quote: . @gdog97_ explains @Ethena Pay and lays out why owning the entire stack matters by pointing to how Coinbase captures 60% of Circle's USDC revenue "A lot of the products in the market haven't got the full vertical integration between owning the stablecoin infrastructure, the yield generation engine, and the front end that sits on top. Taking a debit card and putting it on someone else's stablecoin means you lose the most valuable piece of the entire chain, the stablecoin sitting in the background" "If you're creating one of these platforms and you don't own the whole stack, the issuance of the stablecoins, the generation of the yield, and all the UX and cards and spending on top of it, you've lost the beating heart of these businesses" "People speak a lot about the Coinbase and Circle deal, where Coinbase makes something like 60% of the revenues of the USDC sitting there. If you always depend on the distribution of others, there isn't that much margin left for you in the end. If you never own the user, you can never control that economic relationship in a much more powerful way" @ethena | E184: @ethena CEO - Why @EthenaPay Feels Like Revolut, Not MetaMask @gdog97_ is the founder and CEO of Ethena. He stumbled into DeFi in 2019 when a friend showed him MakerDAO - taking out a $5,000 loan against $10,000 of ETH with no one standing in the middle of the transaction. Six years later he's running Ethena, which scaled to $15 billion in stablecoin supply faster than anything else in crypto history, and his thesis is that a dollar with a yield in an app that doesn't feel like crypto is what finally brings 100 million new users in. Timestamps 0:00 Intro 2:37 Which Of Guy's Plans Fell Apart 5:37 Where Actually Are The Users Everyone Wants 7:10 What Got Guy Hooked On Crypto 9:20 PayPal vs Revolut vs Neo Banks 12:43 Partnerships: @variational_io @Bitwise 13:36 Revolut vs Stablecoin Neo Banks 15:58 Is Switching To Neo Banks Really A 10x 18:00 EthenaPay, Explained Simply 21:21 Why Build Another Crypto Neo Bank 23:53 Will Crypto Banks Fight Over The Pie 25:55 How Ethena Wins Users By Helping Everyone 32:47 What Actually Makes Ethena Different 36:51 Ethena's Cashback System Revealed 38:32 How Ethena Cuts Fees 39:39 How Ethena Finds The Best Yield 45:16 Guy On Dealing With FUD 48:35 Why Guy Stays Quiet 49:29 Partnership: @KASTxyz 50:17 Ethena's KPI Targets 51:55 The Holy Grail For A Stablecoin Neo Bank 52:31 Partnerships: @JupiterExchange Ethena 53:14 If Everyone Does The Same Thing, Who Wins 55:23 What's Next For Ethena After EthenaPay 56:36 Is EthenaPay Basically USDe 58:04 Closing Thoughts