Stripe: Re-laying the Dollar’s Pipes

Introduction: Crypto Winter, Stablecoin Summer

A Farewell Letter, Revised Twice

In January 2018, Stripe published a very short post on its official blog. The title was “Ending Bitcoin Support.”

The company had once had a honeymoon with bitcoin. In 2014, Stripe became the first major payments company to support bitcoin payments. The vision back then was a beautiful one: bitcoin might become a universal foundation for internet commerce, letting people buy things online in places where credit cards were rare, and making possible the small transactions that couldn’t bear card fees.

Four years later, the vision had fallen apart. The farewell letter was candid. Blocks were full, and confirmation times kept getting longer. By the time a transaction confirmed, the price of bitcoin had moved, and what the customer paid had become “the wrong amount.” Fees on an ordinary transfer often ran to tens of dollars, as expensive as a bank wire. Merchants were less and less interested in accepting bitcoin, and for those that did, the revenue it brought in was falling sharply. One judgment in the post would be quoted again and again: bitcoin had become “more suitable to be an asset than a means of exchange.”

On April 23, 2018, Stripe stopped processing bitcoin transactions.

That should have been the end of the story. But the post was never taken down. Instead, it was revised twice.

In March 2022, an update appeared at the top: in hindsight, the optimism about crypto had “not been unfounded,” and Stripe was starting to provide financial infrastructure for crypto companies. In April 2024, another line was added at the top: this summer, merchants who accept payments through Stripe would be able to let customers pay with stablecoins.

A farewell letter had turned into a preface.

What happened over the next two years moved at a pace that seemed out of character for a company known for being steady:

• In October 2024, Stripe resumed accepting crypto. This time it wasn’t bitcoin but dollar stablecoins such as USDC, at a fee of 1.5%.
• That same month, Stripe announced it would buy stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge for $1.1 billion, the largest acquisition in its history. CEO Patrick Collison wrote on X that stablecoins are a “room-temperature superconductor” for financial services.
• In June 2025, Stripe acquired wallet infrastructure company Privy, which at the time served more than 1,000 developer teams and over 75 million accounts.
• In September 2025, Tempo, a payments blockchain incubated jointly by Stripe and the crypto venture firm Paradigm, was unveiled. A month later, Tempo raised $500 million at a $5 billion valuation.
• In February 2026, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) granted conditional approval for Bridge to set up a national trust bank.
• In March 2026, Tempo’s mainnet went live. In April, Visa became one of its external validators.
• On September 30, 2026, Open USD (OUSD), a stablecoin jointly launched by Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa, went live, with Bridge as the issuer.

Within two years, Stripe had bought three pieces of the puzzle (issuance, currency conversion and wallets), built a chain of its own, applied for a federal bank charter, and brought the two big card networks along to launch a dollar stablecoin.

The same company, facing the same kind of technology, went from “giving up” to “all in.” This book sets out to explain what changed in between, and what Stripe wants to get out of it.

Coin Prices Fell, the Pipes Heated Up

The first half of the answer lies in Stripe’s 2025 annual letter, published in February 2026. The Collison brothers wrote:

It may be crypto winter, but it’s stablecoin summer.

They offered a contrast. In 2025, the price of bitcoin fell sharply; by the time they wrote the letter, it was down by half from its October high. In the same year, global stablecoin payment volume doubled to about $400 billion, an estimated 60% or so of it payments between businesses. Bridge’s transaction volume grew more than fourfold.

These numbers matter because they broke a pattern that had held for a decade. In the past, stablecoin volume always rose and fell with coin prices: in bull markets people used stablecoins to buy crypto, and in bear markets the volume shrank along with them. In 2025, for the first time, the two curves diverged. Coin prices went down; stablecoin payment volume went up.

What that shows is that a group of people were now using stablecoins not to trade crypto but to pay: to pay overseas suppliers for goods, to pay freelancers around the world, and to convert the income of users in Latin America and Africa into dollars.

