Original source: Google

Original title: Beyond Stablecoins: The Evolution of Digital Currency

Editor's Note: Internet giant Google has officially unveiled its native blockchain network, GCUL (Google Cloud Universal Ledger). The introduction provides a glimpse into Google's thinking: driven by the explosive growth of stablecoins and their potential trillion-dollar potential, Google is eager to capitalize on this next-generation fintech wave. Consequently, it has created GCUL, a network more akin to a stablecoin consortium blockchain. Rich Widmann, Head of Google Web3, stated that this is the culmination of years of research and development at Google, offering financial institutions a high-performance, trusted, neutral network that supports Python-based smart contracts. Google also published an article detailing its thinking on GCUL. The following is the original text from Google:

Stablecoins experienced significant growth in 2024, with transaction volume tripling to $5 trillion organically and $30 trillion in total (sources: Visa , Artemis ). By comparison, PayPal's annual transaction volume is approximately $1.6 trillion, and Visa's is approximately $13 trillion. The supply of stablecoins pegged to the US dollar has grown to over 1% of the total US dollar supply (M2) (source: rwa.xyz ). This surge clearly demonstrates that stablecoins have established a presence in the market.

The demand for better services is driving a major shift in the nearly $3 trillion payments market. Stablecoins, without the complexity, inefficiencies, and fees of traditional payment systems, enable seamless fund transfers between digital wallets. New solutions are also emerging in the capital markets to facilitate the payment process of digital asset transactions, improving transparency and efficiency while reducing costs and settlement times.

This article explores the evolving financial landscape and proposes a solution that can help traditional finance and capital markets not only catch up, but also lead the way.

Private Currency: Similarities Between Paper Money and Stablecoins

Stablecoins share many similarities with the privately issued paper money that was widely used in the 18th and 19th centuries. Banks issued their own banknotes, with varying degrees of reliability and regulation. These notes made transactions easier because they were easier to carry, count, and exchange, without the need to weigh or assess the purity of the gold. To foster trust in this new form of money, the notes were backed by reserve funds and promised to be redeemable for real-world assets (most commonly precious metals). The number of trading wallets and liquidity increased significantly. Most banknotes were accepted only in the local area near the issuing bank. For interbank settlements, they were exchanged for precious metals or cleared between banks. In exchange for these benefits, users accepted the risk of a single bank default and fluctuations in value based on the issuing bank's perceived solvency.

Fractional Reserve Banking and Supervision

Remarkable economic growth followed, and financial innovation followed. Economic expansion required a more flexible money supply. Banks, observing that not all depositors would demand redemptions at the same time, realized they could profitably lend out a portion of their reserves. Fractional reserve banking, in which the amount of banknotes in circulation exceeded the reserves held by banks, emerged. Mismanagement, risky lending practices, fraud, and economic downturns led to bank runs, bankruptcies, crises, and depositor losses. These failures prompted increased regulation and oversight of currency issuance. Along with the establishment and expansion of central bank mandates, these regulations created a more centralized system, improved banking practices, established stricter rules, enhanced stability, and engendered public trust in the monetary system.

Today's Monetary System: Commercial Bank and Central Bank Money

Our current monetary system utilizes a dual currency model. Commercial bank money, issued by commercial banks, is essentially a liability (IOU) of a specific bank and is subject to comprehensive regulation and oversight. Commercial banks utilize a fractional reserve funding model, meaning they hold only a portion of their deposits in central bank money as reserves and lend the rest. Central bank money is a liability of the central bank and is considered risk-free. Interbank liabilities are settled electronically in central bank money (via RTGS systems such as FedWire or Target2). The public can only use commercial bank money for electronic transactions, and the use of cash (physical central bank money) is declining. In a single currency, all commercial bank money is fungible. Bank competition focuses on services provided, not the quality of the money they offer.

Today's financial infrastructure: fragmented, complex, expensive, and slow

With the rise of computers and the internet, monetary transactions are recorded electronically, allowing them to be conducted without cash. Liquidity, access, and product innovation have reached new heights. However, solutions vary by country, and cross-border transactions remain economically and technically difficult. Correspondent banking, which requires keeping idle funds with partner banks, faces infrastructure complexity that has forced banks to limit their partnerships. Consequently, banks are exiting correspondent relationships ( down 25% over the past decade ), resulting in longer payment chains, slower payments, and higher costs. Convenient solutions that abstract these complexities (such as global credit card networks) are costly for businesses that pay fees. Furthermore, most improvements have been focused on the front end, while innovation in payment processing infrastructure has been slow.

