Stablecoin War Series: 23 Publication-Grade Longform Articles (2026-05)

Wiki Route

This entry sits under fintech index. Read it with Japan financial regulation for tokens, crypto-assets, and payments for adjacent context and Japan stablecoin regulatory landscape: JPYC, USDC, and Project Pax for the broader system boundary.

[!info] TL;DR This page is the reference entry for the blockchain-research-2026-05 output: 23 publication-grade longform articles, about 159K characters, about 8.2 hours of reading time, delivered in four waves (v1: 11; v2: 4; v3: 4; v4: 4). The style benchmark was FT Big Read / NYT Upshot / a16z research. The corpus builds a complete argumentative frame around five primary actors, one portfolio winner (Visa), and one talent signal (Christine Moy). The longform articles themselves are not imported into the wiki atom layer.

Key Facts

23 articles / about 158,764 characters / about 738 KB / about 493 minutes of reading time. ^[extracted from articles/README.md]
Four publication waves: v1 on the morning of 2026-05-17 (macro, protagonists, regions, regulation: 11 articles); v2 in the afternoon (cross-cutting TD / MMF / infrastructure: 4 articles); v3 at night (four deep-dive features); v4 on 2026-05-18 (regulation, black box, central banks, endgame: 4 articles).
Five-protagonist matrix: Coinbase / Base, Stripe / Tempo + Bridge + Privy, Circle / Arc, JPMorgan / Kinexys, and Tether / USDT in the gray-market role. ^[inferred from corpus mapping]
One portfolio winner / tradable proxy: Visa, through articles 04, 14, and 15, framed as the finance-sector analogue to ARM Holdings.
One talent signal: Christine Moy, moving from JPM Onyx to Apollo, treated in article 17 as an early indicator of changing industry power structure 18-24 months ahead.
Style pattern: strong article hooks, explicit narrative arcs, concrete numbers / dates / names, endings that return to the opening, short paragraphs, Chinese body text, and retained core English technical terms. ^[extracted from articles/README.md style spec]

Mechanism / Series Structure

The four waves carry different analytical functions:

Wave	Article numbers	Main axis	Argument focus
v1 (11)	01-11	Macro skeleton	Five-layer central-bank unbundling, five protagonists, three-circle MRA, and the DeFi death thesis
v2 (4)	12-15	Cross-cutting layer	TD / JPM and the three megabanks, MMF / BUIDL, infrastructure oligopoly in seven subclasses, and Standard Chartered’s five-front operation
v3 (4)	16-19	Deep-dive features	Aerodrome on-chain closed loop, Christine Moy talent signal, Privy / AWS AI payments, and $34T sovereign-fund allocation
v4 (4)	20-23	Endgame scenarios	GENIUS 30-day rulemaking, Tether black-box audit, BIS Project Agorá, and 2030 base / bull / bear headlines

Reading routes:

Quick route, 25 minutes: 01, on the $1.2T underground river and the macro structure.
Strategic route, 60 minutes: 01 + 03 on Kinexys as JPMorgan’s quiet protagonist + 04 on Visa as the ARM-style tradable proxy.
Investment route, 80 minutes: 04 + 02 on the Tether Hong Kong asymmetry + 10 on OCC charter scarcity + 11 on the DeFi death sentence.
Geopolitics route, 85 minutes: 06 on China’s five-layer vertical integration + 09 on three-circle MRA / digital-currency gold standard 2.0 + 05 on Japan’s five camps + 07 on USDT on Tron and gray markets.
Cross-cutting route, 87 minutes: 12 on the ¥1T bet + 13 on BUIDL as a hidden $60B stablecoin + 14 on seven infrastructure winners + 15 on Standard Chartered’s five-front campaign.
Deep-dive route, 90 minutes: 16 on Aerodrome’s closed loop + 17 on Christine Moy’s signal chain + 18 on Privy’s double default + 19 on silent capital.
Endgame route, 88 minutes: 20 on the GENIUS 30-day countdown + 21 on Tether’s $145B black box + 22 on BIS Project Agorá + 23 on five 2030 headlines.
Complete route, about 450 minutes: articles 01 through 23 in order.

Origin & Evolution

Reference date: 2026-05-13, after corpus research covering 519 files and v5.5 wiki conversion.
v1, 11 articles: 2026-05-17 morning, macro-skeleton sprint.
v2, 4 articles: 2026-05-17 afternoon, cross-cutting TD / MMF / infrastructure reinforcement.
v3, 4 articles: 2026-05-17 night, deep-dive features on on-chain closed loops, talent, AI, and sovereign capital.
v4, 4 articles: 2026-05-18, regulation, black-box reserve issues, central banks, and endgame scenarios.
Supplements: narrative figure set v1.0, Executive Brief, and cross-section strategy integration. Supplementary materials are not public.

Sources

Authoritative collection index:

23 articles grouped by section:

v1 macro / protagonists / regions / regulation (11): articles/01-the-unbundling · 02-tether-hk-bet · 03-kinexys-quiet-coup · 04-visa-as-arm · 05-japan-five-camps · 06-china-camp · 07-gray-market-usdt · 08-protocol-commoditization · 09-three-circles-mra · 10-occ-charter-scarcity · 11-defi-death-sentence
v2 cross-cutting TD / MMF / infrastructure (4): 12-trillion-yen-bet · 13-buidl-invisible-stablecoin · 14-infrastructure-winners · 15-standard-chartered-five-fronts
v3 deep-dive features (4): 16-aerodrome-coinbase-flywheel · 17-christine-moy-signal-chain · 18-privy-aws-agentcore-ai-payments · 19-sovereign-fund-crypto-allocation
v4 regulation / black box / central banks / endgame (4): 20-genius-rulemaking-30-day-preview · 21-tether-reserve-deep-audit · 22-bis-project-agora-panorama · 23-five-protagonists-2030-endgame

Four analysis drafts:

Wiki Route

Key Facts

Mechanism / Series Structure

Origin & Evolution

Related

Sources