Sep Alavi

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards (SK)

[Sep Alavi @SepAlavi]

@RyanJamesWeeks @HyperliquidX @chameleon_jeff Great article!

[Spiko @Spiko_finance]

SAFO is now the world's largest tokenized fund. 🥇

Seven months after we launched it with @Amundi_ENG, it holds $2.39B, ahead of Circle's USYC ($2.37B) and BlackRock's BUIDL ($2.19B).

More than 10,000 entities and individuals hold it.

1/7

Blogpost: https://t.co/z1bHmCXiDL

PR: https://t.co/U837Aoub4o

[Sep Alavi @SepAlavi]

@jeffseibert Very frustrating. What’s the alternative? Polar? Back to Chrome?

[Sep Alavi @SepAlavi]

@sytaylor Which means it’s definitely true

[Ledn @hodlwithLedn]

Ledn has a new look.

The standards underneath it are the ones we’ve held since 2018.

Hard assets. Higher standards.

[Cameron Coombes @CameronSCoombes]

One of the best companies in the space - example for how to be.

[Simon Taylor @sytaylor]

Visa is in late-stage talks to buy Fireblocks for ~$2.5bn (Axios)

That is roughly 70% below the $8bn valuation Fireblocks raised at in 2022.

Fireblocks runs custody and wallet infrastructure for 2,400+ institutions, including BNY Mellon and BNP Paribas, and says it has secured over $10tn in transfers. It has become the biggest player in digital asset custody.

But increasingly it's expanding in more directions and product cross-sell, while underneath, competitors like DFNS are winning market share and mind share. Fireblocks hasn't raised in a while.

Visa's stablecoin settlement crossed a $20bn annualized run rate in September, up 15x in a year, with 160+ stablecoin-linked card programs live. They're arguably ahead on stablecoin-linked cards.

Then Mastercard bought BVNK, Visa's settlement and OTC partner. While Fireblocks isn't a like-for-like (Visa now partners with many in that space), it does take custody, arguably a harder piece to do in-house.

And the strategy here is fascinating to observe

To my mind, Visa wants to be the provider of choice for any FI going onchain, especially the big banks. Fireblocks is a large book of enterprise clients and fits exactly where I think Visa is going.

Cards are where stablecoins drive Visa today.

As settlement for non-card payments starts to go onchain, Visa needs the wallet and custody plumbing underneath those flows. Fireblocks then looks like a logical play.

Visa gets the enterprise relationships and the plumbing in one deal. Fireblocks customers now have a custody vendor owned by a card network, and some exchanges and Mastercard-aligned banks will think twice. DFNS and the rest now compete with a vendor that has Visa's sales team already inside the big banks.

It reminds me that Standard Chartered also said it would take full ownership of Zodia Custody.

Digital asset custody is consolidating into the incumbents.

Visa paid $2bn for CyberSource in 2010 to own the e-commerce gateway. (Arguably no longer *the default* gateway, but certainly one that's very successful at least in part due to Visa's market distribution).

This is that play for onchain.

For Fireblocks, this is a down round and a half if it happens. But not dissimilar from what we've seen in SaaS with bending spoons. A lot of companies got bid up high in the 2021 era, and no matter how successful and how much revenue they pile on, it's still big shoes to fill.

Fireblocks is a talent team, so I wish them well if this is true or not. Either way. Keep doing things.

Visa and Fireblocks both sponsor tokenized, but as you'd hopefully imagine, I have no insight or color on this from either team and haven't spoken to anyone there about it.

[Spiko @Spiko_finance]

$3B on Spiko.

1st billion: 21 months
2nd: under 5 months
3rd: under 4 months

Thousands of finance teams now earn a yield on their idle cash, with instant liquidity. Most found us through word of mouth.

On to the next billion 🦔

[Spiko @Spiko_finance]

We’ve raised a $90M Series B led by @NEA to make cash earn for everyone, around the clock.

$50T of cash in Europe and the US earns next to nothing. Every point of missed yield costs $500B a year.

10,000+ users now hold nearly $3B in Spiko funds, up 15%+ a month.

Next: interest accrual in real time and treasury on autopilot.

As first reported by @business:

https://t.co/QIROoYZHns

The full story on our blog:

https://t.co/IAoo0XcjDA

[BoomFi - Stablecoin Payment Infra @boom_fi]

🤝 ZBX partners with BoomFi to bring stablecoin payment acceptance to merchants across the EEA.

https://t.co/o8eC799090

#stablecoin #infrastructure #orchestration

[Luka Ivicevic @lukaivicev]

Coming out of stealth today, I’m building Sugar (@usesugar) which solves fintech’s biggest pain point: liquidity for pre-funding and reserves.

Fintech’s biggest secret is: in order for customers to move money, the fintech they use needs to pre-fund payments so that their payments go through.

Sugar solves that pain by providing liquidity in an API, or as a line of credit in USD, USDC, USDT.

