Frank Chaco

Educator | Investor | Extreme learner

[The Wolf Of All Streets @scottmelker]

"Bitcoin is for criminals."

The actual criminals...

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

We were able to fine tune an open weight model (Qwen3.5-9B) on proprietary internal data at @coinbase, and it out performed frontier models, at much lower cost and speed, for a specialized task (fraud prevention in this case).

I think we'll see more of this pattern inside companies. The frontier models are amazing generalists. But increasingly you'll see specialist models out perform on more narrow tasks, either working on teams, or by themselves.

We're making it easy to fine tune models internally for our employees. We even have a skill for it in our internal harness that makes it easy to spin these up and start training them:

"/fine-tune-and-serve-llm I want to fine-tune Qwen for payments risk review. help me get started"

I imagine we'll have some backend services that could be replaced entirely by this new architecture.

[Joe McCann @joemccann]

The largest mortgage lender in the United States, United Wholesale Mortgage, just fell to its lowest closing price in history and is on track for its 9th consecutive red month, its longest losing streak in history

[Luke Gromen @LukeGromen]

Private equity is creating a price umbrella for new small business entrepreneurs

Already seeing this w/my sons & their friends in skilled trades & skilled service biz's

Start biz's that pvt equity has hiked prices on, make bank.

"Your margin is my opportunity" - Jeff Bezos
@soclose2me

[AB Kuai.Dong @_FORAB]

纽约时报的记者，最近去了趟币安创始人 CZ 位于阿布扎比的家。

随行摄影师，拍摄了很多之前没有的日常照片，例如躺着办公的 CZ，婴儿房内的装饰，正在开会办公的一姐。另外有一次还是 CZ 亲自开日产 SUV，到酒店接这名记者。

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

Paste this into your favorite agent: "Connect to https://t.co/CxesPpLf1H"

Then follow the steps. Your agent can now see your portfolio, trade crypto, stocks, and derivatives, and pay for premium data with x402.

Try it out! (and let us know if you get stuck)

[Jacob Coxon @hilbertspaess]

I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. More thoughts below.

[Frank Chaco @frankchaco]

In the age of ai and no oversight, consumers are massively screwed. But I guess investors win by participating in the financialized system.

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔Delta's CEO said AI will boost profits by 50% by setting a different ticket price for every passenger in real time. The airline uses an AI system called Fetcherr that generates a unique price for each shopping request. Delta told Congress last year it was not using personal data for individualized pricing. Its investor presentation described building toward offers for "you, the individual." Airlines are exempt from FTC pricing oversight.

My Take
This is what AI does for a company like Delta. It doesn't make your flight better or your bag show up faster. It watches how you shop and figures out the most you'll pay before you close the tab. Consumer Reports found Uber and Lyft charging 42% different prices for the same ride at the same time, and the House Oversight Committee found one case where two people got quoted $76 and $24 for the same trip. Delta is building the airline version of that, and every carrier will follow because the economics are too good to pass up.

Walmart told us this week that families are choosing between gas and groceries at $4 a gallon. Delta's answer to those same families is an algorithm that squeezes them for every dollar they have left. Airlines are exempt from FTC pricing rules, state laws are preempted by federal deregulation, and the CEO told Congress one thing while telling investors another. When people ask me where the trillions going into AI actually end up, I think Delta just gave us one of the most honest answers we've gotten.

Hedgie🤗

[Omid Malekan @malekanoms]

I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but this explainer of how credit cards work by Rain is inaccurate, almost misleading.

For the record, I like that team and think stablecoin-backed cards are a great product, but if we are going to be disruptive as an industry we need to get key facts right. So let's get to it:

First, the claim that without interchange "no business would take on the risk and costs associated with issuing your card" is absurd.

Interchange is capped in many places to a fraction of the US (most notable the EU) and cards there work just fine. Nobody has exited the market. The credit/debit blend might be different, and there are less rewards, but cards persist.

Similar story in the US with debit cards where the fee is capped by the Durbin amendment.

If you don't believe me, as your favorite LLM how much profit the largest issuers take home from interchange. It's definitely not "recouping operating costs."

Second, the claim that delays in settlement lead to a very high cost of capital ("idle capital") for issuers is mostly wrong.

The largest issuers all have access to real-time payment systems like same-day ACH, RTP, and FedNow (hell they own the private-sector solutions like TCH that offer some of these). If they don't settle cards in real-time, it's because they choose to, not because they can't.

First, delayed settlement = netting = lower cost of capital. The longer the delay, the more capital efficient the netting.

Also, in the weekend example, there is almost no money actually sitting idle earning nothing waiting for Monday settlement. The largest issuers settle out of their Fed reserve balances which earn IORB (currently 3.6%).

And the funds tied up in credit card settlement are relatively tiny compared to their massive balance sheets, which suffer from excess reserves. There probably is no other place they'd want to park this money anyway.

Even if non-weekend settlement did impose some cost, it is small compared to what is recouped via interchange (for credit and Durbin-exempt debit) or the insane interest rate charged on revolving balances (on credit).

Lastly, stablecoin-backed cards also have an idle balance problem. It's just transferred from an issuer (like JPM) to the user (like you).

If you don't believe me, ask your favorite LLM to cross-reference the largest card issuers with a list of the banks most aggressively trying to kill stablecoins in DC. Why would the likes of JPM and BoA be so opposed to something that supposedly reduces their costs?

Third, the cross-border example is both oversimplified and convoluted.

As a general rule of thumb, cross-border card swipes are more profitable than domestic ones for issuers. They are exempt from domestic caps and also earn the F/X conversion fee (at least 1%, if not higher).

This is one reason why so many American credit cards give such great travel perks. They want you to go to Europe and use your card there - they'll make more oney.