Put this next to the 2018 farewell letter and you can see that Stripe’s question never actually changed. It had always been looking for money that can move across the internet the way information does. In 2018, bitcoin failed the test because it was “more of an asset than a means of exchange.” In 2025, stablecoins passed, because they are exactly the reverse: a digital dollar that doesn’t bet on price and only cares about moving.

The question stayed the same. The answer changed.

Now look at Stripe’s own scale. In 2025, total payment volume (TPV) flowing through Stripe was $1.9 trillion, up 34% from the year before and equal to roughly 1.6% of global GDP. It served more than 5 million businesses, directly or through platforms. The employee tender offer in February 2026 valued it at $159 billion.

In other words, a full year of global stablecoin payment volume came to only about a fifth of Stripe’s payment volume alone. From Stripe’s point of view, stablecoins are still a small business. So why is it willing to spend well over a billion dollars and mobilize the whole company to bet on them?

Rented Pipes

The most common explanation is that stablecoins are the hot trend, and Stripe is chasing it.

This book takes a different view. Stripe isn’t chasing a crypto trend. It’s doing something it has waited fifteen years to do: swap rented pipes for pipes of its own.

Stripe’s success over the past fifteen years rests on a clever position. It isn’t a bank, it doesn’t issue cards, and it doesn’t own a payment network. What it builds is a layer of extremely easy-to-use software: a developer writes a few lines of code and can accept credit cards, debit cards and local payment methods from all over the world. The pipes the money actually flows through belong to others: issuing banks, card networks like Visa and Mastercard, acquiring banks, and each country’s clearing systems.

That position let Stripe grow fast, and it also put Stripe in shackles. In the US, Stripe charges 2.9% plus 30 cents for a standard online card payment. Most of that money doesn’t go to Stripe. It goes to the issuing bank as interchange, with a share going to the card networks. Stripe can only optimize its own layer: payment success rates, risk controls, the developer experience. The rules and prices of the pipes themselves are not its call.

Stablecoins gave Stripe, for the first time, another possibility: a pipeline in which every segment, from issuance, wallets and currency conversion to bookkeeping and licenses, could be its own.

Two points need to be made clear right away, or this argument will be misread.

First, Stripe has no plan to overthrow the card networks. Quite the opposite: it brought Visa in as a Tempo validator, and teamed up with Visa and Mastercard to launch OUSD. The reason is practical. Its $1.9 trillion business runs almost entirely on cards; falling out with the card networks would mean wrecking its own livelihood. What Stripe wants is not to flip the table, but to take the head seat at a new table.

Second, the new pipes aren’t free either. Moving USDC onchain costs less than a cent, yet Stripe’s stablecoin payments product launched at 1.5% (in November 2026, the promotional price on its pricing page was 0.8%). Some in the crypto world criticize this as “rent-seeking”; supporters say the fee buys the full package of custody, currency conversion, anti-money-laundering screening and settlement into fiat. Both sides have a point. And it raises one of the book’s core questions: if the pipes themselves keep getting cheaper, what does Stripe actually make money on in stablecoins? Part of the answer lies in the interest on the hundreds of billions of dollars of reserves behind stablecoins. That interest used to go almost entirely to issuers like Tether and Circle, and OUSD is designed precisely to share it with the partners who help mint and circulate the coin. It’s the most ambitious and most easily overlooked move in Stripe’s crypto strategy, and Chapters 7 and 12 work through the numbers.

