Stablecoins are one of the most efficient payment systems in history, but unfortunately, they act like surveillance networks, and every business transaction is publicly available. This article is from Rishabh Gupta and was compiled, compiled and contributed by Block unicorn. (Synopsis: Post-stablecoin era: USDT to the left, USDC to the right) (Background supplement: Bitcoin "invisible market maker" theory: How does Tether hijack the BTC price with stablecoins? In December 2024, three German marketing professors did something that every business that accepts cryptocurrency payments should be terrified. They decoded 22.7 million retail stablecoin transfers and reconstructed complete customer intelligence for eight direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands — everything from wallet share, order frequency, average order amount, peak sales hours, and more. No hacking skills required. No internal permissions are required. All that is needed is public blockchain data and a few lines of Python script. This is the stablecoin privacy paradox of 2025. Stablecoins are gaining traction. The data is shocking: stablecoin use on Base is no longer a niche experiment. Token Terminal's analysis shows that in the first quarter of 2025 alone, L2 transaction volume reached about $3.81 trillion — a record high, surpassing the early growth curve of mainstream credit card networks. Stablecoin trading volume on major chains Even after deducting internal jumps, this number is still as high as several megabytes. 65% of Ethereum's total locked value – about $130 billion – is now concentrated in stablecoins. Tether holds nearly $120 billion in U.S. Treasuries and makes quarterly profits of up to $1 billion. Businesses that pay with Stripe stablecoins sell in twice as many countries as businesses that don't. By all the important measures, stablecoins have achieved product-market fit, and their scale is large enough for traditional fintech companies to take a hard look. So why should I write about privacy for an industry that has already made a lot of money? Because the success of stablecoins has made them the most dangerous payment method in the world. It's not dangerous for users, it's dangerous for businesses. Each of your transactions is a data point for your competitors to analyze. Every salary you pay becomes workplace intelligence. Every invoice you settle exposes your supply chain. Every customer payment exposes your business model. In the midst of the wave of stablecoin adoption, we have built a global financial monitoring system where your business intelligence can be obtained by simply searching on Etherscan. Ironically, we created the most efficient cross-border payment system in history, but it broadcasts your financial strategy to anyone interested in examining it. It's not about ideology or cyberpunk dreams. Here's the cold reality: Your competitors probably know your customer acquisition costs better than your CMO. With stablecoin payments expected to reach $2 trillion by 2028, the problem will become even more acute. We are on our way to $5 trillion. Why is this frightening? Stablecoins have broken every growth record in the crypto space. With 65% of Ethereum's total locked value – about $130 billion – now a stablecoin, institutional money pouring in at an unprecedented rate, and we are witnessing a complete transformation of global payments. The promise is real: instant cross-border transactions, minimal fees, round-the-clock operations. It's no wonder that the number of corporate products paid for with stablecoins is sold to twice as many countries as it is today. But few mention this: All of these benefits come with a hidden cost – complete financial transparency. Some of the current privacy nightmares Salary comparison traps Alice, a founder who just raised $500,000, $200,000 of which was in cryptocurrency. She hired three developers from India, Vietnam and Argentina, with salaries set according to local market levels. Everyone prefers cryptocurrency payments – because they are faster, cheaper, and without the hassle of banking. Then reality struck. Each developer found someone else's salary on the chain. People with lower salaries began to hint at raises. Alice wanted to help, but had a limited budget. While every salary is competitive locally, transparency has sparked discontent. The "jealousy tax" study proves that this is not an isolated case – it is a quantifiable phenomenon. Companies must either overpay high performers or accept the reality that team morale is destroyed. This is not a theory. This is happening in many crypto-native (and now internet capital markets, non-crypto-native) startups. The privacy nightmare Bob is a blockchain developer who works for a well-known L2 protocol and earns $12,000 a month. He deposits his salary into a hardware wallet – safe and professional. But now he needs to buy groceries, pay rent and get by. If he spends directly from his payroll account, his landlord, ex, and competitors all know exactly what he earns and assets. So, Bob