don’t regret m that decision in any capacity. m It ended up getting acquired by a European asset manager, m which was a fine outcome, but not incredible. m so, m no, it was all good. Let’s get to the meat of the subject.

Interviewer: Why did you decide to focus on stable coin? Paul (Plasma): I think stable coins are the single most interesting sector in all of crypto. It’s very interesting to see now how, especially since beginning of the year, that has become incredibly consensus, it feels. even that shift happened incredibly quickly. It didn’t feel that even late last year. I think the number one use case for blockchains is to move value around. globally and efficiently and I think stable coins are the best means of achieving that. people who might not have been in crypto for many years.

Interviewer: Can you go through the evolution of stable coins throughout the years? Paul (Plasma): Sure, absolutely. I mean, you had these very early wacky experiments of stable coins.

Interviewer: UCT very much being the first real at scale used one coming out of Bitfinex and originally mostly just being used as a means to transfer value from exchange to exchange where you m You can do that in Bitcoin and the early days, mean, the early BitMEX days, everything was just denominated in Bitcoin, which creates a long list of issues, right? Paul (Plasma): If your collateral is also a very volatile asset that you then use to trade a very volatile asset, that’s not ideal. m so you basically need a form of USD that is easy to move from venue to venue for market makers and participants. Basically, if you have money on Bitfinex and you need money on Bybit, you want it to be very easy to just send USD from A to B. traditional a wire transfer, see, just takes too long, basically, and is too inefficient. so that is how then Bitfinex originally built USDT, which is now the by far largest stablecoin. And then now you have really a dual pulley basically between USDT and USDC. And then long list of also relatively large m stable coins. I stable coin as a category is pretty reductive. In the end, think stable coins are not one monolithic product, but probably three or four distinct products. really, we’re, Makers USDs is a fundamentally different product than USDTs. And then so is Athena’s USD for example. And they all get bunched into stable coins, but I think they do have different use cases, different user bases and different reasons to exist.

Interviewer: What’s the biggest problem with stable coins today? Paul (Plasma): I think there’s a long list of problems, I think on one hand.

Interviewer: Stablecoins are incredible network‑effect products, obviously, right? Paul (Plasma): Exactly — acceptance breadth is everything. Until stablecoins are plugged into everyday payment flows, the experience stays fragmented.

Interviewer: And so a currency that isn’t basically accepted everywhere is worth much less. than a currency that is just accepted everywhere, right?Paul (Plasma): And then so think stable coins are still not deeply integrated into existing payment flows. And that obviously leads to just challenges and actually using them in day-to-day commerce. That’s probably the number one issue. I think it’s getting solved extremely quickly.

Interviewer: You still have quite a bit of unnecessary inefficiency. in a lot of places. example? Paul (Plasma): It’s still actually quite expensive to use stablecoins to pay for stuff. I mean, if you look at Coinbase Commerce or Stripe’s stablecoin product or stable, none of them are actually all that cheap or actually all that good in my opinion. And I think that probably changes pretty quickly. I mean, Stripe seems extremely serious about winning and dominating stablecoin payments given that they acquired Brudge and now that just acquired Pravi and so I think that probably changes pretty quickly.

Interviewer: You said the stablecoin infrastructure is built for the past. not for future cases, what does the stablecoin infrastructure build for the future looks? Paul (Plasma): Yeah, I mean, if you look at the existing, if you look at where do stablecoins actually transact and and and and and and set right now, overwhelmingly is Ethereum, Mainnet and Tron.

Interviewer: …what does our stablecoin strategy look like? Paul (Plasma): Every major bank is at least exploring it — the direction of travel is clear: make large-value settlement faster and cheaper on stablecoin rails.

Interviewer: And how can we how can we leverage this to to make our operations more efficient? Paul (Plasma): And I don’t think they will use drawn basically. And and and so I think that is the way I look at the world.

Interviewer: Why would they not use Tron, which is the most‑used chain? Paul (Plasma): For banks and large settlements there’s baggage and compliance friction. And even for consumers, fees of $3–$5 per USDT transfer price out many transactions.

