As stablecoins move deeper into mainstream finance and artificial intelligence drives unprecedented demand for computing infrastructure, a new generation of credit markets is emerging at the intersection of digital assets, private lending and real-world infrastructure.
Cap is positioning itself within that shift by building an onchain private-credit platform designed to give stablecoin holders access to yield generated through institutional lending strategies. The model raises some of the most important questions facing the sector today: where stablecoin yields actually come from, how credit risk is assessed and protected against, and whether assets such as GPUs can support a scalable new market for financing the infrastructure behind artificial intelligence.
In this Executive Interview with TechBullion, Benjamin Sarquis Peillard, Founder and CEO of Cap, discusses the mechanics behind onchain private credit, the role of financial guarantees, and what growing institutional involvement could mean for the credibility and expansion of the market. He also examines the opportunities and risks surrounding GPU-backed lending, including hardware depreciation, borrower cash flow and the danger of technological obsolescence.
The conversation offers a broader look at how stablecoins, private credit and AI infrastructure are beginning to converge, and whether this emerging model can develop into a durable institutional asset class rather than another high-yield corner of crypto.
1) Please tell us your name and a little more about yourself and what shaped Cap’s evolution from an interest-bearing stablecoin in 2025 to a covered credit platform for the US dollar, and what have you learned along the way?
I’m Benjamin Sarquis Peillard, founder and CEO of Cap. My background spans both traditional finance and crypto, including time at Citi and helping scale QiDAO before building Cap. The idea behind Cap has evolved, but the problem we are trying to solve has stayed consistent: how do you create sustainable dollar yield onchain without making depositors responsible for opaque risk?
We came to believe that simply creating another yield-bearing stablecoin was not enough. The underlying credit infrastructure mattered more. Cap evolved toward a credit marketplace backed by financial guarantees, where independent underwriters put their own capital behind the loans they approve. The biggest lesson has been that yield needs an identifiable economic source, and the risk behind that yield needs to be transparent and enforceable.
2) What did helping grow QiDAO to roughly $400m in TVL teach you about building durable onchain credit?
The biggest lesson was to design systems assuming that every participant will act in their own economic interest and that some may act maliciously. In DeFi, durability cannot depend on trusting the right people to behave correctly.
That experience shaped how we approached Cap. The goal is to make the incentives, collateral and enforcement mechanisms explicit from the beginning. Underwriters put their own capital behind their credit decisions, collateral is visible onchain, and smart contracts enforce key parts of the guarantee and liquidation process. If a system is designed to function even when participants are stressed or incentives change, it is much more likely to survive different market cycles.
3) How does the involvement of backers such as Franklin Templeton, Susquehanna and leading market makers, some of whom also take part in the marketplace, strengthen Cap, and how do you keep governance clear and transparent for every participant?
Institutional participation matters because Cap is trying to build credit infrastructure that can work for both crypto-native and traditional financial institutions. Having sophisticated financial firms engage with the platform helps pressure-test the product against the standards institutions actually require, from KYC to risk management and operational transparency.
At the same time, participation should not create ambiguity around who is taking what risk. Cap separates the roles of lenders, borrowers and underwriters, and the capital backing individual credit positions is visible onchain. Underwriters make independent allocation decisions and put their own capital behind those decisions. That structure is designed so that the economic incentives and protections remain understandable regardless of who the participant is.
4) Which parts of private credit’s 2026 infrastructure challenges can onchain verification solve today, and where does traditional due diligence still play a role?
Blockchain can solve a meaningful part of the transparency and enforcement problem, but it cannot replace credit analysis. A blockchain cannot tell you whether a company has a strong business, sustainable cash flow or the ability to repay a loan. That still requires fundamental due diligence.
Where onchain infrastructure is useful is everything around that decision. Collateral can be made visible, the same onchain collateral cannot simultaneously be pledged elsewhere, outstanding positions can be monitored, and financial guarantees and liquidation rules can be enforced programmatically. The credit decision still belongs to the underwriter. The difference is that once the decision is made, the capital supporting it and the rules governing it can be much more transparent and verifiable.
5) How would you explain to a corporate treasurer what happens to a dollar deposited into Cap, from cUSD to stcUSD, to a borrower’s trading desk and back again?
At a high level, a depositor brings approved dollar-based assets into Cap and receives cUSD, Cap’s digital dollar. That cUSD can then be staked for stcUSD, which is the yield-bearing version.
The yield is ultimately tied to credit activity. Institutional borrowers access dollar capital and pay interest for that capital. Independent underwriters evaluate individual borrowers and escrow their own collateral behind the loans they approve, earning a premium for taking that credit risk. A portion of the credit spread flows back to depositors as yield. The important point for a treasurer is that there is an identifiable borrower paying for the capital and identifiable collateral standing behind the credit exposure.
6) How does Cap account for market volatility when sizing and pricing the first-loss cover that underwriters provide in ETH, BTC and restaked tokens?
