Where and why should DeFi fit into a fintech roadmap? Fintech has always been a hard but rewarding area to invest in. Hard in nature — building technology with such strong ties into regulations, compliance, age-old banking infrastructure, high trust transactions — those are complex considerations for any young startup…

Summary: Crypto is ready to pave the way for sustainable decentralization (DAOs), but governance is still unsolved. Crypto projects have always strived for decentralization. Now, many are actually doing it — they are decentralizing their organization via decision making (Compound, Uniswap, Maker) with more on the way. Simultaneously, these projects…

Why DeFintech is inevitable and imminent Consumer fintech has transformed how we interact with our banks and financial services. In that process, we’ve seen tremendous business model innovation (e.g. Robinhood’s zero fee trading, Chime’s early paycheck access). Still, fintechs rely on the existing financial stack in many ways, breeding a…

Why Coinbase’s advantages are poised to grow One of the most powerful and underrated advantages of being an early mover in a space is talent aggregation. First, companies become hiring magnets with interesting work, world-class peers and rising equity. Next, companies begin acquihiring groups. Finally, they start acquiring full businesses…

Creator economy x NFTs is a natural combo, but which one will wield the power? Ben Thompson’s recent post on “Non-Fungible Taylor Swift” reminded me of one core shift at play within NFTs. It would be naive to see the current NFT landscape as anything but primitive. Most creators and…

By directly connecting artists to curators and fans, Audius Collectibles can contextually supercharge NFTs Our portfolio co, Audius launched Collectibles today, a way to showcase your music NFTs within your Audius profile. Audius has already built up a highly engaged user base of over 4.5m MAUs, who relate to…

Lil Miquela hints at an NFT that adapts with time, collection and engagement With Lil Miquela dropping 1500 free NFTs today, it felt fitting to write about what makes creator-led drops so exciting. That is, these NFTs represent the rare direct creator-to-consumer interaction, and can be priced accordingly (millions…

The pros and cons of CBDCs as China starts experimenting While the US has struggled to make blockchain fit into existing rules, China’s government quickly took to blockchain as a competitive edge. They are live with a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)-based app in the hands of over 100k people…

Who will build NFT infrastructure with meaningful network effects? Trying out a shorter format here, let’s see how this goes. The explosion of NFTs over the past two months has fascinated me. When we first wrote about them back in 2019, we thought NFTs would become crypto’s bridge to broader…