Vivek Kumar

Building financial infrastructure for programmable credit

[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!

🧵 👇🏻

[Alexandr Wang @alexandr_wang]

got the HRT gang back together!

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

If you’re confused about what’s happening with Nvidia right now…

Basically Jensen Huang, the guy who runs Nvidia, which is the company that makes the chips basically every AI company on earth needs, just sent an email to his entire company admitting he cheated on his wife, and that came right after the New York Times reported that US intelligence believes a woman who got close to him was secretly passing information to the Chinese government, and to understand how we got here you have to go back to June 2024, when this Chinese businesswoman named Alice Huang, who also goes by Huang Le and isn't related to Jensen at all, they just have the same last name, gets photographed at a party in Taipei sitting right next to him, and then about a year later her company, a small Singapore company called Megaspeed that almost nobody had ever heard of, reportedly sets up a deal to buy around $2 billion worth of Nvidia's chips, which is a crazy amount of money for a company that small, and the Times even pointed out it was an unusual amount of business for a firm like that, and people already had questions about where all those chips were really going, but Nvidia looked into it and said everything checked out, so for a while that's kind of where things sat, until October 29, when the Times reported that US intelligence had concluded Alice was passing information to Beijing, and that it wasn't some new discovery either, because Trump had reportedly been briefed on it about a year earlier, and the officials involved apparently believed Jensen didn't know what she was up to, but here's the strange part, nobody ever told him, because there's this thing called a defensive briefing, where counterintelligence people basically pull someone aside and say hey, a foreign government might be targeting you, be careful, and Jensen never got one, even though the whole time the government was still watching her, so you have the head of the most important AI chip company in the world apparently being targeted, and the people who knew about it just let it keep going, and then everyone starts denying it, Nvidia says the Megaspeed allegations were already investigated and debunked last year, China's foreign ministry says the whole report is baseless, and Jensen says the business with Megaspeed was totally normal, just a customer buying chips like any other customer, but Congress doesn't let it go, and three House Republicans who run national security committees ask Jensen to come in and explain himself in a closed-door briefing, which means a private meeting away from the public and the cameras, and then on a Sunday, out of nowhere, Jensen sends that email to every single employee saying he had been unfaithful to his wife, that it hurt her and their children, and that nothing excused what he did, and he doesn't say who it was with, but you can imagine where everyone's mind went, and right after that, Nvidia's board, which is the group of people who are supposed to oversee the CEO, announces it's setting up an independent committee with outside lawyers to investigate, but at the same time says it has no reason to believe any national security secrets or company secrets were compromised and that it still has confidence in him, and then a company spokesperson comes out and says none of this is going to slow Nvidia down and Jensen is going to keep running the company without any interruption, so basically you have a suspected Chinese intelligence asset who got close to the CEO, a $2 billion chip deal, a president who reportedly knew about, a CEO who was never warned, a confession about an affair, an investigation, and a company insisting everything is fine, so that's pretty much where Nvidia is tonight.

[Shaun Maguire @shaunmmaguire]

1) Jensen is one of the greatest entrepreneurs of this generation

2) he did something incredibly dumb

3) it was bad for America

4) but my guess is there was no bad intention

5) two mistakes don’t make a right, and I believe Jensen is irreplaceable for America’s AI leadership

[Temmy | DeFi Analyst🦇🔊 @Only1temmy]

i genuinely don't understand what happened to crypto.

we have onchain reputation, web3 gaming, and DePIN sitting right there, yet everyone seems more interested in building the 900th perp dex.

PLEASE build something people actually want to use.

give me an onchain reputation that actually means something.

if i've spent five years contributing to protocols, building communities, and repaying loans, WHY am i still treated like a complete stranger every time i connect to another app?

and for f*ck's sake, stop turning TRUST into another leaderboard.

people farming reviews, swapping vouches, chasing points, and somehow becoming the most trusted people in crypto.

WHAT exactly does that prove? that you're trustworthy or that you've got a better group chat?

i want my actual history to speak for me without doxxing myself.

and can we PLEASE get a web3 game people actually want to play?

give me a game i can lose an entire weekend to. bosses that make me rage quit at 2am, quests that take days to finish, and rare items worth spending 200 hours chasing.

i want to LOSE MY MIND when that one impossible item finally drops. let me keep it, flex it, or trade it for something i actually want.

not another airdrop waiting room pretending to be a game.

if everyone quits when the token rewards stop, YOU DIDN'T BUILD A GAME.

and DePIN? what the hell happened there?

let someone install a hotspot, provide real internet coverage, and earn because people are actually PAYING to use it.

stop showing me thousands of nodes on a dashboard and calling it adoption.

