Vivek Kumar

Strategy, Growth, GTM | Fintech (Cross-border payments, Stablecoin, Credit), Blockchain & Digital Assets (VDAs), AI (GenAI, AI Agents)

[Vivek Kumar @_imavericks]

Compilation of topics that I have tried to cover in the past and will keep updating it as and when a new topic happens

Feel free to share across!

🧵 👇🏻

[IIM Shillong @IIMShillong]

IIM Shillong is delighted to announce that it has been ranked 13th among the Top Business Schools in India in the prestigious IIRF India Rankings 2026, and 8th among all IIMs.

This remarkable recognition reflects IIM Shillong’s continued commitment to academic excellence, impactful research, and nurturing future-ready leaders with a strong sense of responsibility and global outlook.

This achievement underscores the Institute’s strong performance across key parameters such as academic reputation, employability, research excellence, industry interface, and institutional development.

Together, we continue to create meaningful impact—rooted in values and driven by excellence.

Read the full article here:
https://t.co/dRWcftFeyx

#IIMShillong #IIRFRankings2026 #TopBusinessSchool #ManagementEducation #IIMS #AcademicExcellence #FutureLeaders #LeadershipDevelopment #CampusinClouds #7thHeaven

[Dino @blendino]

https://t.co/qeNPpGRACv

[Predicate @0xPredicate]

Predicate is @centrifuge’s official compliance partner for RWA issuers!

Asset managers building on Centrifuge can now implement robust, real-time compliance controls across the entire RWA lifecycle, from primary issuance to secondary market transfers.

What this means 🧵

[Bion - Stablecoin Payments & Credit @bion_app]

Bion’s Telegram mini app (https://t.co/HOTIUkl0rB) now includes a credit waitlist.

Users can connect their TON wallet and apply for creditline.

• small-ticket credit ($25–$1,000)
• short tenures (7–30 days)

Built for everyday liquidity.

@ton_blockchain

[Bion - Stablecoin Payments & Credit @bion_app]

Tasks are live on bion 🎯

Earn points by spin the wheel. grab daily rewards. click on brands.

More ways to earn: buy a gift card, check credit eligibility, pay via QR scan.

Open the app → https://t.co/I5sSwffxTD

[Bion - Stablecoin Payments & Credit @bion_app]

Invite friends. Earn points at bion.

Bion's referral program is live 👇
→ 1–3 friends = 50 pts each
→ 4–10 friends = 100 pts each
→ 11+ friends = 150 pts each

Points hit the moment your friend connects their wallet.

Grab your referral link → https://t.co/I5sSwffxTD

[Vivek Kumar @_imavericks]

@exk200 . @bion_app that offers under/uncollateralized credit in stable with embedded in-app global payment rails, providing end-to-end credit to payment experience!

[Tim Cook @tim_cook]

I want to thank everyone for the outpouring of love and thank you for believing in me to lead the company that has always put you at the center of our work. This is not goodbye. It’s a hello to John and I can’t wait for you to get to know him like I do! 🙏

[Coinbase Markets 🛡️ @CoinbaseMarkets]

Today, Coinbase has added support for USDC-INR for our users based in India.

USDC-INR will be available on Coinbase Exchange at launch and support will be rolled out gradually across Coinbase․com, the Coinbase app, and Coinbase Advanced.

[Vivek Kumar @_imavericks]

https://t.co/p9N72YIC5F

[Vivek Kumar @_imavericks]

Hi @Tocelot

Building collateral free micro credit in stablecoin with embedded cross-border payment rails.

It uses on-chain, off-chain, and social metrics in underwriting and risk mitigation.

Happy to send over documents and other links over DM. And would be applying to speedrun too!

[Sapna Sarda @sapnasarda_]

A Bangalore founder walked into a Series A meeting last month. Killer product. VC loved it.

"Send us your monthly P&L, revenue breakdown, and cap table. We'll get back to you next week."

He didn't have any of it.

Not "it was messy." He didn't have a monthly P&L. Revenue was tracked in a Google Sheet with missing months. The cap table was a WhatsApp group and an old email thread from 2022.

The VC didn't say no. They said "let's revisit in a few months."

