Stablecoins - what the hell are they?

This episode places stablecoins inside the show's framework — tools that borrowed Bitcoin's open digital rails while keeping a centralized issuer, extending the dollar's reach without changing what the dollar fundamentally is. It surfaces the tension between near-term utility for billions seeking USD access and the longer-term reality that stablecoin demand recycles back into US debt, prolonging the system it appears to upgrade. The register lands on a single distinction — permissioned versus permissionless — and what that divide means for human sovereignty.