We go deep into stablecoins, the idea and practice of which have been around for a while, but a few things have happened this summer to make the matter catch major momentum. To parse through these developments (especially the US GENIUS Act), outlook, and risks, we welcome back Eswar Prasad, the Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy and Professor of Economics at Cornell University. We touch on the stablecoin tech stack, legislations being passed around the world, international dimensions, use case, regulatory risks, and potential disruptions to central banking and traditional finance. Eswar wrote an excellent piece on the Financial Times recently on this topic. Kopi Time extends those thoughts.

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Mark Domitrak, CT Group’s head of research, spends his time figuring out the pulse of consumers and corporate boardrooms. In this wide ranging podcast, he explains how his team makes polls informative and useful at a time when people are anxious and not as responsive to traditional approaches. He then offers insights into consumer and business sentiment on issues ranging from cost of living to trade war, China-US relationship to forces of fragmentation. We discuss the ongoing evolution in company strategies, and how they vary across regions. These strategies involve upholding core values while being pragmatic and realistic. Whether it is climate change, trade war, future of jobs amid tech disruption, or managing China, there is a lot to consider in assessing the outlook. Mark’s insights are clarifying in this context.

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Having been an avid consumer of the output of Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) for a few years, I have been keen to have its co-founder, Lauri Myllyvirta, on Kopi Time. Lauri delivers a tour de force here, going over the state of green transition in the US, Europe, China, and other emerging markets while taking into account geopolitics and regulation. We discuss wind, solar, nuclear, and hyrdo generation, while putting coal and gas into context. We also go over climate tech, touching on promising technologies. Lauri ends the discussion by explaining India and Indonesia’s climate change journey. Regardless of sometime conflicting signals from policy makers, climate finance and tech, green innovation and adoption, will go ahead; dedicated analysts like Lauri are on the right side of history.

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