Loosely held view: there are three independent trends that seem favorable for stablecoins being the big winner in this crypto winter.

1. High interest rates make it a good biz

2. US federal legislation likely in the next 12 months; would make traditional FIs more comfortable

3. Developer infra being built out now

One scenario is PayPal (+Venmo) and Square (Cash App) allow for USDC send / receive. Now the fintech consumer platforms are as interoperable as Zelle. Add Stripe and Shopify as USDC friendly.

Also means you could in theory create a Visa competitor based on stablecoin rails. Start with e-commerce.

All of those platforms already KYC every user. Cash App is already a Bitcoin wallet.

would they have to kyc every user? or can they operate as a wallet?

There are a bunch, but 2 very strong ex-Coinbase teams that deeply understand the fintech / regulatory plumbing (which is the hard part, imo):

building families as ED and cofounder of The Surrogacy Foundation; pfp /beans

There are a bunch, but 2 very strong ex-Coinbase teams that deeply understand the fintech / regulatory plumbing (which is the hard part, imo):

https://bridge.xyz

https://www.witheisen.com

What are the top dev infra companies you are watching?

Agreed on all your assumptions! It's likely that Fintechs of this caliber will issue their own stablecoins to retain their treasury economics and utilize USDC or alternative to interoperate between platforms.