A NOTE FROM FORTUNE

When the dust settled from the Silicon Valley Bank failure in March, one depositor stood to gain the most from the government’s bailout: Circle, the crypto giant founded in 2013 by Jeremy Allaire. Circle had $3.3 billion trapped at SVB, a stunning total that represented 8% of the reserves for its dollar-backed stablecoin, USDC, and kicked off a panic that saw Circle lose its footing. Six months later, it still hasn’t recovered.

The so-called Crypto Winter lingers, but stablecoins still represent the best potential to bridge the worlds of blockchain and traditional finance. Lawmakers continue to clamor for stablecoin legislation, established companies like PayPal are dipping their toes into the competition, and boosters like Allaire claim that products such as USDC will remake the rails of global finance.

Despite Allaire’s optimism, the past months have not been kind to his dream of a payment revolution, with Circle losing market share to its chief rival, the offshore and unregulated Tether. I spoke with more than two dozen executives, competitors, regulators, and former employees to find out why Circle is losing the stablecoin wars, delving into the 10-year history of the company, its rocky partnership with Coinbase, and its own dubious relationship with regulators.

Allaire’s story is the classic tale of a tech founder trying to will his vision into existence through the “move fast and break things” approach—a strategy that may work well for social media companies, but proved disastrous for a bank-like firm with over $40 billion of assets under management. I provide new details on the fateful weekend in March that saw USDC depeg, and why traders are still wary to put their trust back in the company.

You can read the full story here.

FINANCE

How Tiger Global, one of the biggest backers of startups over the past decade, fell to earth

Tiger ‘cub’ Chase Coleman III’s firm backed the equivalent of a startup a day in 2021 at wild prices, helping inflate a venture bubble. Now the firm is facing a reckoning.

By Elon Musk’s own math, the company formerly known as Twitter has lost 90% of its value and could be worth just $4 billion

Musk posted the bleak financial assessment as part of a rant against the ADL.

There’s a housing shortage and an office glut. So why are there only 217 U.S. office-to-resi conversion projects in the pipeline?

Ongoing office-to-residential conversions are just a “drop in the bucket” of the projects to come, researchers say.

TECH

Google’s ‘chief decision scientist’ explains why she left the company and why business leaders’ choices about AI are so critical

As AI becomes more powerful and more prevalent across industries, Cassie Kozyrkov wants to teach industry leaders to make more informed choices about the technology.

Intuit cut hundreds of jobs and spent at least $20 billion in a massive bet on AI. Today the company is revealing its new virtual assistant

Will millions of tax filers and small-business owners trust personalized advice from AI?

LEADERSHIP

Leaders like David Zaslav show there’s a dark side to ‘managing up’ 

Managing up can be healthy, but the toxic version can hurt trust and innovation.

The Disney-Charter cable TV dispute could cost Disney up to $2.3 billion—it all depends on how many customers ditch cable for good

Disney is banking on Charter’s customers switching to streaming services that carry Disney-owned channels.

SUCCESS

Millennials didn’t kill the ‘organization man’ after all. Federal data reveals it was the boomers all along

The supposedly disloyal millennial really followed in the steps of younger boomers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds.

Women-led startups have more than doubled since COVID as women take their work-life balance into their own hands

Here’s why women are quitting the workforce to become entrepreneurs.

Fortune’s Impact Initiative conference (Sept.12-13) supports executives who manage the risks and growth opportunities that put people, the planet, and purpose at the core of their business strategies. Join leaders from PayPal, Cisco Systems, Meta, L’Oreal USA, and more.

Register here to join.