Lou Whiteman

Anthropic has notably chosen to avoid video generators entirely.

So maybe this is something that we're not going to see as much investment in the space.

That remains to be seen, but it is a big shift for OpenAI from, I think, where a lot of people thought the business was going.

Well, and I think another way to look at it is this.

We have heard some pretty lofty ambitions for what stable coins can do for the consumer, for big business.

And one of the hallmarks of adoption, one of the on-ramps that enables adoption is greater regulatory environment.

and more regulations in place.

And so I think that in the long term, should this legislation pass, I actually think it's a good thing.

When you think about companies like Coinbase, they've been leaning pretty heavily on USDC rewards to drive engagement and revenue.

So obviously, this is kind of massive regulatory red line, so to speak.

If you think about, you know, the Genius Act and other recent bills have really essentially been trying to treat stable coins more like traditional cash and less like speculative investments, which, again, is a really important element of long-term adoption.

So I think by cutting off rewards, regulators are hoping to prevent a massive, you know, drain of deposits from traditional banks.

I think that's one piece of it.

But I think it's also about kind of the fundamental safety of the financial system.

And there's also the redemption factor.

So the new rules would mandate that stable coin holders get priority.

in case of an issuer's bankruptcy.

And that would finally give users some of the same protections that they would expect at a regular bank, which again, there might be individuals and entities that have hesitated to adopt stablecoin that should those regulations be in place would be more induced to do so.

So I don't think this is a dead end.

The free money, so to speak, via rewards might be going away.