Some popular cases we help solve in fiat and stables:

- Pre funding payments on/off chain
- Collateral requirements and escrow
- Sponsor bank requirements
- Credit reserves

The problem:

While most SMB segments are well served for credit, fintechs are deeply underserved as there isn’t a credit product designed for fintech’s pre-funding and reserve capital needs, because they did not exist at this scale until a few years ago.

Sugar helps finance those fintechs so that they can scale their payments or credit business, while diluting less and not having to face delays in growth or interruptions of service.

Sugar doesn’t require you to change your payment processor, bank sponsor, payout provider, or on/off ramp infrastructure.

We want to unlock your liquidity to help increase scale.

How do we do it: volume based underwriting.

We’ve pioneered what we call Volume Based Underwriting, where we underwrite fintechs based on their volumes enabling us to understand a fintech’s growth, volatility, and fraud in order to offer them liquidity.

Why now.

Fintech's first two waves.

- Wave one moved banking online through mobile and desktop apps, digital KYC, and payments. The neobanks launching in 2026 still do the same.

- Wave two is payments plus credit. Neobanks have to differentiate, and credit is how the hundreds launching today will win customers.

- All of them will need liquidity for pre-funding, reserves, collateral, and warehouse lending.

We want to be that lender.

Our master plan:

- Customer experience: Make getting liquidity an easy experience for fintechs. Who provides the best experience wins.

- Cost of capital: Develop a loan book and re-finance with each balance sheet milestone with lower cost lenders, from banks, M&A, and DeFi. The lowest cost of capital wins.

- Going vertical: Launch verticals that compliment and strengthen the core credit thesis. Rinse and repeat.

If you’re a fintech founder, CFO, or someone in finance and you’re looking to solve your pre-funding or reserve needs, send me a DM.

Thanks to the team at @WhiteStarCap and @alliance for supporting us early in our journey.

PS,

For friends that knew of us before today, we are rebranding away from Superbank.

[ether.fi @ether_fi]

The next generation of the https://t.co/WT8phhoIdx crypto neobank is live.

Earn, trade, borrow, spend. One app to replace your traditional bank.

What’s new:

→ Tokenized stocks and metals trading
→ An integrated @Aave market on @Optimism, borrowing against your full portfolio at ~4%
→ New on and off-ramps support over 30 new currencies
→ New payment methods: Cash App, Apple Pay, LemonPay, and more
→ Programmatic ETHFI buybacks from every product and revenue line

[Mike Silagadze🛡 @MikeSilagadze]

People have asked, so any Kast refugees who want to try @ether_fi I’ll give you a tier bump to Lux so you get a free metal card.

Any large depositors (>$200k) ping me and you’ll get VIP to try out with the gold card.

Use this URL to sign up to keep track:

https://t.co/GUINTbXi1k

Comment below if you have issue and I’ll dm you.

[The Tie @TheTieIO]

If Stablecoins Win, Do Banks Lose?

At InnovateMiami:
Rajeev Bamra (@Moodys)
@SepAlavi (White Star Capital)
@kingchris (@fintech_io)

Moderated by @leeorgroen (@TheSpartanGroup)

The discussion explored how stablecoins are reshaping money movement, where banks may lose share, where they retain an edge, and how financial institutions are adapting.

Watch the full panel now: https://t.co/gaCNp6RAXV

[Sep Alavi @SepAlavi]

@KyleSamani https://t.co/CfCm25WYBS

[Sep Alavi @SepAlavi]

@defyneric @privy_io @dynamic_xyz @thirdweb @crossmint @turnkeyhq @magic_labs @raincards @Stablecoin @KulipaXYZ @wirexapp @iron @BVNKFinance @SeismicSys @UmbraPrivacy @dfnsHQ

[Sep Alavi @SepAlavi]

@Bkclaims 🎯

[CoinDesk @CoinDesk]

JUST IN: Europe's largest asset manager Amundi (€2.3T AUM) and @Spiko_finance launch tokenized mutual fund SAFO powered by @Chainlink, offering 24/7 transferability and near-instant settlement.

[Spiko @Spiko_finance]

Together with @Amundi_FR, Europe’s largest asset manager, we’re thrilled to introduce the Spiko Amundi Overnight Swap Fund, or SAFO, a new tokenized fund optimized for cash and collateral management.

🏛 UCITS-compliant.

🔄 Built on fully collateralized total return swaps with global systemically important banks, starting with BNP Paribas.

💰 Offering stable yields above risk-free benchmarks and overnight liquidity. Available in four currencies, with subscriptions/redemptions from as little as 1 EUR, USD, GBP, or CHF.

⛓ On-chain shareholder register, providing real-time transparency, flexible custody options, and 24/7 borderlerless transferability of fund shares.

⚡ Programmatic access via API and smart contracts.

[Daniel Barabander @dbarabander]

This is what hitting PMF looks like.

@plasticlabs is on an absolute tear because @honchodotdev is the best product for building stateful agents.

I use it personally for my agents and am never going back.