Trump’s NASA pick Jared Isaacman bets big on stablecoins via Shift4 | Wilnesh News

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, is a 41-year-old space enthusiast who served as NASA administrator just a few months ago. No. 1 in the world all-civilian mission Arrive at the track.

He is also a cryptocurrency billionaire.

Isaacman is Shift4a fintech company that provides secure payment processing solutions to businesses. The company’s shares are up nearly 40% this year, bringing its market value to $9.3 billion. Isaacman started his business in 1999 when he was 16 years old. make it public Listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020.

“Jared has demonstrated exceptional leadership and built a groundbreaking global financial technology company,” Trump wrote in a Dec. 4 post announcing the nomination on his Truth Social platform.

This success can be partly attributed to a bold bet on cryptocurrencies about three years ago.

At Isaacman’s New York home near Central Park, around a glass-walled loft conference room above the apartment’s living area, Isaacman and members of his management team met with Alex Wilson and Pat Duffy sat down with the two entrepreneurs who are in the final stages of selling their cryptocurrency donation marketplace to Shift4. That’s early 2022.

With a whiteboard behind them, they discussed how blockchain-based technology could be applied to the payments company’s business.

Bitcoin A record was set a few months ago, with a six-fold increase from the end of 2019 to the end of 2021. The market is frothy, emotions are running high, and meme coins are at their peak.

Yet while Elon Musk is touting Dogecoin and money is pouring into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Wilson, Duffy and Isaacman are focusing on a far less glamorous corner of the digital asset world: stability currency.

Stablecoins are a subset of cryptocurrencies whose values ​​correspond to real-world assets and are effectively synonymous with tokens pegged to the U.S. dollar. Today, they are worth about $200 billion in total and are often used to move money across borders at a fraction of the cost of traditional payment systems.

Wilson, 31, said attendees at Isaacman’s home “agreed that stablecoins have a better chance of becoming a regular medium of exchange than Bitcoin or Ethereum.” They want to build products that leverage blockchain but are token-agnostic.

“We want to meet the needs of our users and enable our merchants to pay in any way their customers want,” Wilson said.

In front of a whiteboard, marker in hand, Isaacman spoke about how cryptocurrencies apply to the broader Shift4 business. Wilson said Isaacman had an uncanny ability Despite being the CEO of a company that now employs more than 3,000 people, he’s fallen on hard times.

A few weeks later, on March 1, Shift4 announced that it had purchased give blockWilson and Duffy’s company, and will pursue “a $4.5 billion-plus embedded cross-sell opportunity” by bundling crypto donation capabilities with traditional card acceptance. Shift4 paid $54 million and included in the deal potential earnings of up to $246 million.

Duffy and Wilson now lead Shift4’s cryptocurrency team. In October, they declare The service of paying with cryptocurrencies is being rolled out to all 200,000 merchants on the platform, making it possible to use cryptocurrencies in hotels, restaurants and sports venues.

“This is the biggest step the industry has ever taken toward crypto payments becoming mainstream,” Wilson said.

Isaacman told CNBC in a statement that he was excited to see the original vision he discussed with Wilson and Duffy during the acquisition process “come to reality at a time when cryptocurrencies are increasingly becoming mainstream and building real momentum.”

Isaacman found himself at the center of the action.

Cryptocurrency markets have been red-hot since Trump won the election in November, and have seen even sharper gains as pro-crypto candidates have won congressional victories. Bitcoin topped $108,000 for the first time on Tuesday, rising more than 55% since election night and pushing the token’s overall market value to more than $3.7 trillion.

More institutional and retail investors are getting on board as a flood of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds and other options products flooded the market starting in January, offering new ways to bet on Bitcoin’s future price.

Stablecoins are also approaching mainstream.

In October, Stripe agreed to spend $1.1 billion to acquire Bridge Network, a stablecoin platform designed to make it easier for businesses to transact using digital currencies. The deal is a huge wake-up call for traditional credit card companies.

visa and MasterCard Currently dominates the U.S. payments landscape Accounts for 80% of total credit cards in the United Statesaccording to Data comes from Nielsen reports. Credit card networks charge payment processors like Stripe transaction fees for using their so-called “rails.” cost, of which include Fixed fee plus a percentage of each payment, up to 3.30% American Expressusually passed to the client.

But with stablecoins, transactions can cost less than a penny and are almost instant. Emily Sands, technical lead on Stripe’s data science team, said stablecoins are ideal for cross-border transactions, which is important to almost all corporate users.

“This is very valuable to the Stripe ecosystem,” Sands said. “This doesn’t just apply to card networks. It doesn’t just apply to local payment methods. It can also apply to cryptocurrencies.”

