Jody Mettler has spent her whole career on the plumbing of money. Twenty-two years at Citibank, almost entirely in payments, before making what she describes as a natural move into digital assets as COO of BitGo.
That background, two decades inside one of the world's largest traditional banks, gives her a distinctly infrastructure-first view of what stablecoins need before they can go mainstream.
Dayana Aleksandrova sat down with Jody at Money20/20 Europe in Amsterdam for an episode of Payments Pulse. BitGo has been building institutional crypto infrastructure for 13 years — custody, regulated wallets, prime brokerage — which puts Jody in a good position to separate the stablecoin hype from what institutions are actually asking for.
In this episode, Jody explains why stablecoin adoption isn't about retail spending, why MiCA and the GENIUS Act matter for different reasons, why banks refuse to run two separate rails, and the one question every CFO asks her that they still don't have a good answer to.
Dayana Aleksandrova: Jody, welcome to the show. We're so happy to have you here. Now, this is the first question we ask all of our guests: what were you doing before your current role, and how did you get here?
Jody Mettler: Thank you, I'm so excited to be here. I actually worked for twenty-two years in traditional finance, all of it at Citibank. I was doing a lot of things, particularly in the payments space, so it was just a natural conversion over to digital assets. That's how I got here.
Dayana Aleksandrova: Wow, twenty-two years, that is incredible. So you've seen the payments space evolve so much over the last two decades. Our first question is this: stablecoins are still not widely adopted the way regular fiat money is. Why do you think that is, and how could we make things easier for consumers worldwide?
Jody Mettler: Yeah, I think particularly in the EU, MiCA has given a great framework for issuance, but that doesn't necessarily translate to adoption yet. Adoption is really going to happen when the core infrastructure for stablecoin issuance becomes transparent and functions much like people have SEPA and instant payments today. They don't want to know about the inner workings. They want to use it like a payment method.
Dayana Aleksandrova: And you mentioned MiCA there. What do you think has been the key piece of legislation, if you could name only one, over the last two years — or maybe something upcoming that's going to accelerate adoption?
Jody Mettler: Outside of MiCA, the GENIUS Act in the US has been huge. That gave the framework for US adoption of stablecoins. And truthfully, today stablecoins are largely USD-backed. I do see in the near future, particularly with MiCA frameworks, more EU- or euro-dominated stablecoins coming into play.
Dayana Aleksandrova: We've seen a lot more of that as well. Now, since you're a payments — I hate to use the word veteran, so I'll say leader, someone who's been in the space — what do you think of the payment rails as they stand, and where do you think the biggest rupture is when it comes to payment rails? What can we do to fix that?
Jody Mettler: Yeah, Europe has amazing payment rails. Better in most cases than any other jurisdiction on the globe. It's very fast, it's very available. Where the rupture is, particularly with stablecoins coming into play, is that now we have 24-hour usability and instant settlement that we just don't have today in the EU framework. But what happens is banks and traditional financial institutions don't want a separate infrastructure to utilize that within their companies. They want one infrastructure that does both. And that's going to be where the rupture happens.
Dayana Aleksandrova: I see. And when we think about use cases, the number one use case everyone talks about is cross-border payments. But what else do you think is there that we're not talking about enough?
Jody Mettler: I don't think the conversation, at least in the near future, is you and I buying coffee with a stablecoin. It's really about settlement and liquidity. Cross-border is still something that's not fully functioning there. As each jurisdiction comes up with its own stablecoin rules and regulations, we have to find a way to interconnect all of that. So yeah, settlement.
Dayana Aleksandrova: Settlement — you're the second person to say this on the podcast. I'm with Simon Taylor of Fintech Brainfood on that too. Now, here at Money20/20 in Amsterdam we're hearing two things the most: number one, stablecoins, number two, agentic payments. Where do you see the future of payments in the next two years? Do you think we'll still be talking about these two things, or something else entirely?
Jody Mettler: You know, agentic anything is kind of the buzzword of the moment right now. I do think that will be an evolution that happens, and I think it'll happen before two years. I don't think in two years agentic payments is going to be the conversation — it'll be something else, an integration or a cross-section of both stablecoins and agentic payments.
Dayana Aleksandrova: I have to agree with you, even from a narrative perspective. We see something that's super hot, everyone's talking about it, it's the meta of the next six months, and then it just kind of fades. We have two more questions for you. BitGo has custody and prime brokerage on one side, and you're now deeper into institutional payments infrastructure. As European institutions begin treating stablecoins more like payment infrastructure, how does that change what your clients actually need from you?
Jody Mettler: It doesn't change a lot, honestly. BitGo has, for 13 years — we're the OG in the space — been building the infrastructure to handle all of these types of use cases. We've built the wallet structure, so deposits and withdrawals can happen from a regulated wallet infrastructure. We've built the custody segments, we have MiCA licensing, and then we've built the financial services on top of it. So I think BitGo has been the institutional infrastructure that's prepared for this.
Dayana Aleksandrova: I love that — you've already had the foundation, now it's all about putting it into action. Speaking of institutional adoption of stablecoin payments, that keeps getting described as imminent. From what BitGo is seeing in Europe, what are the two things that still need to fall into place before Fortune 500 treasury teams are genuinely comfortable with stablecoins at scale?
Jody Mettler: Yeah, one is what I already talked about — traditional financial institutions want similar infrastructure. They don't want to have to use two different rails to do traditional finance and digital finance. So that's one. And then there has to be, like I said, global infrastructure across all jurisdictions and all regulations, to be able to transfer these assets seamlessly.
Dayana Aleksandrova: That's a great answer. And finally: European treasury and finance teams have spent years building processes around traditional rails — reconciliation, audit trails, counterparty risk frameworks. When you walk a CFO or treasurer through stablecoin settlement, what's the question they always ask you that they still don't have the answer for?
Jody Mettler: They want to understand where the risk is. It's all about — they understand it, they want to make sure they know where they could lose money, where they're not seeing around the corner because they don't fully grasp all of the rails from a reconciliation standpoint. I think we have a great answer for that — anything on blockchain is very transparent. But that is the one question I get from CFOs a lot: where are the risks, where am I not seeing them, and how can you help me mitigate them?
Dayana Aleksandrova: People always like to be prepared. Jody, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much.
Jody Mettler: Thank you so much.