June O.

Latest from me and the team at Self Labs. We've closed $9M in funding from Greenfield Capital, SCVxSBI, Spearhead, Verda Ventures, Fireweed Ventures to expand our technical roadmap and grow our identity document support beyond biometric Passports, IDs, and Aadhar. Also announced today in our latest application v2.9 is Points a new way for our most active users to earn points for using their favorite apps: Aave Labs, Velodrome, ENS, Lemonade, Espresso, Karma, Talent Protocol, and soon Google Cloud Web3's Testnet faucets. https://lnkd.in/gtWRQguc

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We just took another major step forward in strengthening our KYB solution and expanding the value of RiskOS as the core infrastructure layer for identity, compliance, and risk decisioning. Starting today, Baselayer’s business identity and fraud signals, sourced from authoritative government databases and a network of 2,200+ financial institutions, are fully integrated into RiskOS and available to all KYB customers with the configuration of an enrichment step, which takes all of 30 seconds. No engineering lift.  No extra vendor management.  Just better signal, instantly operationalized. Why it matters: ◼️ Baselayer improves our ability to detect synthetic and high-risk business entities ◼️ It boosts auto-approval rates, especially for sole props and thin-file businesses ◼️ And it further differentiates RiskOS as the only platform with native orchestration and the flexibility to embed external best-in-class data sources and solutions We already offer the most automated and performant KYB solution in the market via RiskOS. This deepens that advantage, while reinforcing our strategy to grow the RiskOS 3rd party provider ecosystem and increase platform value for every Socure customer. We now have 85+ pre-integrated partners, adding multiple more every week, and Baselayer represents a blueprint for future integrations: ◼️ Award winning solution (our co-winner of the Liminal Award for top 20 leaders shaping the future of KYB) ◼️ Zero friction, immediate ROI ◼️ Zero integration expense to any RiskOS customer + the integration was done with AI agents and took just a few days ◼️ Extensible across sectors - from fintech and lending to marketplaces and public sector This is how we will continue to compound value for every RiskOS platform user. (Press release in comments)

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Major announcement: CME data is now available for $179/month on Databento. Access 15 years of history for over 650,000 futures, spreads, and options on futures across all four exchanges: CME, CBOT, NYMEX, COMEX.

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Very pleased to announce our $20M funding round to power stablecoins, tokenized deposits and digital assets at banks and credit unions! We're thrilled have the support of Norwest, BankTech Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Bank of Utah, Curql, EJF Capital LLC, Bankers Helping Bankers Fund, Peterson Ventures, Cross River Digital Ventures, Reflexive Capital, Stack Asset Management, Ensemble VC, Naval Ravikant and others This incredible group represents 290+ underlying banks and credit unions. As stablecoins and digital assets grew into multi-trillion dollar markets in the last decade, traditional financial institutions were unable to participate due to a lack of regulatory clarity in the US. Following landmark regulatory changes this year, including the passing of the GENIUS Act and the updating of digital asset policies from the OCC, FDIC, Federal Reserve Board and SEC, digital assets have now become permissible activities for the 8,500+ banks and credit unions in the United States. We believe that these banks and credit unions, particularly regional and community institutions, are the preferred providers of digital assets for both retail and commercial customers. But to unlock digital assets, banks and credit unions have to confront some very hard problems today: - How do they securely and compliantly handle digital asset custody? - How do they integrate digital assets into their existing banking core and digital banking? - How do they handle the ledgering, reporting and compliance needed to pass their exams? - How do they stay competitive and evolve with the market, supporting any asset, network or provider in the years to come? We built Stablecore - a digital asset core focused exclusively on banks and credit unions - to solve these exact problems. Our mission is to ensure that regional and community banks and credit unions don't just survive in the digital asset era, but are a driving force behind it. Alongside Nick E. and Eduardo Montemayor we've assembled a truly world class team, many who have previously designed, built and managed digital asset infrastructure at the largest scale at institutions like Coinbase and others. To our investors, partners and customers who have believed in and supported us: THANK YOU! This is just the beginning 🚀 Read the full announcement: https://lnkd.in/g3XgSC9B Jordan Leites Parker Barrile Carey Ransom Branden Hansen Aklil Ibssa Jonathan Bresler Michael Cherepnin Matthew Smith Neeraj Vohra Dave Mayo Tanner Mayo Craig Ibsen Martin Walker Nick Evens Ben Capell Stuart Cook Mert Mumtaz Michael Ferrari Ryan Alfred Carol Hartman Tom Brown Tom Thiel Michael Giles Brandon Arvanaghi Bryce Crawford Luca Cosentino

