When traditional financial elites and tech celebrities raise their glasses claiming to have found the “truth” about cryptocurrencies, they are committing a cognitive error they mistakenly believe is worth trillions of dollars.
(Background recap: Are stablecoins just “digital EasyCards”? A cognitive war that kills Taiwan’s crypto future)
(Additional background: GuoKe article » Three futures for New Taiwan dollar stablecoins: from night market EasyCards to “chip-based system”)

Table of Contents

• Look at countries with populations comparable to Taiwan
• EasyCard balance? Who recognizes it internationally
• Openness vs. closed systems, the importance of public trust
• Code is money: the overlooked programmable revolution
• The arrogance of old-timers surviving: invisible currency refugees
• Exposing the “energy consumption and scams” old narrative

Amid the noise of financial markets, nothing is more dangerous than a “seemingly perfect” analogy. Recently, Taiwan’s tech and finance circles staged a well-coordinated duet: a chairman of a financial holding company claimed “stablecoins are just offline stored-value cards,” followed by a well-known tech educator, Qu Bo Da Sheng, loudly echoing, as if discovering the emperor’s new clothes.

In their view, this global new asset class, with a market cap exceeding 300 billion USD and an annual trading volume of up to 46 trillion USD, is simply analogous to an offline stored-value system like the “EasyCard,” understood through a completely clueless analogy.

Of course, such rhetoric sounds reassuring coming from bank officials in air-conditioned offices. It simplifies the unknown into the known, reducing fears to familiar terms like “shadow banking.” However, as someone who has lived through the early days of crypto payments and the Trump era, witnessing how people in third-world countries rely on cryptocurrencies to avoid international trade risks and the erosion by major powers, I must ruthlessly point out: this is not only a “category error,” but also arrogance and cognitive laziness.

Look at countries with populations comparable to Taiwan

Thinking Taiwan can say such things is fortunate because we have the strong economic backing of TSMC and others, making the New Taiwan dollar one of the world’s strongest currencies. Consider how many countries with populations similar to Taiwan—such as El Salvador, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Romania, or even larger ones like Iran and Argentina—are all embracing cryptocurrencies and stablecoins to fight inflation.

When you are in a third-world country, lacking the economic strength to acquire more foreign reserve currencies, and your own currency is being squeezed through international trade by major powers, your national currency is almost destined to depreciate. Even countries like El Salvador lack international banking services. In such cases, their markets recognize the value of Bitcoin and stablecoins, sometimes at lower costs and risks than holding US dollars.

Because, without banks, where would the transactions and peer-to-peer transfers of the US dollar come from?
But Bitcoin and stablecoins have these features themselves.

Who recognizes EasyCard balance internationally

This is the key difference. Whether it’s central bank officials, state-owned bank executives, or well-known tech influencers claiming that stablecoins are just offline stored-value systems, such talk is typical of missing the forest for the trees. Of course, you can remotely store EasyCard balances and convince people in any country to buy this balance from you, but the other side (people in other countries) will definitely ask:

Where is the balance stored online? How can I trust you actually gave me the money?

In Taiwan, EasyCard balances are considered valuable assets. But internationally, they are far less recognized than USDT, USDC, and other widely accepted stablecoins. This exemplifies the value of public blockchains and their integration with the financial system, which is entirely different from private company chains or outdated security architectures (the old tech repeatedly rejected by Apple).

Since EasyCards themselves lack remote settlement functions and cannot be recognized as value by any country globally, how can EasyCards be equivalent to stablecoins?

Openness vs. closed systems, the importance of public trust

Stored-value cards like EasyCards are essentially “closed systems” accounting tools. Their code is proprietary and not open source. Their value flow is limited to authorized metro gates and partner stores. If cracked, they still need to be frozen via traditional banking systems.

In contrast, stablecoins are open-source smart contract code running on public blockchains, not relying on a single bank’s server but built on a decentralized ledger. This means a transfer of USDC or USDT can settle instantly from Tokyo to Buenos Aires at 3 a.m. on a Sunday, without any intermediary bank’s permission.

Money in an EasyCard is just a static number in a database. Hackers can infiltrate servers and modify it—something even high school students can do. Stablecoins, by nature, are decentralized balances that cannot be altered or cracked through a single point because they are backed by multiple copies of the ledger.

