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Episode Brief: Stablecoins Need Banks: The “Banking Layer” Nobody Sees w/ Jacqueline Reses (Lead Bank)

Why this episode matters

Stablecoins are often framed as “new rails” that compete with banks. In practice, the fastest-growing stablecoin payment products still depend on banks for the parts that actually determine whether money can move safely and at scale: onboarding and offboarding, compliance accountability, reserve custody and controls, and operational resiliency.

Jackie’s perspective is useful because it reframes “stablecoin adoption” as a banking infrastructure problem, not a token problem. Can the banking layer modernize its risk tooling and its regulatory posture fast enough to support programmable rails? For areas where it cannot, what is the second-order hit to the US banking system, especially smaller community banks that rely on deposits to fund local credit?

The core ideas you should take away

• The weakest layer in modern fintech stacks is often the underlying bank layer, not the product UI. Lead exists because Square-era banking dependencies were fragile, slow, and mismatched to software-led distribution.
• Compliance can be a product, not a cost center. Lead treats legal/compliance as “front of house,” partnering directly with clients to scale programs, not merely to block risk.
• Risk management should be real-time and behavior-based, not checkbox-only. Lead’s claim is that automation and anomaly detection lets them distinguish “actual risk” from legacy regulatory noise.
• Regulatory trust is earned through proactive transparency, including surfacing your own mistakes. Lead’s approach is to bring programs and even potential issues to regulators early, incorporate judgment, and avoid surprises.
• The stablecoin-to-bank interface is increasingly API-native. Lead positions itself as custom-built banking primitives delivered via APIs: accounts, money movement, issuing, lending, and stablecoin programs that can be composed into bespoke products.
• Stablecoin growth has second-order consequences for the US banking system. Jackie is explicitly worried about deposit flight harming community banks and, downstream, local credit creation (small business, ag, rural lending).

What this changes

• For stablecoin payment builders: your bottleneck is less “chain choice” and more “bank program design” (compliance instrumentation, onboarding, reserves, anomaly handling, regulator comfort).
• For banks: the strategic question is not “do we like crypto,” but “which rails do we support for which use cases,” and whether you can participate without becoming the weakest link in someone else’s stack.
• For infrastructure providers: there’s a wedge in serving smaller banks that cannot build this themselves. If they participate at all, it will likely be via wallet-like abstractions and outsourced infrastructure, chosen because it’s useful, not because it’s labeled “stablecoin.”
• For policymakers: a stablecoin regime that only works for large banks and money funds risks accelerating consolidation and hollowing out local lending capacity.

What we didn’t fully resolve

• A concrete path for sub-$1B banks. Jackie is blunt that clear stablecoin use cases for the smallest banks are limited today, beyond wallets and opportunistic infrastructure adoption.
• How fragmentation resolves without a mandated standard. Interoperability is an unsolved problem. The “Hunger Games” framing explains the current mess, but not what governance or interoperability layer actually reduces complexity. 
• Where tokenized deposits meet stablecoins in practice. The conceptual split is clear (internal bank rails vs interoperable external rails), but the operational handshake and market structure remain open. What does it mean for growing rift between larger and smaller banks?

If you listen, listen for this

Stablecoins are not “bankless money.” They are programmable rails that still need institutions to underwrite trust, especially around compliance, reserves, and operational risk. The near-term story is fragmentation and experimentation to determine which stacks make money movement feel simple while keeping regulators comfortable.