Excellent article by Christian Catalini. I believe that Tempo will ultimately fail, despite the massive amount of PR/marketing capital that Stripe can deploy. Bitcoin has been firmly established as the FTP of value exchange / money over the Internet. Layer 2 and 3 solutions (Lightning, Ark, Lightspark et al) are already scaling over the bedrock of Bitcoin as the Layer 1 blockchain. More L2s and L3s will emerge. Interoperability, layering, and competition among these layer 2 and 3 solutions is the crucible for excellence and global scaling. I believe that the critical blind spot for Stripe and other crypto payment tokens is that they are biased by their primary (almost exclusive) base in large capital markets AND the built in limitations of centrally-controlled deployment strategies. What Stripe and crypto token leaders do not grasp is that while they were in their corporate strategy rooms and labs concocting plans, the Bitcoin base layer was achieving escape velocity as the global base protocol (ie, the FTP). They also missed that layer 2 and 3 solutions were already being introduced and stress tested in many places far out of sight from Silicon Valley strategy rooms: in the markets and on the streets of Africa and Latin America; among diverse networks of human rights activists and others circumnavigating capital controls and censorship; and, at the desks of small business owners and other entrepreneurs insightful enough to see niche, early-mover opportunities presented by Bitcoin (what @Peter McCormack coined as the Bitcoin “cheat code”). Ultimately, what enabled and will continue to cement the role of Bitcoin as the base protocol — the layer 1 blockchain — for digital payments is the fact that it is open-source, decentralized, and globally distributed. My prediction: within the next few years the ghost of Libra will have a fresh companion in the ghost of Tempo. https://www.forbes.com/sites/christiancatalini/2025/09/05/stripes-tempo-and-the-ghost-of-facebooks-libras-past/