Whoever can most effectively organize electricity and computing power will be more qualified to define the next generation of currency interfaces.

Author: Charlie Liu

Introduction

Twenty years ago, I became fascinated with the topic of China's energy security during my high school years, which opened the door to my later career in macro investing, global payments, and cryptocurrency.

In today's historical opportunity period brought about by the productivity and production relationship revolution due to AI and Crypto, it is surprising that the story has returned to the origin of energy and electricity.

The New Anchor of Currency

In the AI era, "electricity" has become the new scarce resource.

Whoever can organize electricity and computing power on a larger scale, at lower costs, and with greater stability will be more qualified to embed their currency into the next generation of payment networks.

Stablecoins are not magic; they simply package a country's industrial chain, energy chain, and settlement chain into a programmable "interface."

When the interface connects power plants and data centers, the anchor of currency quietly shifts from gold and oil to kilowatt-hours.

If we look at the timeline of the dollar's story: the first half relied on the gold standard, the second half on the oil standard, and later on the "debt standard"—the unparalleled fiscal and national debt market provided ultimate liquidity.

This system cannot collapse overnight, but in this era of "AI revolutionizing productivity and Crypto revolutionizing production relationships," it is no longer the only natural option.

When the anchor of currency shifts from physical assets to balance sheets, politics and timeframes will seep into pricing.

Even if the market does not recognize the most pessimistic long-cycle narrative, another parallel channel is being laid.

The Flywheel of Stablecoins

Stablecoins are this new channel, moving settlement from cross-border agents and messaging systems to public networks and peer-to-peer settlements.

Geopolitics makes abstract issues very concrete—when certain banks are excluded from SWIFT, and card organizations suspend services in certain markets, enterprises and sovereigns will naturally seek pathways that cannot be "unplugged."

There is no value judgment here, just a discussion of physical reality: if your exports can be settled on a track that others cannot unplug, your bargaining power will compound at the speed of network effects.

This is also why the news of "Renminbi stablecoins" appears to be about tokens, but at its core, it is about energy.

In the past decade, China has exported not just equipment and engineering overseas, but has also turned the entire "electricity-computing-usage" stack of capabilities—generation, transmission, storage, and data centers—into replicable products.

Tokens are merely the user experience of settlement; the moat lies in the tangible supply capacity built from electricity and reinforced concrete.

This closed loop is already operating in some places in a "no-token version."

The capital expenditure for power stations comes from China, equipment comes from China, operations and maintenance and spare parts come from China, and electricity settlement is priced in Renminbi, with funds linked through Hong Kong and onshore-offshore accounts.

Think of the wall socket as a cash flow entry point; electricity passes through the local distribution network and finally lands in a Renminbi account, without needing to transfer through USD to harvest value.

Adding another layer of programmable settlement to this path, stablecoins simply speed things up, making financing and risk control into code.

Energy and Infrastructure

Why must it be energy?

Because AI has pushed electricity to the center stage of currency, and with the large-scale proliferation of AI, training and inference have risen from mathematical problems to electricity problems.

Today, data centers consume a significant share of global electricity, and the scale of models and service density continues to rise.

Large American tech companies are diving into "clean and stable baseload power": nuclear power contracts, long-term agreements, and a combination of distributed and storage solutions.

This is not ESG sentiment; it is the physical constraints of traditional energy.

The ceiling of AI is determined by the generator behind the socket.

Next comes a sharper question: who can build electricity the fastest, on the largest scale, and on time and with quality?

Integrating wind turbines, photovoltaics, inverters, transformers, direct current transmission, phase adjustment, storage, cooling, and parks, and delivering them on schedule in unfamiliar geographical and regulatory environments tests industrial clusters, supply chain resilience, and engineering "muscle memory."

In the past decade, projects in highways, railways, hydropower, ultra-high voltage, and various parks have continuously iterated overseas, making the "electricity-engineering-finance" flywheel increasingly smooth.

The most intuitive feeling was when I was doing macro investing at Franklin Templeton in 2014, and during a business trip to Africa, the newly built highway connected directly to Nairobi, and Zambia's exhibition center suddenly became a new landmark.

The engineering team faced complex terrain and treated it merely as a progress management issue. You can question the efficiency of funds, but it is hard to deny the ability to "deliver on time" in complex environments, which is precisely the most scarce part of the "electricity-currency" closed loop.

