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We learned this week that Stripe and Circle are planning to launch their own L1 chains.

Ethereum community members were quick to question why corporations shouldn’t launch L2s instead.

Ethan Buchman has a simple explanation: Vertical integration is profitable.

Christian Catalini of Lightspark echoes this view in Forbes:

“… stablecoin issuers have strong incentives either to commoditize the rails — by issuing on multiple networks and positioning themselves at the center of interoperability across them — or to nudge most activity to a network they control. Either strategy gives…

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