Faris Habib

Nullius in verba nisi Dei | Coinbase & Opto AI | Opinions are my own

[Faris Habib @frshbb]

Soft as a dove and wise as a serpent.

[The Ways of A Gentleman @Gentleman_Ways]

“Be courteous to all but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.”

- George Washington

[Jawwwn @jawwwn_]

Alex Karp on NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani:

“Obviously someone who has no work experience ever, who has views that have never worked, should not be put in charge of the most important enterprise of its kind, maybe in the world.”

[The Internet Fish @TheInternetFish]

Why does he actually look like ChatGPT

[Thomas Unise @thomasunise]

@ABC If your girl won’t scale the Empire State Building to revolt against the Empire, she ain’t it

[Jeremy Allaire - jerallaire.arc @jerallaire]

We’ve had lots of questions from our investor community looking for thoughts on OUSD, and so I thought I’d share my direct views here for anyone.

Stablecoin networks are platform and network effect businesses that are established over a long period of time, tend towards winner-take-most market structures, and resemble other internet platform utility markets. There are several layers that drive this.

First, stablecoin networks effectively act as public protocols and software layers on the internet and their network strength is a matter of the number and range of applications and services that integrate to the network. Every time a developer or service provider integrates to the network, it brings more network effects. This attracts more developers and adds more utility and more network effects. This then drives demand for the digital currency itself, which then reinforces these network effects through liquidity network effects.

We have realized this at a massive scale with the USDC network today — thousands upon thousands of services integrate with our network, which in turn provides immense utility not just to each application, but to users as a whole who benefit massively from the reach and interoperability that exists. This drives user and developer preference further. We’ve invested in building that ecosystem over nearly a decade, and now it’s accelerating as mainstream institutions come onto the network, connecting their customers and users.

We add to that utility by building software stacks that further expand and strengthen the network — protocols like CCTP and Gateway, which promote interoperability, safety and liquidity around the world. This expands the target surface area for app builders and developers, making it easy for them to tap into the liquidity and network effects that already exist. We are now seeing that stack get pulled into all kinds of chains, permissioned L2s, networks being built by governments, and so much more.

The second layer is that of liquidity network effects. This is fundamental. Liquidity begets liquidity. For a stablecoin to achieve scale and utility, it needs to be highly liquid, both on a primary basis (e.g., through all the major financial market centers in the world, with world class direct banking liquidity) and on a secondary basis both by being available and tradeable for retail and institutional clients in every geography and against every fiat instrument in the world. People who want to access and move value need to be able to easily get in and out of that digital currency. Here, we’ve invested nearly a decade in building out that liquidity, and it is now entrenched in exchanges, DeFI venues, and with PSPs, payments firms, regional exchanges, and so many others. Establishing these liquidity network effects also involves building global regulatory infrastructure and ensuring that the stablecoin is available under various regimes around the world. Today, USDC is in the top 3 most liquid digital assets in the world, and it falls off sharply after that. BTC, USDT and USDC have extraordinary liquidity. The closest other dollar stables are like 10x smaller and that liquidity tends to be concentrated in promotional books in a single exchange, whereas USDC liquidity is dispersed widely across dozens and dozens of surfaces. Building this liquidity has been a nearly decade-long task that we continue.

A third layer of network strength comes from the deep integration with the policy and regulatory environment — in many cases, years of effort to build licensing (e.g., USDC is the only large global stablecoin currently available in all of Europe or Japan), and more regimes for stablecoins are coming online, with Circle leading the way in ensuring that USDC is officially recognized, registered, licensed and accepted in the most important markets in the world. On the back of this is the work of building global banking, reserve management and treasury and liquidity management that can operate this on a nearly 24/7 basis in markets and banking systems globally. This globalization effort is a massive investment that we have made over the years.

All of these investments by Circle and our global ecosystem of thousands of partners have delivered the net result of providing the world’s most trusted and available digital dollar infrastructure—a utility that any user, developer, or business can freely and easily tap into. And we do not intend to slow down.

All of this compounds and shows in the numbers. In Q1 2026, according to third-party analysts (Artemis) who track stablecoin adoption, USDC handled nearly $30T in onchain transactions, representing 80% of all dollar stablecoin transactions on blockchains. USDT handled the remaining 20% of transactions. All of the combined remaining dollar stablecoins handled a total of 0% of transactions (i.e., < 0.5%). While other stablecoins may have some circulation, most of that is through promotions and incentives, the actual usage is extremely limited—because of the extremely limited liquidity and network utility that exists for these coins.

But my thoughts on the competitive landscape are not just about the strength of our network—there are also considerations around any new initiative.

Several perspectives and positioning have been shared about how something like OUSD improves on something like USDC.

1) Free mint and burn. The argument suggests that existing stablecoins charge burn fees, and payments firms should not need to pay these (despite the fact that the entire payment industry is built on small bps fees on various ingress and egress points on their networks). There are structural market realities built around the fact that some stablecoins impose very large redemption fees and have limited redemption facilities – the impact of this is that stablecoins with strong redemption facilities, good liquidity and no fees become the offramp for their competitor stablecoins. It may seem easy to say one will offer unlimited and free redeems, however market reality likely forces other behavior. This can be addressed – and is addressed by Circle – through contractual mechanisms vs. a blanket fee exemption.