WHO is paying for the service? would anyone still pay if the token stopped subsidizing everything?

if nobody needs your network without emissions, you've built a farm, not infrastructure.

we've become so good at paying people to look like users that we've forgotten how to build things people WANT to use.

but sure, let's launch another chain that's dead on arrival, another perp dex fighting for the same recycled traders, another points program turning everyone into unpaid interns, and another token looking for a reason to exist.

we keep talking about onboarding the next billion users while building the same sh*t for the same 100k wallets.

WHAT THE F*CK are we building all this infrastructure for?

[Jason Freedman @jasonfreedman]

I've read maybe ~10,000 YC applications. 8000 for YC admissions/PG quite a few years ago and anther 2000 informally as an alum.

There's a new and growing mistake and I want to share why it's more important than you think.

By the way - I try not to ever say YC admissions works this way or that way. That's YC's job and they're always changing things and making up their own minds.

But I will share my impression and you can see what you think - YC partners, please chime in as well if you like.

The YC application is fundamentally an evaluation of a founder's potential. And much less an evaluation of a specific business. (Airbedbreakfast transitioning into Airbnb because Brian, Nate, Joe never give up and never stop listening to their customers)

So, in your writing of the application, YOU need to shine through.

This batch, I read ~200 applications.

I'm guessing over half were significantly written, edited, or polished with AI.

That half was easily in the bottom half of my informal rankings, almost every time.

To be clear, most were NOT AI slop. I often couldn't tell at first they had used AI. Founders were pouring their heart and soul into their app - so I what I received was high quality.

But I think the AI really hurt them. Here's why:

Once polished by AI, I as reader lost insight into the personality of the writer.

I love the YC application because the questions are the same questions I would ask in office hours or casually to a friend that wanted help with their startup. It pushes the founder out of their pitchdeck/VC talk style into simple worded questions that can be answered simply as well. And great founders shine through when they just write like they talk. The LLM writing made answers feel more like a corporate cover letter, with the personality drained out.

The AI-assisted drafts also gave me a sense of mid work. The writing itself seemed like zero standard deviations from the mean. The LLMs had lopped off the outlier portions of sentences, paragraphs, and thoughts. Given the YC App is an outlier detector, a writing tool that lops off outlier writing is the opposite of what you want.

And the AI writing was needlessly verbose. Which hurts when a reliable predictor of great founders is that they're deep thinkers and deep thinking shines through in the density of their writing.

So...

I did an experiment. I asked a bunch of these seemingly AI-assisted app writers to talk with me live. I just asked them the same YC app questions and recorded their answers.

I then gave them back the transcripts. Unedited and unpolished.

And...

OMG! A good number turned from easy no to actual good applications.

Magic! Remove AI >> Improve application.

This happened BOTH with native English speakers and founders abroad.

So this is my recommendation to all of you.

Don't let AI touch your application, even for a second.

And maybe try the dictation approach with a friend.

My apologies to the YC admissions team if you already knew AI-written applications were crap and you were using this insight to help you easily move applications to the No pile.

YC's Winter Batch Application deadline is Nov 2nd.

[Binance @binance]

https://t.co/sU9dUqLQDH

[Dickson @DicksonWuML]

Binance hot wallets lost ~$6.28B across 8 chains today. $6.07B went in the first 55 minutes, and the attacker kept re-sweeping one Ethereum wallet for two more hours.

Since then Tether, Circle, Ripple, Paxos, World Liberty and Binance have frozen ~$2.80B. About $3.27B can still move, mostly BTC and ETH.

I traced it all on-chain, including how the attacker raced the freezes 🧵

[Richard Teng @_RichardTeng]

I want to speak to you directly about what happened.

Bottom line - your money is safe, and we're covering every loss.

Our initial investigation suggests this security incident may have started with a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop. That gave an attacker access to a service container, where they submitted unauthorized withdrawal transactions.

To be clear: the attacker did not simply use one engineer's permissions, and this was not a single "one-click" action. It involved a more complex attack process. Our investigation has not attributed responsibility to any individual.

So far, we have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak.

We'll share a detailed technical post-mortem once the investigation is complete and every fact is verified - and publish an updated Proof of Reserves once remediation is complete.

What you need to know:
• Your funds are safe
• Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and company funds
• Estimated total impact: ~$6.3B, with ~$3B frozen on-chain so far, in coordination with our blockchain partners
• No evidence of any wallet private key leak
• Deposits are unaffected and operating as normal

What we've done:
• Temporarily suspended withdrawals while we complete a security revamp of the withdrawal service and its related addresses
• Revoked the affected address authorizations
• Engaged law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover funds

Our team hasn't stopped. We're working closely with law enforcement to ensure the matter is handled appropriately - and I'll share what I can, as soon as I can.

