Live from Money20/20: AI, Stablecoins, & More!
Happy Wednesday, Fintech Listeners!
The Fintech Takes: Builders Summit is a week away, and I could not be more excited. Live events are simply the best.
Speaking of which, I was delighted to have the opportunity to record a podcast with Jason Mikula when we were in Las Vegas for Money20/20. Live podcasts are also, without exception, the best.
— Alex
3 BIG IDEAS FROM THE PODCAST
Live podcast, recorded in Vegas = A shorter, more caffeinated (and dangerously dehydrated) episode where Jason and I leapfrog from topic to topic, across a cacophonous fintech pond.
The pace is quick, the takes are fresh, and yes, I’m aware this metaphor is working overtime.
Tune in for the full conversation here
And read below for my three big ideas...
#1: From Faster to InstantCopy anchor linkCopied
If you’ve been reading Fintech Takes, you can probably already guess the two most popular stablecoin use cases everyone was talking about on the show floor: moving money across borders and giving consumers and business owners in inflation-ravaged economies a way to hold digital dollars.
As I wrote in last Friday’s newsletter, banks have been loudly expressing their concerns with stablecoins.
So are those concerns justified?
In some respects, sure. If your institution does a lot of cross-border money movement or serves consumers and business customers in countries where local currencies depreciate by the week, stablecoins are clearly a new vector of competition.
But that doesn’t describe most banks, and frankly, the domestic case for stablecoins still feels thin (and not strong enough to justify rewriting anyone’s product roadmap).
Meanwhile, our friends at the Federal Reserve manned a booth pitching “faster payments,” which felt like a charming time capsule from 2019. That irony captured the state of play perfectly. The Fed is selling faster domestic payments while many in the market are already building on infrastructure that is instant and global, right out of the box.
Stablecoins settle instantly and are quietly threading their way into regulated corridors; a parallel payments layer already disrupting the spaces where SWIFT still drags its feet.
#2: Erebor and the Price of AccessCopy anchor linkCopied
Erebor Bank (named after a mountain in Middle Earth from The Lord of the Rings, which is a Thiel-inspired trend that I fucking hate) recently received conditional approval from the OCC to become a full-service national bank. That distinction matters. It’s not a limited-purpose trust charter, like most crypto banks have pursued. It’s a full charter, approved in roughly 127 days, which is astonishingly fast.
Jason had the data to prove it. According to figures compiled by Klaros, most national bank applications take much longer (on the fast side of the spectrum, often six to nine months).
Erebor says that it plans to serve high-net-worth consumers and tech companies, a sort of SVB remake that is – and I quote Palmer Luckey here – “one of the few finance companies that started by somebody who wants it to be in service of all the other true interests they have, rather than the culmination of their own personal interest.”
Help! How do we parse that quote? What does it mean?
All I know is that when a founder who bragged about his political connections with the White House and the OCC gets a charter in record time, it raises a lot of troubling questions. The OCC was created during the Civil War — let me repeat, the Civil War! — to bring order to a chaotic financial system at the time (when thousands of state banks were issuing their own unreliable banknotes). By chartering national banks and tying their currency to U.S. government bonds, the OCC established a uniform, trusted national currency that also helped the Union finance the war.
When a regulator that old and supposedly neutral moves this fast for someone this connected, you have to wonder what’s really going on.
#3: Apple’s Quiet Open Banking ArgumentCopy anchor linkCopied
When the CFPB (re)opened the door for public comment on its open banking rule, nearly 14,000 people and institutions weighed in on what “consumer data access” should mean.
Banks argued over pricing and liability. Fintech companies lobbied for broader access and fewer restrictions.
And big tech companies mostly sat it out.
With one exception.
Apple filed a comment, and it said, in essence, don’t lump us into opening banking rules because we’re not a bank. Take the Apple Card as an example. Apple’s argument is essentially that because Goldman Sachs is the issuer of the Card, any regulatory obligations should fall on Goldman, not on Apple.
Apple’s comment neatly illustrates how tech giants have built their role in finance (capturing the customer relationship while outsourcing the regulatory risk).
Because if the CFPB ever did ask the broader question (who owns the consumer data that powers these digital ecosystems?), it wouldn’t just be banks under scrutiny.
That’s the irony: we call it open banking, but the real walled gardens are elsewhere. You can’t port your Gmail history to another email service. You can’t export your Apple subscription data to another wallet. You can’t take your ChatGPT conversation history to a different AI model.
And yet, shouldn’t consumers be able to move their data between those platforms, too?
That’s what universal data portability looks like, and we’re nowhere near realizing it.
So while regulators spend years defining the rules for how banks share customer data with third parties, the platforms that actually shape consumers’ behavior (including their financial behavior!) remain, by their intentional design, outside the conversation.
🎬 DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY
I am grateful to the good folks at Money20/20 for giving Jason and I space to record a podcast together, but 25 minutes is just not enough time!
We both love to talk. We both have ample takes on fintech and fintech-adjacent news. We need more time!
Hopefully, next year, we will get a longer slot.
WHAT I'M LISTENING TO
#1: Banker’s Hours with First International’s Trent Sorbe (Bank Nerd Corner) 🎧Copy anchor linkCopied
Lots of interesting stuff in this episode of Bank Nerd Corner, including why South Dakota is such a hot spot for payments.
#2: Why Gutting the CDFI Fund Hurts Banks, Communities (Banking With Interest) 🎧Copy anchor linkCopied
Gutting the CDFI fund is pointless and idiotic, which could be a tagline for this administration. It’s the same instinct that led to the decimation of USAID. Like, great. Thanks. No one asked for this. It won’t save any meaningful money. And it will hurt people. Great work.
Anyway, sorry for the mini rant there. This podcast episode has some excellent info on the CDFI fund and why it’s important.
Bonus: Engineering the SMB Capital Stack, Episode 1: The State of SMB Lending (by me, with Fundbox) 🎧Copy anchor linkCopied
By the numbers, small businesses are surviving, not thriving. The Fed’s 2025 credit survey shows revenue declines outpacing gains for the first time since 2021. Tune into Episode 1 of our new miniseries with Fundbox (cohosted by CEO Prashant Fuloria), as we unpack what’s really behind the SMB squeeze: rising costs, ghostly defaults, and why embedded finance might be the lifeline lenders and platforms need. Listen here!
WHERE I'LL BE
💻 What’s the Best Way to Protect Consumers (and Lenders)? | 11/6 | ZoomCopy anchor linkCopied
Financial stress is arguably the most important topic facing consumers right now.
It affects every single part of our lives: where we work, how we raise our kids, how we vote, how we shop.
When financial stress is high (like right now), companies have two options:
- Build trust
- Lose customers
Join me, Chris Guild (from TruStage), and Taylor Nelms (from the Financial Health Network) tomorrow to dig deep into this critical topic.
Today’s the last day to RSVP for a chance to win a Fintech Takes hoodie (because if we’re all stressed out, we may as well be cozy).
Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email.
— Alex
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EVENTS | FEED | LIBRARY | DIRECTORY
