Strandedbar

Tech, Web3 & Finance. Aspiring to reach 50 followers.

[Justin Murphy @jmrphy]

Today working on a phone or laptop is associated with upper-middle-class knowledge work. In ten years, it will be a kind of low-status, blue-collar, manual labor; you won't want to be seen doing it in public.

A megatrend over the next ten years will be the disappearance of screens. We'll move to e-ink displays for anything that requires visual inspection, but the most elite and coveted, high-value work will be screenless, engaged with analog materials, and voice-first. Looking into all of these backlit screens, scrolling and typing with your thumbs on tiny keyboards, squinting at tabs and pixels with a "mouse"—you can already feel these are absurd, awful relics of a past time.

[Criptolawyer @criptolawyer]

most neobanks will not survive the next 18 months.

not because demand disappears. $245M in top-ups in a single week proves demand is the least of your problems, they will die because of what they built underneath:

i review compliance infrastructure for a living since 2017. here is the full map of what actually holds this market together, layer by layer, and who is powering each one right now

cards

your card program is a three-party compliance relationship: you, your issuer, and the network. the network's enhanced due diligence sits on top of your issuer's requirements. if either loses confidence in your stack, the card stops. not slowly. overnight

@binance lost Visa in Europe July 2023. lost @Mastercard in latam two months later. gone by December. @ready_co gave non-EEA users one hour's notice in June 2026 when their issuer relationship broke. one hour

what the network actually wants to see: account-level OFAC and sanctions screening, not batch, not periodic, continuous. a transaction monitoring system that produces real alerts. a KYC layer defensible across every jurisdiction you operate in. one audit trail running through every product the customer touches

Starlingbank had a system that produced zero individual sanctions alerts for six months. £29M fine. that is the floor

the infrastructure powering this layer right now: @raincards (Visa and Mastercard principal member, BIN sponsor for 200+ programs, one API for issuance, compliance, FX and onchain settlement), @pomelo_latam ($160M raised, powers bbva , santander , @Bancolombia , @WesternUnion , Binance across latam, just launched global stablecoin card across 150+ countries), @marqeta ($383B processing volume in 2025), @lithic, @GalileoFintech, @unit_co_, @treasuryprime, @Adyen, @Stablecoin @eldoradoio @Uglycash

the compliance layer that makes the issuer relationship survivable is what @blend_money is built around: screening, audit trails, per-jurisdiction reporting, the infrastructure that keeps the card program intact at scale

on and off ramps

every ramp is a compliance event before it's a UX event

on-ramp: you are opening a new account. source of funds, identity verification, risk scoring before a single dollar moves

off-ramp: withdrawal with a clean audit trail, documented source of funds, per-jurisdiction reporting. this is where most teams underinvest because users don't see it. regulators do

best practice: per-account screening on every transaction, not customer-level screening on signup and never again. your banking partner will pull a sample during their quarterly review. if the trail isn't clean per transaction, you find out at the worst moment

the infrastructure powering ramps right now: @moonpay (eliminated fees on stablecoin onramps, enterprise stablecoin services live), @Transak (published the Q2 2026 compliance cliff report, most serious public documentation of what payment companies need before july), @Stablecoin (acquired by Stripe for $1.1B, trust charter approved february 2026), @belo_app @AlchemyPay, zerohashx, @Bitso , @RipioApp @daimo @dakota_xyz @RampNetwork @tazapay

earn

(im biased here just a little bit)

the most misunderstood compliance surface in the stack

shared vaults feel like a product architecture decision. they are actually a legal structure decision. commingled user funds create fiduciary exposure, insolvency complexity, and a direct failure point in any serious institutional diligence process

the question that kills shared vault structures is simple: show me the ledger entry for user X's balance. if the answer requires reconstructing it from pool accounting, you don't have an answer

best practice: isolated per user from day one. each account its own ledger entry. yield calculated individually. never commingled. this isn't conservative. it's the only structure that survives the question above from a banking partner, a regulator, or an institutional LP doing diligence on your cap table

this is the architecture @blend_money runs. isolated accounts, clean ledger, never commingled

for the institutional layer on top: @noon_capital brings the DeFi stack diversification and insurance coverage that makes yield products viable for institutions. diversified protocol exposure across @MorphoLabs, @eulerfinance, @pendle_fi, tokenized treasuries, CLOs and private credit. insurance gating on every deployment, no capital deployed without coverage. that is the version that survives institutional diligence

the broader earn infrastructure: @opentrade_io (RWA-backed yield-as-a-service, bank-grade legal structure with bankruptcy-remote SPC, powers Littio, Kredete, Criptan), @OndoFinance, @maplefinance, @goldfinch_fi, @SuperstateInc

in europe, MiCA Article 50 prohibits interest on euro-denominated stablecoins. the compliant path runs through tokenized T-bills and RWA wrappers. yield from an underlying asset, not from the stablecoin itself. whoever builds this first owns european earn

cashback and rewards

every rewards program with monetary value has reporting obligations

(ps @itstuyo set the new standart here: buy now pay maybe)

the cleanest structure: rewards funded from interchange revenue, paid in a regulated stablecoin, accounting that reconciles per user per period, tax-reportable from day one in every jurisdiction

paying rewards in your own token introduces volatility risk for the user and securities classification risk for you. the question "is this a security?" becomes harder to answer the moment the token fluctuates and users expect returns

compliance screening, the layer underneath all of it

most teams assemble this reactively. something breaks, a regulator asks a question, a banking partner flags a transaction. then the compliance stack gets built. that is the wrong order

the teams that survive build it preventively. before the card. before the ramp. before the earn product. one continuous audit trail across every product the customer touches

