And that is how the crypto ecosystem, or rather the crypto multi-system, is drowning in its own paradoxes while traditional finance sits on its head to hold it under water.

In 1944, Bretton Woods imposed the dollar thanks to gold. In 2025, stablecoins impose the dollar thanks to the blockchain. A clandestine Bretton Woods 2.0, with no treaty and no vote. Orchestrated by two opaque companies from the Caribbean. History stutters, dystopian edition. Because let’s remember, all the same, what Bitcoin promised.

1️⃣ An anti-inflation currency through programmed scarcity.
2️⃣ A trustless system, with no middleman.
3️⃣ A censorship-proof network.

Stablecoins are the exact opposite.

1️⃣ USDT follows the dollar like its shadow. The Fed prints, the token loses: Jerome Powell discovers he has become the unwitting dealer of the crypto casino. More than $150bn out of $250bn directly finances the US debt that feeds the printing press. It’s like buying a fire extinguisher that sprays petrol.

2️⃣ Tether says “trust us” with $72bn never (or almost never) audited. Bitcoin’s “don’t trust, verify” has become “trust and pray”. Prayer not included.

Nobody seems to have noticed the strange smell that hung in the air when the Fed pledged not to let SVB sink while Circle was a whisker away from going down with it. A “stable” stablecoin rescued by the very central bank it claimed to replace. You could bottle the irony and sell it.

3️⃣ Circle freezes on orders. Tether blocks on request. The blockchain has become a panopticon where Big Brother has his finger on delete. Circle has even recently turned reversibility into a selling point²³. And more recently in France, everyone cheered it on… without noticing the paradox.

When David Balland, co-founder of the French crypto wallet maker Ledger, and his partner were kidnapped, a crypto ransom was demanded. It was sent quickly. The kidnappers believed in censorship resistance. Wrong. Tether froze the lot (I wrote about it here, in French). The libertarians applaud the censorship they were denouncing yesterday. It’s for a good cause. But a good cause always takes on the colour of its interests. Ledger’s founders, Bitcoin maximalists for some of them, celebrate the freezing of the funds, and the uncensorable becomes censorable when it suits.

But the revolution is on the march, as The Big Whale, the French crypto news outlet, would say.

Visa processes $2.5bn a month in USDC²⁴. PayPal launches PYUSD²⁵. The world’s payment rails are gradually switching to stables. It is no longer a crypto toy. It is the financial infrastructure itself that is migrating. Tomorrow, Grandma will pay for her tomatoes without knowing she is using a token issued in the Virgin Islands. Perhaps one day she will even have to swap her USDF for USDO because her greengrocer only accepts USDO and USDG.

By then, everyone will have taken their profits.

The big exchanges like Binance or Kraken will at least have had the honesty to promise nothing beyond the ability to trade and to bet. People bet on Arsenal or on the next British prime minister, so why not bet on the next token that could go x100, while stacking up a few of the safest cryptos?

Because yes, there are cryptos with a real project. They are marginal, because the reality is that everyone couldn’t care less about whitepapers and only looks at performance. But you cannot look at the whole market while turning a blind eye to the enthusiasts and developers who spend their time creating projects they believe in, around close-knit communities like those of Polkadot or AAVE.

Whether you believe in it or not, whether it works or not, whether it ultimately finds a use or not, most of the big caps started out with a coherent project.

But the success of stablecoins outside the ecosystem, beyond being a mere go-between for blockchains, beyond being a simple pool of liquidity, signs the death certificate of the crypto revolution. Bitcoin for payments? 0.1% of volume. Stables? 90% of everything. The revolution has turned into digital dollarisation on steroids.

And we now have to be clear about two visions, which are opposed in every way, which nothing can reconcile, and which nobody can claim at the same time:

• That of Bitcoin, which stands as an alternative to the centuries-old centralised monetary system;
• That of stablecoins, which is nothing but the continuation of the ultra-financialisation we already know.

You cannot believe in Bitcoin and invest in the bullshit companies that pile up BTC, like Michael Saylor’s.

You cannot believe in Bitcoin and cheer the ETFs that concentrate BTC ownership in the hands of institutional players, who own it in everyone else’s place.

You cannot believe in Bitcoin and think stablecoins are cool when they directly finance inflation.

You cannot believe in Bitcoin and find nothing to object to in an ecosystem that is almost entirely dollarised.

Besides, in the face of this capitulation, some governments are trying to take back control. Europe is rolling out MiCA, the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation: monthly audits, 1:1 reserves, issuance caps. The intention is laudable: correct the excesses before another 2008. But it obviously risks killing innovation before it can live. If everything flees to the United States or Asia, Europe will have gained neither stability nor sovereignty. The euro remains fragile, with no fiscal union and no military power. Regulating faster than everyone else can give an illusion of strength. It is often the reflex of a continent that doubts itself. Or doesn’t dare.

But at this stage, there is no middle ground left that holds. No happy synthesis. Just a brutal choice between two irreconcilable worlds.

On one side, Bitcoin. Freedom, programmed scarcity, resistance to censorship. But also extreme volatility, and the practical impossibility of everyday use. A shopkeeper cannot live with a currency that goes +20% in the morning and -15% in the afternoon. Unless we decide that, in the end, it is our medium of exchange.

On the other, the fiat system. Apparent stability, institutional guarantees, long-term credit. But also infinite debt, creeping inflation, monetary manipulation, perpetual bailouts.

Stablecoins claimed to reconcile the two. All they did was create a hybrid monster. Neither the freedom of Bitcoin nor the genuine security of the banking system. The worst of both worlds, wrapped in blockchainwashing.

It is the politician’s “neither left nor right”, crypto edition. Except we know how that ends: those who claim to be neither one nor the other are always on the side of the established power.

Satoshi had engraved in the genesis block:

“Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”.

Fifteen years later, stablecoins travesty his legacy and turn the promise into a farce.

The mirror no longer reflects freedom.
It caricatures servitude.