Blockchain-based payments company Ripple just has launched its own stablecoin, RLUSD, and cryptocurrency custody company BitGo plans to follow suit. Robin Hood British fintech company Revolut is reportedly considering similar measures.

PayPal It entered the market relatively early, launching a USD-pegged token called PYUSD in August 2023. Market value exceeded US$1 billion In August, however, the company’s sales had fallen below $500 million as competition for market share intensified.

Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC are the main stablecoins, with supplies of $140 billion and $42 billion respectively, accounting for about 90% of the market in total.

Given their growing popularity, experts are eagerly waiting to see how the big credit card companies react and whether they launch their own coins.

In October, Visa announced the launch of the Visa Tokenized Asset Platform (VTAP), making it easier for banks to launch their own stablecoins. Cuy Sheffield, head of cryptocurrency at Visa, said the product allows banks to issue and manage fiat-backed tokens.

Sheffield said Visa is “providing them with a lot of these capabilities.”

Last July, Mastercard launched multi-token network (MTN), which facilitates payments for fully collateralized stablecoins as well as other digital assets on the platform.

Raj Dhamodharan, head of crypto and blockchain at Mastercard, told CNBC that MTN is looking to bring crypto capabilities, including programmability of digital currencies, to banks as they hold trillions of dollars worth of U.S. dollar deposits.

But stablecoin issuers also face some challenges. TerraUSD (or UST) and its sister token luna collapsed during the 2022 cryptocurrency crash, losing billions of dollars in value and eroding confidence in the reserves backing certain stablecoins.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal October report The Justice Department is investigating whether Tether may have violated sanctions and anti-money laundering rules. A Tether spokesperson said at the time that the report was “purely based on ranking speculation” and was “unaware of any such investigation.”

With the participation of more mature financial players, the market is gaining broader credibility.

Ari Redbord, global policy director at blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs, said stablecoins are a bridge between the crypto ecosystem and the traditional financial system.

“That’s why you’re seeing the leading fintech companies — Stripe, PayPal, Visa, etc. — really leaning into stablecoins,” Redbord said.

The crypto industry has been lobbying lawmakers on Capitol Hill for years to enact stablecoin legislation that would provide safeguards for these dollarized digital assets and the companies that issue them. Coin library Founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, one of the industry’s loudest voices in Washington, told CNBC in September that the company had seen significant traction in stablecoins.

Shift4 continues to grow through acquisitions. The company purchased German point-of-sale company Vectron SystemsBritish card industry professionals, Canadian Characteristics of Paymentsand other payment companies in recent years.

Wilson said the company views stablecoins in the context of two different target markets. One group, he said, was made up of people who had become wealthy through cryptocurrencies and wanted to use their tokenized dollars to “charter a jet or a helicopter.” Another category includes people living in Latin America and Africa, “where people only want to use stablecoins for daily payments because the adoption of Visa and Mastercard is low,” he said.

conducted a survey Research from Castle Island Ventures, Visa and other partners shows that stablecoins are an important part of the economy in emerging markets such as Nigeria. In countries “facing severe liquidity crunches,” stablecoins “allow individuals and businesses to receive international dollar payments without the need for hard currency to leave the country,” the report said.

Standard Chartered wrote in a recent report that stablecoins currently account for 1% of U.S. financial transactions and a similar proportion of foreign exchange transactions. The bank said an increase to 10% was “feasible” as they gain legitimacy.

Isaacman’s pivot to the public sector comes as Shift4 attempts to position itself at the forefront of stablecoin’s continued momentum.

In addition to his career in finance, Isaacman has led two private space flights through SpaceX in 2021 and 2024, commanding crews on multi-day trips around the Earth. His aerospace ambitions have led to an increasingly close relationship with SpaceX CEO Musk, who has become one of Trump’s biggest supporters and is poised to play a major role in the administration.

On December 4, Isaacman wrote letter Addressing his “Shift4 Family,” he told investors and employees that he would remain CEO until the Senate confirms his appointment.

“Shift4 has been my life’s work since I was 16,” Isaacman writes. “But now it’s my time to serve and give back to my country, which allows me to live the American dream.”

Isaacman said his nomination to lead NASA “reflects my passion for advancing human exploration among the stars, unlocking the secrets of the universe, and improving life on Earth.”

Wilson recalled having dinner with Isaacman after The Giving Block closed in March 2022. They were in Las Vegas, and on the eve of the announcement, Isaacman took Wilson and Duffy to Lago, an Italian restaurant in Bellagio. Wilson remembers discussing what it was like when Isaacman started the business as a teenager.

“No one cares and works harder than the founders, and that’s reflected in Jared,” Wilson said.

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