USDwtf? Why Interoperability Matters More Than the Letter

Everyone’s minting branded dollars.

From PayPal and Fidelity to Walmart and Amazon, some of the biggest names in finance and consumer commerce are developing and announcing their own versions of tokenized money. The landscape is quickly maturing, and it can be disorienting.

For enterprises starting to think seriously about stablecoins, today’s environment raises questions. Are branded stablecoins actually the future of money, or are we just reinventing gift cards on a blockchain?

The honest answer is that it depends, and not on the branding or the institution issuing the token. The success of any given stablecoin usually comes down to one factor: whether or not it can actually move. Interoperability is the difference between a real currency and a closed-loop instrument that only works where it was issued.

Before I get into the details of interoperability, let me first address why so many dollar-backed tokens are coming on the scene in the first place. It’s mostly because stablecoins are a compelling business.

They move at high velocity onchain while the underlying reserves remain largely static, allowing issuers to earn yield on collateral even as value circulates rapidly through the economy. Why wouldn’t banks and large brands be drawn to a new, low-risk revenue stream?

Over the past year, this has resulted in some of the largest enterprises rushing to issue a press release about their branded stablecoin. But the days of PR coming first and utility being an afterthought are fading.

Why? For starters, history shows that technology doesn’t scale just because it exists, or even because it offers a superior way to do something. Mainstream adoption of stablecoins will depend on people being able to use the new technology conveniently.

As stablecoins mature, users will care less about whose stablecoin they are holding and more about whether it works everywhere they need it to. The future is not a world where consumers consciously juggle half a dozen branded dollars. It’s a world where value moves seamlessly, often without the user ever knowing what letters were appended to their token behind the scenes.

Realistically, there will be some branded stablecoins that reach mainstream recognition. In some cases, adoption and scale can be forced. If a major retailer, like Amazon or Walmart, makes its own stablecoin the only accepted form of payment, people will use it.

But there are very few players dominant enough to demand adoption in this way, and, at the end of the day, a stablecoin that’s only usable for certain transactions isn’t real money. At best, it’s a yield mechanism for the brand and a poor UX for the consumer.

The future can, and will, support dozens of branded stablecoins unknown to consumers and a few branded stables that have widespread awareness, but only if interoperability is prioritized. Just look at web adoption.

The internet didn’t succeed because everyone used the same server. It scaled because protocols made everything interoperable. Money must follow the same path. The goal isn’t to eliminate choice, it’s to make choice invisible.

So, how do we unlock this future? At the end of the day, interoperability comes down to infrastructure.

In practice, it requires native integrations with issuers, clean mint and redeem paths, reliable onramps and offramps, and payment rails that work across onchain and offchain environments.

That’s where Rain comes in. Our focus is payment utility. Our goal is to turn any stablecoin into real-world spendable value, through cards, payouts, and direct movement between onchain and offchain economies.

In a multi-stablecoin world, that layer matters more than the brand behind the stablecoin. The less users have to think about what kind of dollar they are holding, the more stablecoins can behave like real money.

Stablecoins are becoming foundational financial infrastructure.

As that happens, the winners will not be the loudest brands or the most clever tickers. They will be the systems that make money interoperable, spendable, and forgettable.

In the long run, the letter matters less than whether the dollar works everywhere.