The Day I Paid 20,000 for Crepes
Stablecoins and borderless currency started feeling very real to me on a warm evening in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
A few months ago, my friends and I had just landed in Cambodia — hungry, curious, and very much in that giddy first-few-hours-of-a-new-country energy. We were strolling through the streets looking for local food and a place to exchange some currency when something caught our eye.
A young girl by the roadside, making what locals call Cambodian Roti — similar to crepes — with the most beautiful, rhythmic motion. The kind of skillful, effortless movement that makes you stop walking mid-stride and immediately want to try one.
So naturally, we did what any curious traveller would do. We stopped and asked how much they cost.
She smiled and said: “4,000 Cambodian Riels.”
We all froze. 4,000? For one crepe? 😅
Sensing our collective panic, she added helpfully: “Don’t worry, you can pay in dollars. It’s just $1.”
My jaw dropped. What on inflation happened to the Cambodian Riel? 😄
We found an ATM, got some Riels, and paid for our five crepes.
Twenty thousand Riels.
Tell me why 20K for crepes still doesn’t sound right? 😂
What Cambodia’s Currency Taught Me About Money
As we walked away, crepes in hand, I started piecing together why Cambodia operates the way it does with money.
It turns out, Cambodia has one of the most fascinating — and sobering — currency stories in the world. The riel devalued from 4 riels to 1 dollar in 1980 to a rate of around 4,000 KHR/USD in the 2000s, where it has remained stable ever since. But the deeper story is why.
Dollarization started in the 1980s and continued into the early 90s when the United Nations contributed humanitarian aid, refugees began sending remittances home, and inflation as high as 177% per year eroded confidence in the riel. Decades of political instability, the destruction of the banking system under the Khmer Rouge, and hyperinflation meant that Cambodians simply stopped trusting their own currency. The US dollar stepped in — and never really left. Today, the major cities and tourist areas heavily use the US dollar, dispensed in ATMs and accepted in virtually all purchases.
Coming from Kenya, where the KES sits at around 130 to the dollar, I thought I understood currency devaluation. Cambodia showed me a different level entirely.
And standing there with my very expensive-feeling 20,000 Riel crepes, one thought kept circling back:
Why should where you are born determine the value of the money in your pocket?
The Unfairness Baked Into the Current System
This is the conversation that travel forces you to have — if you’re paying attention.
The global financial system, as it stands, is not neutral. The strength of your currency is not a reflection of your intelligence, your work ethic, or the value you bring to the world. It is largely a product of history, geopolitics, and the economic decisions made by governments and international institutions — many of which ordinary people had no part in shaping.
A Kenyan freelancer doing the same work as a Canadian freelancer, at the same quality, still has to navigate currency conversion fees, exchange rate losses, and payment delays that their Canadian counterpart never thinks about. Some remittances can cost up to 20 percent of the amount being sent. That is not a small thing. That is a tax on being from the wrong country.
And it does not stop at remittances. Cross-border payments more broadly involve high fixed costs, long process chains, and payment systems with different operating hours — all of which result in high costs, delays, and less transparency for everyday users.
The person who suffers most from these inefficiencies is never the one at the top of the currency pyramid. It is always the person at the bottom, trying to participate in a global economy with tools that were never designed to include them.
Could Stablecoins Be the Answer?
Walking away from that crepe stall, I said something to my friends that I had been turning over in my mind for a while:
“I think it’s time the world embraces stablecoins.”
Not as a get-rich-quick instrument. Not as a trading vehicle. But as something far more fundamental — a borderless, fair, and transparent way to move and store value that does not punish you for where you come from or how strong your local currency is.
Stablecoins could enable faster and cheaper payments, particularly across borders and for remittances, where traditional systems are often slow and costly. Being a single source of information, blockchains can greatly simplify the processes linked with cross-border payments and reduce costs.
Unlike traditional cryptocurrencies that swing wildly in value, stablecoins are designed to maintain a stable value — typically pegged to the US dollar or another reserve currency. They give you the speed, transparency, and borderless nature of blockchain without the volatility that makes crypto impractical for everyday spending.
