When Mega Financial Holding Co. (兆豐金控) Chairman Ray Dawn (董瑞斌) compared stablecoins to the EasyCard transit pass — saying they were unfair to consumers and unsuitable for large enterprises — the crypto community erupted.
Critics rushed to the media, calling the analogy an act of "cognitive warfare" designed to strangle Taiwan's crypto future. Comparing a stablecoin to a prepaid transit card, they said, was not just inaccurate. It betrayed the arrogance and conservatism of a traditional regulator who had failed to grasp the transformative power of blockchain.
So who is right? Is traditional finance being arrogant and backward? Or is the crypto industry overhyping and bluffing? Let me take this apart piece by piece.
Blockchain Is Not What You Think
Blockchain represents decentralization — wrong. Blockchain means tamper-proof — wrong. Blockchain is a machine of trust — completely wrong. Wait, isn't that what everyone says? Why are all of those claims wrong? （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
Blockchains divide into three types: public chains, consortium chains, and private chains. Consortium chains can be further split into genuine and fake — a genuine consortium is one where members are truly independent and cannot collude; a fake consortium is one where members are related and can.
Only public chains and genuine consortium chains are decentralized. Fake consortium chains and private chains are not. So blockchain is "not necessarily" decentralized.
Only public chains and genuine consortium chains are tamper-proof. So blockchain is "not necessarily" tamper-proof.
And only proof-of-work public chains can be trusted. Everything else — public chains that don't mine, consortium chains, private chains — cannot. So blockchain is "not necessarily" trustworthy. It is fundamentally not a "trust machine."
Does your head hurt yet? Good. That is exactly the point. Blockchain is that complicated — which is precisely why a group of clever people can weaponize its jargon to bamboozle regulators and the public. That complexity is the foundation on which the new Ponzi scheme rests.
The Cross-Border Transfer Magic Trick
Suppose Taiwan's Xiao Wang wants to remit NT$300,000 to Xiao Mei in the United States. He buys 10,000 units of "XX Coin" from the issuer at NT$30 each, then uses a mobile app to send them to Xiao Mei instantly — like a text message crossing the Pacific. Xiao Mei redeems her coins for US$10,000 at a 30:1 exchange rate. （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
Here is the trick: none of that requires a stablecoin or blockchain technology. A single server could handle the entire transaction.
But the issuer is taking NT on one side and handing out USD on the other — who absorbs the exchange-rate risk, and where is the profit? The issuer's play: go around telling everyone that XX Coin will eventually overtake SWIFT, so prices will soar and you should invest now.
Investor Da Ming puts in US$10,000 and buys Xiao Mei's coins on a crypto exchange. Final score: Xiao Wang sent US$10,000 to Xiao Mei in three seconds at zero fee. Da Ming holds coins he believes will appreciate. And the issuer has offloaded its coins for real cash. Everyone is smiling. The issuer most of all.
Traditional cross-border remittance via SWIFT requires regulatory compliance, fees, and time. Crypto claims to do the same in three seconds for free. Most people assume some remarkable blockchain magic is involved. It isn't. A single server is sufficient.
Stablecoins, unlike bitcoin, require no mining. You write a program, conjure hundreds of billions of coins from nothing, and slowly exchange them for hundreds of billions of real dollars. Counterfeiting at least requires a printing press — this method eliminates even that. I call it "zero-capital finance." （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
The key question: can you really conjure hundreds of billions of coins and swap them for hundreds of billions of dollars without regulatory approval?
Blockchain Has Nothing to Do With It
The XX Coin above has a fluctuating price. Peg it to a fiat currency so it neither rises nor falls, and you have a "stablecoin." But if it never goes up, why would investor Da Ming want to hold it?
Because Da Ming, playing the role of upstream seller, can cash out after dumping overpriced bitcoin on downstream buyers — and park those winnings in stablecoins as a hedge.
Crypto's edge over SWIFT in cross-border transfers comes entirely from bypassing existing regulatory frameworks. It has nothing to do with the supposed genius of stablecoins or blockchain technology.
