How would you launch a new stablecoin?

What is this?

These are some quickly written product sense and execution ideas. Their goal is to test my thinking. These may not be written and edited well, but it's a substitute for "practicing" interviews. The core muscle can be exercised just by writing them -- and then its a matter of connecting my brain to my mouth. :)

Clarifying Questions

First, I want to know what are the reasons behind the goal.

Is it because of a competitive threat? Is there a specific region that it needs to be done?

Is the goal to expand USDC in another non-US region or is it to be a new stablecoin backed by the local currency?

A likely response is that the region is up to me, it's largely pre-emptive, and it's backed by a local currency.

Set the Mission and the Product Attributes

So the mission seems to be increasing transaction value through frictionless rails. So this means that primary product and customer needs should be met by a few characteristics: lower friction, such a time to settlement; lower costs per transaction.

How do I decide which country?

To decide which country, I would consider three attributes:

  1. Size of the currency volume;
  2. Regulatory affinity towards the USD;
  3. Opportunity -- known issues that have unmet needs

If I rank by size and affinity, Japan would be high.

I don't know if there's a large opportunity relative to other countries that have high inflation, though. They do have low, sometimes negative interest rates, and that is something that we could potentially address because of DeFi lending and liquidity protocols.

so I would like to select Japan for those three reasons. Is that a good choice?

Who is the User Segment within Japan I want to target?

Before I talk about the end-user segment, I want to check in whether we need to spend time on the entire supply chain and ecosystem of setting up a stablecoin, such a regulators, issuers, banks, etc.

If not, I'd like to spend time really fleshing out who the end-user segments are.

Okay, so I'm going segment based on crypto-nativity or crypto-fluency, and I'm going to use the following metric to make it MECE: # of DeFi protocols they interact with on average per month.

Are you okay with this means of segmenting the user segment?

Sure, this seems fine.

Note to self:

I realize that checking in is actually a real skill. The interview often feels like a time to just bloviate, and I realize that it is a real skill not just for interviewing but in the doing of the job to work fast in real time.

Here is how I would break down the users

  1. 0 DeFi App
  2. 1 Crypto App, but Centralized (like a CEX)
  3. 1 DeFi app - which means has a wallet
  4. 2-3 DeFi - starting to use / curious
  5. 3+ Full on DeFi Degen (maybe I would adjust this to 5+ but I think this captures the general break down)