Zach Walsh

[Canton Network @CantonNetwork]

HIFI 🤝 Canton

[HIFI @hifibridge]

@hifibridge and @circle are now live together for money transfers into Brazil and Hong Kong.

The financial system is becoming software. Stablecoins let developers build on money like they build on compute - scalable, global, and programmable.

The future of economic activity will not be constrained by geography - every business will operate as default global from day 1.

This is one more step toward that world.

[Circle @circle]

Now Open on Circle Payments Network (CPN): US to Brazil and Hong Kong Payouts

@hifibridge is now fully live on CPN.

Their API platform powers B2B and remittance flows from the US to Brazil and Hong Kong with stablecoin settlement built in.

No delays. No bilateral setups. Just internet speed payments.

At Circle, we connect people, businesses, and developers into a network that makes money more helpful for everyone.

[Zach Walsh @ZachaWalsh]

@RyanKuhel @hifibridge 🤫

[Zach Walsh @ZachaWalsh]

Excellent essay. I hope we continue to see a shift towards “founder mode” as companies scale in the coming years.

Perhaps the MBA will become obsolete and founders will be encouraged to take the company the distance as opposed to bringing in some curated C-suite figure.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Founder Mode: https://t.co/3hOnlKOJBi

[Zach Walsh @ZachaWalsh]

Thinking of stables in a payments flow requires a different set of assumptions.

Operating models across the stack are not equivalent to take rates with acquirer / issuers

Best liquidity on-chain will be met across bidders at the banking level for the on/off ramp

Interchange as we know it will go to near zero

[Zach Walsh @ZachaWalsh]

It’s so exciting to see all the ways stablecoins are transforming nearly every money movement flow.

There are the clear in plain sight problems - x border, remittances, payroll.

But there are so many others unforeseen

B2B supply chain, micro disbursements, internal treasuries

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

It's funny to look back on how I thought payments was going to be the first killer app for crypto, and it turned out trading was the best business in crypto for the first 10 years.

I think payments will probably take off in the second 10 years, now that we have stablecoins (USDC), layer 2 (Base), human readable names (ENS), and simpler onboarding (Smart Wallets). It has already started if you look at stablecoin payment volume.

But good example of bias for action and iterating based on customer feedback. Action produces information.

[Zach Walsh @ZachaWalsh]

I often think about where we are at with the time duration of stables.

It’s a difficult concept, but I think every money movement flow and financial application will shift in some way or another to stablecoins in the coming years.

The next-generation of fintechs will be built on stables as a settlement layer.

[Zach Walsh @ZachaWalsh]

@FEhrsam @nudge @quintinfrerichs This is awesome. We need more big swings.

[delian @zebulgar]

inject this directly into my fucking veins

AMERICAAAAAAAAA

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Zach Walsh @ZachaWalsh]

Getting to work on genuine hard problems that you enjoy is basically the same as getting paid to play legos as an adult.

[Zach Walsh @ZachaWalsh]

I’ve been thinking deeply for awhile now about liquidity problems in emerging markets and issues moving in and out of dollars there.

People usually equate it at face value to lack of infra on the ground level, but there’s real reasons extend beyond that.

Not sure about the dynamics of it, but loosely what if corporate balance sheets and treasuries could contribute to a global liquidity protocol on-chain. Deploy an anchor node in Ghana and put up $5 billion in USDC tied to that market, with some aspect of yield generation.

[Zach Walsh @ZachaWalsh]

Superhuman really does feel like a life hack and it really eats at my OCD habit of getting to inbox zero every day. I can see why people speak so highly of the product. Really awesome UX too.

[Zach Walsh @ZachaWalsh]

If you’re interested in building on top of our API’s - shoot me a dm!

[Zach Walsh @ZachaWalsh]

In 2011, fintech wasn't even recognized as a category.

@zachperret saw the impossible problem of building financial applications on top of traditional banks.

This led to the creation of the first financial connectivity APIs with Plaid.

Platforms like Venmo, Chime, Square, and Klarna emerged from this tooling, collectively generating hundreds of billions in market value since then.

Think of it this way: without a screwdriver, you can't build anything—from a handle to a car.

Today, we're at a similar crossroads with stablecoins. But this opportunity is even more significant, encompassing the entire global economic system.

At @hifibridge , we've developed the API operating system to seamlessly move stablecoins into any banking rail in the world.

Essentially architecting a network of highways, enabling businesses to create any type of vehicle that can travel to any destination.