He thought they lost interest in the product. They didn't. They never even got to evaluate the product properly. They couldn't get past the numbers.

I've seen this happen to at least a dozen founders now. And every single one made the same mistake. Not a compliance mistake. A mental model mistake.

They thought fundraising is one event. Walk in, pitch, get money.

It's not. It's three stages. And most Indian founders die at the wrong one while preparing for the other two.

Stage 1 — Getting the term sheet.

This is the part nobody talks about because it's unsexy. The VC has heard your pitch. They're interested. Now they want to see if the business is real.

What they ask for is shockingly simple:

Monthly P&L. Not audited. Just organized. Revenue, costs, margins, month by month.

Unit economics. What does it cost you to acquire a customer? What do they pay you over time? What's your payback period?

Burn rate and runway. How fast are you spending? How long can you survive?

Cap table. Who owns what. Option pool. Any convertible notes or SAFEs. Previous round terms.

Your top 5-10 customer contracts.

That's it. No auditor's report. No ROC filing. No FEMA paperwork. Just proof that you understand your own business well enough to have tracked it.

And this is where 80% of first-time Indian founders silently lose the deal.

Because when the VC asks for monthly P&L, the founder goes quiet. Calls his CA. The CA says "give me 3-4 weeks." Three weeks later the VC has moved on to the next deal.

Stage 2 — Closing the round (after term sheet, before money hits your account).

This is what founders actually panic about. The investor's lawyers send you a 47-item due diligence checklist and you feel like you're being audited by the government.

They'll want:

Full legal due diligence — contracts, IP assignments, employee agreements.

ROC filings verified — PAS-3, MGT-14, AOC-4, annual returns.

GST and TDS compliance check.

Bank statements cross-checked against your claimed revenue.

If foreign investor: FEMA compliance, RBI valuation, FC-GPR readiness.

Board resolutions, shareholder approvals, AoA amendments.

This stage is brutal. But here's what nobody tells you — it's fixable. You can hire a good law firm and a specialist CA, spend 3-5 lakhs, and clean most of this up in 4-6 weeks. It's stressful but it's not a deal killer. VCs expect some mess here. Their lawyers will tell you what to fix and give you time to fix it.

Stage 3 — Post-closing (after money is in your account).

These are things that literally can only be done after the round closes, or that both sides agree can wait:

Filing PAS-3 with ROC within 30 days of share allotment.

Filing FC-GPR with RBI within 30 days of receiving foreign investment.

ESOP pool formalization — board approval, scheme documentation, grant letters.

Updating share registers, issuing share certificates.

D&O insurance.

Setting up proper board governance.

Nobody's deal dies at Stage 3. This is just paperwork with deadlines.

So here's the pattern I keep seeing.

A founder spends 6 lakhs hiring a CA firm and a CS to "get compliance ready" before fundraising. They clean up ROC filings, GST returns, annual filings. Takes 3-4 months.

Then they walk into the VC meeting. VC says "show me your monthly revenue trend for the last 18 months and your unit economics."

Blank stare.

Because that was never on the CA's checklist. The CA fixed compliance. Nobody built the financial MIS.

The founder prepared for Stage 2 and 3. But the deal died at Stage 1.

And here's the brutal part.

Stage 2 and 3 can be fixed in weeks with the right team after you have a term sheet. The investor expects you to fix things during due diligence. That's literally what due diligence is for.

But Stage 1? You can't manufacture 18 months of monthly P&L and unit economics in 3 weeks. You either tracked your revenue and costs month by month, or you didn't. There's no shortcut. No CA can reconstruct what you never recorded.

The founders who raise fast don't have better products. They don't have better CAs. They don't have cleaner ROC filings.

They just started keeping a monthly P&L from day one. When nobody was asking for it. When it felt like a waste of time. When the business was too small for it to "matter."

It always matters. You just don't know it until the VC asks.

If you're a founder reading this and you don't have a monthly P&L going back to when you started — stop whatever you're doing and build one today.

Not for compliance. Not for your CA. For the meeting you don't know is coming.

[Vivek Kumar @_imavericks]

@arjunnchand Valid point!

