Recently, I’ve seen many people praising that so-called “alliance of 140 traditional giants,” saying they want to encircle Circle (USDC) with compliant and stablecoins. The momentum is certainly impressive, and the PPTs are beautifully written—but in my view, this is nothing more than traditional capital, facing a shift to the Web3 paradigm, once again trying to comfort itself with a smug “clique forming for mutual support.”

Want to take a bite out of Circle’s cake by creating a group chat and holding a meeting? Not so easy. In history, this kind of script—giant “orthodox” forces surrounding and closing in on native early movers—almost never ends in victory. The reason is simple:

1. Inside the alliance, everyone is harboring ulterior motives. The cars with 140 steering wheels just can’t go fast.

The biggest fatal flaw of a giants’ alliance isn’t technology—it’s the production relationships and how interests are allocated. 140 institutions means 140 top legal teams, 140 risk-control standards, and 140 sets of “unspeakable” interest calculations.

Splitting the spoils is the first hurdle: the fattest profits of stablecoins come from the spread of underlying assets (like U.S. Treasury bonds). With such a huge profit pool worth hundreds of billions—or even trillions—how do you divide it? Do the ones providing liquidity get the biggest share, or is it split equally by status?

Decision-making efficiency is a fatal weakness: in a 24/7, ever-changing crypto market, projects need pixel-level agility. But when the giants get together to hold meetings, they go through layers of approvals, PPT presentations, and endless legal/compliance back-and-forth—by the time they finish the process, the market’s direction has already shifted three rounds. This kind of organizational structure fundamentally cannot generate real combat power.

2. Circle’s compliance and ecosystem are built by using “time” to do hands-on bomb disposal, piece by piece.

People always think stablecoins have no technical barrier—anyone can just invent a wheel. But Circle (USDC)’s true moat isn’t just technology; it’s the ecosystem inertia and compounding trust it has cultivated over many years.

Compliance isn’t just a one-page whitepaper: over the years, how many times has Circle dealt with the U.S. Federal Reserve, the SEC, financial regulators across states (including NYDFS), and regulators worldwide? How many deep pitfalls have they stepped into, how many lessons have they paid for, to磨合 into the compliance framework that lets them dance on the edge of a knife today? The political and financial trust accumulated from this “hands-on bomb disposal” can’t be bought by newcomers with money.

A deadlock caused by user habits and ecosystem integration: USDC has already been embedded deep into the underlying code of global DeFi (decentralized finance) smart contracts, major centralized exchanges, cross-border payment networks, and hardware wallets—like capillaries in the body. For developers and users, the cost of migrating liquidity and the cost of building new understanding are so high they’re hard to imagine. Once user habits form, they have extremely strong inertia and exclusivity.

3. Admitting others’ barriers is the highest level of business judgment.

Here we go again: another textbook “missing the Tesla after investing in a Mercedes” or “traditional banks trying to launch a blockchain alliance (like R3 back then) and then soaring high only to fade.” The arrogance of traditional giants is that they always think they have resources, backing, and licenses—so they can step in anytime and redefine the rules.

But Web3’s ecosystem evolves natively—it isn’t catalyzed by capital. Faced with Circle, which has already crossed the life-or-death chasm and built absolute network effects, the best strategy for these 140 giants isn’t to jump in themselves to build wheels. Instead, it’s to find this ecosystem core that’s already been built, and hold on to it tightly.

Unfortunately, the big players often can’t resist the impulse to “grab a slice for myself,” and in the end they’ll most likely smash their heads against a long grind of internal friction, mediocre efficiency, and the hard, impenetrable wall of user habits.

History doesn’t repeat itself simply, but it always sticks to the same kind of rhyme. This time, I’m still betting on the native pioneers to win.