The fragmented financial system increases trade frictions and slows economic growth. The Economist estimates that by 2030, the macroeconomic impact of a fragmented payments system on the global economy will be a staggering $2.8 trillion in losses (2.6% of global GDP), equivalent to more than 130 million jobs (4.3%).

Fragmentation and complexity are also harming financial institutions. Annual maintenance costs for outdated payment systems were $37 billion in 2022 and are projected to rise to $57 billion by 2028 ( IDC Financial Insights ). Furthermore, the inability to provide real-time payments exacerbates direct revenue losses due to inefficiencies, security risks, and extremely high compliance costs ( 75% of banks struggle to implement new payment services within outdated systems, and 47% of new accounts are with fintechs and neobanks ).

High payment fees can hinder a company's international growth, impacting profitability and valuation. Companies that process large volumes of payments have a strong incentive to reduce their processing fees. For example, for Walmart, reducing its approximately $10 billion in annual processing fees (assuming an average processing fee rate of 1.5% on $700 billion in revenue) to $2 billion could increase earnings per share and stock price by over 40%.

New infrastructure, new possibilities

Experimentation in Web3 has given rise to promising technologies like distributed ledger technology (DLT). These technologies offer a new way for financial systems to transact by providing a global, always-on infrastructure with advantages such as multi-currency/multi-asset support, atomic settlement, and programmability. The financial industry is already shifting from siloed databases and complex messaging to a transparent, immutable shared ledger. These modern networks streamline interactions and workflows, eliminating independent, costly, and slow reconciliation processes and removing the technical complexity that hinders speed and innovation.

Disruptor: Stablecoins

Stablecoins, operating on a decentralized ledger, enable near-instant, low-cost global transactions, unconstrained by the time and geographic constraints of traditional banking. This freedom and efficiency have fueled their explosive growth. High interest rates also make them highly profitable. Profits, growth, and growing confidence in the underlying technology are attracting investment from venture capitalists and payment processors. Stripe acquired Bridge, enabling online merchants to accept stablecoin payments. Visa also offers the ability to use stablecoins for partner payments and settlements . Retailers (such as Whole Foods) are accepting and even encouraging stablecoin payments to reduce transaction fees and receive payments instantly ( Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta article ). Consumers can obtain stablecoins in seconds ( Coinbase integrates ApplePay ).

Stablecoins face many challenges.

Regulation: Unlike traditional currencies, stablecoins lack comprehensive regulation and oversight. The US is increasing its regulatory oversight, and the EU is applying e-money rules to e-money tokens through MICAR. Depositor protections do not apply to stablecoins.

Compliance: Ensuring compliance with anti-money laundering and sanctions laws is challenging when anonymous accounts conduct transactions on public blockchains ( 63% of the $51.3 billion in illicit transactions on public blockchains in 2024 involved stablecoins ).

Fragmentation: The wide variety of stablecoins operating on different blockchains requires complex bridging and conversions. This fragmentation has led to a reliance on automated bots for arbitrage and liquidity management, with these bot accounts accounting for almost 85% of all trading volume ( $5 trillion in organic volume versus $30 trillion in total volume ).

Infrastructure Scalability: To achieve widespread adoption, the underlying technology must be able to handle a large number of transactions. (There were approximately 6 billion stablecoin transactions in 2024, with ACH transactions roughly an order of magnitude higher and card transactions two orders of magnitude higher.)

Economics/Capital Efficiency: Currently, banks drive economic growth by expanding the money supply by lending out funds many times their reserves. Widespread use of stablecoins would divert banks’ reserves, significantly reducing their lending capacity and directly impacting profitability.

The immediate challenges facing stablecoins (issuer credibility, regulatory ambiguity, compliance/fraud, and fragmentation) are similar to those faced by early privately issued banknotes.

The widespread adoption of fully funded stablecoins would disrupt not only the banking and financial sectors but also the current economic system. Commercial banks extend credit, currency, and liquidity to support economic growth; central banks monitor and influence this process through monetary policy to directly manage inflation and indirectly pursue other policy objectives, such as employment, economic growth, and welfare. A large-scale transfer of reserve funds from banks to stablecoin issuers could reduce the supply of credit and increase its cost. This would dampen economic activity, potentially leading to deflationary pressures and posing challenges to the effectiveness of monetary policy implementation.