The next generation of developers will be able to craft entirely new and more efficient products—sending money to Hong Kong, remittances to Colombia, insurance payments to Spain, and experiences we have yet imagine.

Plaid’s market cap as of this writing is $13.4 billion.

[yoon.exe @realsamyoon]

Everyone at HIFI is a straight up savage. I love it.

[Ashley Mayer @ashleymayer]

I’ve been playing around with this idea of narrative shifts lately. Over my 15 years in startups (I joined Box in 2009), there have been three distinct umbrella narratives for the tech/startup ecosystem. I believe we’re in the early years of a new one.

The first narrative probably started around 2007 or 2008, with the launch the iPhone and App Store, and ended with the 2016 presidential election. This was an era where founders were scrappy underdogs, and tech was a force for good. The industry had finished licking its wounds from the dot-com crash, and was the first to rebound from the Great Recession. The combined platform shifts of cloud and mobile were transformative for consumers and businesses alike, and nearly all startups painted themselves as “democratizing” forces. New business models emerged (Uber for X). Disruption was (mostly) good, and startups largely got the benefit of the doubt. Even the bigger players were seen as challengers—in fact, Steve Jobs is probably the best figurehead for the ethos of this era, all its optimism and potential, maybe even more so after his death. Marc Andreessen is another—a hero of a prior era returned to build a firm that broke with conventional venture wisdom and unabashedly celebrated founders. Software was eating the world, and we were thrilled.

And then came the 2016 election, and with it, an era of reckoning. Tech got bigger and bigger, but its growth and influence were increasingly called into question. There was widespread soul searching in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory—had tech, and Facebook specifically, undermined our democracy? Two years later, we had an answer with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The Me Too movement swept the tech industry in 2017, and we grappled with power imbalances and abuse. Travis Kalanick, a pioneer of the prior narrative era, was ousted from his company by his own investors. Meanwhile, valuations kept going up, the SPAC frenzy began, and people were getting rich overnight on NFTs and meme stocks. The pandemic initially looked like it might put an end to this party, but no—tech reached new heights. Venture investments and valuations skyrocketed while companies grappled with employee burnout and demands for more equitable practices in the wake of the BLM movement. Coinbase was a perfect poster company for this tension—a phenomenal IPO, and unrest within its ranks. Sam Bankman-Fried tried to meet the moment with a carefully crafted do-gooder image, but became our perfect villain with the collapse of FTX in 2022, following the bursting of the web3 bubble and a market reset for all of tech.

I think our third era started last year, after the shockwave of 2022…I’ll call this the anti-hero narrative. The bottoming out of the startup ecosystem gave founders permission to do what needed to be done—mostly, layoffs. Unlike in the era of reckoning, the tone became unapologetic. Elon led the way, slashing Twitter’s workforce in the wake of its acquisition, espousing free speech—the more shocking and offensive, the better. The criticism continues, of course, but tech’s most powerful no longer care. The spirit is gleefully combative: anti-media, anti-woke, anti-DEI. Once controversial industries like defense tech are celebrated; once taboo political opinions are expressed without reservation. AI is our new platform shift, and the ethos of e/acc captures this moment perfectly: technological progress is inevitable and we should run after it at all costs. Mark Zuckerberg is back, fully rehabilitated from the prior era, with his chain necklace and cage match challenges. Jensen Huang, one of the heroes of the AI wave, wasn’t toppled from his throne for signing a woman’s chest; if anything, it made him shinier. Progress is what matters, how we get there matters less.

The narrative—and vibes—have definitely shifted. And of course, no era describes any one company, and no era is all good or all bad. Nor are the phases perfectly distinct: the seeds of each are planted in the era prior.

Like with platform shifts, understanding how your business fits into the broader context is essential. No narrative exists in a vacuum. The stories we tell about ourselves, about our industry, help shape our reality. They influence what kinds of ideas and founders are backed. Where talent flocks. Where we’re willing to suspend disbelief. At the same time, most companies don’t get to live snugly in the bubble of tech—the way they (and our industry) are perceived by customers and partners outside our sector is essential to their success.

Which means this is an especially interesting and challenging phase we’re entering: the newly combative spirit of the tech industry, paired with an AI platform shift that’s going to transform every sector, disrupt labor markets, and touch the lives of consumers around the world.

[Zach Walsh @ZachaWalsh]

@realsamyoon Our entire company is cracked and jacked beyond normal standards.