The only moats in cross-border stablecoin payments are owning the traffic, the licensed rail, or the liquidity.
1
95
this is interesting - Gacha/ lootboxes with offline cards/ goods that have instant liquidity have a clear PMF
Ever wanted a Rolex on your wrist? Now you can pull for one.
Jupiter Gacha just added Watch Packs with @watchdotfun, real luxury timepieces, now one pull away.
To kick it off:
• $50,000 in rewards for Chrono and Master Pack
• $10K volume gets you a free $250 pack
Real watches you can actually wear.
Catch the time on Jupiter.
45
good article on service discoverability on x402 for Agents (potentially an early Google Ads moment):
open.substack.com/pub/shoal/…
40
I quite liked the expression: “A terrorist should be able to buy milk” relative to payments compliance.
40
Goldman Sachs APAC FinTech conference today.
Incumbents realize the gate is already open:
licensed rails + bank infra are becoming programmable platforms for a new market of operators, fintechs and stablecoin-native companies.
Barbarians at the gate - but with APIs this time.
50
Vladimir retweeted
[news] Chinese battery storage company Sigenergy is drawing intense investor demand ahead of its Hong Kong IPO, with retail orders reportedly exceeding the available shares by more than 1,000 times. The surge in interest also lifted sentiment around listed peer Guoxia Technology, whose stock jumped nearly 15% as investors looked for ways to gain exposure to the AI-linked energy infrastructure theme.
Sigenergy, based in Shanghai, is seeking to raise about HK$4.4 billion. According to brokerage data cited by Futu Securities, retail investors borrowed HK$358.6 billion to subscribe, implying roughly 1,414 times oversubscription before its expected trading debut on Thursday.
The excitement reflects both Sigenergy’s background and its market position. The company was founded in 2022 by Xu Yingtong, a former longtime Huawei executive who previously oversaw the firm’s photovoltaic and AI computing operations. Sigenergy sells stackable distributed energy storage systems that let homes and businesses store solar power and manage charging, with a strong focus on residential use.
Despite being only a few years old, Sigenergy says it has already become the global leader in the stackable DESS segment, with a 28.6% share, citing Frost & Sullivan data in its prospectus. That combination of fast growth, founder credibility, energy storage exposure, and proximity to the AI power buildout appears to be driving investor enthusiasm.
Source: SCMP
Vladimir retweeted
The US-Israeli war on Iran has exposed the vulnerability of critical water infrastructure in a region that is among the most water-scarce in the world.
We look at how much of the Gulf’s water comes from desalination plants aje.news/hhb7zc
Why ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did open.substack.com/pub/davido…
26
3. Capital-light revenue models with high switching costs
Businesses that scale without proportional increases in capex or labor. When AI cuts their costs, it falls straight to the bottom line—and customers can’t easily leave.”
25
2. Pricing power that persists despite automation
Companies where the customer pays for outcomes, not labor hours. They can slash costs with AI while maintaining prices because the value proposition doesn’t change.
1
21
“You need companies with three characteristics:
1. Structural moats that AI enhances, not erodes
Think regulated monopolies, network effects, physical infrastructure. AI makes them more profitable, but it doesn’t eliminate their competitive advantages.
1
6
“Most investors are chasing the wrong opportunity. They’re buying “AI companies” with no moats, or legacy businesses facing disruption, or high-flying growth stocks with no path to profitability.”
1
11
Revenues are staying flat while margins are growing - labor costs are falling and unemployment is going up;
Company revenue is no longer tied to equivalent scaling of labor - so assets will appreciate way faster than wages;
open.substack.com/pub/macron…
1
32
What @michaeljburry says here is very aligned with what @stephen_wolfram has been advocating for years - we need a combination of both shallow and deep computation to expand the boundaries of human knowledge:
open.substack.com/pub/michae…
1
29
"The SaaSpocalypse isn’t the death of software":
open.substack.com/pub/a16z/p…
27
