Ford Broncos aside, cars no longer have much to do with horses. Yet we still measure engines in terms of “horsepower.”

The analogy was useful at first.¹ To explain a strange new machine to 19th-century ears, you reached for the familiar: This engine *slaps hood* can do the work of ten horses. The metaphor eventually became outdated, but it stuck anyway.

“Stablecoin” feels like that today. The term was born in crypto’s early, chaotic years, when wild volatility defined the space. Prices could swing 20% in the blink of an eye, making the technology unusable for everyday financial activity. If you wanted to send money, save, or lend, you needed something that didn’t behave like the Kingda Ka rollercoaster at Six Flags (RIP)….