So why does the industry keep invoking those terms? Because without blockchain jargon layered over everything, there is no way to baffle regulators who are financial law experts. Without the jargon, the whole operation gets shut down as money laundering tomorrow.
The truth is that with regulatory approval, a McDonald's stored-value card could do cross-border transactions too. The comparison between stablecoins and stored-value cards is more apt than crypto advocates would ever admit. （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
Stablecoins Are Stored-Value Cards — and the Chairman Was Right
USDC issuer Circle listed on the NYSE and watched its share price rocket from US$31 to US$134 in a single week — a more-than-fourfold gain. Walmart and Amazon announced they were exploring stablecoin issuance as consumer payment tools, aiming to displace Visa and Mastercard and cut transaction fees. Visa and Mastercard shares fell. Media piled on, hyping stablecoins as the future of financial innovation.
So what exactly is a stablecoin?
A government-regulated stablecoin is a stored-value card. You give me one dollar; I give you one stablecoin — exactly the same as loading one NT dollar onto an EasyCard. The difference is that I can write a program to issue 100 billion stablecoins and exchange them for 100 billion real dollars. Tempting, isn't it?
If Walmart and Amazon issue stablecoins, consumers will have to convert dollars into stablecoins before shopping — just as they would have to load a stored-value card before shopping. A stored-value card can also displace Visa and Mastercard and cut transaction fees. So what does any of this have to do with stablecoins specifically?
Credit cards are buy-now-pay-later. Stored-value cards are pay-now-buy-later. If you can pay later, why pay upfront? Stored-value cards have existed for decades. Why have they never replaced credit cards? Why would stablecoins succeed where stored-value cards failed?
If McDonald's issued a stablecoin, would you pre-load NT$1 million onto it and slowly spend it at McDonald's? Swapping in a new jargon term does not change the underlying reality. No wonder bitcoin is on its way to being called digital gold. （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
Consider: couldn't Visa simply issue a Visa stablecoin? It would be more useful than a McDonald's stablecoin — spendable everywhere and still buy-now-pay-later, while the McDonald's version works only at McDonald's and requires payment upfront. Who would choose the McDonald's stablecoin?
The one real difference between stablecoins and stored-value cards is that stablecoins can transact on a blockchain, making it far easier for crypto holders to dump worthless speculative tokens onto investors in exchange for real stablecoins. That conversion benefit — helping the crypto industry monetize — is enormous. That is the secret the industry will never openly admit.
And even that distinction collapses under scrutiny: a stablecoin transacts on a blockchain only because its code is written in a blockchain-compatible format. If you rewrote a stored-value card's code in the same format, it would work on the blockchain too. At that point, stored-value card and stablecoin become identical. The jargon is the trick.
Circle's IPO success guarantees that many more crypto issuers will seek listings. Once listed, shares become assets — now the crypto industry can vacuum up real money not just through speculative coins but through equity too. The cost is that it fuses virtual crypto finance with real-world traditional finance, quietly brewing the next financial crisis. When do you think it will hit? （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
Bitcoin at US$100,000 — What You Need to Know
Years ago I wrote extensively about blockchain mechanics and argued that bitcoin was a Ponzi scheme — a classic pump-and-dump, recruit-more-suckers operation.
Former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, once an MIT Sloan professor who taught blockchain and cryptocurrency courses and praised the technology's potential, abruptly reversed course and condemned the crypto industry for being riddled with fraud.
Then Trump won, and his new SEC chairman threw the doors wide open for crypto. Bitcoin surged past US$100,000 to new all-time highs. Online critics came at me: "If bitcoin is at US$100,000, how can you still call it a Ponzi scheme?" Others began to wonder. What actually happened over the past two years?
One Con vs. a Crowd of Cons
The original Ponzi scheme was hatched in 1919 by Italian-American immigrant Charles Ponzi, who set up a shell company, lured investors into a nonexistent business, and paid early investors with money from new ones — classic upstream-recruits-downstream. Centralized. One man conning a crowd. It failed.