The capital efficiency of investment may not be the "optimal" in textbooks, but capability is a long-accumulated ability, which is a moat that cannot be seen on the balance sheet.

Oil is certainly still on stage, especially in the Middle East—a region that embraces both crypto assets and new settlement experiments.

However, the focus of energy will shift more towards renewable and "localized" clean power in the next decade.

Hydropower, wind, solar, and storage lock value above geography, and with the data sovereignty requirements of various countries, local data centers and local power are a natural pair: one side is electricity transforming into computing, and the other side is computing transforming into services, with settlement best following a path that does not need to traverse foreign systems.

The Implementation of Renminbi Stablecoins

There are two very practical pathways here.

The first is direct settlement for electricity.

Electricity purchase and sale contracts align more closely with the programmable attributes of stablecoins than commodity trade—how much is generated, how much is measured, how much is paid, with full-chain data. Currency can follow the electricity meter.

Today, there are already electricity fees, operation and maintenance fees, and financing leases priced in Renminbi; tokenization simply makes the accounts faster, financing more flexible, and collateral more combinable.

The second is for computing power and model service settlement.

Electricity transforms into "AI output" in data centers, and enterprises and developers use stablecoins to purchase API calls, model tokens, vector storage, and inference time.

Many emerging market cross-border digital services have long used USD stablecoins as a "USD substitute." As supply chains and service providers increasingly come from China, an offshore Renminbi stablecoin becomes a second choice that flows smoothly.

If this framework still seems abstract, let’s return to a previously mocked case.

In 2021, while I was responsible for global strategy at Jack Mallers' Strike, I helped El Salvador make Bitcoin legal tender. At that time, the president proposed using "volcanic geothermal" mining to turn local resources into globally liquid digital assets.

The process was not perfect, but the direction was correct: turning "geographically exclusive" natural endowments into tradable value units through energy and code.

AI and stablecoins are industrializing this idea.

At that time, "mining with volcanoes" was seen as a joke, but looking back today, utilizing local energy to digitize value seems like a precursor to the "electricity standard."

The Flywheel of the Second Half of Going Global

Returning to the main line, from oil to electricity, the key to the closed loop lies in the "recycling" of currency.

In the past, when others questioned using Renminbi to settle energy, the biggest counter-question was, "What can you buy with the Renminbi received?"

The traditional answer was Renminbi offshore pools, dim sum bonds, panda bonds—usable, but the market was thin.

The new answer is more direct: buy electricity, buy computing, buy equipment, buy services.

If your generator sets, inverters, storage systems, vehicles, and charging facilities come from China, and operations and upgrades come from China, and the software and services of data centers come from China, then the "recycling" of foreign exchange reserves does not require a USD jump.

Moreover, with the broader "China manufacturing" going global, the things that Renminbi can buy can almost meet all aspects of life and business needs. We can even abandon white-labeling for overseas brands and provide truly high-quality direct supply.

Of course, this means that in the "second half of going global," we need to do more homework on brand power and storytelling, but at least the purchasing power and liquidity pool of currency will naturally grow in the supply-side stacking.

The New Competitive and Cooperative Game of Great Powers

If we put the conclusion in a more uncomfortable way: the winner of the stablecoin war will not necessarily be the token with the best audit or the most regulatory-friendly, but rather the currency system that is most tightly coupled with "low-cost, stable electricity and high-density computing power."

If China promotes offshore Renminbi stablecoins, the real "secret weapon" is not the token design, but the ability to deliver wind turbines, photovoltaics, transformers, ultra-high voltage, and data centers globally, all priced in Renminbi.

That would mark a new monetary order transitioning from "oil anchor" to "electricity anchor."

Of course, this path is not without noise.

The expansion of nuclear power and clean "strong baseload" electricity will be constrained by approvals and supply chains, making it difficult to achieve overnight.

And do not underestimate the self-repairing ability of the United States: if the USD version of the compliant stablecoin framework runs smoothly while making significant investments in clean, stable electricity, the network effect of the USD can completely layer another level at the software level.

In terms of direction, AI has already established electricity as the new constraint; in the face of constraints, payments will follow the path of least cost, and currency will follow suit.

If I were to leave one sentence from this article for the readers, I would choose this:

AI has made electricity the "first principle variable," and crypto and stablecoins merely connect this physical variable directly to the currency system; whoever can most effectively organize electricity and computing will be more qualified to define the next generation of currency interfaces.

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