COINOTAG Exclusive Interview: Tether Co-Founder Reeve Collins on His New Project STBL — 7 Questions, 7 Answers

1. As a co-founder of Tether, what specific challenges or opportunities did you observe in the stablecoin market that directly inspired the creation of STBL, and what is your ultimate vision for its role in the Web3 ecosystem?

When we launched Tether, the goal was straightforward: prove that dollars could move on a blockchain. That was Stablecoin 1.0. It democratized access to dollars and introduced a new way to make global payments, but all of the value — the yield on reserves — stayed with issuers and banks. Users got utility, not upside.

STBL is the evolution. We designed a system where money is not only stable and fast but also productive, resilient, transparent, and fair. USST is a universal stablecoin. The YLD NFT captures the yield from high-quality collateral. $STBL is the governance token that lets the community set collateral, incentives, and integrations over time. By separating payments and yield, we preserve dollar-like liquidity while routing income back to the people who create and use the money.

My vision is for USST to become the foundation of Web3’s economy because it is the first stablecoin to truly deliver on the promise of Web3: those who contribute to the network reap the rewards of the network. USST has transparent on-chain reserves, efficient global settlement, and community ownership as the default. Individuals get spendable digital cash that doesn’t quietly tax them through lost yield. Institutions gain capital efficiency, using USST as collateral while keeping income through YLD. Enterprises and governments can build programmable money on sovereign-grade assets. First we proved dollars could move. Now we make dollars that move value back to the people.

2. The STBL Token Generation Event showed impressive initial growth. Could you elaborate on the project’s long-term tokenomics and the strategy to maintain value and utility beyond the initial listing hype?

The TGE was an important milestone, but we never designed $STBL for short-term hype. It’s built for long-term value accrual. In our model, 80% of the yield flows directly to the minters of USST, while about 20% supports protocol operations, with most of it cycling back to increase $STBL’s value through mechanisms like buybacks and burns.

Long-term value is reinforced by three flywheels. First is adoption: the more USST circulates as stable digital cash, the more yield is generated. Second is collateral expansion: today it’s Treasuries, tomorrow it’s a diversified mix of tokenized real-world assets. Third is ecosystem-specific stablecoins minted on top of USST, extending adoption even further.

This design means $STBL is not fueled by speculation but anchored in real usage, real yield, and community control. That’s what makes the three-token system sustainable long after the TGE.

3. The decentralized finance market is incredibly competitive. What is the core technological or strategic advantage of STBL that you believe sets it apart from other emerging projects?

STBL isn’t just another stablecoin, it’s a movement. Yes, USST is a universal stablecoin, but what makes it unique is that every time you use it, you know the value flows back to the community, not to a centralized issuer. That means you’re not just sending money, you’re voting for the original promise of Web3: those who contribute to the network reap the rewards of the network.

Technologically, the breakthrough is separating payments and yield. USST is pure digital cash, stable and composable anywhere in DeFi or TradFi. YLD is the yield layer, capturing the income from reserves and distributing it back to the community. That structure preserves stability while unlocking capital efficiency: you can spend or deploy USST freely while YLD ensures the yield is never lost.

Strategically, we built for durability. By keeping USST yield-free, it can circulate globally without being classified as a security. YLD, meanwhile, is distributed through a compliant framework. This balance means STBL scales safely across regulators, institutions, and everyday users.

So the advantage is philosophical. Using USST is a signal: you believe money should be transparent, efficient, and community-owned. That alignment of technology, strategy, and values is what sets STBL apart, and why it’s built to last.

4. How has your vast experience at Tether, including its successes and challenges, informed the way you’ve structured STBL, particularly regarding transparency, governance, and regulatory compliance?

Watching Tether and the other stablecoin entrants grow over the years, some obvious realities started to surface: utility drives adoption, resilience sustains it, and massive profits can be generated. Seeing all of that showed me exactly where the model needed to evolve.