the point tools doing parts of this well: @chainalysis (blockchain analytics, OFAC and sanctions screening, regulator-accepted in US, EU and UK), @elliptic, @trmlabs, @Sumsubcom (KYC, AML and Travel Rule in one integration, MiCA and FATF ready), @ComplyAdvantage, @notabene_id, @sardine, @unit21inc, @jumio, @Onfido

but point tools create point gaps. your KYC vendor does not talk to your transaction monitoring. your transaction monitoring does not feed your sanctions screening. your sanctions screening does not generate the audit trail your banking partner needs to read. every gap is a reconciliation problem you find at the worst moment

what @blend_money built is the integrated layer. AML screening, OFAC checks, KYC, transaction monitoring, per-jurisdiction reporting, all running together as preventive infrastructure before a single user touches a product. not a compliance dashboard bolted on top. the foundation the card, the ramp and the earn product sit on

IDmerit's February 2026 breach of approximately 1 billion records made this clear: your compliance infrastructure is now a counterparty risk decision, not just a regulatory one

the right order of operations

1) screening and transaction monitoring, then issuer relationship, then card

2) source of funds framework, then ramp, then volume

3) isolated ledger, then earn product, then institutional partners

4)interchange accounting, then rewards, then retention

teams that invert this order ship faster in year one and rebuild in year two. sometimes year two doesn't come

the $245M is not a card story. it's not a yield story. it's a survival story

the neobanks still standing when this market hits $2.45B will be the ones that figured out compliance is not the last thing you build. it's the only thing that lets you build everything else

WaveCrest taught this lesson in 2018. Wirecard taught it in 2020. Ftx in 2022. Binance in 2023. Ready in 2026

the lesson does not change. only the names do.

[Max Karpis @maxkarpis]

Revolut open-sourced its Core Talent Blueprint — a free masterclass for any founder scaling fast.

(Note: QuantumLight first dropped this in 2025.)

TL;DR:
Revolut went from ~100 to 12k+ people while keeping elite talent density.

They ditched traditional recruiting for first-principles hiring:

Hire ambitious juniors on an upward trajectory > experienced “experts”

Build an internal recruiting machine (do not rely on externals)

Hyper-standardise everything to protect the bar at volume 3-interview framework:

Problem-solving case studies + Bar Raiser (real achievements + grit) + Leadership assessment for managers
Attitude & problem-solving > years of experience

Full playbook + frameworks here: https://t.co/v3W8VokbFs

I applied to @Revolut several times purely as a learning experiment — and got rejected almost instantly every single time. They’re ruthlessly sticking to their values and systems. They’ve turned recruitment into a genuine science, and ot clearly works.

[Strandedbar @strandedbar]

@MacLughaidh He seems scuttered drunk

[Strandedbar @strandedbar]

@Kerrso86 Focusing it more so as an urban center of excellence could be a much better shout at this stage. Gaelic games in the city need a hub. Stadium may never come.

[Strandedbar @strandedbar]

@moneillsf Failed to deliver, unfortunately. Shared Island fund could have supported it. All the focus is on the wrong things.

[Strandedbar @strandedbar]

@PangurBn10 We didn't really have hipsters back in 2012-2015 but we have them now in the form of mullet & mustache heads. They're quite different to the scauldy techno heads who looked rough but could be very friendly.

[Strandedbar @strandedbar]

@MacLughaidh They are really moving ahead. US has mass affluence now. Normal to have a Ford Ranger, a few jet skis and a zero turn lawnmower. The only people here with that kind of wealth made it in Oz and sent it back in a shipping container.

[Strandedbar @strandedbar]

@KarlMartinIrl @SkyNews @naval_service At this stage, everything is needed! Troop protection vehicles are essential and one of the most pressing priorities as the mowags need replacements. Consider the ongoing equipment needs for peacekeeping missions. The wheeled vehicles have proven invaluable in Ukraine!

[Strandedbar @strandedbar]

@RobCross247 Could easily have some sort of Georgian museum in Limerick. The city lacks in terms of decent attractions. It would benefit by having a multitude of small museums. Start small and build a cluster of niche museums. Put too many eggs in one basket with the rugby experience.

[Strandedbar @strandedbar]

@GetUsBritsOut Socio-economically, it's much closer to Rugby or AFL than it is to soccer.

[Strandedbar @strandedbar]

@AllIrel2023 The dreary steeples...

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

As one thing (digital content) becomes cheap and plentiful, another thing (in-person experiences) becomes expensive and rare.

[@levelsio @levelsio]

Bitcoin has always been operating in 4 year cycles where it crashes at the end

2014, 2018, 2022, 2026

It's actually great because every 4th year people really get super sad and give up on it (or well that's how it feels like)

There's also surely some sentiment pumping to push the price down so people can buy in cheap again

The next cycle up is 2027-2031

(And it has something to with the halvening which happens every 4 years cutting the reward for miners in half)

[Buck @BuckOnTwidder]

if you can hold 3 jobs, hit a few perfect trades, keep expenses low and then nail that parlay you can live the lifestyle of a moderately successful plumber in the 1970s

[Strandedbar @strandedbar]

Very cool concept. Universities should be watching closely.

[Atoms Not Bits @AtomsNotBits]

BREAKING: America is getting a new trade school built for the reindustrialization boom.

@TryOpenX begins trials at Skill Factory #000 in Texas in early July, with plans to train 10,000+ skilled workers annually and build employer-backed production lines around real industrial demand.

[Unfiltered Artist @EmpireEnjoyer3]

Musk alone is reindustrializing America. He’s at least 50% of the equation.

[Strandedbar @strandedbar]

@joehas No definately not, there should be some sort of Japan style obsession with preserving the place and even growing it.