did what thousands of people do: he "mixed" money through centralized exchanges, or blurred his financial trajectory through 3-4 bridging transactions and multiple exchanges. Ironically, we built decentralized finance (DeFi) to get rid of intermediaries, but privacy concerns have forced users back to centralized services — and now with added fees, tax complexity, and compliance risk. Competitive Intelligence Disaster Charlie runs a successful online pharmacy in Argentina that accepts USDC payments. His rival Don noticed Charlie's growth and decided to investigate. Through hours of on-chain analysis, Don found that 80% of Charlie's transactions were concentrated in a specific time period. Further digging reveals Charlie's entire customer acquisition strategy – target audience, region, effective marketing channels. Don has free access to Charlie's hard-earned business intelligence. No corporate espionage required. Just Etherscan. Institutional Time Bomb These are just retail level issues. Institutional-level impact is a matter of life and death. When every money flow is visible, when every strategic deal is public, when your competitors can track your cash flow in real time – how do you compete? How to negotiate? How to maintain strategic advantage? Corporate financial realities: Imagine a Fortune 500 multinational company considering rebalancing $2 billion across its Asian subsidiaries. Traditional channels: 3-day billing, $50,000 fee, zero transparency. Transparent stablecoin: instant settlement, $100 fee, but the strategy is fully exposed. Some fiscal rebalancing reveals regional performance. Every supplier payment exposes supply chain relationships and pricing. Every internal transfer between jurisdictions indicates which markets are being prioritized and underperforming. Payment time patterns can leak a company's plans or market entry strategies months in advance. With stablecoins, the efficiency gains tremendously. The cost of privacy is fatal. Institutions claim that privacy is their top concern, but they are built on a transparent chain. This disconnect between established needs and actual infrastructure is a disaster. But here's the problem: they have no choice. Most of the activity takes place on public chains. Liquidity dominates there. 90% of DeFi protocols are executed there. Stablecoins settle there. Composability with existing infrastructure is non-negotiable for many players. For example, Paypa...
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Why do stablecoins need privacy? The larger the market capitalization, the more nightmares there are.
Stablecoins are one of the most efficient payment systems in history, but unfortunately, they act like surveillance networks, and every business transaction is publicly available. This article is from Rishabh Gupta and was compiled, compiled and contributed by Block unicorn. (Synopsis: Post-stablecoin era: USDT to the left, USDC to the right) (Background supplement: Bitcoin "invisible market maker" theory: How does Tether hijack the BTC price with stablecoins? In December 2024, three German marketing professors did something that every business that accepts cryptocurrency payments should be terrified. They decoded 22.7 million retail stablecoin transfers and reconstructed complete customer intelligence for eight direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands — everything from wallet share, order frequency, average order amount, peak sales hours, and more. No hacking skills required. No internal permissions are required. All that is needed is public blockchain data and a few lines of Python script. This is the stablecoin privacy paradox of 2025. Stablecoins are gaining traction. The data is shocking: stablecoin use on Base is no longer a niche experiment. Token Terminal's analysis shows that in the first quarter of 2025 alone, L2 transaction volume reached about $3.81 trillion — a record high, surpassing the early growth curve of mainstream credit card networks. Stablecoin trading volume on major chains Even after deducting internal jumps, this number is still as high as several megabytes. 65% of Ethereum's total locked value – about $130 billion – is now concentrated in stablecoins. Tether holds nearly $120 billion in U.S. Treasuries and makes quarterly profits of up to $1 billion. Businesses that pay with Stripe stablecoins sell in twice as many countries as businesses that don't. By all the important measures, stablecoins have achieved product-market fit, and their scale is large enough for traditional fintech companies to take a hard look. So why should I write about privacy for an industry that has already made a lot of money? Because the success of stablecoins has made them the most dangerous payment method in the world. It's not dangerous for users, it's dangerous for businesses. Each of your transactions is a data point for your competitors to analyze. Every salary you pay becomes workplace intelligence. Every invoice you settle exposes your supply chain. Every customer payment exposes your