[Vivek Kumar @_imavericks]

@cz_binance @heyibinance Paperback not available? It’s just the scent of a fresh book and charm of flipping pages is just magic!

[Yuri Gubert | LI.FI @Yuri_Gubert]

https://t.co/rg9DaO4mjG

[Vivek Kumar @_imavericks]

@Yuri_Gubert Good read!

[Stani @StaniKulechov]

We respect the decision of Chaos Labs to step down as one of the two risk managers for the Aave DAO.

We want to thank Chaos Labs for their work over the years. They have been a valuable partner to the Aave DAO, and their contributions have helped Aave grow and mature.

There is no disruption to the Aave Protocol, its smart contracts, asset listings, or network deployments, and we will work closely with Chaos Labs during the offboarding process.

Aave operates with a two-layer economic risk model that has been managed by Chaos Labs and LlamaRisk. While this model does create tension between risk managers from time to time, we believe it has been valuable in safeguarding Aave. We strongly support maintaining a two-layer approach and will continue supporting this model, alongside an additional technical risk layer managed by Aave Labs.

Over the past weeks, we held discussions with the Chaos team regarding next steps, as Chaos was exploring winding down its risk consultancy services business (and had already begun winding down some agreements with other protocols).

We were generally supportive of a 2× increase in their risk management payment to $5M, but not supportive of $8M without a separate addendum at a later stage if the workload proved higher than anticipated.

What we did not support were other elements of the proposal, including setting Chaos Labs as the sole risk manager and using Chaos Labs price oracles instead of Chainlink on all new deployments, as well as adopting Chaos Labs vaults as the default vaults (which are not yet audited) for all B2B integrations.

While we do not see issues with these Chaos products or their future viability, we strongly believe that, given the scale of the Aave protocol, it should maintain at least a two-layer risk management model and vendor lock-in free vaults. Additionally, given the strong track record with Chainlink, we prefer to continue supporting Chainlink for price oracles, which our users are currently more comfortable with at scale.

Regarding Aave V4, the architecture introduces isolated risk markets through Spokes, new liquidation logic, and governance-controlled parameters that give the DAO more granular control over how it manages risk across different markets and assets. We held multiple risk calls with Chaos Labs employees in attendance well before V4 went live, and the feedback we received during those sessions does not align with the concerns expressed in their post.

For the immediate future, Aave Labs will work closely with LlamaRisk to ensure a smooth transition and uninterrupted risk coverage for the protocol.

LlamaRisk already serves as a risk contributor to the Aave DAO and has deep familiarity with the protocol’s architecture and parameters. We support LlamaRisk increasing their budget to accommodate this additional workload and expanding their team as needed. Aave Labs will also contribute engineering and analytical resources wherever necessary to support this transition.

We also want to thank the entire Chaos Labs team for their contributions over the years, as they have helped bring the protocol we built into its current level of maturity.

[Omer Goldberg @omeragoldberg]

https://t.co/C1XkE1tJK3

[CZ 🔶 BNB @cz_binance]

A snippet from the book:

---

Go Live, July 14th, 2017

Ten, nine, eight, seven…

They were counting down. The tech guys had their eyes glued to their screens. I was one of them. Others hovered around us.

Our receptionist, Fang, had her phone out, capturing a video of the special occasion with me in the center. I had the https://t.co/3V0rZgCnlm website on my screen, on the BNB trading page.

Three, two, one. We were live!

Bam, the screen was filled with Sell orders, no Buy orders.

“This is not good, right?” I murmured.

Slowly, a few buy orders started to appear. They were at low prices. As soon as a buy order appeared near the last price range, they were taken. And the BNB price inched downwards.

The room went from excited anticipation to silence. Fang, usually a cheerful girl, quietly dropped the camera and retreated to her desk.

What happened?

...

[CZ 🔶 BNB @cz_binance]

Update on my book Freedom of Money.

The launch is set for next week. Unless the editors pull me in for one more round 😂

E-books are now available for pre-order.

English 👉 https://t.co/UxgYxYJ3NF
Traditional Chinese 👉 https://t.co/ItFd8FEyuK

The English physical book will also launch next week. Regional language editions will follow in the coming months — taking a bit longer, but we’re on it.