Interviewer: It’s basically the stablecoin chain today, right? Paul (Plasma): Yeah.

Interviewer: I think it’s a lot of baggage attached to that, right? Paul (Plasma): And a lot of just probably compliance challenges. If you work at a large bank and you want to settle a very large commodities trade, you probably have challenges doing that on Tron. Besides that, I for consumer use cases. is actually not that cheap anymore. I mean, it costs between three to five dollars to send you a CT on drawn from A to B now, which is actually very meaningful. Right. If you send someone fifty dollars and then it costs five. That is an insane take rate and then fee. And so I think you do you do price out a lot of use cases if it’s just expensive. So the vision for the future infrastructure. There’s a few points we talked about the other day. The first one is permissionless.

Interviewer: What does a permissionless stablecoin infrastructure look? Paul (Plasma): Yeah, I don’t think there’s a one sentence answer to that really.

Interviewer: I think it needs to be, I mean, needs to be commercialized, right? Paul (Plasma): So anyone can run a validator and anyone can participate in securing the network. I think Bitcoin has to play a role in that as the most lendy, most just… incredibly neutral blockchain that exists and I think inheriting some of Bitcoin security is a useful thing. And then given that Stablecoins is such a integrations, network heavy business, it needs to be extremely easy to integrate. you want to, I mean, we made the very conscious choice to be fully EVM compliant and compatible.

Interviewer: And that makes it so much easier to just integrate Plasma into of existing workflows, right? Paul (Plasma): Because you don’t need to build an entire new tech stack, but you can use all of the dev tooling that exists for the EVM itself. And you just have a 100x harder job if you have some custom VM that doesn’t have good tooling around it.

Interviewer: How can we have a permissionless stablecoin infrastructure if the most‑used stablecoins today are centralized? Paul (Plasma): Truly permissionless USD is hard — most algo attempts failed. Over‑collateralized designs can work but have trade‑offs. Today USDT/USDC work well; some centralization is a pragmatic compromise while experimentation continues.

Interviewer: Do we have another stablecoin that is different? or do we use what’s being used today in a different fashion? Paul (Plasma): Yeah, I mean, I think in the end, it’s really hard to build a fully permissionless stablecoin. I mean, I went through the very early days of DeFi SEMA with all of the algo stables and the ESDs and DSDs, and they all failed in somewhat spectacular fashion.

Interviewer: I think in the end, I’ve not seen a good design for a truly permissionless, fully decentralized stablecoin. really, at least not in, I mean, you can just way over collateralize it in some other asset, right? Paul (Plasma): And then that works, which used to be the old die model. That’s also changing to an extent. So think in the end, that is a trade off you have to make. I mean, both USDT and USDC work incredibly well and have deep liquidity and have mint redeemed that functions. And that does require some degree of centralization. So your opinion is that we don’t need to solve the centralized table coin problem. Or is it even a problem? or we haven’t found yet the way to do it. I don’t have a super distinct view on that, to be honest. think USDT and USDC work extremely well in the current fashion. There’s a lot of strong people building new and interesting stablecoins. Some of them are going to work, some of them won’t. I think in the end, the beauty of crypto is you have so much experimentation and it’s you can just experiment with a lot of things. And that probably leads to incredible innovation on the stable coin asset side of things itself. And I think that’s a positive. It’s tough to predict how that plays out.

Interviewer: I don’t see a massive issue with the current state of having specifically USDT be the largest and leading stable coin. mentioned before, Tron, too expensive, three to five dollars per transaction, right? Paul (Plasma): So one of the key requirements for future infrastructure is a fast and cheap.

Interviewer: And you even said ideally free USD transfers, right? Paul (Plasma): Right — that’s the target UX bar for mainstream payments.

Interviewer: How do we get free USD transfers? Paul (Plasma): By making USDT transfers gasless on Plasma. We reserve part of every block specifically for USDT moves and let users send without paying gas. The hard part is spam-resistance, so we enforce a minimum balance and add controlled allow‑listing at the start; we’ll iterate on the mechanism over time.

Interviewer: How does that work in practice? Paul (Plasma): We isolate stablecoin transfers into a dedicated lane inside each block. Users send USDT without gas; validators run the lane and protocol rules handle spam resistance (min balance + allow‑listing at launch).

