There’s another elephant in the room to address, which is cashback. Users are so spoiled with 2-4% cashback financed by VCs or parent companies of those neobanks, so it makes impossible to compete even if your CAC is $0.
All these “successful” neobanks are essentially the retention strategy for CEXes or other big companies, or pure VC plays to win a particular market and sell a company to a bigger player before you run out of money
Starting a neobank is now incredibly cheap. With crypto rails, most of the stack comes out of the box for free. That makes CAC the dominant cost driver, and the whole business becomes a game of acquiring customers for less than they’re worth. The way to keep CAC low is to specialize. Teams often start by focusing on a narrow segment, like farmers in one region, young people in high-inflation economies, or expats in Asia, and build features and marketing tailored precisely to them. The result is great for consumers: they get financial experiences designed for exactly who they are.
Paging all .HL's...
Introducing Proof of HYPE
Drop a handle and find out who's actually been spreading the word about @HyperliquidX on X / Twitter
Who's really been putting in the work? 👀
Have a mission, plan ahead, question everything, assume nothing, roll up your sleeves, study the past, take risks, dream higher, welcome change, have an amazing haircut, laugh, be curious, pay attention to details, make m̶i̶s̶t̶a̶i̶k̶s̶ mistakes, think sideways, do things with passion, don’t forget to play, take it to the edge, breathe.
Creativity takes courage.
This is the most unique perps exchange design I've seen in a while. Particularly because of the $PAPER mechanism.
Here's how it works:
> @papertrade_xyz is a synthetic perps protocol on HyperEVM without fees, funding, or slippage.
> If you lose a trade, your full margin goes to the LP. If you win, you get paid but the protocol takes a fee on your gain - the fee is smaller for big moves, bigger for tiny moves. That haircut is the protocol's only revenue.
> The LP starts at $0. It fills purely from trader losses. If the LP can't pay a winner immediately, the payout enters an onchain FIFO debt queue and gets paid as the LP refills.
> Losing traders receive PAPER tokens. The lower the LP balance, the more PAPER you mint per dollar lost.
> PAPER can be staked to earn USDC dividends - a continuous cut of LP revenue. Once the LP exceeds $5M, all surplus gains go entirely to stakers.
> When the LP is low, emissions are high, so this is theoretically the time to accumulate PAPER cheap (also the riskiest period - if volume dries up, the LP doesn't earn any revenue and the whole flywheel breaks).
> When the LP is high ($5M), dividends are high, so this is theoretically best time to be staking.
> With sufficient volume, both states create buying/holding pressure on the token.
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Holding/staking $PAPER is essentially betting that traders will lose against the house, which is arguably one of the most reliable bets you can make (and a good hedge if you're a degen perps trader).
My favorite liang wenfeng story is that when he was in college, a buddy offered him a cofounder position in his drone startup. He turned him down to focus on academics. The drone startup became
DJI.
You would assume making such a decision would be the defining career moment of someone’s career. That they would regret it forever. But not this guy 😅
@davidpattersonx For you to earn 10x, society and the government provides enough infrastructure so that you can earn that capital. Let’s not forget that money is a way for the state to systematize resource allocation. So yeah, stfu and pay your taxes.
We are no longer overbought so it is possible we can rally once more led by compute-ai and financials and even travel & leisure and manufacturing on the Middle East rebuild
Launching my venture app studio in June.
If you have a high-potential idea (or if you’ve already launched) and need a team and $ to scale it, DM me or leave a comment.
Starting with 3 apps this summer.