Stablecoins offer clear benefits to users, particularly in cross-border transactions. Competition will drive innovation, expand application scenarios, and spur growth. Increased transaction volume and increased adoption of stablecoin wallets could lead to reduced deposits, lower lending, and lower profitability for traditional banks. As regulation matures, we may see the emergence of stablecoin models that use partial reserves, blurring the lines between them and commercial bank currencies and further intensifying competition in the payments sector.

Innovator's Dilemma

Institutions and individuals now have a choice between traditional payment systems, which are familiar and less risky, but slow and costly, or modern systems, which are fast, cheap, convenient, and rapidly improving, but come with new risks. Increasingly, they are choosing modern systems.

Payment service providers have a choice. They can view these innovations as niche markets that won't impact their core traditional financial customer base and focus on incremental improvements to existing products and systems. Alternatively, they can leverage their brands, regulatory experience, customer base, and networks to dominate the new payments era. By embracing new technologies and forming strategic partnerships, they can meet evolving customer expectations and drive business growth.

Better payments through evolution, not revolution

There's a way to enable a new generation of payments—global, 24/7, multi-currency, and programmable—without reinventing money, simply by reimagining the infrastructure. Commercial bank money and strong traditional financial regulation address the stability, regulatory clarity, and capital efficiency issues of the existing financial system. Google Cloud can provide the necessary infrastructure upgrade.

Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL) is a new platform for creating innovative payment services and financial market products. It simplifies the management of commercial bank currency accounts and facilitates money transfers via a distributed ledger, enabling financial institutions and intermediaries to meet the needs of the most discerning customers and compete effectively.

GCUL is designed to provide a simple, flexible, and secure experience. Let's break it down:

Simple: GCUL is delivered as a service, accessible through a single API, simplifying the integration of multiple currencies and assets. There's no infrastructure to build and maintain. Transaction fees are stable, transparent, and invoiced monthly (unlike the volatile, upfront fees of cryptocurrency transactions). Flexible: GCUL offers unparalleled performance and is scalable to any use case. It's programmable, supporting payment automation and digital asset management. It integrates with the wallet of your choice. Secure: GCUL is designed with compliance in mind (e.g., KYC-verified accounts, outsourcing-compliant transaction fees). It operates as a private, permissioned system (which may become more open as regulations evolve) and leverages Google's secure, reliable, durable, and privacy-focused technology.

GCUL offers significant advantages to both customers and financial institutions. Customers can enjoy near-instant transactions (especially for cross-border payments), along with low fees, 24/7 availability, and payment automation. Financial institutions, on the other hand, benefit from reduced infrastructure and operational costs by eliminating reconciliations, reducing errors, streamlining compliance processes, and reducing fraud. This frees up resources for developing modern products. Financial institutions can leverage their existing strengths (such as customer networks, licenses, and regulatory processes) to maintain full control over customer relationships.

Payments as a catalyst for capital markets

Similar to the payments sector, capital markets have undergone a significant transformation through the adoption of electronic systems. Initially met with resistance, electronic trading ultimately revolutionized the industry. Real-time price information and wider access to it increased liquidity, leading to faster execution, tighter spreads, and lower per-trade fees. This, in turn, spurred further growth in market participants (especially individual investors), product and strategy innovation, and overall market size. Despite significantly lower per-trade prices, the industry has experienced significant expansion, with advances in areas such as electronic and algorithmic trading, market making, risk management, and data analytics.

However, challenges remain in payments. Due to the limitations of traditional payment systems, settlement cycles can stretch out to several days, necessitating working capital and collateral for risk management. Digital assets and new market structures enabled by distributed ledger technology are hindered by the inherent frictions of bridging traditional and new infrastructure. Independent asset and payment systems perpetuate fragmentation and complexity, hindering the industry from fully benefiting from innovation.

Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL) addresses these challenges by providing a simplified and secure platform for managing the entire digital asset lifecycle (e.g., bonds, funds, collateral). GCUL enables seamless and efficient issuance, management, and settlement of digital assets. Its atomic settlement capabilities minimize risk and increase liquidity, unlocking new opportunities in the capital markets. We are exploring how to transfer value using a secure medium of exchange backed by regulated, bankruptcy-protected assets, such as central bank deposits or money market funds. These initiatives will help enable true 24/7 capital mobility and drive the next wave of financial innovation.