From Stablecoins to Digital Money: Building the Next Layer of Financial Infrastructure
Every few decades, financial infrastructure gets rebuilt - payments, banking, lending - and what seemed radical one year becomes the new default over time. Finance is now due an upgrade and the next wave is happening on-chain. At its core sits something deceptively simple: money that moves as easily as information on the internet.
From Edge Utility to Core Financial Rails
Stablecoins, initially a bridge between blockchain-based assets and traditional money, were the first real attempt to fix this. An early prototype of internet-native money, stablecoins showed that value can move at speed, without intermediaries and settle in seconds. But, despite the fast growth in stablecoin market cap, they also showed the limits of unregulated innovation. Without trust and regulatory clarity stablecoins would remain a parallel system.
That is now changing. With the EU’s MiCA regime live, the US GENIUS Act having been passed, and the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Bank of England preparing their own stablecoin frameworks for 2026, we’re entering a phase of increased regulatory clarity, creating the conditions that will turn large scale experimentation into institutional adoption. The next phase of monetary infrastructure will be on-chain - regulated, diversified and global.
Why the Pound Needs a Digital Counterpart
Around $300 billion now circulate in stablecoins, clearing monthly transactions in the early trillions. And yet, nearly all of that value is denominated in USD. The British pound - the world’s fourth most traded currency - has been a key part of global trade for centuries, yet its absence in the digital asset ecosystem is striking at roughly two-millionths of a percent of global stablecoin supply. A GBP stablecoin isn’t just a new product, but rather a foundation for maintaining relevance in a financial system that is rapidly going digital. Every token in circulation connects back to the sterling economy, supporting liquidity, reserve strength and competitiveness.
Once the FCA’s and the Bank’s rules take effect, GBP-backed stablecoins will, for the first time, have the opportunity to sit inside the perimeter of regulated money. That is likely to be the inflection point where institutional players - banks, corporates, fintechs - can treat them as safe compliant settlement assets. We expect adoption to follow quickly across FX (where London dominates), capital markets settlement (initially via the FCA’s Digital Securities Sandbox) and cross-border flows.
From Stablecoins to Digital Money
What will emerge isn’t another crypto token. Instead, it will be a new form of money that matches the trust and regulation of commercial bank deposits and adds the advantages of being natively digital. Fully backed, redeemable and supervised. But also programmable, transparent and always-on.
Partnering with the Builders of This Transition
What’s been missing is a regulated, multi-currency infrastructure layer that lets global firms participate safely and seamlessly. We are keen to partner with the entrepreneurs leading this transition. With ReStabilise, we are teaming up with Mike Ringer and Dave Lemmens, digital asset experts from the worlds of traditional finance and regulation, with the aim to deliver this foundational layer of digital money without the crypto risk - starting with the pound.
What Comes Next
Stablecoins are transitioning from a crypto story to regulated-by-design digital money. Just as payments went digital in the 2000s and embedded finance redefined APIs in the 2010s, the 2020s are about trusted digital value. This is how infrastructure, such as ReStabilise, can help enable the financial system’s move from messaging networks to value networks.