In 2025, stablecoins processed around $33 trillion in transaction volume. Meanwhile, on-chain stablecoin transfers settle in seconds, with near-zero fees, 24/7 availability, and full transparency — a stark contrast to the traditional banking rails that still miss their own speed targets in many corridors.
This is not theoretical. The infrastructure is being built right now. By the close of 2025, the majority of major cross-border payments companies had some form of stablecoin-based solution. The technology has moved from a fringe conversation to a foundational shift in how global money moves.
The Digital Gold Standard?
There was a time when the world did share one monetary standard — gold.
The gold standard tied every nation’s currency to a single, universally agreed-upon value base. It was imperfect, and eventually dismantled, but the underlying idea was powerful: a common reference point that transcended borders and gave money a shared meaning across different nations and economies.
In many ways, the question being asked about stablecoins today is whether they could become the digital equivalent of that. A global reference currency that is:
- Borderless — accessible to anyone with a smartphone, regardless of geography
- Transparent — every transaction visible and verifiable on a public ledger
- Decentralized — not controlled by any single government or institution
- Stable — pegged to a reliable value base, without the volatility of native crypto
The momentum is real. The US is leaning into dollar-backed stablecoins as a means to amplify USD global dominance, with legislative efforts such as the STABLE and GENIUS Acts advancing to provide a comprehensive framework for USD-denominated stablecoins. Europe has its MiCA framework. Singapore has its own regulatory structure. And here in Kenya, the Draft VASP Regulations 2026 are shaping how stablecoins will be issued and supervised in our own market.
The world is not just talking about stablecoins anymore. It is building the infrastructure for them.
Is a One-World Currency Financial Utopia?
I dream of a day when I can pay for a single onion in a Tanzanian village or a Lamborghini in Dubai with the same globally recognized currency. Where the value of what I hold is not arbitrarily diminished by the passport I carry or the central bank that issued my notes.
Is that financial utopia? Maybe. But maybe not as far away as it sounds.
The honest answer is that stablecoins carry real challenges alongside their potential. Their value can fluctuate if the underlying assets lose value or if users lose confidence in the ability to cash out. Another risk is currency substitution — when people and companies in a country forego their own national currency in favor of a foreign one. Cambodia is a living example of what that looks like at scale — and it is not without consequences for a country’s ability to manage its own monetary policy.
There is also the question of who controls the peg. Most major stablecoins today are dollar-denominated — which means a borderless currency still carries the fingerprints of a single nation’s monetary policy. A truly neutral global currency remains an unsolved problem.
But the direction of travel is clear. The financial system is being rebuilt — piece by piece, blockchain by blockchain — in a way that is faster, cheaper, more transparent, and more accessible than what came before.
And for those of us who have watched currencies devalue, waited weeks for international payments, and paid a significant portion of our earnings just to move money across a border — that matters deeply.
Final Thoughts: Travel Has a Way of Teaching You
I did not expect a crepe stall in Siem Reap to spark a conversation about the future of global finance. But travel has a way of making abstract ideas concrete.
When you watch a local currency become essentially decorative — used only as change for dollar transactions — you stop thinking about monetary theory and start thinking about people. About what it means to build your life in a currency that the world has already decided is worth less. About the dignity of having access to a financial system that does not make you pay extra for being from the wrong place.
Stablecoins and borderless currency will not solve every problem overnight. But they represent something important — a serious attempt to build financial infrastructure that works for everyone, not just those at the top of the currency pyramid.
And that, to me, is worth talking about.
Continue the Conversation
If this resonated with you, here are two blogs that connect directly to what we discussed 👇
👉 Stablecoins for Freelancers and Businesses: A Better Way to Receive International Payments — The practical side of using stablecoins as a freelancer navigating international payments.
👉 Kenya’s VASP Regulations 2026: Are Local Builders Being Locked Out? — Because what Kenya decides about stablecoin regulation right now will shape whether this future is accessible to us or not.
Do you think stablecoins could ever become the world’s borderless currency — or is that financial utopia? Drop your thoughts in the comments.