With STBL, we hardwired transparency into the design. Reserves are tokenized Treasuries and money market funds, spread across multiple custodians, and visible on-chain in real time. No hidden banking risk, no opaque balance sheets, no “trust me” audits. Tether was a closed box; STBL is an open book.

And on compliance, we built a dual-token structure that balances freedom and regulation. USST circulates freely as global digital cash, while YLD NFT is distributed in a compliant, KYC-gated framework. That way, regulators get transparency where it’s required, and users retain privacy and censorship resistance where it matters most.

So the difference is simple: Tether proved stablecoins work. STBL proves they can work better — transparent, community-governed, and regulatory-resilient from day one.

5. Who do you envision as the primary user for the STBL ecosystem? Is it designed more for the individual DeFi user, institutional players, or perhaps even governments?

STBL benefits multiple user types, designed so each type of user gains in their own way.

For spenders, USST is a universal stablecoin — stable, liquid, and freely tradable. And when you use USST, you know it is benefiting the community. The yield from reserves isn’t captured by a corporation; it flows back to you or other community members through YLD.

For minters — the people who post RWAs as collateral to mint USST and YLD — they get the best of both worlds. Why would you ever use another stablecoin when you can mint your own?

Institutions would also be minters. They know that USST is transparent, tokenized collateral. Trading firms, funds, and banks can deploy it in lending, derivatives, or settlement markets, while YLD ensures the underlying yield remains productive. That creates capital efficiency you don’t get from legacy stablecoins.

For governments and enterprises, STBL provides the governance and infrastructure layer. USST acts as the universal base stablecoin, on top of which they can mint their own ecosystem-specific versions. Those tokens inherit universal acceptance because they are backed by USST, and if one ever needs to be retired or removed, it can be swapped seamlessly back into USST. This ensures programmability and interoperability without fragmentation. Ecosystem-specific stablecoins can be programmed with any rule set a government or enterprise requires, while USST itself remains completely unencumbered.

So adoption starts with individuals and institutions, but the architecture scales outward: individuals get digital cash, institutions get collateral, enterprises and governments get programmable money that can be universally accepted. That’s how STBL evolves from a token into the foundation of a new monetary system.

6. Looking ahead, what are the next 2-3 major milestones on the STBL roadmap that the community should be excited about in the coming year?

The next year is about proving STBL’s architecture in the real world, and three milestones stand out.

First is the full launch of Multi-Factor Staking. This is where our design of rewarding balance and commitment really comes alive. Users will be able to stake, time-lock, and co-lock assets in a way that is transparent, fair, and capital-efficient — without the runaway advantages that have plagued other systems.

Second is collateral expansion. Today USST is backed by Treasuries for maximum safety and trust. Next we are adding a broader set of tokenized real-world assets, from a wide variety of top-tier issuers. Each step makes USST more resilient and turns it into a truer reflection of the global economy itself.

Third is multi-chain native issuance of USST. Bridges are one of crypto’s biggest weaknesses. By issuing USST natively on multiple chains, all referencing the same collateral pool, we remove that fragility and give users liquidity everywhere they operate. That makes USST safer and far more scalable than legacy models.

7. What is the single most underestimated feature or potential of STBL that you believe will have the biggest impact over the next five years?

The most underestimated feature is the separation of payments and yield. It sounds simple, but it changes everything.

By keeping USST purely a payment token, we protect it from security classification risk and ensure it functions as true digital cash. By routing yield into YLD, we give the community access to income that used to be trapped at the issuer level. This design means liquidity isn’t sacrificed for returns — USST stays universally usable, while YLD makes the reserves productive.

That separation is the cornerstone of what I call Stablecoin 2.0. It’s what turns a stablecoin from static money into a capital-efficient, transparent, community-owned system. Over the next five years, I believe this model will become the new standard, just as 1:1 reserves became the standard after Tether.

In short: first-generation stablecoins proved money could move. STBL proves money can move and work — for everyone.