Yearn was crypto's first great yield product. Deposits peaked at $6.9B in 2021 and are down 98%. Most rivals fell as far. None were scams. They were the best products of their cycle, and the money left anyway. Agents will make this worse. They make switching free. https://t.co/RdSYmv1oh2
Some of the best businesses in finance are paid to wait. A supplier can agree to a 60-day invoice and take a discount to get paid early. But even after that payment is approved, the money can spend a few more days making its way through the banking system. Those are two different kinds of waiting, and we’ve built businesses around both. Stripe recently announced that US businesses with Stripe financial accounts can pay each other instantly and for free. Ripple and C2FO have announced plans to use RLUSD to settle early supplier payments in seconds. The supplier still gets paid early against a net 60 invoice. Someone still has to put up the money and deserves to be paid for it. But once the payment is funded and approved, the supplier is waiting for the money to arrive. That’s the part getting harder to sell.
Harvard researchers priced sending money abroad. Big banks hid exchange-rate markups of 2% to almost 5%. Transfer apps charged under half a percent on large transfers. Stablecoins were supposed to make this cheap. For dollars to euros, the apps got there first. https://t.co/FPzRxPVlM1
Crypto finance is replaying how wealth management grew. First came the products. Then rules made them legal. Now someone has to choose among them. Pitches for agents that move money went from 1% of my fund's deal flow to 9% since 2023. Choosing is the scarce job again. https://t.co/xOD6stRM6C
Profits at America's 500 biggest companies grew about 30% last quarter. A third of that growth came from two chipmakers, Nvidia and Micron. Take the chip companies out, and corporate America is having a good year instead of a boom. https://t.co/00NALQ33tM
Gotta keep my meme skills sharp. #Anthropic https://t.co/Nj5vkcVzsG
Earlier this year, I almost fell for an elaborate phishing attempt. It was convincing enough that I nearly went along with it. For an entire weekend I felt shame. Unfortunately, the latest “Black October” security findings suggest things are going to get worse. Old security flaws that once took too much time to exploit can now be targeted by 10k agents working overnight for the cost of a Pumpkin Spice Latte (okay... or two). A few things people much smarter than me have noticed over the past week: • Amazon spotted an attempted attack on website software four days before the public warning went out. The flaws could let someone take control without a password. Businesses were being targeted before they knew they needed a fix. • PHP, the software behind WordPress and many other websites, needed emergency fixes for two flaws that could let attackers take over servers without a login. Vercel added firewall protections before the public warning, but website owners still need to update PHP itself. • One of the secret keys used to help verify that websites are genuine was simply the number 4. Eight keys at certificate provider eMudhra were easy to guess. Updated browsers have protections, but older software may still trust the affected certificates. • NorForge researchers found criminals putting AI agents to work against online shops and payment systems. One group had more than 1,100 attack projects across its dashboards. • Quest Diagnostics, one of the biggest medical companies in the U.S., disclosed a breach this week and believes someone accessed patient records. It is still investigating how many people were affected. AI didn’t cause all of these failures. But it does make existing weaknesses cheaper to find and exploit. Not to play the doomer or alarmist, but now is a good time for a few reminders. -Use a password manager. -Turn on two-factor authentication. -If someone unexpectedly asks you to send money or download something, check through a number or account you already know. -Follow trusted security experts online. Working in tech or being chronically online doesn’t make you immune. Be safe out there.
Last week I spoke to an investment management group about the machine economy. The part I keep thinking about is junior hiring. Firms say they still need young people to learn the work. I believe them. But a firm can say that and still leave an empty seat unfilled when someone quits. AI makes that choice easier to justify, one vacancy at a time. Eventually, you have fewer people who know how to do the work without it. I’m excited by what these tools can do. I’m less comfortable with the idea that we can remove the first rung of a career ladder and somehow keep the people who would have climbed it. I wrote more about that tension, and the financial incentives behind it, in this week’s Fintech Blueprint. https://t.co/CquCh4W8qm As always, lmk what you think.
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