At Stablecon 2026, Notabene CEO Pelle Brændgaard joined Simon Taylor (Tempo), Tyler Sherwin (BVNK), and moderator Tedd Huff (Fintech Confidential) for a panel on the stablecoin sandwich — the model where fiat goes in one side, stablecoins settle in the middle, and fiat comes out the other.

The conversation covers where the model works, where it breaks down, and what comes after it. Pelle makes the case that the strongest product-market fit today is the "open-face sandwich" — transactions where one side has already gone stablecoin-native — and argues that corridor-by-corridor expansion is re-implementing the worst parts of correspondent banking. Simon Taylor draws parallels to the early internet and Clayton Christensen's innovator's dilemma. Tyler Sherwin shares how BVNK approaches the operational reality of scaling across geographies without trying to own the full stack.

The panel closes with a pointed exchange about why banks treat stablecoin-based payments as high-risk remittance, and what that says about the economics of risk categorization.

Key moments

1:33 — Pelle introduces Notabene as a SWIFT-like network for crypto and explains why stablecoins on public blockchains are the first truly open-loop payment system ever built.

4:04 — Simon defines the stablecoin sandwich: fiat in, stablecoin settlement, fiat out — and why the model has been so successful for markets outside the G20.

5:46 — Pelle on the open-face sandwich: why the strongest product-market fit is where one side of the transaction has already gone native, and why the full sandwich is a temporary measure. ("I'm Danish. In Denmark we have open-face sandwiches.")

7:30 — Tyler on real-world corridors: how BVNK handles fiat on-ramps across three major currencies and lets local providers handle the last mile.

9:58 — Simon on treasury use cases: why bank holidays and weekend closures cost global PSPs real money, and how stablecoins solve the liquidity gap.

11:30 — Pelle on the corridor trap: how stablecoin companies have been forced to re-implement the worst parts of correspondent banking — prefunding, bilateral agreements, corridor-by-corridor expansion — instead of building product. ("Let's just go full keto.")

14:23 — Pelle on why banks require more KYC than regulation demands: the fiat partners on both sides treat the stablecoin sandwich as high-risk remittance, limiting the open-loop benefits that make stablecoins valuable in the first place.

15:23 — Simon Taylor: "You ever noticed how banks have high-risk categories that are also not very profitable? Just an observation."

18:22 — Simon on the innovator's dilemma: how stablecoins serve the underserved and overcharged — exactly the pattern Clayton Christensen described — and why what starts out looking uninteresting to incumbents tends to become dominant.

25:26 — The panel on going breadless: what it takes to bake trust into the network itself, why crypto needs its SSL moment, and the Dee Hock quote about Visa's founding insight — that the primary job of the network was to identify the customer with the merchant and the merchant with the customer.

Go deeper

Pelle wrote an extended analysis of the stablecoin sandwich model and why it has a shelf life: The Stablecoin Sandwich Had a Good Run.