How a 300‑Person Stablecoin Firm Is Out‑Earning Wall Street Banks

A renowned crypto market connoisseur has drawn a sharp line between the profits of Tether, the world’s largest dollar stablecoin issuer, and the future of regulated digital dollars — arguing that the same profit engine could soon run on rails built around XRP.

Kamilah Stevenson points to Tether’s startling numbers: with a staff of roughly 300 people, the company has reported more than $10 billion in net profit in back‑to‑back years, rivaling major U.S. banks that employ hundreds of thousands and blanket cities with branches.

The model, as described in the YouTube episode, is “almost embarrassingly simple”: users hand over dollars for USDT, Tether parks those dollars in short‑term U.S. government debt, and Tether keeps the interest on a portfolio now said to exceed $100 billion in Treasuries.

The Spread Moves From Branches To Code

To frame this shift, the host revisits how banks traditionally make money on the “spread” — the gap between what they earn lending out deposits at 5–20% and what they pay savers, often around 1% or less.

Historically, that spread required expensive infrastructure: branches, vaults, tellers, armored trucks, compliance teams.

Stablecoins strip that down to software. Instead of a nationwide footprint, a few hundred engineers and risk managers can run the same core business of holding customer funds and capturing yield.

“The physical weight of banking just gets thrown out and the profit center of banking stays” Stevenson says, comparing it to how digital platforms like iTunes and Spotify pulled value away from record labels that once controlled physical distribution.

From Tether To RLUSD: XRP’s Role In Stablecoin Era

The YouTube video argues that Tether proved the stablecoin engine works, but “built it in a lightly regulated way.”

With new rules targeting that model, Dr. Kamilah Stevenson suggests the “next phase belongs to the regulated version of the same engine” — and places Ripple’s forthcoming RLUSD stablecoin at the center of that shift.

RLUSD is described as a dollar stablecoin “designed from day one for the regulated banking world,” settling on the XRP Ledger, where banks, governments, and institutions are already testing settlement and tokenized assets. In this framing, XRP isn’t the stablecoin but the “neutral settlement layer” for a compliant stablecoin economy.

Every transaction on the XRP Ledger burns a small amount of XRP as a fee, so rising stablecoin volume could translate into structural demand pressure on XRP rather than competition.

Why This Matters For Crypto Investors

Kamilah Stevenson’s core thesis is that as the dollar “turns into software” profits will migrate from legacy banks to whoever controls compliant digital rails — and that XRP’s ledger is being positioned as one of those rails.

Those dynamics, more than near‑term price swings, will determine whether today’s stablecoin profits become tomorrow’s XRP‑linked transaction fees.

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People Also Ask:

How does Tether make money, according to the video? By holding users’ dollar deposits in interest‑bearing assets like short‑term U.S. Treasuries and keeping the yield, while users hold the USDT tokens.

What is Ripple USD (RLUSD)? Ripple‑issued U.S. dollar stablecoin that’s built for regulated banking use and designed to settle on the XRP Ledger.

Why does Stevenson think stablecoins are “fuel” for XRP? Because every transaction on the XRP Ledger burns a small amount of XRP, so higher stablecoin and settlement activity on that ledger could increase demand for XRP.

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