Today's crypto "Ponzi" calls itself decentralized. It uses blockchain technology, distributes its ledger across miners worldwide — most of whom are actually highly centralized — dresses up as fintech innovation, and manufactures buzz through social media to pump prices before dumping on new buyers. （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
The structural logic is the same: upstream recruits downstream. The only difference from 1919 is that it is decentralized — a crowd cons everyone — instead of one person conning a crowd.
I predicted this three years ago: the old Ponzi failed because only one person benefited, and regulators only had to take down that one person. The new Ponzi succeeds because anyone who buys crypto immediately becomes upstream.
The moment you hold it, you have every incentive to evangelize and find new downstream buyers — otherwise, who are you going to dump your worthless coins on?
Understanding basic human psychology makes all of this obvious. Bitcoin's rise is not about the value of its blockchain technology. It is about the exploitation of human psychology. A veteran of the crypto space once told me: people who think blockchain is innovative don't understand technology; people who think bitcoin will fail don't understand human nature. A perfectly astute observation.
Why Bitcoin Will Succeed
Politicians need campaign donations. The crypto industry has money to burn. Politicians need the youth vote. Courting the crypto industry is a necessity.
There is an inelastic demand for cross-border money laundering. Even the Russian government is actively adopting crypto. （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
Think about it: a group of clever people package a Ponzi scheme as fintech, fool regulators and the public, extract money from everyone, and funnel it as political donations to politicians who smile all the way to the bank.
Those politicians then amend the laws to use public funds to buy bitcoin and inflate prices. It is a flawless symbiotic structure.
Russia, to circumvent Western sanctions, passed legislation allowing Russian companies to conduct international transactions in cryptocurrency — bypassing the SWIFT blockade America imposed. Crypto is a superb money-laundering vehicle.
Do you really think a politician will sacrifice those dollars to ban it for the sake of Ukrainian democracy?
Trump's Revelation: Circle Money, Don't Earn It
In his first term, Trump loudly attacked bitcoin as fake currency. Then he showed up at a crypto conference and reversed course completely, endorsing bitcoin and announcing plans for a national strategic bitcoin reserve.
What happened? After losing the 2020 election, Trump began actively participating in crypto markets — holding digital assets, accepting campaign donations from the crypto industry, and licensing his image for NFTs. He ultimately launched World Liberty Finance tokens, targeting US$300 million in sales with a projected valuation of US$1.5 billion.
Trump had figured it out: circling money is faster than earning it the hard way. （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
After Trump took office, crypto entered its spring. Bitcoin surged past US$100,000 again, confirming my prediction: the moment you hold crypto you become upstream. The old Ponzi — one person conning a crowd — is destined to fail. The new Ponzi — a crowd conning everyone — is destined to succeed.
Financial Crisis 2.0 Is Coming
In 2008, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae packaged mortgage loans into collateralized debt obligations and sold them to investors. When the real estate bubble burst, mass defaults caused CDO values to collapse, triggering a financial crisis.
The result: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. Freddie and Fannie were placed into government conservatorship. Merrill Lynch was absorbed by Bank of America. A cascade of institutions teetered on the brink. Global layoffs followed. Unemployment climbed.
Now history is rhyming in an alarming way. The director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has reportedly asked Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to study the feasibility of incorporating bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies into mortgage collateral assessments. The crypto market reacted immediately; bitcoin surged nearly 3%, breaking back above US$110,000. （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
According to media reports, the current FHFA director has since 2019 used social media influence to promote digital asset adoption and encourage policy liberalization. Financial disclosures reportedly show the director personally holds bitcoin and Solana, as well as equity in U.S. bitcoin mining companies. Everything I have argued keeps being validated.
Former SEC officials have warned that introducing volatile crypto assets into housing collateral means any single market-decoupling event could deliver a systemic shock. Legal scholars have gone further, calling it extremely dangerous to use the most vulnerable populations as a test bed for forcing through technological change.