[Imran @lmrankhan]

My take on a16z crypto moving into frontier tech.

First, I'll always be grateful to a16z for helping validate the space back in 2013 when Chris Dixon led their investment into Coinbase, which got me even more excited about crypto.

But the final nail in the coffin for my previous career, and what ultimately pushed me to pivot my entire career into Bitcoin, was Marc Andreessen's 2014 NYT oped, Why Bitcoin Matters. If you haven't read it, suggest reading it. It's still important to this day.

A lot of people have probably forgotten, but in those days we were all just looking for external validation. Very few institutions or funds were willing to publicly endorse crypto, and two of the funds that took a real brand risk were a16z and USV.

Since then, we've seen some of the most incredible talent enter the space and fundamentally reshaped what crypto is today.

You can actually argue that a lot of the AI infrastructure development we're seeing today wouldn't be where it is without Bitcoin mining infrastructure and the talent that flowed from crypto into AI. There is a real connection between the two industries that I don't think gets enough credit.

Now, moving from crypto into frontier tech, whether that's robotics, bio, AI, energy, compute etc just means to me that the talent and muscle we developed building crypto over the past decade can now be used to build across all of frontier tech.

We spent years building something that was nascent, misunderstood, and in many cases hated by the world. We developed thick skin, continued investing and building, and had to constantly show the world why this tech mattered. Even during thanksgiving dinners.

And I think that makes us uniquely suited to build frontier tech.

An example is data centers. Today, people and governments are increasingly pushing back against them. Well, people and governments hated crypto too, but we continued to invest and build, and now almost all of trad finance is embracing crypto in some capacity.

I believe frontier tech represents the next generation of pirates in technology. People willing to build things that are nascent, misunderstood, and sometimes hated by the world.

We're going to be hated and loved along the way, but we're going to keep building cool shit that the world hasn't recognized the importance of yet.

And crypto taught me that the world usually doesn't recognize the importance of new tech until years later which is why I stay close to talent

[Chris Dixon @cdixon]

https://t.co/pQssLkjGX8

[Crypto India @CryptooIndia]

🚨 Millions of web servers could be vulnerable to hackers, forcing governments to take websites offline as a precaution!

The threat comes from two critical security flaws in PHP, a programming language used by millions of websites.

So, what happened?

🧵

[Vivek Kumar @_imavericks]

@grebby All 4

[stao @staoio]

Stao is now open for integrations.

Apply here: https://t.co/BaQX4Hk4j6

Stao provides full-stack infrastructure for fintechs, wallets, dApps, and consumer apps to offer unsecured stablecoin credit to their users through APIs and widgets.

[Ministry of Finance @FinMinIndia]

👉 UPI Continues to Remain Free for Peer to Peer Transactions and 96% of Merchant Transactions

👉 The new UPI framework introduced has no impact on any person to person transactions

👉 UPI will continue to remain completely free for all person-to-person transactions, irrespective of the amount transferred

👉 Payments to merchants up to ₹2,000, along with transactions covered under the zero-MDR framework for small merchants, will also remain free

👉 Consequently, approximately 96% of all P2M transactions will remain unaffected. MDR will apply only to specified merchant transactions above ₹2,000

👉 It is clarified that MDR is neither a tax nor a charge collected by the Government or @NPCI_NPCI. It is distributed among payment ecosystem participants, including banks and payment application providers, to support the operation and continued expansion of the UPI ecosystem

👉 Introduced under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, following detailed deliberations by the UPI Steering Committee, the framework seeks to ensure the long-term sustainability of UPI while protecting individuals and small merchants from additional charges

Read here for full details ➡️ https://t.co/KGxlX3SVC0

[IIM Shillong @IIMShillong]

We are honoured to welcome Ms. Ira Singhal, AIR 1-IAS 2015, and Deputy Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, Government of India, as a speaker at TEDxIIMShillong.

A trailblazer in the Indian civil services, Ms. Singhal made history as the first differently-abled woman to secure All India Rank 1 in the UPSC Civil Services Examination. Her journey reflects resilience, conviction and the courage to challenge limitations, offering perspectives that go beyond conventional definitions of success.

As we explore our theme, Beyond Boundaries, join us as Ms. Singhal brings her story and perspective to the TEDxIIMShillong stage, encouraging us to rethink the limits we place on possibility.

Date: 16 September 2026

#TEDxIIMShillong #TEDx #IIMS #BeyondBoundaries #IdeasWorthSpreading

[stao @staoio]

Onchain credit is moving beyond collateral.

Bion's unsecured stablecoin credit is now live, powered by @staoio

Try now: https://t.co/Kj9mrn9cGx

A meaningful step toward making onchain financial access more inclusive.

