The Big Whale Future of Finance - June 2026

TL;DR

• European Parliament's 43–14 endorsement of the digital euro is symbolically strong, but both speakers see the 2029 timeline as a non-starter in a market that is moving on a monthly cycle.
• Höptner reframes the debate: digital euro vs. stablecoins is a category error — the digital euro competes with PayPal, Visa and Mastercard (e-money); stablecoins target Swift (cross-border, capital optimisation, trade finance).
• Post-GENIUS yield debate is overblown — with ~4-minute redemption round-trips and yield-bearing tokenised RWAs coming online, stablecoins become a messaging layer between yield-bearing positions, not the yield-bearing instrument itself.
• Qivalis (37 banks, Fireblocks custody) raises two open questions: the incentive structure for member banks to migrate liquidity off their own balance sheets, and US-tech-stack dependency in the wake of the Fable 5 shutdown.
• Distribution is the real European gap — not because the tech is missing, but because European banks are not offering institutional wallets to corporate clients and capital flows into US infrastructure providers at a velocity European builders cannot match.

Speakers:

• Alexander Höptner – AllUnity, CEO (issuer of EUR, SEK and CHF stablecoins)
• Elie Naba – Meridyan, CEO & Founder
• Aleksandar Bukovski – The Big Whale, Host & moderator

The Digital Euro Vote & the Wrong-Instrument Problem

The European Parliament's 43–14 endorsement of the digital euro on 24 June is, on paper, a decisive political signal. Both speakers agreed the underlying motivation — payment sovereignty independent of US rails — is legitimate. Neither agreed that the proposed instrument is the right answer.

Implementation costs are estimated at €14–19 billion, with go-live still targeted for 2029. SEPA Instant already exists, is free, and is universally accessible. Stablecoins, tokenised deposits and now a retail CBDC layered on top create a maintenance burden European banks will struggle to absorb. The end-user case remains undefined.

Höptner: "It's a waste of time and resources."

Naba: "I don't still see the use cases for a digital euro."

Höptner's sharper framing came later, in response to an audience question: comparing the digital euro to stablecoins is a category error. The digital euro is being built to compete with PayPal, Visa and Mastercard — i.e. with e-money. Stablecoins, as tokenised e-money tokens, are targeting Swift — cross-border settlement, capital optimisation, trade finance. Different layers, different problems, different incumbents.

Höptner: "Stable coins are targeting Swift. A totally different layer."

The Yield Debate Is a False One

The GENIUS Act's prohibition on direct interest payments to token holders has dominated commentary, but Höptner and Naba both pushed back. The relevant question is no longer whether the stablecoin itself pays yield — it is what yield-bearing instrument sits next to it. AllUnity's round-trip redemption time is approximately four minutes. With tokenised money market funds and other yield-bearing RWAs maturing, the friction cost of moving cash in and out of yield is collapsing.

Naba's framing: stablecoins were never designed to trap liquidity. As tokenised RWAs scale, the stablecoin reverts to its native function — a messaging and settlement layer between yield-bearing positions. Capital circulates; it does not park.

Höptner reinforced the point with a treasurer's lens: even on a traditional corporate bank account, cash earns nothing. The treasurer has to actively move it overnight to capture yield. The expectation that stablecoins should embed yield natively misreads how institutional cash management already works.

Höptner: "All this discussion about stablecoins not paying interest is a false discussion."

Naba: "Stablecoins would just become a messaging layer between one yield-bearing asset and another."

On the business model: Höptner sees two durable revenue lines for issuers — reserve income on the float, and per-transaction fees on cross-border and trade-finance flows. Even at 2–5 bps, European trade-balance volumes make this material. Any "technical integration fee" regulators may eventually permit is incremental, not foundational.

Stablecoins vs. Tokenised Deposits: When Each Wins

An audience question - why use stablecoins rather than tokenised deposits for settlement of asset management transactions — drew an aligned response from both speakers. Tokenised deposits work cleanly inside a single-bank ecosystem: bank issues the deposit token, bank custodies the security, bank settles. No stablecoin needed.

The model breaks the moment liquidity has to be pooled across multiple banks to make a tokenised security liquid. Each bank's deposit token sits inside its own infrastructure; cross-bank settlement requires a unified cash leg. Stablecoins fill that gap.

Naba: "Tokenised deposits don't work because you need a unified cash leg to actually make the exchange happen."

Höptner: "Deposit token in the universe, fantastic. Stable coins for cross-border."