Interviewer: Who pays for the, who pays for the transactions? Paul (Plasma): It’s free. I mean, in the end, as you said, I fast and cheap is a requirement, but very much not a right to win. Well, it’s. You definitely lose if you’re slow and expensive, you don’t definitely win if you are fast and cheap. And for us having this, having this gasless transfers of USDT, I think unlocks actual net new use cases that they would be priced out otherwise. And we achieve that by basically having a split block architecture where part of the block is reserved for just USDT transfers. And we, I mean the… the foundation is going to run validators for that and anyone can. the biggest issue you have obviously is protecting against spam. Well, if you have zero guardrails in place, then anyone can just send 17 million USDT transfers a second and then clog up the entire chain forever. And so we’re enforcing a minimum balance to do that. And there’s going to be some whitelisting m implemented there. to ensure against spam resistance. And it’s also something that’s going to be a very iterative process. think the V1 is not going to be the single best solution. I think it’s going to be a step in the right direction. The next experiment is accessible to everyone.

Interviewer: How do we make stablecoins accessible to everyone? Paul (Plasma): I think, for one, you do need extremely good on off ramp infrastructure to truly have stable coins be extremely accessible to everyone. And you need a way to actually get in and get out of the ecosystem because otherwise it’s always going to be this vacuum that is its own reality. And so I think all of the payment stack around just the chain itself matters a lot for that reason, where you need to be… need to be integrated into places where consumers have existing relationships, accounts, then get access to stable coins in basically the easiest way possible, where you don’t need to go through a fully separate process just to get to some stable coin rail. Very fably no neutral.

Interviewer: What does that mean? Paul (Plasma): This is very very fably neutral. I mean, that is the same thing as we talked about on the decentralization. think you need things to be transparent and verifiable and permissionless and anyone can build on it. I think you have a long history of permission chains failing and I never fully understood why a… If you can’t deploy a smart contract permissionlessly on a blockchain, then I think it’s really hard to make the case why it needs to exist. so Plasma is permissionless. Anyone can deploy anything and that is that needs to transparency. The last requirement for the vision for future infrastructure of stablecoin is highly scalable.

Interviewer: What does highly scalable mean in the context of stablecoins? Paul (Plasma): You just need to be in a position to support a lot of transactions and to support a lot of small transactions and to truly be scalable. think, again, it’s a necessary but not sufficient requirement to money. think that is the least important thing because it’s a given that you need that anyways. If you can’t scale and you can’t actually if you have demand to transfer something from A to B and it’s slow and expensive, then you’re dead. You’re the co-founder of Plasma. Explain to me Plasma simply with no jargon. Plasma is a blockchain specifically built for stablecoins.

Interviewer: Why does the word need Plasma? Paul (Plasma): You can make very different choices if you only focus on stable coins specifically and you basically only care about stable coins in both tech architecture of the chain and go to market and strategy and liquidity and incentives, all of that. If you only gear all of that towards stable coins, you have a massive edge against fully generalized chains. So you’re saying that Solana and Ethereum and all these chains basically are not it. And we need another one whose only purpose is to make stablecoin better. I’m extremely well incentivized to say yes to this. think this is not an argument meaning that, Solana won’t win or Ethereum won’t win. think that is fully separate. think on the specific stablecoins at scale use case, we can we can do a better job than any of them, given that we don’t have to care about anything else. PathMite is tackling what you call the trillion dollar stablecoin opportunity.

Interviewer: What is the trillion dollar opportunity for stablecoin? Paul (Plasma): Stablecoin is taking meaningful market share of just global commerce in terms of payment flow and volume. I think that is the trillion dollar opportunity.

Interviewer: How quickly do you think this can happen? Paul (Plasma): Stuff to predict, I think we will have more than a trillion and outstanding stablecoins supply next year. Pretty confident in that. I mean, we are at about 250 billion m right now and it’s been increasing extremely steadily over the last couple of months and I think there’s basically 100 % probability we’ll have a trillion dollars in outstanding stablecoins very soon. What’s the end game? plasma. That’s a very broad question. I the true end game is we can become the number one chain for stablecoins and we can have just the highest market share and then settling stablecoins on plasma. We talked about Chuan before.