According to reports from a16z and Grayscale, by 2025, stablecoins will have an annual transaction volume of 46 trillion USD, nearly three times Visa’s volume.
Ask yourself: which “EasyCard” can handle settlement for global oil trade? Which “stored-value card” can become a liquidity pool for multinational corporations?

Reducing a “permissionless” global settlement protocol to a local “licensed” payment tool is not only narrow-minded but a fundamental misreading of the technology.

Code is money: the overlooked programmable revolution

Qu Bo and the chairman of Mega International Bank completely ignore the true killer application of stablecoins: “programmability” and “composability.” This is the most difficult cognitive gap for traditional finance people to cross.

It means money now has “Turing completeness.” Developers can embed stablecoins into smart contracts, setting complex logic. For example, in the future, you could easily deploy smart contracts using ChatGPT and Claude Code, automating business transactions and agreements:

When goods arrive at the port and are verified by IoT sensors, automatically release 50% of the payment; the remaining 50% enters an interest-bearing protocol.

In the world of decentralized finance (DeFi), stablecoins are the fundamental building blocks of “financial Lego.” Based on them, people have built automated market makers (AMMs), decentralized lending protocols (like Aave), and synthetic asset markets.

You cannot build an automated derivatives exchange “on top” of EasyCards, but you can rebuild the entire Wall Street on stablecoins. Ignoring this is like holding the first-generation iPhone and only seeing it as a “phone without physical buttons,” missing the ecosystem revolution brought by the App Store.

The arrogance of old-timers surviving: invisible currency refugees

The “unstable stablecoin” argument often comes from those living in financial privilege. For people in Taiwan or the US, stable fiat and accessible banking services make it hard to see the urgent need for stablecoins. But for Argentinians, Turks, or Nigerians, stablecoins are not “virtual gimmicks” but lifelines. When their national inflation exceeds 100% annually or they face strict capital controls, cryptocurrencies become their only means to counter government money printing and preserve assets.

This is the true value of technology’s neutrality. Traditional banking relies on cumbersome KYC and expensive cross-border remittances (averaging over 6%), shutting out billions of “unbanked” people worldwide. Stablecoins offer a low-cost, censorship-resistant alternative.

While we sit comfortably in Taipei, mocking Bitcoin as a Ponzi scheme, or attracting conservative traffic, we should think: why is UNHCR starting to pilot blockchain-based aid distribution? Because in war-torn, bankrupted ruins, decentralized value networks are the only functioning banks.

Exposing the “energy consumption and scams” old narrative

Finally, we must directly dismantle Qu Bo’s outdated and misleading attacks. He habitually confuses “Bitcoin’s high energy consumption” with “stablecoin operations,” which is technically extremely ignorant.

Most modern stablecoins are issued on efficient blockchains like Ethereum (PoS) or Solana. Solana can process thousands to tens of thousands of TPS per second, with single transactions consuming less energy than two Google searches. Criticizing 2026 stablecoin payment tech with Bitcoin’s 2012 PoW as “wasteful and inefficient” is like blaming Tesla electric cars for emissions, ignoring that the electricity may come from renewable sources.

Claims of “scams” and “money laundering” are also a logical fallacy. Cash is the preferred tool for money laundering and terrorism financing worldwide. Should we therefore abolish the New Taiwan dollar or US dollar? The root of scams lies in human nature and lack of regulation, not in the technology itself.

In fact, blockchain’s transparency (on-chain analytics) makes law enforcement much more effective at tracing flows than traditional underground exchanges. Stablecoin smart contract switches, like Tether’s, allow remote wallet locking, which can actually improve anti-fraud efforts.

When critics only resort to labels like “Ponzi scheme” or “tulip bubble” to attack a burgeoning industry they don’t understand, it reveals not the industry’s fragility but the stagnation of their own knowledge system.

History is always eerily similar. In 1995, the famous Newsweek declared the internet doomed to fail because “no one will buy things online.” Today, reducing stablecoins to EasyCards will similarly become a footnote in the long history of financial evolution.

This revolution isn’t about whether you believe in it, but whether you can truly feel its importance and the indispensable role of stablecoins and blockchain in the future world.

If you still don’t believe it now,