Cloudwise Founder "Slaps His Own Face": From Slamming Stablecoins to Building Chains Hands-On

By Xiaobing, TechFlow

Jack Zhang likely never expected that the words he posted on X in June 2025 would go down as one of those quintessential 'proven wrong' quotes.

The post was written with absolute conviction. He stated: "I do not see any way for stablecoins to reduce fees. The exit channel costs from stablecoins to receiving currencies are far higher than the foreign exchange interbank market."

He followed up with an even harsher comment in the thread: "After 15 years, cryptocurrency has not solved a single real-world problem."

The author of the post was Jack Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Airwallex. At the time, this Melbourne-headquartered cross-border payment company was valued at $6 billion, held 80 financial licenses globally, covered 200 countries and regions, and had just surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue—giving him plenty of confidence to make such statements.

The reaction from the crypto community was predictably swift and aggressive.

Danion partner Omar Kanji mocked him, while Huma Finance co-founder Richard Liu penned a long-form rebuttal. Zhang finally made a minor concession in the comments: admitting that stablecoin wallets could serve as alternative payment methods in emerging markets.

Just 17 months later, on November 10, 2026, a blockchain company named Alta announced the closing of a $47.5 million Series A round led by Index Ventures, with participation from GV (Google Ventures), Blackbird Ventures, and Square Peg. Including its previous $32.5 million seed round, the company had raised a total of $80 million.

On the list of Alta’s co-founders stood a familiar name: Jack Zhang.

From Bearish Talk to Stepping Into the Ring

Zhang’s pivot did not happen overnight.

Following that June 2025 stablecoin spat, several major developments occurred in the global payments industry.

Stripe acquired the stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge for $1.1 billion, and subsequently co-incubated Tempo, a payment-specific public chain, alongside Paradigm.

Circle’s USDC hit an annual trading volume of $18.3 trillion in 2025, surpassing USDT. The total stablecoin market cap doubled from $150 billion to over $300 billion. More importantly, the US GENIUS Act and Hong Kong’s stablecoin regulations were successively implemented, and regulatory clarity suddenly opened the door for institutional players.

While publicly bearish, Zhang’s actions told a different story.

In early 2026, Airwallex quietly began assembling a stablecoin team under its core FX and liquidity division. The job posting was straightforward: integrate stablecoins into existing FX and payment systems so they operate on the platform just like any other fiat currency.

Also in early 2026, introduced by a mutual friend, Zhang met Loong Wang. This tech geek, who graduated from the Australian National University, founded Republic Protocol (later renamed Ren Protocol) in Canberra in 2017, a DeFi project for wrapping Bitcoin. Alameda Research acquired Ren in 2021. Wang left before the FTX collapse, then pivoted to quantum chemistry and drug discovery.

The two hit it off immediately. Zhang was already considering starting a blockchain company but needed a technical leader to helm it. In a later interview, Wang recalled that Zhang was actively thinking about the stablecoin space when they were introduced. They quickly became friends and decided to team up.

This "something" turned out to be Metal, which was later renamed Alta.

What Exactly Is Alta Doing?

Alta is not another general-purpose public chain; it is an L1 specifically designed for licensed financial institutions.

Zhang shared his reasoning for founding Alta on X, writing: "Discussions around stablecoins mostly focus on settlement speed and remittances. But viewed through the lens of financial market evolution and financial infrastructure development, there is a much more interesting opportunity."

Zhang’s core argument is this: buying a dollar-backed stablecoin with local currency is fundamentally an FX transaction. As adoption grows, stablecoins will create an entirely new USD liquidity market with its own spreads, pricing mechanics, and linkage to traditional FX markets. Stablecoins are not merely "cheap SWIFT"; they are developing into an independent financial market structure.

He then introduced the true "killer argument": programmability. He stated: "Stablecoins turn currency into a native software component, unlocking new paradigms for treasury management, automated settlement, and multi-party trade coordination, ultimately enabling autonomous trading by AI agents."

What does it take to achieve all this? Zhang provided his checklist: reliable liquidity, institutional-grade privacy, compliance, and seamless integration with local financial systems across different jurisdictions. None of these four requirements can be simultaneously met by any existing public chain.

CEO Loong Wang put it even more bluntly: "We wouldn't build an L1 unless we were completely backed into a corner." The implication is clear: neither Ethereum, Solana, nor any other L2 can meet the baseline privacy and compliance requirements of banks and payment companies.

Thus, Alta made a highly un-'crypto-native' technical choice: building its underlying architecture using recursive zero-knowledge cryptography. This approach allows on-chain transactions to verify compliance while protecting privacy: you can prove that a transaction adheres to the regulatory rules of a specific jurisdiction without exposing the identities or amount details of the counterparties.

In product design, Alta did several things traditional public chains refuse to do: it features a built-in programmable compliance layer supporting plug-and-play regulatory rules for different jurisdictions; identity and authorization systems are embedded directly into the protocol layer rather than relying on external oracles; and it even includes anti-airdrop functionality, preventing unauthorized addresses from sending funds to you. For banks, this last feature might be more important than any technological innovation.