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News from BaaS Island! Hatch Bank, a California-chartered BaaS sponsor bank with $118 million in assets, has entered into a consent order with the California Department of Financial Protection & Innovation. Hatch's most notable fintech partner is Wisetack. You may recall that it also worked with HMBradley, which it forced to stop taking on new accounts in 2021 because Hatch was unable to accommodate the neobank's rapid growth. The California DFPI consent order is the result of a March 4 2024 exam (FDIC + DFPI), which found unsafe/unsound practices and BSA-AML violations tied to Hatch’s third-party-fintech business model. Among other things, the consent order requires the bank to: - Redo its written enterprise money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment so it accurately reflects the bank's fintech partners, customer types, volumes, and geographies. This must be done within 60 days. - Write or overhaul policies for: internal controls, alert review & SAR process, customer due diligence, transaction-monitoring model validations, and staffing adequacy reviews. This must be done within 90 days. - Periodically review every vendor or fintech partner that supplies BSA functions (KYC, monitoring, case management, etc.) and review internal staffing head count and skills to ensure that they are sufficient to meet the compliance and risk management needs of the bank based on projected partner and transaction growth. - Obtain written approval from the California DFPI before engaging in any new lines of business or establishing any new branches or other offices. For the most part, the Hatch Bank consent order is consistent with the orders that other BaaS sponsor banks have entered into with regulators over the last couple of years (correct BSA/AML deficiencies, increase board oversight, etc.) From what I can tell, the big differences with this one are, A.) the timelines (60 days for the risk assessment and 90 days for the full BSA/AML program is fast, relative to other orders), and B.) the California DFPI taking the lead. That last point is worth emphasizing. Consent orders for state-chartered BaaS banks are usually issued jointly by federal regulators (either the Fed or the FDIC) and state regulators. This is the first one that I have seen issued solely by a state. Perhaps a parallel order is forthcoming from the FDIC, but if not, it may indicate that the states (particularly California and New York) are preparing to take on more of a leading role in supervision and enforcement over the next four years. As for Hatch Bank, I'm guessing 2025 will be a year of remediation and strategic reevaluation. It's worth noting that the executive who led the transformation of Hatch into BaaS sponsor bank (Jer Wood) left in January of 2024 and is now the head of lending strategy, partnerships, and operations at Cash App.

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Circle is now launching their own L1, ARC, expected to be in testnet this fall. Acknowledging what many of us have long theorized, which is that CRCL needs to become a payments business to survive. CPN was the first domino and this is a natural next step. While market is up on the news this morning pre-market, i'm not sure how you view it positively for their long term prospects, as it has become more clear that the primary issuance business model is dying. Rates will drop and all the "yield" revenue will end up being shared for distribution. So now to win, Circle has to go head to head with Stripe on the merchant or SMB side or Kinexys on the enterprise side and win the end customer relationship? Hard to see how they can win that battle.

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Two things stand out from Stripe’s announcements yesterday: AI and stablecoins. And these are real game changers. Far beyond Stripe. Read on to understand why. Patrick Collison, Stripe cofounder and CEO: “There are not one, but two, gale-force tailwinds, well off the Beaufort scale, dramatically reshaping the economic landscape around us: AI and stablecoins”. 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: - Stripe’s new, large-scale core model - called the Payments Foundation Model - is trained on tens of billions of transactions to capture hundreds of subtle signals about every payment. - It serves as a single, general-purpose AI backbone that powers and boosts all of Stripe’s specialized payment-focused models (for fraud prevention, authorization optimization, etc.), unlocking performance improvements. - With its previous models, Stripe gradually reduced card testing by 80% over two years. By applying the new model, Stripe increased its detection rate for attacks on large businesses by 64% practically overnight. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: - Stripe introduced Stablecoin Financial Accounts, its new money-management feature powered by stablecoins, now available to businesses in 101 countries. - Businesses can hold a balance in stablecoins, receive funds via both crypto (on-chain) and fiat rails (e.g., ACH, SEPA), and send stablecoins almost anywhere in the world. - For now only two US dollar–pegged coins are supported: USDC and Bridge’s USDB. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗱: - To enable merchants that only accept fiat, Stripe’s newly acquired Bridge partnered with Visa to issue cards that automatically convert stablecoins to local currency at the point of sale - usable at any of Visa’s 150 million+ merchants worldwide. - This isn’t minting a new stablecoin token; it’s issuing a Visa-branded payment card that draws on a customer’s Stripe stablecoin balance. - The card automatically converts USDC or USDB into local fiat at the point of sale. 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: By unifying payments intelligence into one foundation model and pairing it with native stablecoin rails, Stripe is laying the groundwork for a radically leaner, more resilient financial plumbing: - transactions can be dynamically routed through the optimal network in real time based on risk, cost, and speed assessments from a single AI brain; - authorization decisions become instantly adaptive to emerging fraud patterns; - settlement shifts from multi-day, multi-party reconciliations to near-instant, atomic on-chain transfers. This convergence not only slashes friction and latency at every step but also collapses traditional silos - acquiring banks, card networks, correspondent banks - into programmable, API-driven flows, fundamentally redefining how money moves, who controls it, and how securely it can be managed. Opinions: my own, Graphic source: Stripe 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫: https://lnkd.in/dkqhnxdg

