USDi is a unique, new stablecoin that’s generating news in the crypto space. While a dollar-pegged stablecoin holds its nominal value, its real-world purchasing power erodes as prices rise. Enter USDi, a stablecoin launched in early 2025 that’s tied not to the dollar but to the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI), which tracks inflation.

Stablecoins are often marketed as 24/7 money—programmable dollars that never sleep. But behind the scenes, most stablecoins are still tethered to the limitations of traditional finance. One of the most overlooked constraints is banking hours. The global banking system doesn’t run on weekends or holidays, and that gap quietly introduces friction into stablecoin minting, redemption, and liquidity management.

Stablecoins are often treated as timeless assets—minted once, transferrable forever. But that assumption runs into a growing challenge across multiple blockchains: smart contract rent, state pruning, and rising storage costs. As networks mature and scale, they’re starting to make tradeoffs that could affect the long-term viability of smart contracts, including those that govern stablecoins.

Stablecoins are typically viewed as perpetual assets—stable by name and indefinite by nature. But that assumption introduces blind spots. What happens if a stablecoin is held for ten or twenty years? Will it still be redeemable 1:1? Does the issuer still have the obligation—or even the operational ability—to honor that redemption?

Most users assume a stablecoin transaction is complete once it hits the blockchain. But finality—the guarantee that a transaction is irreversible—isn’t instantaneous on many networks. On Ethereum, finality takes around 15 minutes. On Bitcoin, it can take hours. And on some rollups or modular blockchains, finality is probabilistic or dependent on another layer.