Jeremy Allaire, the co-founder and CEO of Circle, has recently expressed his extreme optimism about the future of cryptocurrency. He has been in the space for over 11 years and has seen the waves of innovation and technology adoption transform several industries and improve utility for people. He believes that cryptocurrency is the next logical infrastructure layer for the internet and that it is poised to catapult society and the economy forward in unprecedented ways.

In his post, Allaire highlighted the progress made in the industry, including the evolution of public blockchain infrastructure, breakthroughs in security, privacy, and scalability, and the explosion of stablecoins. He also noted the global political dimension of cryptocurrency, describing it as a matter of national competitiveness. He observed that governments worldwide are racing to establish frameworks that foster responsible innovation in the space.

Looking ahead, Allaire painted a picture of a world where digital tokens are widely used for incentives, governance, and record-keeping globally. He envisioned a future where a larger portion of finance and commerce is executed and intermediated by smart contracts on public chain infrastructure and where on-chain organizations consistently outperform legacy multinational corporations. In Allaire’s view, the next decade could see stablecoins accounting for 10% of global economic money, with credit intermediation shifting from fractional reserve lending to on-chain credit markets. This transition, Allaire suggested, could democratize access to credit and debt in ways comparable to how Amazon transformed commerce and Google’s AdWords revolutionized advertising.

Allaire’s optimism is not limited to the potential of cryptocurrency, but also to the progress made in the industry. He believes that the industry has made significant strides in recent years, despite the initial skepticism surrounding crypto. He noted that mainstream media focused on the "dark" side of the evolving sector, but the industry built a "massive, thriving, growing competitive, and innovative community" while the general public was unaware of the developments.

In conclusion, Allaire expressed his conviction that the developments in the cryptocurrency space are achievable within the next decade. He believes that the time goes by fast, but when you zoom out and look at what has been accomplished and how that sets us up for the future, it’s hard not to be insanely optimistic right now.