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Big news today at Highnote: We’ve launched real-time, 24/7 stablecoin funding for U.S. card programs, in partnership with BVNK. This isn’t just about moving money faster. It’s about building the unified platform modern businesses need to operate without constraint. Global enterprises can now fund their Highnote program accounts instantly in USD using stablecoins, with no dependency on U.S. banking hours. As stablecoins gain regulatory momentum, highlighted by the GENIUS Act passing in the Senate this week, we’re already delivering the enterprise-grade use cases that make digital assets practical, powerful, and production-ready. This launch reflects the strength of Highnote’s orchestration engine, which now supports stablecoins as a new funding rail giving our subscribers more control across the full payments lifecycle. Special thanks to Keith Vander Leest, Christina Potter, and Noah L. at BVNK for helping bring this to market! https://lnkd.in/gZvPSyjS

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Good discussion from Alex at Stablecore, Brooke from American Bankers Association, and Carson from Sunwest Bank and BankTech Ventures about the history and future of stablecoins, status of the Genius Act, and how Utah banks can think about opportunities in digital assets. Huge topic! Done right this will help smaller banks to still compete and hold deposits, and thus, continue to make loans. It will be awhile before this all gets finalized, so banks will want to pay attention and be involved in this conversation.

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Excited to announce the final close of ResilienceVC, our oversubscribed $56M+ AUM seed-stage fintech fund backing startups that drive financial resilience for all Americans. With inflation, rising debt, and eroding safety nets pushing more Americans to the brink, fintech innovation is more critical than ever. 70% of Americans lack the financial tools to thrive through adversity - we support the best founders building them. Using new technologies, they’re creating scalable, profitable solutions that unlock income, grow net worth, and drive resilience for all. It’s the opportunity of our time. Sincere thanks to the colleagues, founders, LPs, and friends who’ve supported me over so many years - too many to name, but I am deeply grateful. This is a small milestone, but we’ve reached it because a diverse group of investors and friends came together around a shared vision of driving financial resilience through startup-led innovation. To Tahira Dosani - after 12 years of building together, we’re just getting started. Thank you and our awesome team Billy Taki Bryson Hearne. We’ve already backed incredible companies like Alice, Chaiz, EarlyBird, Foyer, Mirza, OS BENEFiTS, PartnerSlate, and SUMA Wealth - and we’re looking for more. If you’re building the future of financial resilience, let’s talk. Thank you to Mary Ann Azevedo for this awesome piece. #resilience #vc #fintech #startups

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"Data is the culprit". Oct 10th was a defining day for crypto. Many pointed to leverage, traders, or protocols and exchanges, but the real culprit was collateral pricing, the invisible thread connecting every market, every product, every liquidation. A great analysis from Anastasia Melachrinos (and link to article in the first comment): ➡️ It Was Never About a Stablecoin Losing Its Peg Attention quickly turned to Ethena’s USDe, which appeared to depeg from $1. In reality, it was not a true depeg but a pricing dislocation. On Binance, USDe fell to $0.65 while on other exchanges it stayed above $0.90. Ethena’s mechanisms worked as intended, but liquidity on Binance’s USDe/USDT pair collapsed by more than 70% within minutes. As market makers pulled liquidity to manage risk, Binance’s spot market became the source of a severe deviation from the broader market. Because Binance priced its derivatives collateral from its own spot feed, this directly impacted valuations and triggered forced liquidations. ➡️ When Collateral Loses Its Meaning Portfolio margin systems across exchanges accept multiple assets as collateral, and that scope will only expand. Both CeFi and DeFi faced challenges. During the crash, as very well explained by Chaos Labs (🔗 https://lnkd.in/eb_w83Ym), Aave’s oracles were delayed by several blocks, and assets like CRV and ENS briefly deviated 30 to 40 percent from on-chain prices. In both centralized and decentralized markets, price feeds and risk systems reacted faster than liquidity could recover. Even small trades had outsized impact. That’s when it hit me. As a former data product manager at Kaiko, I’ve spent years sitting with exchanges and protocols, explaining why reliable pricing is not just a technical detail but the foundation of market safety. Many listened and integrated Kaiko’s feeds (off or on-chain), others preferred to wait, and see. Watching what happened on October 10 was a reminder of why these conversations matter. When markets move fast and prices diverge, there is no time to rethink infrastructure. Pricing integrity is what keeps the system safe and everyone in it. 🏷️ Paying the Price of Bad Prices These events make clear how critical reliable data expertise has become, and why, as the market grows and products and tokens become more complex and interconnected, it needs it now more than ever. The way forward is transparent, accurately aggregated, and regulated benchmarks that reflect the real market. At Kaiko, this is our day-to-day. We build these foundations to ensure resilient and reliable pricing across the entire crypto ecosystem.

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Largest Sector in Direct Lending? You guessed it, Software! KBRA highlights this fact in the pie charts below. How much software exposure is in your loan book? Direct Lending vs. Asset-Based Lending is interesting: compare a highly leveraged software company with little/no collateral vs. a well-structured ABL with a perfected interest in the underlying mission-critical collateral (Aviation, On-Ground Logistics, Maritime, Equipment, Commercial Real Estate, Residential Real Estate, Healthcare, Specialty Finance). A very different risk-reward profile.

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