Qivalis and the Stack-Sovereignty Question

Naba's view on Qivalis — the 37-bank European euro stablecoin consortium with Fireblocks as custody provider — was respectful but structurally skeptical. The unanswered question is the incentive structure: what motivates any individual member bank to migrate liquidity off its own balance sheet and into a shared issuance vehicle? Without a clear distribution and economic-share model, the project risks becoming a defensive hedge against stablecoin growth rather than a competitor for liquidity.

Naba: "What is the incentive for that? That is still unclear for me."

Naba's second point cut to the sovereignty question. Following the abrupt US shutdown of Fable 5, European institutional buyers can no longer treat infrastructure dependencies as neutral. A MiCA-compliant, euro-denominated stablecoin running entirely on US tech — Fireblocks for custody, US-domiciled cloud, US oracle providers — is only partially sovereign. The relevant assessment is the entire stack, not just the token.

Naba: "The whole point is reducing reliance on foreign tech providers."

Höptner's position was complementary: Europe is in a phase where fragmentation is inevitable, and the market will eventually sort which players are best suited to which use cases. Qivalis for inter-bank, AllUnity for cross-border, SG Forge for asset-management ecosystems, Monerium and Quantoz for retail-adjacent flows. Consolidation will follow — but only if European players can hold the field long enough to reach it.

Höptner: "We need maybe two, max three" privately-issued euro stablecoins in the long run.

Non-USD Stablecoins & the Agentic Payments Case

AllUnity's recent SEK launch — alongside existing EUR and CHF products — was used to test whether non-USD stablecoins have a structural rationale or are one-off curiosities. His answer: structural, and increasingly so.

Two arguments. First, the Nordics' cross-border trade balance is large enough to justify a tokenised SEK rail; trade-finance flows do not need to be routed through USD if the underlying counterparties are European. Second — and more interesting — agentic payments will require micropayments in the user's home currency. AI agents transacting on behalf of Swedish consumers will not detour through USD to buy a piece of content. For smaller currencies, tokenisation also removes FX frictions imposed by legacy rails — making smaller currencies more competitive on-chain than they are off-chain.

Höptner: "Tokenisation strengthens smaller currencies — it takes the frictions out of the process."

On Japan: a recent regulatory shift now permits foreign-issued stablecoins to be approved through a specialised broker-dealer license, removing the requirement for local issuer structures. The Taiwan model is similar. Within Japan, large banks are leaning toward deposit tokens for retail and stablecoins for cross-border, trade finance and capital optimisation — a structural mirror of the European framing.

The Missing Wallet Layer

Naba framed Meridyan's value proposition: rather than asking banks to rebuild their core to support on-chain transactions, Meridyan ingests existing ISO 20022 / SEPA messages, translates them, and executes on-chain. The customer experience stays IBAN-to-IBAN; the settlement leg moves onto blockchain rails. The same technology enables IBAN-embedded on-chain wallets, letting banks bring tokenised assets and stablecoins to clients without ripping out two decades of infrastructure.

Naba: "Banks took the last 20 years to implement ISO standards. Don't ask them to rebuild — translate."

Höptner's framing was complementary and uncompromising: no wallet, no asset. No tokenised security, no deposit token, no stablecoin, no digital euro means anything to a corporate client who cannot custody it inside their existing banking relationship. Today, European banks are routing institutional clients to Coinbase to access digital assets.

Höptner: "Without a wallet, nothing happens."

Höptner: "If that is what we understand under sovereignty, we're on the wrong ship."

The structural problem, both agreed, is not technological. Europe has the talent, the protocols, and the regulatory framework. What it lacks is capital flowing into European builders at the velocity US infrastructure providers — Stripe, Bridge, Privy, Coinbase — have enjoyed. Without that, the US stack will continue to set the pace, and European banks will increasingly act as customers of US rails rather than operators of their own.

Naba: "Europe has the talent, the universities, the developers. It's a matter of unlocking the capital."

Höptner: "That ship has sailed unless we make it very easy for banks to onboard. Otherwise a lot of banks will die over time."

Fragmentation Now, Consolidation Later

The session closed on a structural point both speakers endorsed. Europe will see fragmentation across digital euro, deposit tokens, stablecoins and CBDC variants before it sees consolidation. That is not a failure mode — it is how a market of 450 million people with multiple regulatory frameworks discovers which players fit which use cases. The risk is not fragmentation per se. The risk is that European players run out of capital before the consolidation phase, leaving the field to US incumbents who arrive with deeper pockets and multi-year head starts.

Höptner: "Fragmentation is inevitable. The question is whether we hold the field long enough to consolidate."