2) Everybody wins and shares. While this sounds good in principle, the reality of the market and market opportunity is quite different. Today, Circle shares the majority of its income with its distribution partners, and we continue to lean hard into expanding those partnerships with leading companies across every sector of the market. However, we also retain significant income that allows us to invest in the massive market infrastructure that makes this such a powerful and valuable utility for the world to build on. Giving away all the income is a recipe for starving an infrastructure, systematically underinvesting and ensuring that your platform will remain limited in scope.

Furthermore, Circle believes that the future stablecoin market is likely several orders of magnitude larger than it is today. We’re actively bringing partners into the USDC ecosystem through a diverse and growing set of partnership models that span our work with exchanges, custodians, payments firms, asset issuers and more. We are excited to continue to build with a “big tent mentality” where the entire ecosystem can grow value together.

3) A consortium where everybody has a voice. Perhaps I have a cynical view, but the track record of consortium products achieving scale, P/M Fit or even basic product agility is absolutely dismal, and while there are examples of financial consortia that operate utilities, they are predictably slow moving. Large groups of large companies coordinate poorly, have misaligned incentives, slow things down and rarely create the space for real durable innovation and competitiveness. They also typically, out of their own self-interest, starve the consortium itself on an operating basis. We actually tried this in the early days of USDC, and even with a very small group, ran into endless challenges and complexity. Smaller, tighter strategic collaborations and commercial partnership arrangements with product and platform builders that can drive forward independently will almost always outcompete large consortiums. But oftentimes when these get formed, everyone feels like they should put their logo on the list, kiss the ring, and make noise about openness. But typically those same firms will turn to their operating units and make the best decisions for their customers, which often means partnering with the market leader and building durable win-win partnerships.

There’s also been a bunch of commentary on Circle's partnership with Coinbase and what this all means. Our stablecoin partnership with Coinbase remains as strong as ever, and I think we both see that enormous opportunity ahead to expand the USDC network.

A final comment: Circle remains committed to supporting a wide range of different products and infrastructures, even when we might compete with different aspects of those partners’ products in other areas of our business. With OUSD, we work closely with many of the founding members, and we expect that those same members will remain large USDC partners and customers. At the same time, as Circle has diversified our product and platform stack, expanding across Arc, CCTP, CPN, StableFX, Agent Stack and many other areas, we continue to expand the partnerships and collaboration with many other stablecoin issuers — dozens of them — to help them launch on Arc, leverage our interoperability infrastructure, get supported in our Wallets and become settlement and FX options on CPN and StableFX.

We are huge believers in growth in the stablecoin ecosystem and welcome OUSD as a new member of the community!

[🜁🜄 Un Alquimista 🜂🜃 @fenice]

"Oracle: Don’t worry about the vase.
Neo: What vase?
...
Oracle: That vase.
...
Neo: How did you know?
Oracle: What’s really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything?"

Matrix

[Dialectic with Jackson Dahl @DialecticPod]

.@tylercowen: "Twitter as this grand organ that you play to learn things and see jokes is phenomenal. It's actually one of mankind's greatest creations. @pmarca will say this, even if very few people say it."

"There's so much hating on it, but I think it's important to make it clear that it is one of our greatest intellectual, humorous, learning, inspirational, and depressing creations of all time."

[Mitchell Hashimoto @mitchellh]

Amongst my friends, Spotify is the lowest quality consumer app we still pay for. It certainly hasnt gotten noticeably better in the last couple years (arguably worse). So, this is not the positive look Ant and Spotify are spinning here.

Bigger picture, this is the problem with a lot of AI reporting. It reports completely meaningless metrics like deploys per day or LoC. Why don’t we start reporting consumer satisfaction reports? Actually end state research results.

All the no nuance AI people always come out and think that this is anti AI. Again, I think AI is great and Claude is great. But this is bad marketing and makes both look like clowns.

[nic carter @nic_carter]

https://t.co/MNudH9Y832

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Le progressisme est le pire cancer des 50 dernières années.

Pas parce qu'il est "de gauche".

Parce qu'il a volé un mot — progrès — pour vendre exactement son contraire.

C'est la thèse de Thiel. Une fois que tu la vois, tu ne peux plus la dé-voir.

Dans les années 60, l'Occident construisait. On allait sur la Lune. On bâtissait des centrales nucléaires, des avions supersoniques, on parlait sérieusement de coloniser Mars et de vaincre le cancer en dix ans. Le progrès, c'était des atomes : de l'énergie moins chère, des transports plus rapides, des vies plus longues.

Puis quelque chose s'est cassé autour de 1971.

