The princess stated that this ride was too intense, going in the wrong direction. The initial business hypothesis was incorrect, thinking that the more users liked using the card, the more money they would deposit... (Background: Infini Card announced the cessation of all U Card services, further details on withdrawals, top-ups, and Earn services) (Context: Why? During this crypto cycle, many U Cards and bank co-branded payment cards?) The idea of "simplifying DeFi earnings" has never changed; Infini has just been misled by the U Card for a long time. On June 17, Infini officially announced the cessation of its crypto card business aimed at individual users. For many users, this decision was very sudden; however, for the Infini team, this was actually a decision made after much contemplation. Once highly anticipated, crypto cards are increasingly labeled as "hard to manage" and "unrewarding." Compliance barriers, cross-border clearing, and risk control... These issues, which should belong to traditional financial institutions, have become the harsh reality that these Web3 entrepreneurs must face. Ultimately, Infini chose to press the termination button on this business due to the disparity between resource investment and business returns. What exactly happened behind this? What specific difficulties did the U Card business face during execution? Why is the compliance cost so high? With these questions, Rhythm BlockBeats interviewed Infini co-founder Christine (the princess). Through the firsthand account of the operator, we can see the full picture of this business adjustment. The starting point of the U Card story: When NFT players fell in love with "simple DeFi" In May 2024, Blast launched the "dividend-paying" stablecoin USDB, allowing users to earn capital gains from the underlying assets just by holding USDB, attracting a large number of NFT community players to deposit assets on Blast's blockchain. "Tie Shun," a top entrepreneur in the NFT circle, made many NFT players feel the charm of "simple DeFi" through a stablecoin product. At the same time, Ethena opened up the arbitrage profits of Funding Rate Arbitrage to retail users through USDE, similarly making complex blockchain earning opportunities available to ordinary people. The princess and Christian, who came from the NFT community, saw the potential of stablecoins during this period, believing that this was a business direction that could allow ordinary people to enjoy blockchain earning opportunities and had great potential to break into new circles, so they decided to do something in this field. At that time, discussions about stablecoins in the industry were not lively; Infini could be considered a pioneer in entering the market early. However, the difficulty of starting a stablecoin business far exceeded their expectations; this field is completely different from the previous "playing house" atmosphere of easy entrepreneurship in Web3. The harsh reality of costs and the unshakable "old money world" are what the princess and Christian had to face. Infini's origin BlockBeats: What was Infini's initial entrepreneurial motivation and intention? Princess: When we first started Infini last July, stablecoin financial products were quite popular. We saw that Blast launched a stablecoin called USDB, which had an APY of about 5%-10%. We found that many GameFi and NFT users would be interested in USDB. In fact, these people were previously unaware of DeFi earnings; Blast packaged the complex and abstract DeFi earnings into this stablecoin, allowing users to earn dividends just by holding it. DeFi earnings actually come from many sources, such as lending, RWA, etc. We realized that many people would be interested in a stablecoin like USDB that is somewhat like a synthetic asset, meaning there was a demand for "simplifying complex on-chain earnings and making them accessible to the public." This was actually the reason we wanted to start Infini. We had this idea back in May of last year, as I was also a deep player of Blast. I thought they did something very interesting by introducing DeFi products to NFT and GameFi user groups. It was around that time that I noticed many people suddenly started talking about stablecoins, and many institutions became interested in stablecoins. This inspired me; I felt we had to do something to expand the circle. NFTs were popular because they brought many novice users into the crypto space; Blast was popular because it brought NFT users into the DeFi space. Blast really did something meaningful; I saw many people begin to understand DeFi through Blast, and it played an educational role in the market. We actually wanted to create a stablecoin, but we found the competition in this space was too fierce. Moreover, we did not believe we had the same strength in terms of funds, teams, and resources as Ethena. So we considered how to engage in differentiated competition. At that time, we thought about what the main use cases of stablecoins are, thinking along its usage scenarios, which brought us back to a very fundamental idea: we invented currency to use it. So we thought, why not start with payments? Our initial idea was to create our own stablecoin, with all U Card users using our own stablecoin for payments. We also understood the costs of USDC and USDE. The cost of USDC is very high, and they are already industry pioneers. I think USDE is a genius-level player, but Binance still does not support USDE trading pairs, which shows how difficult it is to push a new stablecoin into mainstream exchanges. So we might as well start from small and beautiful scenarios, allowing everyone to use it in daily consumption. After all, the two most important functions of stablecoins are: either supporting transactions or supporting payments. BlockBeats: After the research, you believed that creating a stablecoin required very high costs, so why did you think creating U Cards didn't require such high costs? Princess: Because we think U Cards actually don't require too many resource costs, such as distribution channels. We could push this card through a to-C growth strategy. As it turns out, we did indeed push this U Card out at a very low cost. But creating a stablecoin is different; you need strong resources to back it up. We don't have a soul figure like Arthur Hayes. We are a grassroots startup, and for a grassroots startup, the lack of top resources is a significant shortcoming. BlockBeats: It's actually very interesting, because from a structural perspective, Infini has already launched its own stablecoin; it just hasn't packaged it under the name "USDe." What is shown in the application is "USD," but what is actually behind it is already something very similar to a stablecoin. Princess: Yes, I think it's not very meaningful to package it under a shell. Although packaging...

#USDC #NFT