True freedom and strength come from letting go of the illusion of stability and embracing the change that’s already happening.
Every December, as the payments world wraps up another year of “transformation,” I find it a small hobby to take sentences — even single words — apart to uncover their true meaning.
“Words matter,” my Dutch language teacher used to say. “They harm, they heal, they teach, they unveil, and they deceive.”
His voice was ringing in my ears at yet another conference on “stablecoins.” Why on earth do we call a stablecoin stable? It’s the neatest irony in finance today. A stablecoin is, in essence, our industry’s polite admission that the world has become so dramatically generative, volatile, digitised, tokenised — choose your adjective — that we needed a tool to soothe ourselves.
We baptised it “stable” because calling it what it truly is — a volatility-absorbing shock blanket for a revolutionised financial architecture — wouldn’t fit on a conference badge.
In payments, too, words matter. They signal intent, promise, and emotion far more than technical specification. Calling something a stablecoin is a linguistic stabiliser — a sedative for the imagination. It reassures the market: “Don’t worry. This is the safe bit in an unsafe world.”
But if we’re honest, stablecoins are not stability. They are instruments for navigating instability. For choosing innovation over nostalgia. For riding the only constant in payments: change.
And perhaps that is precisely why they thrive.
They are not a return to the familiar; they are our adaptation to the unfamiliar. Not a promise of sameness, but a mechanism for travelling through difference. The idea of a “stable” anything reveals more about our psychology than our technology — our longing for anchoring, even as we sprint into the next wave of disruption.
And so payments bring us, naturally, to Nietzsche.
He would have enjoyed the contradiction in the term “stable-coin.” He knew that humans love to name things as if naming could freeze them. But names don’t freeze reality; they reveal our longing — a brand, as we call it today.
Nietzsche famously observed that humans survive by telling themselves stories of stability — not because life is stable, but because the belief calms our trembling animal bodies. This fiction, he said, is not a sin but a strategy. A story we tell ourselves simply to keep walking.
But he also believed something more radical: the people who truly thrive are those who stop worshipping stability and start dancing with flux. He called it Amor Fati — loving the fate that arrives, not the one we ordered.
In our stable fictions, we seek protection; in our unstable truths, we find power. “You want certainty?” he would smirk. “You might as well demand stillness from the sea.”
He invites us into a harder but richer life: stability is comfort, not a guarantee. Look outward and meet change with curiosity, not fear. Recognise that every crisis, shock, or unwelcome twist in business as well as in private life is part of the raw material of becoming something, someone new.
His proposal is a new kind of courage: stop pretending stability ever existed. Because once the fiction drops, freedom arrives — fierce, light, strangely joyful. Strength surfaces the moment we stop resisting the change already underway.
And to help us do so, Nietzsche gave the practice a wonderfully comforting soft name: Amor Fati. Embrace life and all it brings.
Swipe. Reflect. Move on.
About the author
Conny Dorrestijn Prins is a Fintech Mentor and Non-Executive Director at Augmentum Fintech, Singer Capital Markets, and Worldpay BV. Named one of the ‘2021 Top Ten Voices in European Fintech,’ Conny Dorrestijn is a trusted advisor to payments and fintech firms looking to scale or reposition internationally. With a career dedicated to innovation in financial technology, she also champions empowerment, mentoring through Women in Payments, Money2020’s Rise Up program, and the Global Give Back Circle. A frequent international speaker (EBA, Money2020, Citi, Techleap, and more), she brings a unique mix of experience and curiosity, having introduced Europe’s first internet banking tech, driven a payments hub to successful exit, and advised on positioning and strategy across the industry. She is known for combining clear business focus with an inclusive, future-driven voice.
