Nik’s FinTech Origin Story

Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, sits down with Nik Milanović, Founder and FinTech Enthusiast in Chief of This Week in FinTech, a global community of more than 200,000 members, and the founder of StableCon, the first conference built exclusively around stablecoins and payments. Nik also serves as a General Partner at The FinTech Fund, where he invests in the next generation of FinTech startups.

Stablecoins have spent years being called either the future of money or a passing trend. What's changed isn't just the hype cycle: it's the regulatory foundation underneath it. The passage of the GENIUS Act, the repeal of SEC guidance SAB 121 on crypto custody, and a visible shift in how banks and financial institutions are engaging with stablecoins have moved this conversation from theoretical to operational. Banks that were quietly watching are now building. Companies that had no public stablecoin strategy 12 months ago are now processing stablecoin transactions in more than 150 countries.

But here's what's worth paying attention to: the version of stablecoins that actually reaches everyday people won't look like what the original crypto community envisioned. No seed phrases. No self-custody. No libertarian utopia. What mass adoption looks like is a Stripe-powered merchant settlement that runs on blockchain rails while the customer sees something that looks exactly like a credit card transaction. As Nik puts it, "the revolution has to become a lot more boring first."

That's not a failure of the original idea. That's how every major technology shift has played out, from radio to the internet. The infrastructure gets built, the guardrails go in, the corporates arrive, and what was once radical becomes routine.

The same pattern is showing up in how banks and FinTech companies are working together. The old model of banks acquiring technology companies and absorbing them in-house has largely failed. What's replacing it is a partnership model: tech-forward institutions like FinWise, Column Bank, and Cross River Bank figuring out how to extend their capabilities without overreaching their charters. The tension between "you're either a bank or a tech company" has given way to something more practical.

That shift in thinking is exactly what Nik built StableCon around. After six years of running This Week in FinTech and hearing repeated calls to launch a conference, the case for yet another general FinTech or crypto event wasn't there. There are more than 250 conferences globally with FinTech in the title. What didn't exist was a conference sitting at the specific intersection of banking, FinTech, and crypto, focused entirely on stablecoins: not asset price speculation, not blockchain theory, but the actual infrastructure of how money moves.

The conference was announced January 17, 2025. It ran May 29 in New York City. That's five months to plan, hire, sell tickets, and pull off an inaugural event in one of the most expensive cities in the world. At the start of May, only 400 tickets had been sold. In the final two weeks, 500 more sold as word spread and people realized they needed to be in the room. Final attendance: more than 1,000.

What the event revealed was as important as the numbers. Attendees were so focused on meeting each other that many skipped the general sessions entirely. That's not a failure: that's what happens when you gather a thousand people who are actually working in the same ecosystem and give them a room for the first time. The feedback confirmed it: StableCon filled a gap that BTC Vegas, Token2049, Permissionless, Money 2020, Consensus, Finovate, and FinTech Nexus weren't filling.

The next StableCon US is expanding to three days, moving to Washington, DC at the Gaylord at National Harbor, and shifting to September to avoid scheduling conflicts. The goal is to bring in policy participants, regulators, law firms, and accounting firms alongside the operators, reflecting where the stablecoin conversation is actually heading.

The current phase of stablecoin adoption has a name: skeuomorphic. Just like early apps made digital wallets look like leather wallets to make them feel familiar, today's stablecoin products largely rebuild what already exists on traditional rails. ACH replaced by stablecoin settlement. Wires replaced by on-chain transfers. The form looks the same; the infrastructure underneath is different.

What comes after that phase is where things get genuinely interesting. Programmable payments with instructions built directly into the transaction. Conditional transfers that can't be replicated on analog rails. On-chain escrow, disputes, and chargebacks managed without customer service departments. Collateral composed from tokenized holdings across multiple asset classes, combined into a single deposit without requiring conversion into dollars first.

That future isn't fully visible yet. As Nik says, "the coolest products that are built with stablecoins are products that we can't envision yet." What is visible is the direction: stablecoin rails becoming infrastructure people use without knowing it's there.

For FinTech founders navigating all of this, Nik closes with one clear piece of advice: don't lose sight of the big picture. It's easy in FinTech to start solving a surface-level problem, discover a deeper infrastructure issue beneath it, and keep drilling down until the original purpose disappears. The work of building better financial products requires holding both: the immediate technical problem and the reason you started solving it in the first place. And, critically, doing it in a way that stays compliant.