One of the few mechanisms in DeFi that are fully battle-tested and work for almost a decade is overcollateralized onchain loans with crypto collateral. The intensity of competition for liquidating those loans when they breach LTV thresholds is so great that these loans are immediately put in a healthy state by arbitrageurs when they fall out of line. At Cap, we place extremely conservative parameters that have already proven efficient during the crashes of October 10, 2025 and February 2026.
7) How do you approach diversification across underwriters and collateral types as the marketplace grows?
Diversification matters because a guarantee is only as useful as the capital behind it. The goal is not simply to accumulate as much underwriting collateral as possible, but to avoid creating concentrated exposure to a single underwriter, borrower or collateral type.
Cap’s marketplace structure helps because individual loans can have separate underwriters and separate collateral. That means one credit event does not automatically have to become a platform-wide credit event. As the marketplace grows, the quality, liquidity and correlation of the assets used as underwriting capital become increasingly important. Diversification has to be
considered not just by asset name, but by how those assets may behave together during periods of market stress.
8) What happens if a borrower defaults, how is underwriter collateral applied, how are depositors protected, and what did periods of market stress, such as October 2025, teach you about the design?
The basic principle is that the underwriter takes the first-loss risk on the credit it approves. Underwriters escrow collateral behind individual loans. If a borrower defaults or the position breaches the required health parameters, that collateral can be liquidated under Cap’s guarantee rules to protect lenders.
That separation is important because the party making the credit decision has capital at risk. Periods of market stress are the real test of any credit system. During the October 2025 liquidation cascade and subsequent Stream Finance contagion, Cap continued processing redemptions without gating them or breaking the peg. For us, the lesson is that resilience has to be built around liquidity, transparent collateral and enforceable protections before stress arrives, not added after the fact.
9) Who are the borrowers paying for dollars on Cap, and what should depositors understand about the risks involved in earning a return above the Treasury bill rate?
Cap’s borrowers are institutional firms that have a reason to pay for flexible access to dollar liquidity. The marketplace has included firms such as Susquehanna Crypto and Flow Traders. The yield is not created out of thin air: borrowers pay interest for access to capital, and underwriters earn a premium for putting their own capital behind the loans they approve.
Any return above a risk-free benchmark should prompt the question: what risk is being taken to generate the additional yield? In Cap’s case, depositors should understand the underlying credit activity, the collateral guaranteeing that credit, the liquidity of that collateral and what happens in a default. Higher yield should be explainable in economic terms.
10) What questions should an investor ask to understand where any stablecoin yield really comes from?
The first question should always be: who is paying the yield? If there is no clear economic activity generating the return, investors should understand whether the yield is being subsidized by token incentives or another temporary source.
From there, investors should ask who is taking the credit risk, what collateral or guarantees stand behind the position, whether that backing can be independently verified, what happens in a default, and how redemptions work during periods of stress. APY by itself tells you very little. The more important question is the financial structure underneath it: where the return comes from, who bears the downside and whether the protections actually work when markets become volatile.
11) How is Cap positioned within the US GENIUS Act and Europe’s MiCA, and what do these frameworks mean for reaching banks, neobanks and corporate treasuries?
These legislations open the door for offchain businesses to borrow stablecoins from our market. Today we’re financing various industries from film production to financial services. This would not be possible without robust stablecoin legislation.
12) Which future participants on Cap’s roadmap, such as export credit agencies, surety firms, rating agencies and bank deposit tokens, could arrive within two years, and how do onchain guarantees work alongside traditional legal frameworks?
As Cap expands, several key institutional participants are slated to join the marketplace over the next two years, structured around clear operational roles and legal frameworks:
- Underwriters (Surety Firms & Export Credit Agencies): These entities bring specialized risk assessment expertise and real-world commercial credit guarantees onchain, replacing paper-heavy claims processes with programmatic, atomic settlement.
- Curators (Credit Rating Agencies & Audit Firms): Independent analysts and rating agencies publish assessments onchain to guide underwriter allocation. Every recommendation is tied to public, immutable outcomes to align incentives and establish verifiable track records.
- Lenders (Bank Deposit Tokens & Regulated Stablecoins): Commercial banks issuing deposit tokens can deposit liquidity into Cap’s neutral yield layer, allowing institutional and retail clients to access credit yields seamlessly.
Legal Framework Integration: Onchain smart contracts execute immediate escrow and automated liquidation rules, while traditional bilateral legal agreements provide enforceable offchain recourse, binding physical collateral and corporate guarantees to onchain actions.
13) What should depositors look for when judging the resilience of any credit platform, and what is the biggest opportunity in crypto credit that audiences may be overlooking?
Depositors should look past the headline yield and understand the structure underneath it. Who is borrowing the money? Who is underwriting the loan? What capital is actually at risk? Can that collateral be verified? What happens if the borrower defaults, and can users still redeem during periods of stress? Those questions tell you much more about resilience than an APY does.
The bigger opportunity in crypto credit is connecting onchain capital to productive economic activity. Crypto has built transparent, programmable financial infrastructure, but much of its yield has historically remained circular and dependent on crypto markets themselves. Bringing real credit activity onchain can expand the market while preserving the transparency and automation that make blockchain infrastructure valuable in the first place.
