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Analysis: The Missing Half of Agentic Payments
The agent economy has built the buyer side. But the merchant side has barely started.
 • Lex Sokolin
44:49
Podcast: How Marqeta Built the $400B Modern Card Issuing Platform, with CEO Mike Milotich
Lessons from Visa's mobile pivot, the multinational card issuer, and the path to personalised payments
 • Matt Low
Analysis: A Psalm to the Machine Gods
The Feeling of 2026
 • Lex Sokolin
DeFi: Circle takes shot at Stripe with stablecoin chain and AI payments
$3B valuation for Arc is all goes well, including agentic payments
 • Laurence Smith
36:54
Podcast: The $6B Decentralized AI Network, with Yuma CRO Evan Malanga
Training 72B parameter models on-chain, building a Claude competitor for under $10M, and the future of permissionless AI
 • Matt Low
Analysis: The Fintech Blueprint AI & Robotics Report Q1 2026
This 121 page report maps 95 companies across AI infrastructure, foundation models, robotics, agents, and decentralized networks
 • Lex Sokolin
Fintech: The $12B hole in Coinbase and Robinhood's Q126 Earnings
The diversification challenge facing trading platforms
 • Michiel Milanovic
Analysis: Coinbase and Ramp restructure as AI-Native Financial Companies
Coinbase now experiments with one-person product teams while Ramp says 99.5% of employees use AI daily
 • Lex Sokolin
AI: Finance adopts AI at 2x the Pace of Its Regulators
4 in 5 Firms Deploy It. Half of Regulators Don't Track It.
 • Luke Spill
Analysis: The Machines are working, while their Banks are getting robbed
AI capital is being mobilized at nation-state scale. DeFi capital is being drained at nation-state scale. The two stories are the same story.
 • Lex Sokolin
The Fintech Unicorn Playbook: the roadmap I wish I'd had
Reading another founder interview won't get you to a unicorn
 • Lex Sokolin
44:40
Podcast: Inside Mercury's $650M Revenue Machine, with CEO Immad Akhund
Embedded finance, the Synapse collapse, and building the financial operating system for startups
 • Matt Low
Fintech Blueprint 🤖🏦🧭
Fintech Blueprint 🤖🏦🧭
Become a world-class financial services investor and operator, leveraging our deep research on Fintech, DeFi, and AI to improve your strategy and achieve success.
Podcasts
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Fintech Blueprint 🤖🏦🧭
Podcast: How Marqeta Built the $400B Modern Card Issuing Platform, with CEO Mike Milotich

Company Financials

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Fintech: Why Capital One Chose Brex in a $5B Deal
Behind the largest fintech-bank deal in history
 • Michiel Milanovic
Report: Is Fintech or DeFi a better financial system?
Does crypto or fintech win? We compare Revenue, Volume, Users, and Take Rates of Fintech and Onchain Protocols
 • Lex Sokolin, Mario Stefanidis, and Jon Ma
Analysis: Schwab buys private shares broker Forge for $660MM, down from $2B SPAC price
SPVs Multiply as Pre-IPO Valuations Race Beyond $100B
 • Lex Sokolin
Fintech: Figure's $8B IPO rewiring HELOCs and prime brokerage
From HELOCs to the $2T consumer lending market
 • Michiel Milanovic
Analysis: The Economics of a Digital Asset Treasury
Is there a difference between DATs, ETFs, SPACs, and the underlying assets?
 • Lex Sokolin
Analysis: Hyperliquid prints $550MM revenue and $40B valuation with no VCs
With $300B in monthly volume, this small team may have created the next Binance onchain.
 • Lex Sokolin
Fintech: Chime IPO Primer - Can it hit $15B?
Winning the primary bank customer is not enough
 • Michiel Milanovic
Fintech: Can Revolut beat Robinhood in the US and Nubank in LATAM?
The trade-off between product expansion and overseas growth
 • Michiel Milanovic
Analysis: Our eToro IPO Primer, a global neobroker with $300MM in profit
With $300M in EBITDA, eToro’s IPO may rival Webull, Robinhood, and Coinbase.
 • Lex Sokolin
Analysis: Our Circle IPO Primer, $1.6B revenue reaching for $10B valuation
Interest rates all the way down
 • Lex Sokolin
Fintech: Klarna IPO Primer; will it reach $30B?
Benchmarking the category-defining Swedish BNPL against Affirm
 • Michiel Milanovic
AI: Is CoreWeave’s $35B IPO an AI Hyperscaler or a GPU Debt Trap?
CoreWeave is set to be the most anticipated tech IPO of the last few years as investors prepare for the first pure play AI IPO opportunity available to…
 • Luke Spill