Interviewer: How can Plasma compete with concretely? Paul (Plasma): We don’t compete with Tron directly. I think Tron is extremely good at what they do currently. They’re capable. Justin is a sharp guy. I think you just have a changing landscape of stablecoin use cases. I think the world that leads to Tron winning exists less. as everyday passes basically. I think that is where we win is on net new use cases on that. I mean, we have 250 billion in outstanding supply right now. I’m highly confident we’ll have a trillion plus. I think that 750 billion delta basically, I think we have a very real shot of taking a good chunk of that.

Interviewer: Can you give me two or three examples of where you think these 750 billion are going to come from? Paul (Plasma): In just mostly cross border large notional value payment settlement. I mean, that is the most interesting area is in you buy coal in South Africa and you want to pay for it and you ship it to from South Africa to the UK and you pay for that in USD and you don’t have to wait for five days and then pay 40 bips on that payment.

Interviewer: What’s your approach to winning share of those new flows? Paul (Plasma): Focus on where stablecoins already move: exchanges and local hubs in key regions. Integrate deeply, reduce friction, and make settlement instant and cheap.

Interviewer: If blockchain is global, who do you target first to capture part of the $750B? Paul (Plasma): We prioritize jurisdictions with real turnover — Middle East, South America, Turkey — then integrate with the top local venues driving those flows.

Interviewer: How do you acquire customers? market share, how are you going to do that? Paul (Plasma): I think for us, there’s a couple of key jurisdictions that matter the most. I don’t think US and Europe is where you really want to focus because most of the stablecoin supply that originates in those jurisdictions is relatively stale and it doesn’t actually have a lot of turnover. think Middle East is incredibly interesting. South America is really interesting. Turkey specifically is incredibly interesting. And I think that is where you want to be focused because that’s also where real stablecoin payment flow happens now. And I don’t think that changes.

Interviewer: If we look at Turkey, for example, and you say, so interesting, how do you capture these market shares? Paul (Plasma): And it’s completely linked to, you told me a consumer blockchain is a B2B product. Yes. Right.

Interviewer: Most people think actually my end user is the people, right? Paul (Plasma): Yes. But which is true, but by proxy, right? think every blockchain is a B2B product. No one actually interacts with the blockchain directly. So if we look at Plasma in Turkey, for example.

Interviewer: What’s the approach? Paul (Plasma): To say we’re going to conquer Turkey’s stablecoin market. That is a very long, very detailed answer to that that I’m not willing to give. so I think Turkey being one of the focus areas is incredibly interesting. You need to be integrated in places where stablecoins actually get used. In general, if you look at the actual originators basically of stablecoin flow, it tends to be pretty top heavy. m Exchanges matter a lot, especially to a surprising extent, local exchanges in the interesting jurisdictions. so you need to work with them and you m need to be integrated into as much as you can in the highest value, highest turnover and volume, m basically central nodes of stable coin flow. You have a very close relationship with Tether, the company behind the most used stablecoin USDT.

Interviewer: Why do some people call Plasma the Tether chain or the Paolo chain? Paul (Plasma): I mean, first of all, Plasma is very much not the official Tether chain by any means. we would never claim that we are. Paolo specifically has been incredibly helpful and gracious to us. I have incredibly deep respect for him. I mean, Betfinex led our very first round and Paolo has been extremely helpful since. And for us, mean, if you have a choice on what stablecoin do you want to focus on as the one canonical, this is the one stablecoin you focus on as a chain. And USDT is the very obvious choice. the… the Sabrecoin that actually has real usage. And so the choice for us was incredibly obvious and we’re very happy to be focused on USDT and USDT aligned. I think it’s the, you look at the data, what Sabrecoin gets used and you focus on that. that’s also, I mean, you have a lot of other players who also came to a similar conclusion. so… I think it just makes sense. I completely understand. I think everyone understands why you would go for USDT and Tether.

