“Today, there's about 190 currencies around the world. My view is that 10, 20 years from now, those 190 will be maybe 10, because the fiscal situation in so many countries around the world is so dire that a lot of that fiat money is not real money.”
Invest Like the Best (Patrick O'Shaughnessy) · Money & Markets · October 2026
Asked which outside changes to the global financial system he watches most, Vélez names the end of cash, open banking, and crypto with stablecoins. He expects billions of people to bank in an offshore system of dollar stablecoins and Bitcoin alongside their local one.
Transcript
…can now be automatized and be done by model versus a human. That's what AI is also enabling. So it kind of let us do what we were already doing at a much more significant scale. But the culture itself already existed since we saw this as a way to differentiate ourselves since the very beginning.
How do you think the global financial system will change the most or needs to change the most in the next five years, totally away from your business? Like what are the exogenous changes that you're most carefully watching that you think matter?
…of the fiat system in your country with a global offshore system. Your lives go in between without you even realizing this. For a lot of countries around the world, it's really important. You've seen with the usage of access to Bitcoin, for example, stablecoins, increasingly they want to bank in the offshore system. They don't trust their banking system. They don't trust their fiat currency. Today, there's about 190 currencies around the world. My view is that 10, 20 years from now, those 190 will be maybe 10, because the fiscal situation in so many countries around the world is so dire that a lot of that fiat money is not real money. This is basically crypto tokens. So increasingly, billions of people are going to be banking on the offshore world, US stablecoin, but also Bitcoin and other type of assets. You see these two parallel systems interrelating with each other across the world.
If you had to think about the US dollar and its importance, if it goes from 190 to 10 or something, do you think the US dollar is the reserve currency 10 years from now? Is it one of a few? What do you think its role will be in the world?
There are two sides of that argument. You can make the case U.S. stablecoins ultimately will be the big savior or one of the biggest saviors of the US dollar because it democratizes access to the US dollar. And while the fiscal situation in the US is not great and it's deteriorating fast, it's…
What's the most surprising thing, do you think, about the move away from cash? What would I not appreciate about the implications of that or how long it would take? Like what's surprising about going cashless?
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