Key Highlights

Banks Are Finally Moving

Banks and financial institutions are actually making inroads into working with digital assets and stablecoins. After the event, we've got the passage of the GENIUS Act. I can only see a path moving forward with that, but the revolution has to become a lot more boring first. The revolution's getting co-opted, and in a way, this is a great thing.

500 Tickets in Two Weeks

At the start of May, we had only sold 400 tickets, and then in the last two weeks alone, I think we sold 500 tickets.

The Moment FinTech Became Real

The attempted Visa acquisition of Plaid in early 2020 forced the entire industry to stop and ask a question nobody had seriously considered before: can a tech company actually become a scaled financial institution? When the deal fell apart, the answer became impossible to ignore. That single moment shifted how investors, founders, and banks looked at what was actually being built.

The Deal That Changed Everything

Before 2020, the prevailing belief was that building a scaled financial services company required a bank charter, a fund structure, or a major institutional sponsor. The attempted Visa acquisition of Plaid shattered that assumption. When the deal collapsed and everyone started asking why it mattered, the answer was impossible to ignore: a tech company had quietly built something so valuable that one of the world's largest payment networks was willing to pay billions to own it. That single moment rewired how investors, founders, and banks thought about what was actually possible in fintech.

Stablecoins Must Get Boring

Stable coins, crypto, digital assets, they take off if you actually make them accessible to large institutional owners and corporates and retail investors and mom and pops. But that means that you need to add guardrails, and it's not gonna be like this libertarian Bitcoin vision where you self custody your wallet. It's gonna be a very, very boring mass market vision.

250 Conferences, One Gap

With over 250 FinTech-related conferences already competing for attention globally, launching another general event made no sense. The stablecoin space sat at a unique intersection of banking, FinTech, and crypto with no flagship conference to call its own. That gap was the only reason worth building something new.

When Disaster Became the Highlight

Two high-profile speakers dropped out within 36 hours of the conference. What could have derailed the entire event turned into one of the most talked-about sessions of the day. The unplanned replacement session delivered an hour of raw, unscripted conversation that attendees called the standout moment of StableCon.

A Decade of Groundwork Is Paying Off

JPMorgan has been running on-chain transaction experiments for close to ten years through its Onyx platform. The technology was never the problem; regulatory clarity was the missing piece. Now that the blessing has arrived, an institution at that scale turning on stablecoin settlement becomes one of the most significant signals in the market.

Stripe Flipped in 12 Months

In 2024, Stripe had no meaningful public stablecoin initiatives. By the end of 2025, after acquiring Bridge, Stripe had enabled stablecoin transactions for merchants across roughly 150 countries. That shift from zero presence to global stablecoin infrastructure in under 12 months shows exactly how fast this space can move when a major player commits.

The Advice Every Founder Needs

FinTech founders consistently start by solving one problem, only to discover deeper infrastructure issues underneath it that pull focus further and further from the original goal. The founders who build lasting companies are the ones who stay anchored to the outcome they set out to deliver, even as the technical complexity grows. Keeping the big picture in front of you at every stage of the build is what separates products that matter from ones that get lost in the stack.

Five Key Takeaways

1️⃣ Stop Waiting for Perfect Regulations

The GENIUS Act passed. SAB 121 is repealed. The regulatory foundation is in place right now. If you are a bank, a FinTech, or a founder still sitting on the sidelines waiting for clarity, you are already behind. Start building to the framework that exists today.

2️⃣ Check Your Conference Strategy

There are over 250 FinTech conferences globally. If you are sponsoring, speaking, or attending events that put you in a room with everyone instead of the right people, you are wasting budget. Find the events built around your exact niche and show up there instead.

3️⃣ Watch the Card Programs

Eight stablecoin-linked card programs launched or announced in a single year. Cards are the first product step before broader stablecoin adoption follows. If you want to know where the real traction is happening right now, track who is launching card programs tied to stablecoins.

4️⃣ Build Partnerships, Not Ownership

Banks that tried to buy and absorb tech companies watched those investments fail. If you are a bank or a FinTech looking to grow, find a partner who complements what you already do instead of trying to own and control the entire stack.

5️⃣ Ladder Back to Your Why

Before you ship your next feature or chase the next infrastructure problem, ask yourself if it connects back to the original value you set out to deliver. If you cannot draw a straight line from what you are building to a better outcome for your customer, stop and reorient.

TLDR

Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, sits down with Nik Milanović, founder of This Week in FinTech and StableCon, to break down exactly what this regulatory shift means for banks, FinTech founders, and anyone building in the stablecoin payments space right now.

