Luca Cosentino

Internet capital markets

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

Brutally missing the opportunity to generate 100% incremental demand for Euro-denominated government bonds

[European Central Bank @ecb]

Stablecoins are not an efficient way to strengthen the international role of the euro, says President Christine @Lagarde.

The best solution remains deeper capital market integration through the savings and investment union and a stronger safe asset base https://t.co/Xewr8ysz9B

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

@aakashgupta Not to mention that OpenRouter is unusable - it breaks every second if you switch between models and use data objects instead of plain queries.

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

Finally, a well-articulated explanation of something that has been challenging to convince operators about.

[Geoff Charles @geoffintech]

1990s: Business → IT
2000s: Business → PM → Eng
2010s: Empowered product teams (PM + Eng + Design)
2020s: Outcome teams (PM/Eng/Design + Data)
202xs: GM model (Business Owner + Builder + GTM)

PMs need to level up to GMs or transition to "member of the technical staff".

The role as defined might soon cease to exist.

[Cross River Bank @crossriverbank]

Read our full statement urging the Senate to preserve its position on stablecoin yield rules to foster competition and consumer choice: https://t.co/r3U0NUei05

[Cross River Bank @crossriverbank]

We expect 2026 will be the year of stablecoins.

Organizations are using them to unlock 24/7 settlement capabilities, reduce friction, and expand liquidity. What was once experimental is becoming operational and the momentum is undeniable.

As stablecoins lead the digital finance revolution, AI adoption rises, and payments frameworks evolve for speed and efficiency, what do you think will be the biggest trends of 2026?

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

@sytaylor well said

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

@Visa, @crossriverbank, and @highnotesocial brought 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝘀𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 to life.

What changes?
Card members benefit from lower cost of capital.
Crypto-native cardholders can pay balances directly in stablecoins.
Program managers stop babysitting wires and prefunding.
Crypto programs can push and pull stablecoins natively.
Merchants get paid 7 days a week.
Crypto merchants get paid 7 days a week, in stablecoins.

[Cuy Sheffield @cuysheffield]

Excited to announce that in partnership with @circle, we have launched USDC settlement for @Lead_Bank and @crossriverbank card programs over the Solana blockchain

https://t.co/7VK1hGktfw

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

@0xDaedalus Wouldn't it better to enable Check -> Stablecoins -> Bank? @0xDaedalus

Meet the user where they are, but remove backoffice complexity.

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

https://t.co/foKhExYeZd

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

The Rail above Rails.

Today, money's interoperability relies on complex clearing houses and fragmented systems.

This is why you often have to ask, "Are you on Venmo? Which bank?" or call your bank to trace a payment.

#Stablecoins are the "English" of finance - a universal, open standard. They create a digital layer that connects domestic and international systems.

This means open standards and digital assets can create a unified, frictionless rail for everyone, or rail above rails.

Some thoughts below 👇

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

The largest asset managers and originators are now integrating #Web3* to handle edge cases that give competitive advantage.

Simple example: use @aave for pre-fund an ETF redemption.

This was not happening 1 year ago.

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

@dberenzon onchain!

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

Fostering the ecosystem.
Let's move these assets #onchain.

[Simon Taylor @sytaylor]

Super excited to share that the @tempo public testnet is now live.

And you can start building.

Since announcing in September, we've added 14 design partners:

- Brex.
- Coastal.
- Cross River.
- Deel.
- Faire.
- Figure.
- Gusto.
- Kalshi.
- Klarna.
- Mastercard.
- Payoneer.
- Persona.
- Ramp.
- UBS.

Plus 40 infrastructure partners across dev tools, on/off-ramps, and DeFi.

What's live:

- Dedicated payment lanes (guaranteed blockspace for payments.)
- Stablecoin-native gas Pay fees in USD stablecoins.
- Built-in stablecoin DEX Pay fees in any USD stable. ly.
- Native memos (e.g. Invoice numbers, cost centers, identifiers - attached to every transfer.)
- 0.5 second finality Deterministic.
- Passkey auth Face ID. Fingerprint.

The client is open source under Apache license. Anyone can run a node.

Design partners are already testing remittances, global payouts, embedded finance, tokenized deposits, and agentic commerce.

Payments infrastructure. Open to everyone. Testnet available now.

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

Comparing adoption numbers when “adoption difficulty” is different leads to wrong conclusions.

Which multiples were paid on YouTube, at the time when phone screens were half the size of business card and Internet ran at the speed of a text file?

I think we should move the discussion to the sustainability of the economic model of L1’s.

[Santiago R Santos @santiagoroel]

A sober reminder of where we stand as an industry:

- Crypto has ~40M monthly active users (MAUs) today
- Facebook IPO’d with 845M MAUs at a ~$100B market cap
- OpenAI has ~800M MAUs and was last valued at $500B

We want a $10 trillion asset class?
We need a billion users. Minimum.

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

@dberenzon Then I agree ;)

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

@dberenzon Is your post about “can compete if they had these features” or “can compete against these features”?

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

@EtherfuseDave onchain

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

Let’s view blockchains as technology with governance and incentives, like a new/better Internet.

And less as an asset class. Web3 is getting started, but most users will not have to care.

[Ryan De Souza @_ryandesouza]

🏦 Fintechs raised hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire customers (aka distribution) over the last decade.

You think they’re just going to hand it over to crypto bros in exchange for tokens?

Crypto needs better ways to get products into the hands of end users and sustainable strategies for customer acquisition and retention

Instead of banking on fintechs as a Hail Mary for distribution

[Luca Cosentino @lcosent]

@usemotocard happy to see my friends at @usemotocard push it forward