Interviewer: The question is why would Tether go for Plasma potential and be an early investor? Paul (Plasma): I think in the end, mean, Tether as a company is obviously interested to have USDT distribution be as wide as possible and be omnipresent. it makes sense for them to projects that are furthering that goal. I think Plasma very much fits that bill. You said before in crypto, it’s not about speed, cost, everyone has that.

Interviewer: What does pasma success depend on? Paul (Plasma): I don’t think there’s a singular factor. think in the end, crypto is an incredible execution game and you need to be very good at just actually executing, which is a horrifically boring and terrible answer to this question, but I do think it’s true. And so in the end,… Building a chain, building an ecosystem is a task that has so many variables and so many complexities. I don’t think each individual one is the make or break it factor, but all of them together very much are. I’m very happy that we have an incredibly competent team who are fantastic and we have an incredible amount of things to… to get right over the next couple of years.

Interviewer: What’s a big risk for asthma? Paul (Plasma): I think it’s a long list of risks by just building in crypto, right? m On one hand, you have a regulatory risk on the stable coin side of things, specifically. I think it’s meaningfully lower now than it was a year ago or two years ago, but it still very much exists.

Interviewer: You do have, m mean, building anything in crypto has inherent risks, right? Paul (Plasma): You have to be paranoid about security. We very much, we… very much are, but that is still a looming risk if you build anything in crypto. And as a very long list of risks to our building.

Interviewer: What keeps you awake at night? Paul (Plasma): The usual crypto trifecta: security, execution complexity, and regulatory overhang. There are a thousand moving parts and you have to get most of them right.

Interviewer: The answer to the question I just gave basically, many other, it’s just such a complex system, right? Paul (Plasma): And you need to get so many things right. One of the few points that you put emphasis on when we talked last time, our brand and storytelling.

Interviewer: What’s the story you tell everyone that makes Plasma different and more trustworthy? Paul (Plasma): I think for us, given this laser focus on just stable coins, we can just make choices that no one else can. And I think that is the massive advantage we have in building Plasma. And you have to communicate that extremely well. think you have to be ah in crypto so much as building out in the open and then even pre-product launch, you have so much content out there on what you’re working on and what the vision for the whole thing is. And we try to very actively communicate to the public and then to everyone on what our thinking is and then how we… how we approach building Plasma itself. And I think that actually matters a lot. Clear messaging and vision.

Interviewer: What is Plasma vision in one sentence? Paul (Plasma): Winning stablecoin settlement globally. We talked about the real user engagement, not the vague community building, which is just used and used and overused and that everybody’s tired of. Yes.

Interviewer: What do you see in crypto that you don’t and don’t want to reproduce with Plasma? Paul (Plasma): Man, we have time. Yeah, we do have time. No, I don’t it in the end. I’m a pretty big free markets maxi to an extent. And so I think it’s a lot of things I’m not a massive fan of. But in the end, most of the stuff that was truly bad also ceases existing. And and and so I think you do have a lot of self correction, I think baked into into things that. And so I think you saw half. ah There’s plenty of things I don’t in crypto. And I think that that’s never going to change. There’s plenty of things I don’t in TradFi and I don’t in every other industry. I just happen to know crypto the best. we think about what happened recently, you getting $1 billion in deposits that quickly. It shows that people believe in you, but it also puts some pressure on your shoulder.

Interviewer: You have to deliver, right? Paul (Plasma): And it’s only delivering infrastructure, but actually show real user engagement.

Interviewer: Otherwise, why would people deposit money and then invest in the token? Paul (Plasma): We invited pressure on purpose. The plan is simple: launch, drive real stablecoin payment flow (not airdrop farming), and integrate where volume already moves. Execution is the moat.