[Bion - Stablecoin Credit Infrastructure @bion_app]

🚀 Unsecured stablecoin credit is now live on https://t.co/OX0uIsuQC5.

🔍 Wallet analysis across 8 EVM networks
💳 Credit up to $300
📅 Repayment tenure up to 30 days
⚡ Online journey from eligibility to repayment

Apply: https://t.co/CsWNHREMEV
Powered by @staoio

[Subham Surana @TheSuranaverse]

i'm planning to host a meetup in #Mumbai next weekend followed by #Bangalore and #Kolkata, can anyone suggest a good venue that can accommodate atleast 40-50 people?

ps if you're a dev/tech evangelist from Mumbai, Bangalore or Kolkata then drop a hi let's connect 👋

[Balaji @balajis]

Network School is back.

We’re up and running in the beautiful country of Kazakhstan, which combines high tech, low cost, brilliant people, a competent state, and plenty of space to build.

So: if you want to build a techno-optimist society with us, apply to Network School.

[Divya Mittal @divyamittalJB]

आज मैंने 13 वर्षों की अविस्मरणीय यात्रा को अपनी इच्छा से विराम देते हुए IAS से त्यागपत्र दे दिया है।

साधारण परिवेश में पलते हुए मैंने एक अच्छे, सफल जीवन का सपना देखा था। दिन-रात एक कर IIT दिल्ली और IIM बैंगलोर से पढ़ने के बाद, लंदन में नौकरी लग गयी। पर 'सब कुछ' पा लेने पर भी कुछ अधूरा था। अपने देश में न होना खलता था। मेरी पढ़ाई, आत्मविश्वास, दुनिया में कहीं भी सिर उठाकर चलने की ताक़त, सब इस मिट्टी का कर्ज़ था मुझ पर। वो कर्ज़ चुकाना था। चाहती थी जिस भारत का सपना देखा था, उसे बनाने वाली ईंटों पर मेरे भी हाथों के निशान हों। सो लौट आई, और IAS अधिकारी बनने का सौभाग्य मिला।

बहुत कुछ करने का मौका मिला और बहुत सीखा। देवरिया ने सिखाया कि सही के साथ खड़ा होना विकल्प नहीं, कर्तव्य है। मीरजापुर ने सिखाया कि 'असंभव' कोई तथ्य नहीं, बस एक राय है। और माँ विंध्यवासिनी के चरणों में बैठकर सीखा कि शक्ति किसी पद से नहीं, उनकी कृपा और लोगों के विश्वास से आती है। सबसे बड़ी सीख यह थी कि अपने लिए देखे सपने तो पूरे हो चुके थे, अब अपने लोगों के लिए देखे सपनों को जीना था। इस जीवन का असली सुकून उन आँखों में दिखा, जिस परिवार को पहली बार ज़मीन का हक़ मिला, जिस दिव्यांग को सम्मान से जीने का अवसर मिला, और जिस किसान के खेत को पानी मिला। उनके संघर्षों में साथ चलते हुए मैंने सीखा कि हर सरकारी फ़ाइल के पीछे एक व्यक्ति है, और उसकी गरिमा बनाये रखना ही न्याय है।

मूर्ख थी जो सोचा था कि कुछ देने आयी हूँ। सच यह है कि सबसे ज़्यादा मैंने ही पाया, और वो कर्ज़ और भी बढ़ता गया। लोग मेरी ख़ुशी में मुझसे ज़्यादा ख़ुश हुए। उन्होंने मुझे तब भी उसी विश्वास से देखा, जब मैं खुद ही थकी या टूटी थी। और इसी ने आगे बढ़ते रहने की हिम्मत दी। इतना प्यार, इतना सम्मान, इतना अपनापन मिला, कि मेरी झोली पूरी भर गयी। और इसमें उन साथियों, अधिकारियों और कर्मचारियों का भी बहुत बड़ा श्रेय है जिन्होंने मेरे कंधे से कंधा मिलाकर काम किया और साथ डटे रहे।

आज आभार से आँखें नम हैं। बस एक दृश्य इनमें बसा है। लहुरिया दह की पहाड़ी की वो वृद्ध माँ, जो अपने गाँव में पहली बार पानी पहुँचता देख कुछ नहीं बोली, बस काँपते हाथों से मेरा सिर छूकर आशीर्वाद दे गई। पद तो आज छूट गया, पर वह स्पर्श जीवन भर नहीं छूटेगा। और वह सपना भी नहीं छूटेगा, जो देश की इस मिट्टी ने मुझे दिया है।

आपकी अपनी,
दिव्या मित्तल