Circle Founder: Digital Currencies at Key Growth Moment as Governments Take Notice

Throughout the seven volatile years during which Circle founder Jeremy Allaire has been developing crypto products, he has consistently warned there's much work to do before the technology is ready for mass usage.

Now, with governments starting to explore digital currencies, new stablecoin models emerging and big tech platforms like Facebook getting involved, he finally sees the potential for a tipping point that brings about mass adoption. 

On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, he spoke to Michael Casey about the convergence of forces leading to what he sees as a wholesale shift in how money and value moves around the world. 

“Digital currency, stablecoins and the role of central banks in that is now a central theme for world economic leaders,” Allaire said. “The conversations are with people who run major currencies in major countries, with finance ministers that are looking over those economies, with supranational leaders that work on the monetary system.”

Those political conversations, Allaire said, are now aligning with technological improvements.

“We are at a moment in time now, [with] the dramatic continued improvements in the fundamental infrastructure for public blockchains and these models for things like stablecoins are meeting [while] major tech platforms and others are potentially creating mass distribution, that we can really now see a world in which, in the next couple of years, there could be hundreds of millions or billions of people using digital currency in their everyday life."