business model. In the midst of the wave of stablecoin adoption, we have built a global financial monitoring system where your business intelligence can be obtained by simply searching on Etherscan. Ironically, we created the most efficient cross-border payment system in history, but it broadcasts your financial strategy to anyone interested in examining it. It's not about ideology or cyberpunk dreams. Here's the cold reality: Your competitors probably know your customer acquisition costs better than your CMO. With stablecoin payments expected to reach $2 trillion by 2028, the problem will become even more acute. We are on our way to $5 trillion. Why is this frightening? Stablecoins have broken every growth record in the crypto space. With 65% of Ethereum's total locked value – about $130 billion – now a stablecoin, institutional money pouring in at an unprecedented rate, and we are witnessing a complete transformation of global payments. The promise is real: instant cross-border transactions, minimal fees, round-the-clock operations. It's no wonder that the number of corporate products paid for with stablecoins is sold to twice as many countries as it is today. But few mention this: All of these benefits come with a hidden cost – complete financial transparency. Some of the current privacy nightmares Salary comparison traps Alice, a founder who just raised $500,000, $200,000 of which was in cryptocurrency. She hired three developers from India, Vietnam and Argentina, with salaries set according to local market levels. Everyone prefers cryptocurrency payments – because they are faster, cheaper, and without the hassle of banking. Then reality struck. Each developer found someone else's salary on the chain. People with lower salaries began to hint at raises. Alice wanted to help, but had a limited budget. While every salary is competitive locally, transparency has sparked discontent. The "jealousy tax" study proves that this is not an isolated case – it is a quantifiable phenomenon. Companies must either overpay high performers or accept the reality that team morale is destroyed. This is not a theory. This is happening in many crypto-native (and now internet capital markets, non-crypto-native) startups. The privacy nightmare Bob is a blockchain developer who works for a well-known L2 protocol and earns $12,000 a month. He deposits his salary into a hardware wallet – safe and professional. But now he needs to buy groceries, pay rent and get by. If he spends directly from his payroll account, his landlord, ex, and competitors all know exactly what he earns and assets. So, Bob did what thousands of people do: he "mixed" money through centralized exchanges, or blurred his financial trajectory through 3-4 bridging transactions and multiple exchanges. Ironically, we built decentralized finance (DeFi) to get rid of intermediaries, but privacy concerns have forced users back to centralized services — and now with added fees, tax complexity, and compliance risk. Competitive Intelligence Disaster Charlie runs a successful online pharmacy in Argentina that accepts USDC payments. His rival Don noticed Charlie's growth and decided to investigate. Through hours of on-chain analysis, Don found that 80% of Charlie's transactions were concentrated in a specific time period. Further digging reveals Charlie's entire customer acquisition strategy – target audience, region, effective marketing channels. Don has free access to Charlie's hard-earned business intelligence. No corporate espionage required. Just Etherscan. Institutional Time Bomb These are just retail level issues. Institutional-level impact is a matter of life and death. When every money flow is visible, when every strategic deal is public, when your competitors can track your cash flow in real time – how do you compete? How to negotiate? How to maintain strategic advantage? Corporate financial realities: Imagine a Fortune 500 multinational company considering rebalancing $2 billion across its Asian subsidiaries. Traditional channels: 3-day billing, $50,000 fee, zero transparency. Transparent stablecoin: instant settlement, $100 fee, but the strategy is fully exposed. Some fiscal rebalancing reveals regional performance. Every supplier payment exposes supply chain relationships and pricing. Every internal transfer between jurisdictions indicates which markets are being prioritized and underperforming. Payment time patterns can leak a company's plans or market entry strategies months in advance. With stablecoins, the efficiency gains tremendously. The cost of privacy is fatal. Institutions claim that privacy is their top concern, but they are built on a transparent chain. This disconnect between established needs and actual infrastructure is a disaster. But here's the problem: they have no choice. Most of the activity takes place on public chains. Liquidity dominates there. 90% of DeFi protocols are executed there. Stablecoins settle there. Composability with existing infrastructure is non-negotiable for many players. For example, Paypa...