In 2008, Freddie and Fannie's CDO fiasco triggered a global financial crisis — not just for the institutions on the brink, but for innocent working people who had nothing to do with CDOs and still lost their jobs.
Now the government itself is asking Freddie and Fannie to incorporate speculative crypto assets into mortgage collateral. Regulators are openly manufacturing Financial Crisis 2.0.
By fusing virtual crypto finance with real-world traditional finance, the U.S. government is engineering a massive windfall for crypto holders — including the president and the officials he appointed. It is inflating a super-bubble. When it pops, the damage could surpass 2008. History is uncanny in its repetitions. Are you ready? （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
What the Attack on Chairman Wang Got Wrong
The piece in question hammered on the innovation of "stablecoins" and "blockchain" from start to finish, filled with grandiose but slippery rhetoric.
It claimed stablecoins could serve as the next generation of "programmable financial infrastructure." That they could create a "value medium" with low volatility and high liquidity. That they change not the act of payment but the "nature and flow of value itself." That stablecoins are triggering a global power shift from "sovereign currencies" to a "supra-sovereign monetary network."
Read between the lines: state-issued sovereign currencies will become worthless, and global power will shift to a pump-and-dump crypto network. So everyone should dump their sovereign currency and buy crypto. Did you catch the play?
The irony: the so-called "supra-sovereign monetary network" — bitcoin, its showcase asset — can process a grand total of 6.82 transactions per second globally. That is the very opposite of low volatility and high liquidity.
Meanwhile, the crypto assets that do have low volatility and high liquidity are largely built on fake consortium chains or private chains. The author's argument is riddled with internal contradictions. （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
More tellingly, the entire article never once explains how any of this actually works. Why not? Because explaining the mechanism would expose the trick. The "supra-sovereign monetary network" would be revealed as worthless.
Anyone who has seen The Wolf of Wall Street knows that finance can succeed on pure bluster alone — which is exactly why this particular Ponzi scheme works. The piece is a masterclass in what I call Knowledge Manipulation: fabricating jargon, stacking it until it is impenetrable, then exploiting the asymmetry of expertise to carry out financial manipulation. The operating principle is simple: "I understand blockchain and you don't, so you should trust me."
The article also cited a market capitalization of over US$260 billion as evidence of stablecoins' world-historical importance. This figure refers primarily to USDT, the world's largest stablecoin.
But USDT is not a regulator-approved stablecoin. It is a product issued by a private company that wrote a program, conjured hundreds of billions of coins from nothing, and exchanged them for hundreds of billions of real dollars. Counterfeiting requires a printing press. This requires nothing. （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
People believe in USDT because it claims to be blockchain-based — "decentralized, tamper-proof, trustworthy, secure, and valuable." In reality, most people have no idea what any of those words mean in practice. They have simply been conditioned by slogans.
USDT is not issued on a public chain. "Blockchain-based" simply means its code is written in a blockchain-compatible format. It is not the decentralized, tamper-proof bitcoin or ether people imagine. The audits that ostensibly verify its reserves use the same methods as traditional finance. So much for "next-generation financial infrastructure."
The article also mentions that Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal are all positioning themselves in stablecoin settlement networks. They are doing so because they have realized that "stablecoin" is a magic word that lets them bypass SWIFT regulations and achieve cross-border transfers at zero cost.
But they do not actually need stablecoins for this. Any multinational financial company can achieve the same with a single server. The choice to frame it as stablecoins is purely because regulations allow it — not because stablecoin is a revolutionary blockchain technology. （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
The U.S. stablecoin legislation prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest directly to holders — motivated by the risk of systemic instability if issuers offered high-yield accounts to attract funds. The result: investors fled toward unregulated stablecoins. Government-regulated stablecoins have no appeal to investors. Chairman Wang was completely correct.
On the claim that USDC or EURC on Ethereum or Solana would be ideal for a Taiwanese software company paying staff across North America and Southeast Asia: wrong. Any multinational bank or enterprise can achieve instant, low-cost USD or EUR receipts using a single server. Blockchain infrastructure is simply not required.