L'innovation dans le monde physique s'est arrêtée net. Le Concorde a été retiré — on vole moins vite aujourd'hui qu'il y a 50 ans. Le nucléaire a été tué par la peur. Le salaire réel médian a stagné pendant un demi-siècle. "On nous avait promis des voitures volantes, on a eu 140 caractères."

Mais l'humain a besoin de croire qu'il avance. Alors le progressisme a fait une chose géniale et terrifiante : il a déplacé le mot "progrès" du monde des atomes vers le monde des symboles.

Puisqu'on ne savait plus agrandir le gâteau, on a décrété que le seul combat qui compte était de le redécouper. Plus de croissance à promettre ? On promet de la redistribution, de la repentance, des comités, des labels, des normes. La machine à créer a été remplacée par la machine à gérer le déclin — et on a appelé ça "le bon côté de l'Histoire".

C'est là que Girard rejoint Thiel. Le progressisme n'est pas une politique, c'est une religion sécularisée. Il a gardé tous les rouages du christianisme — le péché, la culpabilité, la confession, le bouc émissaire à sacrifier — mais il a jeté la rédemption et la transcendance. Résultat : une religion qui ne sait que désigner des coupables. Jamais pardonner. Jamais construire.

Et les coupables désignés, ce sont toujours les mêmes : ceux qui bâtissent. L'entrepreneur, l'ingénieur, le fondateur, celui qui prend des risques et crée quelque chose à partir de rien. Pendant ce temps on érige en héros le commentateur, le régulateur, le consultant — celui qui ne produit rien mais qui distribue les bons points moraux.

Voilà pourquoi c'est un cancer, au sens propre. Une cellule cancéreuse n'est pas un envahisseur extérieur. C'est une cellule de ton propre corps qui oublie sa fonction, refuse de mourir, et se met à grossir sans rien produire d'utile — jusqu'à étouffer les organes qui font vivre l'ensemble. Le progressisme, c'est exactement ça : une partie de la société qui a cessé de créer de la valeur, qui se nourrit de celle des autres, et qui appelle ça de la vertu.

La bonne nouvelle, c'est qu'un cancer, ça se soigne. Le remède n'est pas la nostalgie. C'est de rendre au mot "progrès" son sens originel : construire des choses réelles. De l'énergie abondante. Des frontières nouvelles. Des fondateurs qu'on célèbre au lieu de les juger.

Le futur n'appartient pas à ceux qui redécoupent le gâteau. Il appartient à ceux qui en font un plus grand.

[Tim Ferriss @tferriss]

Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre.

The level of competition is thus fiercest for “realistic” goals, paradoxically making them the most time- and energy-consuming.

If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too.

Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.

Unreasonable and unrealistic goals are easier to achieve for yet another reason.

Having an unusually large goal is an adrenaline infusion that provides the endurance to overcome the inevitable trials and tribulations that go along with any goal. Realistic goals, goals restricted to the average ambition level, are uninspiring and will only fuel you through the first or second problem, at which point you throw in the towel.

If the potential payoff is mediocre or average, so is your effort.

The fishing is best where the fewest go, and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone else is aiming for base hits.

There is just less competition for bigger goals.

[Mathematica @mathemetica]

“Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.”

― Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

[nic carter @nic_carter]

The absolute moral chaos inherent in the debate as to whether Elon “killed” millions of people in the global south is precisely why we do not as a society reason in raw consequentialist terms. Because everyone with agency ends up with uncountable moral culpability for virtually every action or inaction. When distant lives or those 5000 years in the future are worth exactly the same as your own, you end up completely paralyzed.

No one reasons like that - aside from shrimp welfare maximizing polycule members in SF - so we can happily disregard the entire debate. All the gotchas and “by your logics” are simply downstream of the fact that consequentialism is an alien and inhuman philosophy that no one real actually espouses.

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

Correct.

America has one (1) real city, and this chart shows why.

[CoveredGeekly @CoveredGeekly]

Edward Norton talking to himself at the game

[Stewart Brand @stewartbrand]

Herculaneum fused scroll read in full.
https://t.co/y8RV6tDzvg

[Charly Wargnier @DataChaz]

this guy literally reverse-engineered his @OuraRing so he can control his computer like Gandalf 🤯

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

Imagine a politician who wins an election in the country that she hates and plans to eradicate. Suicidal Empathy.

[dax @thdxr]

nyc bans waymo and all of tech flips to moralizing

when will we realize that our industry is fucking terrible at getting the world excited about the future

for some reason we pretend like that's not part of the job

[John Carmack @ID_AA_Carmack]

If you are asking “Why push back against anti-datacenter efforts?” I consider it a tragedy that anti-nuclear efforts largely strangled nuclear power in the US based on vibes, and I don’t want to see that happen to AI. Public opinion matters, and it shouldn’t be ceded unchallenged.

If you are asking “Why should I support AI efforts at all?” I believe we are in the midst of a transition more vibrant than the industrial revolution. Opinions formed a couple of years ago about the uselessness of AI are no longer valid. Millions of people and organizations are getting great returns from using it, and the demand for data centers is the market responding to the value signal. That is how progress is made!