How To Build a Company

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The Fintech Unicorn Playbook: the roadmap I wish I'd had
Reading another founder interview won't get you to a unicorn
 • Lex Sokolin
Building Company Playbook #9: Integrating AI Labor into your Fintech/DeFi business
The top 3 things Fintech and DeFi founders should do to level up their business
 • Lex Sokolin
Building Company Playbook #8: Dangers of the Growth Hacking Dark Arts
From Fake Growth to Ghost Networks in Web3
 • Lex Sokolin
Building Company Playbook #7: Planning and executing your exit strategy
This entry will focus on exit strategy, from M&A to IPO, and the required factors for success
 • Lex Sokolin
Building Company Playbook #6: Using token design for financial and product success
This entry will focus on cryptoeconomics and token engineering, and the key considerations when designing token-based projects and systems.
 • Lex Sokolin
Building Company Playbook #5: Creating your Fintech financial model and raising venture capital
This entry will focus on the issues around generating financial projections, raising capital, and making it through market cycles.
 • Lex Sokolin
Building Company Playbook #4: Building Fintech & DeFi software products
A continuation of our series on building Fintech & DeFi companies
 • Lex Sokolin
Building Company Playbook #3: Creating a B2B fintech go-to-market strategy
And the differences with the B2C path

Research

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Report: The State of Intelligent Finance, from Plaid
Will people trust AI agents to handle their finances?
 • Lex Sokolin
Analysis: The Fintech Blueprint AI & Robotics Report Q1 2026
This 121 page report maps 95 companies across AI infrastructure, foundation models, robotics, agents, and decentralized networks
 • Lex Sokolin
Robotics 101: Understanding the Robotics economy and its financial applications
How Web3 could power autonomous labor
 • 0xjacobzhao and Lex Sokolin
Research: Plaid's 2025 Fintech Consumer Report
Consumers now expect their apps to be smarter and more connected
 • Lex Sokolin
Fintech 101: The Tokenization of Real World Financial Assets
How asset management is moving onchain at scale
 • Will Beeson
AgentFi 101: The Definitive Guide to Decentralized Financial Agents
Lending, Farming, Arbitrage AgentFi’s First Real Use Cases
 • 0xjacobzhao and Lex Sokolin
Fintech 101: Money Movement reimagined with Stablecoins
How stablecoins are rebuilding global finance and commerce
 • Lex Sokolin and Marc Baumann
AI 101: How financial companies can build AI Agents
60% of Finance already is subscribed to AI services according to Ramp
 • Luke Spill
Research: The 2025 Practitioner’s Guide to Stablecoins
Stablecoins have quietly become the most used product in crypto for their practical utility
 • Will Beeson
Investing 101: DeFi Fixed Income Yields
Three Low-Risk DeFi Strategies Yielding Above Fed Rates
 • Lex Sokolin
Fintech 101: Neobanks
Introduction to core sectors
 • Lex Sokolin
Research: Decentralized AI Overview (2024)
Performance, Investments, and Decentralized Growth
 • Lex Sokolin

Cornerstone Philosophy

Analysis: A Psalm to the Machine Gods
The Feeling of 2026
 • Lex Sokolin
Fintech: Why Iran demands crypto for ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz
Rising demand for a global neutral settlement layer
 • Michiel Milanovic
Analysis: Coinbase's Super App to swallow Crypto, like Google ate the Internet
Free finance, infinite choice, and the rise of closed-loop financial fortresses.
 • Lex Sokolin
Analysis: From Vanguard to Believe App, investing collapses into short form content
The Technium is leading us to create faster systems, but for worse outcomes.
 • Lex Sokolin
Long Take: Emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence sector, and powering DAOs with shallow labor
Gm Fintech Architects —
 • Lex Sokolin
Long Take: Deriving Polygon Supernets and Avalanche Subnets value accrual through the Laws of Nature
Gm Fintech Architects —
 • Lex Sokolin
Long Take: The Roaring Twenties of Populism, Institutionalism, and Technology's Meaning
Gm Fintech Futurists — a bit of philosophy for you at the close of the year.
 • Lex Sokolin
Long Take: Getting ahead in Facebook's Metaverse by earning the Harvard of NFTs
Hi Fintech futurists --
 • Lex Sokolin
Food for Thought: A meditation on capitalism, the grey goo, and the Borganisms
The cycle of capitalism.
 • Lex Sokolin
Long Take: The absurdity of how the Internet is both beautiful and awful, and the memetic infection of Finance
Hi Fintech futurists --
 • Lex Sokolin
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