Brian Fabian Crain

retired entrepreneur. previously co-founder and ceo @chorusone (acq by @bitwise). co-host @epicenterbtc & investing @frachtisvc

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

@Bfaviero @krakenfx @KrakenInsto Big boy job!

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

@nico_laqua @karrisaarinen Seems like a totally unrelated point.

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

@Jacob_Naviaux You have no integrity.

[RYAN SΞAN ADAMS - rsa.eth 🦄 @RyanSAdams]

- we laid off a portion of our team and slimmed down to a smaller core

- i'm stepping into passive mode and @TrustlessState is now leading team and content (though I'll keep doing our weekly rollup)

- i expect David will expand content beyond our previous 6 years of strong ethereum focus, but he'll figure it out as he goes

I need to touch grass, David has energy for a second era, crypto and media have changed and Bankless needed to adapt

I'm still bullish ETH, though I think the window of success is now slimmer than it once was

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

@RyanSAdams @Bankless @TrustlessState Thanks! That’s helpful. I would do some tweet from the bankless account too.

Wish you all the best with touching grass and whatever comes next!

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

The whole @Bankless communication is very confusing. What exactly happened? They fired all their media team and are now bearish ethereum? Or they’re shutting the podcast down?

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

API for @meetgranola is really not great. If I get transcript from calls it doesn't even identify different speakers?

That's just a broken product.

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

@Rewkang @RoboStrategy This is very cool!

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

API for @meetgranola is really not great. If I get transcript from calls it doesn't even identify different speakers?

That's just a broken product.

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

@levelsio @jesper_bee What is the optimal level and what’s evidence for it? If I ask Claude, it says there is no evidence that 400 is better than 800.

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

@sweatystartup What a dumb take

[Xave Meegan @0xave]

SF / @Stripe Sessions takeaways 🌉

Crypto x Fintech:

- fintech is taking over crypto - they’re raising money without telling investors they’re actually using crypto underneath, crypto founders take note

- corporates are extremely interested in stablecoins, not crypto

- enterprises guarantee if something doesn’t work they’ll make a customer whole, crypto teams don’t do this enough, which important in the agent era when there’s a lot of risk

- imo there’s room for a decentralised network that uses all agent payment standards and is open - @Tempo will be huge for enterprises and massive for blockchain adoption, TBD on timeline for a 3rd party developer ecosystem there

- still think some of the best apps in the world going forward will uniquely use crypto rails in a way competitors (like pure AI) don’t to differentiate and provide better UX / value to users

AI

- AI infrastructure is everywhere, if people think crypto pitches are saturated, try AI

- lots of talk about what AI agents will do but unclear exactly what they’ll be doing in outstanding use-cases

- somewhat consensus in SF that blockchain can improve trust of AI, yet very little founders have answers as to how to make it happen

- becoming more consensus that hardware is a great way to build strong moats in the age of AI

- accessing prop data is a huge moat for AI startups, there’s likely industries that are sitting on very interesting datasets in niche markets that will be high growth in the future, which AI startups can target - interesting investment opportunity

Startups & Fundraising:

- very few founders have good responses for why frontier models won’t eat their startup in the next 6-12 months

- the best startups glue incredibly complex workflows together, which require special kinds of permissions to do so and would be hard for competitors to replicate

- surprising amount of trad VCs have dedicated crypto teams

- talent in SF is best I’ve ever seen, barely had 1 bad pitch across crypto or AI

—

overall I’m very bullish SF and the intersection of crypto, FinTech and AI.

The vibes are high in SF. People are curious in how technologies will intersect and care about distribution / moats. Could see some generational winners here being built at the intersection if not already, then in the future.

Now headed to Consensus Miami! DMs open for builders keen to meet there 🌴

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

Let’s go!

[Tushar Jain @tushar_jain]

1/ Multicoin has built a significant position in $ZEC since February.

Zcash is a return to the cypherpunk ideals crypto was founded on.

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

@cdixon @eddylazzarin Congratulations @eddylazzarin ! Well deserved!

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

@zmanian Max HRV during sleep of the following night? That’s amazing.

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

So needed! Great effort. Let’s fix Portugal.

[@levelsio @levelsio]

It's been about a year ago since I launched a site called 🇵🇹 Only In Portugal to journal the crazy issues we've experienced as foreigners moving to Portugal with both governments agencies and businesses here, most of them quite Kafka-esque in nature

Of course everyone's reaction is "why don't you leave?"

But it is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, which has incredible potential

And it's nicer to fix things, and while complaining about things doesn't make you popular (I've received many death threats), it is oddly effective if you do it in the public sphere:

Collectively complaining about things, as we've seen with Google (they stopped self-sabotaging and are now the leader in AI), the European Union (they are passing laws based on @euacc points), and even Apple (Tim Cook finally quit), does fix things, eventually!

So I'm trying the same with Portugal

I feel AI governance has a lot of potential, AI can be quite a neutral party that can look at issues and find solutions in a very pragmatic and non-partisan way

So I've asked AI to analyze over 300 issues, stories and experiences submitted to my site in the last 12 months, and write an deep analysis report how to fix Portugal in the next 5 years: every argument it makes is based on real experiences from real people , so no AI hallucinations

AI believes all issues here are based on 5 core problems:
- The Portuguese government is too expensive and too slow to interact with
- There aren't enough skilled workers and no incentive to become one
- There is zero accountability anywhere in the system
- Technology adoption is 15–20 years behind
- The tax system punishes productive people and rewards evasion

(P.S. of course many of Portugal's issues are a microcosm of Europe's macro issues)

AI then created a 5-Year Action Plan to solve it:

YEAR 1 — Shock Therapy
1.1 Flatten the Tax System
1.2 Nuke the Immigration Agency, Build a Digital Replacement
1.3 Gut the Public Sector Bureaucracy
1.4 The Accountability Law

YEAR 2 — Infrastructure Blitz
2.1 Lisbon Airport
2.2 Digital Infrastructure
2.3 Healthcare Triage

YEAR 3 — Culture Shift
3.1 Skilled Trades Academy
3.2 Animal Welfare & Noise Enforcement
3.3 Court Reform

YEAR 4 — Economic Acceleration
4.1 Housing
4.2 Transport
4.3 Consumer Protection

YEAR 5 — Consolidation
5.1 Measure Everything
5.2 Cultural Campaigns
5.3 The Exit Metric

Of course the next challenge is how do you get this to politicians, but we did this with @euacc before, so we can surely do it in Portugal too!

You can read the full action plan in the reply below!

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

@JasonYanowitz @AndrewSteinwold Big money for the big guys. The world is healing.

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

@luigidemeo @aave Super exciting! Congrats. Very bullish Aave!

[Brian Fabian Crain @crainbf]

@nicknorwitz Did you also consider retatrutide?