They cover why stablecoin adoption depends on becoming invisible infrastructure, how the current phase of stablecoin products is rebuilding existing rails before unlocking truly new capabilities, and what the surge of stablecoin-linked card programs signals about where the market is heading. Nik also pulls back the curtain on launching a thousand-person conference in five months, what the attendee behavior revealed about the state of the industry, and the one piece of advice every FinTech founder needs to hear before their next build.

Links & Resources

Guest

Nik Milanović

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikm/

This Week in FinTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/this-week-in-fintech/

This Week in FinTech Website: https://www.thisweekinfintech.com/

StableCon Website: https://stablecon.com/

Host

Tedd Huff

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teddhuff/

Fintech Confidential

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@fintechconfidential

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Newsletter: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

X: https://x.com/FTconfidential

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential

Supporters

Dfns - Wallets as a service provider offering API-first, multi-chain digital asset infrastructure with security, compliance, key orchestration, and blockchain integration for fintech platforms and custodians - fintechconfidential.com/dfns

Skyflow - Zero trust data privacy vault delivered as an API; collect, secure, and tokenize personal information like card data and payment details with built-in PCI, CCPA, GDPR, and SOC 2 compliance - skyflowsecure.com

Hawk AI - Real-time payment screening, ML transaction monitoring, and dynamic customer risk rating tools designed to fight fraud and financial crime while reducing false positives - gethawkai.com

Timestamped Chapters

00:00 Episode Highlights

01:36 Welcome to Fintech Confidential

01:44 Dfns: Wallets as a Service

03:05 Meet Nik Milanović

08:44 Nobody Was Calling It FinTech

10:21 The Deal That Changed Everything

13:10 Banks and Tech Stopped Competing

16:02 Digital Assets Finally Come In From Cold

18:15 How Crypto Gets Mainstreamed

22:46 Why StableCon Had to Exist

25:20 Stablecoins Replace the Fax Machine

26:47 Five Months to Launch a Conference

28:04 The Moment We Knew It Worked

28:34 Skyflow: Data Privacy Vault

29:34 Nobody Went to the Sessions

31:39 NYC Logistics and What Comes Next

34:12 Speakers Dropped and Nobody Noticed

35:27 How Leaders Really View Stablecoins

37:51 Stripe Shopify AWS Walmart All In

39:46 Why Stablecoins Still Look Like ACH

45:11 Programmability Changes Everything About Money

46:59 Stablecoins Go Mainstream and Feel Boring

51:59 The One Thing Every Founder Needs

54:43 Wrap Up and Subscribe

56:45 Hawk AI: Fighting Fraud and Financial Crime

57:31 Disclaimer

About

Guest Bio

Nik Milanović is the Founder and FinTech Enthusiast in Chief of This Week in FinTech, the largest global fintech community with more than 234,000 subscribers across six continents. He started the newsletter in 2019 as an internal team email at Petal and grew it into one of the most widely read fintech publications in the world. He is also the General Partner at The Fintech Fund, an early-stage venture fund focused on underserved fintech verticals globally, and the founder of StableCon, the first conference built exclusively around stablecoins and payments, which drew more than 1,000 industry leaders to New York City in its inaugural year. Before building This Week in FinTech, Nik was the first U.S. employee at Funding Circle, led Business Development and Strategy at Google Pay and Google Finance, and held a strategy role at Petal. He studied at Stanford University and has spent more than 15 years working at the intersection of fintech, payments, and financial inclusion.

Host Bio

Tedd Huff is CEO of Voalyre, a fintech advisory firm, and founder of Fintech Confidential. Over the past 25+ years, he has contributed to fintech startups as an Advisory Board Member, Co-Founder, and Chief Experience Officer, providing strategic and tactical direction for global companies. His expertise focuses on growth while delivering process improvements and user experience-driven value to simplify the complexity of payments. As host and executive producer of Fintech Confidential, Tedd brings entertaining and informative content focused on fintech industry insights, market trends, and stories from fintech leaders, thinkers, and doers. He is a recognized thought leader and U.S. Army veteran known for making complex financial technology approachable and engaging through his conversational storytelling style and deep understanding of global payments, cross-border transactions, and payment localization.

DD3 Media

DD3 Media is a media creation, management, and production company delivering engaging content globally. The company produces Fintech Confidential and other shows focused on the people, tech, and companies changing how money moves.