Fintech startups can be categorized primarily into two realms,.- Soft fintech (services, don’t actually touch money as a business).- Hard fintech (touches money as a means of doing business).

RT @MollySOShea: BREAKING: Fired by Elon, Astronomer, Meta, & Wendy’s, Alex Cohen Raises $22.5M Series A for Hello Patient Led by Scale Ven….

RT @anothercohen: Excited to share that we've raised a $22.5m Series A for Hello Patient, led by Scale Venture Partners. This is by far th….

RT @tbpn: IN NEWS: Rain raises $58M Series B to scale its stablecoin-powered card issuing services. We asked Rain’s founders (@rooqster &….

RT @rooqster: In the early days of Rain, @cnaut and I would talk to our early customers and realize that for them stablecoins were intelle….

RT @raincards: The forecast? Heavy Rain. ☔️. We’ve raised $58M in Series B funding—led by @SapphireVC with support from @Dragonfly_xyz, @ga….

RT @ScottHickle: I have a lot of respect for people like Aaron, who tell you what you need to hear, rather than what you want to hear. http….

RT @mignano: Embracing all the VC stereotypes, @semil (legendary seed investor and one of Figma's earliest backers) and I took the pod on t….

RT @MattHartman: Interesting read from @mitch_troy from @trybasis, a Factorial Capital portfolio company: The PC era created IT department….

RT @TheStalwart: Can God create a central bank so independent that even he can not interfere with it?.

10/ This is just the beginning of our Money 3.0 series. Coming next: Deep dives into each layer, founder playbooks, and the specific opportunities we’re most excited about. Read the full post: Follow @lightspeedvp @katkzhang @jmover for more.

9/ The best founders have one thing in common: customers use their product DESPITE it being built on blockchain, not because of it. That’s when you know you’ve found real product-market fit.

8/ What gets us excited about Money 3.0 founders:.• Deep fintech expertise meets blockchain primitives.• Treat compliance as competitive advantage, not headache• Platform business models > single-use apps.• Non-crypto traction (real PMF signal).• US-domiciled commercial pull.

7/ ISSUANCE layer = network effects + regulatory moats matter.DISTRIBUTION layer = end user relationships + specialized workflows create defensible differentiation.If you’re fighting in the middle, you’re fighting the wrong battle.

6/ Plot twist: The middle layers (infrastructure + orchestration) are commoditizing FAST. Everyone’s rebuilding similar tech stacks. Brutal margin compression incoming. The real value? It’s captured at the EDGES.

5/ The Four Layers:.ISSUANCE: Where trust stems from (Circle, Tether + specialized issuers).INFRASTRUCTURE: Technical backbone (FX, wallets, custody, on/off ramps)ORCHESTRATION: Where use cases come alive (B2B payments, treasury mgmt).DISTRIBUTION: How stablecoins reach end users.

4/ But here’s what most people miss: not all stablecoin opportunities are created equal. We see four distinct layers, each with different pace of innovation and value capture potential:.

3/ The numbers are staggering:.• $232B stablecoin market cap (March 2025).• 45x growth since Dec 2019• $400B projected by end of year.The GENIUS Act provided regulatory clarity. Now we’re seeing the fastest pace of financial innovation in decades.

2/ The financial system was built for a pre-digital world: batch processing, correspondent banking, physical settlement. Stablecoins represent the shift: batch → real-time, correspondent → peer-to-peer, physical → programmable.

1/ 2 weeks ago we published our thinking on the next phase of fintech.Money 3.0 is here, but most people missed it. Here’s our take on why stablecoins represent the biggest architectural shift in finance since the internet + what’s coming next 👇.

Ran into this again today.