Something strange is happening in the world of finance right now. A person who spent 20 years at the biggest global banks—specifically Citi—is leaving everything behind and saying that the future lies in public blockchain. But not the way you’d expect.

His name is Tony McLoughlin, and his story is worth paying attention to because it reveals something most banks have completely overlooked: stablecoins are not a threat—they’re a massive source of income.

McLoughlin wasn’t just an ordinary employee. At Citi, he was one of the lead engineers for RLN—a highly advanced regulatory settlement system. This project affected the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank for International Settlements, and even financial authorities in Singapore. But after years working on private chains and permissioned networks, he realized something crucial: the problem isn’t in the technology—it’s that no one wants to be the first to join.

This is what he calls the “initial operational problem”—you need a centralized network of banks, but no bank wants to start before there are users.

Then came the GENIUS law in July 2025, and everything changed. McLoughlin suddenly realized that banks would be allowed to operate on public chains—which means the future isn’t for private networks, but for stablecoins on Ethereum and beyond. He left Citi in March 2025 and founded Ubyx.

Now, what’s really interesting is how McLoughlin views stablecoins. He doesn’t see them as a brand-new technical product—he sees them as the natural evolution of a very old tool: travelers’ checks.

Remember American Express Travelers’ Checks? Before credit cards and ATMs, they were the only way to travel. You buy them for a set amount and spend them anywhere in the world because banks and merchants accept them at face value. The value wasn’t in the paper itself—it was in the settlement network that guaranteed the redemption of funds.

Stablecoins work on the exact same idea. USDC, or any other stablecoin—the real value isn’t in the token; it’s in the promise that you’ll get redemption at face value.

What’s the current problem? There is no unified settlement network. If you’re a stablecoin issuer, you have to build a distribution network from scratch. And if you’re a bank, you have to negotiate separately with every source. It’s chaos.

Ubyx solves this problem in a very simple way—it acts as a settlement intermediary, just like Visa and Mastercard. The process is straightforward: the customer deposits a stablecoin, the bank sends it to Ubyx, the issuer confirms the token, and the dollars are returned to the bank and credited to the customer. If the issuer fails, the token is returned—without any risk to the bank’s balance sheet.

Now, why should banks care? The numbers.

Assume the stablecoin market reaches one trillion dollars ( currently 300 billion and growing ). With a conservative daily redemption rate of 0.5%, annual redemption volume is about 1.8 trillion dollars. If banks charge fees of 100 basis points, plus a cross-border FX spread of 100 basis points, annual revenue reaches $36 billion.

That’s just from acceptance and transfer—we haven’t even talked about issuance yet.

For non-U.S. banks, this is even better. Every stablecoin dollar that enters a European or Asian banking system and is converted into the local currency—pure foreign income. Foreign exchange trading represents “huge profits” for banks.

That’s why major names have started investing in Ubyx. The first funding round in June 2025 raised $10 million, led by Galaxy Ventures. But what about the other investors? Founders Fund by Peter Thiel, Coinbase Ventures, VanEck, LayerZero. This isn’t just technical capital—it’s a strategic alliance.

Then Barclays—the second-largest bank in the UK—invested in January 2026. It was their first investment in a stablecoin company. They said that “interoperability is key.” A month later, AB Xelerate from the Arab Bank Group also invested.

We can see the picture clearly: American capital, European banks, financial infrastructure from the Middle East—everyone is betting on the same direction.

The only real risk? Circle launched its own USDC network in mid-2025. The question now is: will it be a single-issuer network, or a multi-issuer settlement system? McLoughlin bets that history favors diversity—just like it did with Visa and Mastercard.

There’s also the question of yields. If regulators ban yields on stablecoins, banks will feel more comfortable, but the market will be smaller. If yields are allowed, stablecoins will compete directly with savings accounts and money market funds, and banks will race to build infrastructure quickly.

The truth is: McLoughlin believes banks will soon understand one sentence: “Banks can handle stablecoins just like they handle checks.”

When someone with authority says this, every bank and fintech company in the world will immediately know what to do.