Co-founder Catherine Porter, a former executive at Meta responsible for Libra (later Diem) partnerships, also served as a consultant for Mysten Labs and Aptos. Her appointment itself illustrates Alta’s strategic path: to bring the financial system onto the blockchain voluntarily, rather than to disrupt it.

Airwallex’s Role

Airwallex’s role in Alta goes far beyond simply leading the seed round.

According to Fortune, Airwallex is acting as a large-scale distribution channel for Alta, leveraging its global client network to drive adoption of the Alta platform for crypto transactions. Alta’s chain will integrate directly with Airwallex’s payment network, supporting stablecoin transfers and connecting to local fiat payment rails across 200 countries and 90 currencies.

This means a brand-new chain that just closed $80 million in funding starts its journey with a payment giant boasting $287 billion in annual transaction volume and $1.3 billion in annual revenue as a "design partner" and customer acquisition engine—a starting advantage almost unheard of in the public chain space.

Zhang himself provided a new narrative framework in the announcement: "With the rise of AI agent banking and programmable payments, stablecoins are becoming a crucial vehicle for settlement."

An Airwallex insider anonymously revealed a more grounded version to Forbes Australia: "Zhang hasn’t become a crypto convert. But client demand is rising and regulatory frameworks are clarifying, so he is willing to integrate this technology into the platform."

This is likely the most accurate assessment: Zhang’s core beliefs remain unchanged; this is simply a victory of commercial rationality.

Stripe Already Has the Lead

Zooming out to the competitive landscape makes it clear why Zhang felt he "had" to take action.

In October 2024, Stripe acquired stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge for $1.1 billion; at the end of 2025, it acquired wallet developer Privy, securing 75 million embedded wallets; in early 2026, it co-incubated the payment-specific chain Tempo with Paradigm, raising $500 million at a $5 billion valuation; Tempo launched its mainnet in March 2026 and now provides the underlying settlement layer for Stripe Treasury’s stablecoin features.

Stripe’s head of crypto has publicly stated that the company aims to become the "AWS of money."

It is indeed building a full-stack stablecoin infrastructure: Bridge handles issuance and fiat on/off-ramps, Privy manages wallets, and Tempo powers settlement. Layered together, Stripe can now handle everything from stablecoin minting to merchant-side payments without relying on any third parties.

Tempo’s design partner list includes OpenAI, Shopify, Visa, and Deutsche Bank. By November 2026, over 100 services had integrated Tempo’s mainnet.

For Airwallex, Stripe is no longer just a competitor in cross-border payments; it is now a rival in blockchain infrastructure too. If they stand idly by and stablecoin settlement becomes the standard for corporate payments, Airwallex risks being downgraded from "infrastructure" to "application layer," turning its payment network into a mere wrapper interface running on someone else’s chain.

Alta is Airwallex’s response to this threat, though the execution differs: while Stripe chose to build a fully integrated stack in-house, Airwallex opted for incubation, investment, and strategic partnerships.

A War Over Who Controls the Settlement Layer

The data in the stablecoin market hardly needs defense anymore. As of mid-2026, the total market cap exceeds $320 billion, with USDT holding 59% (approx. $187 billion) and USDC accounting for 24% (approx. $75 billion). On-chain trading volume for 2025 surpassed $33 trillion, with USDC clocking $18.3 trillion to surpass USDT’s $13.3 trillion.

But market cap and trading volumes are merely surface metrics. The real battleground lies at the settlement layer. Whoever controls the entire lifecycle of stablecoins—from minting and settlement to fiat off-ramps—holds the pricing power for the next generation of financial infrastructure.

This explains why payment companies are rapidly launching their own chains:

Stripe built Tempo, partnering with Paradigm at a $5 billion valuation. Circle developed Arc, providing native infrastructure for USDC’s cross-chain settlement. Fireblocks launched the Global Stablecoin Network, connecting on/off-ramps, liquidity, and compliance providers. Supported by Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and BNP Paribas, the Canton Network similarly targets on-chain settlement for licensed financial institutions.

Airwallex plus Alta represents the latest hand played at this table.

The consensus among these players is clear: stablecoins are not a "crypto product"; they are a new payment rail.

The race for payment rails has always been about whose network effects are stronger, whose compliance coverage is broader, and who can fastest bridge on-chain assets back to real-world bank accounts. Technical elegance is ironically the least important variable.

Some say Zhang's past words came back to haunt him. But if you closely examine his statements across both phases, a subtle consistency emerges: he has never been bullish on "cryptocurrency"; what he backs today is "tokenized fiat settlement infrastructure."

In his framework, stablecoins are not crypto; they are the on-chain manifestation of fiat currency.

This distinction may sound like splitting hairs, but it marks a massive paradigm shift underway: payment companies no longer view blockchain as a competitor or a scam, but as their own next-generation infrastructure. Stripe is doing it, Airwallex is doing it, and Visa and Mastercard are following suit.

Pragmatists are voting with their feet; belief is the least relevant factor.