Asheesh Birla, a board member at blockchain company Ripple, has opined that blockchain is “unbundling” banks.

Birla has compared this development to the bifurcation of newspapers by the internet. He believes that the same thing is happening to banking institutions.

Newspapers eventually got broken into classified ads (Craigslist), recipes (Pinterest and food blogs), opinion columns (Substack and Medium), job listings (LinkedIn), and so on.

Birla has echoed a take by Bloomberg Opinion columnist Matt Levine, who believes that stablecoins are emerging as a new form of narrow banking.

In the meantime, the market cap of Ripple USD (RLUSD) has now surpassed $300 million.