The Five-Layer Pipeline: One Picture That Explains Stripe’s Crypto Strategy

Stripe’s moves over the past two years look scattered: acquisitions, a chain, a coin, a license application, cards, a payments protocol for AI agents. Put them in one picture, though, and every step fills in some layer of the same pipeline. I call it Stripe’s five-layer pipeline:

1. Use-case layer: where the money comes from. Merchants accepting stablecoins, stablecoin-linked cards, payments to AI agents. This is Stripe’s home turf and its biggest advantage over crypto companies: 5 million business customers are already in its system.
2. Access layer: where the money sits. Privy’s embedded wallets and Stripe’s Stablecoin Financial Accounts determine who holds the dollar balances of users and businesses.
3. Orchestration layer: how the money is converted and moved. Bridge handles conversion between fiat and stablecoins, plus routing across chains and currencies. It is the router of the whole system.
4. Issuance layer: whose liability the money is. Through Open Issuance, any company can issue its own branded stablecoin; OUSD is a dollar stablecoin governed jointly by a consortium. Whoever issues it gets first claim on the reserve interest.
5. Settlement layer: which chain keeps the books. Tempo is a blockchain designed specifically for payments. It has no token of its own; fees are paid directly in stablecoins.

Beneath the five layers sits a foundation: licenses. Bridge’s federal trust bank charter, its MiCA license in Europe and the state money transmitter licenses determine where this pipeline can legally be laid.

The picture also exposes the biggest tension Stripe faces. Privy CEO Henri Stern, who runs Stripe’s crypto business, says Stripe aims to be “completely stablecoin-agnostic and completely chain-agnostic.” That is Stripe’s standard playbook: open to everyone, winning by being easy to use. But once it owns a chain, an issuer and a consortium coin at the same time, neutrality is hard to guarantee with words alone. A week after OUSD launched, onchain data showed about 71% of OUSD sitting on Tempo.

Open, but its own is the easiest to use. That is Stripe’s commercial instinct, and it’s a question its partners will sooner or later press.

Three Questions This Book Sets Out to Answer

Built around the five-layer pipeline, this book sets out to answer three questions.

First, why Stripe? The card networks have networks, PayPal has its own stablecoin, Circle has the second-largest stablecoin by market cap, and Coinbase has an exchange and the Base chain. Why is it a company that doesn’t even own a payment network that turned stablecoins into a full suite of business services?

Second, where does the money come from? Payment fees, currency spreads, card revenue shares, reserve interest, onchain fees: which will grow, and which will be competed down to zero?

Third, where will it get stuck? The limits of regulation, the promise of neutrality, pushback from the card networks, counterattacks from issuers, and the most basic question of all: do ordinary merchants and consumers actually need stablecoins?

Different readers can come to the book with different questions:

• If you work in cross-border payments or sell overseas, Chapters 4 and 8 matter most: in which countries stablecoin on- and off-ramps work today, what they cost, and where the pitfalls are.
• If you run digital-asset business at a bank, payments company or card network, Chapters 6, 7 and 11 matter most: who is setting the rules on the new pipes, and where you fit.
• If you are building a startup, or work at a company that wants to become infrastructure, read Chapters 1, 2 and 3 and the Conclusion: how Stripe grew from seven lines of code into a giant, what mistakes it made, and how it got back up.
• If you are an investor, Chapters 2, 12 and 13 matter most: what Stripe’s crypto business is worth, and what the risks are.

How to Read This Book

This book is about one company, so it is first of all a story: how two young Irishmen used seven lines of code to break into a market controlled by banks, how they recovered after their valuation was cut in half, and how, after their first bet on crypto failed, they came back with a different currency. The crypto strategy is the newest and most important part of that story, but you can only understand why Stripe is betting this way if you understand what came before. Every chapter ends with a section called “Lessons for Other Companies.”

The book’s thirteen chapters are organized as “where it came from, what it’s laying, where it’s used, and the rules and the ledger”:

• Chapters 01–03, where it came from: the starting point of seven lines of code; growing from one API into $1.9 trillion of pipes; why the first marriage with bitcoin failed.
• Chapters 04–07, what it’s laying: Bridge, Privy, Tempo, Open Issuance and OUSD, taking apart the five-layer pipeline one layer at a time.
• Chapters 08–09, where it’s used: merchant payments, stablecoin-linked cards, and machine payments made by AI agents.
• Chapters 10–12, the rules and the ledger: the road to a license, rivals and allies, and how the crypto business makes money.
• Chapter 13, the Conclusion: limits, risks, and the ten lessons Stripe leaves for other companies.