Not Cognitive Warfare — Knowledge Manipulation
Yes, this is an ongoing cognitive campaign — waged by the crypto industry carpet-bombing regulators and the public with blockchain jargon, conditioning everyone to believe crypto is decentralized, tamper-proof, trustworthy, extremely secure, highly valuable, and something you need to buy immediately.
People who tell the truth are not "conservatives." People who dress up jargon to bamboozle are not "innovation-first." They are simply helping upstream holders dump historically worthless, now absurdly priced assets onto downstream buyers for a massive payday. （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
Taiwan does not need visionary strategists who can read the global stablecoin race but do not understand blockchain mechanics. Taiwan needs experts who genuinely understand how blockchain works, are willing to tell the truth, and can see through crypto industry hype — only then can they give regulators and financial institutions advice that actually serves the economy.
Traditional Finance Strikes Back
By now most readers probably assume I am anti-crypto. Completely wrong. I am a pragmatic engineer. My operating principle is simple: if you can legally circle money, why work hard to earn it? I fully support crypto — and I support traditional finance joining the game: understand it, use it, beat it.
In July 2025, the U.S. Congress passed three major crypto bills:
GENIUS Act: Grants stablecoin holders priority over all other creditors, protecting consumer interests as a final backstop.
CLARITY Act: A federal-level law establishing a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets, covering classification, issuance, trading, and oversight.
Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act: Protects American citizens' privacy, personal freedom, and free-market innovation by prohibiting central bank digital currency from being used as a surveillance tool.
Major U.S. banks including Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase have announced stablecoin and tokenized deposit initiatives. Traditional financial institutions are preparing to enter the arena directly.
With USD stablecoin legality now confirmed, U.S. banks are reportedly exploring forming a stablecoin consortium. （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
Crypto exchanges are also seizing this moment to expand — planning tokenized stocks and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, transforming into one-stop platforms covering crypto, wealth management, credit cards, and banking, and actively recruiting customers and assets globally.
The crypto industry is deploying blockchain jargon to poach traditional finance's customers. Meanwhile, traditional finance professionals still cannot explain what blockchain actually is.
When the crypto crowd tells your clients that bitcoin is decentralized, tamper-proof, trustworthy, extremely secure, and highly valuable — digital gold, buy it instead of real gold — do you also half-believe it? Do you know how to push back and explain the reality to clients?
This is why I am declaring this year the beginning of traditional finance's counterattack: understand it, use it, beat it. Here is the three-step playbook:
Step 1 — Understand blockchain mechanics, so you can see exactly how the crypto industry misleads clients and build your defense.
Step 2 — Use the genuinely useful parts of blockchain, specifically genuine consortium chains, to leverage traditional finance's existing advantages and reclaim market share.
Step 3 — Beat the speculative pump-and-dump crypto market by using blockchain and financial fundamentals to win clients back.
Three Recommendations （Related： Cross-Strait Tensions Knock Energy Off UK Firms' Taiwan Risk List ｜ Latest ）
Understand blockchain: Anyone entering the virtual asset space must first develop deep, genuine knowledge of how blockchain and cryptocurrency actually work. Financial experts who only half-understand blockchain technology are easy prey for jargon-wielding manipulators.
Build a firewall: Draw on U.S. legislation as a regulatory reference, and establish a clear firewall between real-world traditional finance and virtual crypto assets — keeping risk within acceptable bounds.
Move your deposits: If traditional financial institutions use customer savings to buy crypto assets, they are essentially using your money to prop up upstream holders' positions. You share none of the gains; you absorb all of the losses. Move your deposits to safety.
Facing a surging crypto industry, traditional finance should not suppress it, reject it, or look down on it. It should understand it, use it, and beat it. With regulatory permission, everything is on the table — and traditional finance, leveraging its existing advantages, can do it better. The only question is whether regulators and institutional leaders are ready to act.
Original Article in Chinese. Published August 11, 2025