Now, this doesn't apply in the example given (a Colombia-issued card being used for a Claud subscription) but I am confident LatAm card issuers make money off the F/X leg - it's not a burden.

As a general rule of thumb, any argument or explainer that acts like credit card issuers or networks are doing us some kind of favor by existing should not be taken seriously.

Issuing a card and running a card network are among the most profitable businesses out there. The gross-margins are fat, the sector is growing, and the network effects are strong.

So why do I care enough to issue this correction?

The fact that Rain—an otherwise succesful and even admirable company—would issue this tortured account of how cards work is a great teaching moment as to why cards and their related fees persist, despite being a regressive tax on small business.

Rain's business model is primarily interchange. They can't exactly come out and say "stablecoins on public blockchains will kill swipe fees" because then they'd have to go find a new business model.

Something similar has happened to every pre-crypto attempt to disrupt cards. Those in the position to change it all got coopted to benefit from it.

My favorite example are the largest merchants (like Amazon) who used to be the largest victims of swipe fees, until they realized they can negotiate much lower fees for them, then issue a branded card that sticks it to smaller competitors.

My own view is that stablecoins will ultimately disrupt this model and collapse swipe fees. First, because the card industry's margins (including Rain's) are their opportunity.

Second, because unlike the credit card networks, public blockchains are censorship-resistant. They allow far more competition, particularly from startups.

The process will take decades to play out, but ironically stablecoin-backed cards like the ones issued by Rain will help us get there.

To break down network effects, you need to target one side of the market first. Get millions of people comfortable with paying with stablecoins (by way of a card), then go to the merchants and convince them to accept stables directly.

I'm sure a savvy startup like Rain will be able to evolve. The big banks who are the biggest issuers will struggle.

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

Coinbase for Agents is a great place to start the next $1b hedge fund

https://t.co/O2Od95xdQB

[Yash @yashhsm]

when the world’s biggest fintech investor @mickymalka says something:

i just listen!

ai is probabilistic
money is deterministic

yet they’ll intersect fs - but v weirdly & suddenly

[Emad @EMostaque]

“My partner Charlie says there is only three ways a smart person can go broke: liquor, ladies, and leverage. Now the truth is, the first two he just added because they started with ‘L’ – It’s leverage.” ~ Warren Buffett

[Miles Deutscher @milesdeutscher]

How to use Claude as your personal financial advisor.

Full workflow guide (only takes 4 minutes to set up):

[Kyle @zeroxkyle]

IMO reading CEO of Deepseek's interview and comparing it to what Western AI leaders are saying is the largest blackpill I've taken today

[Richard Z. Ptardio @RichardPtardio]

A message to @blknoiz06 regarding his new ANSEM crypto-currency.

[ludoonchart @ludoonchart]

David Tepper on why he left Goldman Sachs:

"i left Goldman Sachs. i was thinking about going to another wall street place. i didn't want to do that. that was crazy. after you work on wall street, it's a choice: would you rather work at Mcdonald's or on the sell side? i would choose mcdonald's over the sell side."

the whole point of the sell side is pitching other people's ideas and living off commissions without risking your own money. for Tepper, that’s just noise and sales, not investing

the real game is having skin in the game. if you aren't betting your own capital on your own calls, what’s the point? he’d rather flip burgers than go back to working for fees.

bookmark and watch the full talk below

[Saira @AiWithSaira]

🚨 BREAKING NEWS: AI CAN NOW BUILD TRADING ALGORITHMS LIKE GOLDMAN SACHS' ALGORITHMIC TRADING DESK (FOR FREE).

HERE ARE 10 INCREDIBLE CLAUDE PROMPTS THAT REPLACE $500K/YEAR QUANT STRATEGIES (SAVE FOR LATER)

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

Managing your money is time consuming. Telling an AI agent what you want and putting it to work will eliminate toil.

Coinbase is an AI enabled financial account that can do just this.

In this clip, you can hear about what we're building to address this.

[Coinbase Developer Platform🛡️ @CoinbaseDev]

🚀 A BIG week for x402 and payments! Here’s the latest:

Updates:
→ Coinbase for Agents is live. Give your agent its own account to trade, manage your portfolio, and run autonomously under your guardrails.

→ @MurrLincoln gave a demo on the new, simpler sign-in for the Coinbase CLI and MCP using Claude.

→ Our developer wallets are now available via a Swift SDK, so you can build self-custodial wallets into native iOS apps.

x402:
→ @travalacom introduced their Travel MCP: featuring gasless USDC transactions on @base via x402.

→ @Must_be_Ash gave a demo on booking travel with Claude connected to Base and Travala’s MCP.

→ @yugacohler and @programmer talked about agents and x402 at @ethconf.

→ @brian_armstrong shared: 160M+ agentic payments processed via x402 and ~$1T in annual stablecoin movement at Coinbase.

Payments:
→ Our Head of Infrastructure Products, @alecglovett, broke down everything Coinbase has built for stablecoin payments.

→ Cross-border stablecoin payouts are live for @masspay_io, powered by Coinbase.

Coming up:
→ x402 payments with user's retail USDC balances arrive in Coinbase for Agents in the coming weeks, stay tuned for updates.

→ System Update on June 16. The future of payments is built on Coinbase.

[Kyle Samani @KyleSamani]

I gave a presentation at the @allinsummit Liquidity Summit on June 2nd about a little known asset, solana:7JA5eZdCzztSfQbJvS8aVVxMFfd81Rs9VvwnocV1mKHu

My blog post about it is here - https://t.co/Ixv8VGZACR

And the YouTube video of my presentation is here

https://t.co/ct0r4jM1Ry