Each chapter starts with a specific person or event, explains why Stripe did what it did and the business logic behind it, then tests that logic against numbers and cases. The chapters can be read on their own, but read in order, they show how a single question runs through the whole book: whoever owns the pipes owns the pricing power.

About the Data

This book was written in early November 2026, and most of the data runs through late October to November 3, 2026. Stripe is a private company and doesn’t publish full financial statements, so the figures about it come mainly from three kinds of sources: Stripe’s annual letters and official blog; regulatory filings, such as the OCC’s approval letter; and data published by partners and third parties. Onchain data was pulled on the day from public sources such as DefiLlama. Wherever a number comes only from media reports or third-party estimates and has not been confirmed by Stripe, the text says where it comes from, and it is listed separately at the end of the chapter.

The crypto industry changes fast, and the specific numbers in this book will go out of date. What I hope won’t go out of date is the way of looking at the problem. The next time a company announces it’s moving into stablecoins, start by asking three questions: Which layer of pipe does it own? Is it earning tolls or reserve interest? Is its “open” the same for itself as for everyone else?

This book doesn’t predict coin prices or recommend any asset. What it tries to explain is how a company that got its start renting other people’s pipes is trying to lay a new set of pipes for the dollar, and what that means for everyone who gets paid, pays, or saves.

Data and Sources

Verified (primary sources):

• Became the first major payments company to support bitcoin payments in 2014; reasons for ending support (confirmation times, price volatility, fees of tens of dollars); processing ended April 23, 2018; updates on March 10, 2022 and April 25, 2024: Stripe blog, “Ending Bitcoin support” (stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support).
• “Crypto winter, stablecoin summer”; 2025 stablecoin payment volume doubled to about $400 billion, about 60% B2B; Bridge transaction volume grew more than fourfold; total payment volume of $1.9 trillion (+34%), about 1.6% of global GDP, 5 million businesses: Stripe 2025 annual letter and press release (stripe.com/newsroom/news/stripe-2025-update, 2026-02-24).
• $159 billion valuation: the employee tender offer accompanying the same press release; Bloomberg report, 2026-02-24.
• Bridge conditional approval (2026-02-12, Bridge National Trust Bank): OCC Corporate Decision #1365; Bridge blog, 2026-02-17.
• Total global stablecoin supply of about $297 billion, USDC about $70.9 billion, OUSD about $900 million: DefiLlama, data pulled 2026-11-03.
• Standard US online card payment fee of 2.9% + 30 cents: published rate on Stripe’s US pricing page.
• Stablecoin payments fee: 1.5% at launch (2024-10, reported by multiple outlets); in 2026-11 Stripe’s US pricing page lists 0.8% per transaction as a promotional price, rising by 0.2 percentage points from 2027-01-01: Stripe pricing page (stripe.com/pricing, accessed 2026-11-04).

Verified (media and partner sources):

• Bridge acquisition price of $1.1 billion, “room-temperature superconductor”: Fortune, 2024-10-22; the acquisition closed on 2025-02-04.
• Privy acquisition (2025-06-11), more than 75 million accounts, more than 1,000 developer teams: SiliconANGLE, 2025-06-11; Sequoia article.
• Tempo announced 2025-09-04; $500 million Series A at a $5 billion valuation, led by Thrive Capital and Greenoaks, with Stripe and Paradigm not participating: Fortune, 2025-10-17.
• Tempo mainnet launched 2026-03-18: Across blog; Visa, Stripe and Zodia Custody among the first external validators (2026-04): Everstake research article.
• OUSD launched 2026-09-30, founded by Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa, issued by Bridge; about 71% of supply on Tempo one week after launch (2026-10-05): Crystal Intelligence onchain analysis.
• Henri Stern running Stripe’s crypto business, and the “completely stablecoin-agnostic and completely chain-agnostic” remark: CoinDesk interview, 2026-10-05.