Interviewer: And how do you feel about that? Paul (Plasma): I think the plan concretely to say, okay, we’re going to have real, we want to build a real user engagement. And that’s what it looks. I think for us, we’re comfortable having that pressure. I mean, we’re confident in our ability to ship and to execute. I mean, this go-to-market path is a very conscious choice that we made. And I think it’s fine. think it’s good pressure in the end to actually execute and deliver. For us, we just have to get to as much actual real. stable coin payment flow as quickly as we can. And we’re in a very good position to do that and then to get there. that’s not a thing that job is never going to be finished. Basically,, is not a, I don’t think it’s a thing you arrive at, but that is going to keep being our job in two years and three years and five years. What do you tell people who complain or criticize, there is always a lot of them, especially in crypto, that this $1 billion comes from just a few people or a few entities. It doesn’t. I mean, we have 2,200 plus wallets that participated and it was very easy to participate without any, you didn’t need any crazy gas costs. You didn’t need a MEV bought and set up and so. For us, the goal with Elgo to Market was to give everyone, not just very large funds, an ability to participate. I think I’m actually relatively happy with how distribution looks. the second tranche of the second 500 was open for about 30 minutes. then so anyone could get in. There’s people that paid 80 cents in gas. then so…

Interviewer: …2,200 — how do you feel about that? Paul (Plasma): Happy with the distribution. Anyone could participate — no private deals, no MEV sniping. The second 500M tranche stayed open ~30 minutes; some people paid ~$0.80 in gas.

Interviewer: Based on expectation, did you expect that you have many more people? Paul (Plasma): Because it doesn’t sound a lot from someone external or for someone who doesn’t necessarily understand crypto, you’re, okay, you have 2000 people, that’s great. yeah, I think for us in the end, we didn’t know at the beginning and we… anyone can participate and anyone could have put money into the pre-deposit and m for us we work with extremely imperfect information. m I’m happy with that outcome. think the distribution of all things considered is quite good and especially given that anyone who wanted to could have participated but it wasn’t it just got sniped in one block by… m some MEV bot and so I think that’s a pretty good outcome. on is focused on actual users.

Interviewer: What is not an actual user? Paul (Plasma): I think the answer to that is relatively obvious and relatively simple. You have a lot of this. I mean, if look at the activity of a lot of chain launches and so much of it is just a drop farming and or just fully fake users and For us, we didn’t want that and then we wanted real people with real skin in the game which is also why we chose this go-to-market and I think in the end that is the superior way to go to market.

Interviewer: Talking about go-to-market, what are the next steps? Paul (Plasma): Launching the chain is very much item number one. in the final stages of rolling everything out and we’re looking good on that. We’re launching in late summer of this year and going through final audits, final setup, all of that. But next major milestone is very much launching Plasma mainnet beta.

Interviewer: How do you keep the hype? Paul (Plasma): We don’t optimize for hype. It’s an ebb and flow. The only sustainable way is substance: ship great product, integrate where value moves, communicate clearly. Hype follows quality.

Interviewer: Because the hype was so huge, right? Paul (Plasma): How do you keep the hype going? when it’s almost impossible to do better. Yeah, mean, I don’t think that is true. But…

Interviewer: So how do you keep the hype even better? Paul (Plasma): By executing — tweets and quests won’t save a weak product. Build something people actually want to use.

Interviewer: It’s always an ebb and flow, right? Paul (Plasma): And, don’t think you… You’re not optimizing for hype. At least we aren’t., we didn’t, we didn’t,, set out to just,, build,, short-lived hype. And so in the end, you need to build real substance. And I think that that’s the only way to sustain interest and to sustain people caring about what you do. Otherwise, everyone stops caring about what you do. And so I think what we need to do is very clear. I think hype generally follows quality. I mean, Hyperliquid is still incredibly hyped and for good reason, because they’re just fantastic and have built. an incredible product and a very good at executing. And I think that is the only way to sustain hype. in the end, you can tweet as well as you want and you m can do the coolest Discord quests. You have to build a product and it needs to be good and people need to want to use it. Yeah, you can go on so many podcasts. Exactly. I mean, look, this is obviously a fantastic podcast to go on. In the end, you actually have to build a product and you need people to care about that. And I think that is the only way to win long term and sustainably. That’s the one thing that people should remember from today’s conversation. Stablecoins are the most interesting market and Plasma is here to dominate it.

Original interview: https://x.com/KevinWSHPod/status/1968353315017920515 https://youtu.be/Ff7SOQQ6H6U?si=8Pw1CmmBAZVQpW63