Heath Tarbert, Circle President | From Crypto Winter to IPO | Stablecoins, AI and the Future of Money

Two years after Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire joined us on Searching for Mana, Lloyd Wahed sits down with Circle President Heath Tarbert to pick up the story. Quite a lot has happened in between. Circle has gone public, stablecoins have moved firmly into the financial mainstream and the conversation has shifted from whether this technology matters to how large it can become. Heath has had a rare view of that journey. Before joining Circle, he served in the White House, chaired the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission and held senior roles at Citadel Securities. Today, he operates at the centre of one of the most important companies in digital finance. In this episode, Lloyd and Heath discuss the road through crypto winter, Circle’s IPO, the growing competition around USDC and what it takes to turn a long-term vision into a functioning global financial platform. They explore why new stablecoin entrants may validate rather than weaken Circle’s thesis, why consortium models often struggle, and how regulation is opening the door for stablecoins to move beyond crypto markets and into traditional finance. The discussion then turns to what happens when AI begins to move money for itself, from Circle’s internal transformation to a world of autonomous agents transacting at a scale and frequency humans never could. It also becomes a broader conversation about how to build through uncertainty: staying clear-eyed when conditions turn, holding onto conviction without drifting into fantasy, and finding the discipline to keep moving when the outcome is far from guaranteed. A wide-ranging conversation about money, policy, strategy and the infrastructure that could underpin the next era of finance. Very special thanks to: Ideaworks, Megapixel, Ventana and Superlumenary Work on view: 0xfff, Transaction Sculpture, 2025–26. Courtesy of Nguyen Wahed and the artist. FOLLOW ON X: @Circle @Lloydwahed @ideaworksgroup   @superlumenary   @0xShiroi @nguyenwahed