Shawn W Lim
@shawnlim
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founder ark financial & @artichokecap | digital money maximalist | LSE & @columbialaw alum | not financial advice
Joined November 2019
3/ Every meaningful fintech development is the result of the alchemy of new tech AND regulation before it’s ready for prime time. I love studying history because it repeats over and over, but accelerated each time.
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must read for using llms for wordcel work
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make banking great again
We are about the enter the biggest financial transformation of our lifetimes, on the order of fractional-reserve banking, joint-stock companies, and derivatives pricing theory.
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we're at the start of a new bull mkt for macro & commodity commentator accounts. to play, you will have to grok - energy - commodities (everything from lithium for batteries → nitrogen for fertilizer/food) - global supply chains & shipping - private credit cracks -
I'm going to make some obvious points. (1) Blowing up all the oil infrastructure in the Middle East is an insane idea, and may well result in a global economic crash and humanitarian crisis unrivaled in the lives of those now living. We're talking about the price of everything
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Why don’t they just tokenize the oil in the Middle East and transport it across permissionless financial rails, thereby avoiding the Strait of Hormuz altogether
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The test for any fintech: - Do you underwrite risk yourself or pass it to a partner? - Do you own the regulatory relationship or rent it? - Does every transaction make YOUR models sharper? - Is your ledger the source of truth?
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@heynavtoor Adopting AI into your work makes everyone a CEO, and there's something about it that very few people understand (mostly because few people are CEOs): When you have an front-line job, you spend maybe 1-5% of your brainpower of high-level, critical-thinking strategy. Most of your
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you can just do things
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do you have a product or a business?
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Great profile on 3G Capital. Was fortunate to have been part of the 3G story. Daniel Schwartz took a bet on a young lawyer and let me run a high growth business unit at Burger King. Learned about accountability, ownership and how to take bets on people.
The story of 3G Capital involves Roger Federer, Sam Walton, and Warren Buffett. It includes the biggest beer company on earth, the biggest footwear deal in history, and a ketchup bottle with Charlie Munger's face on it. It also involves accusations of 'chainsaw capitalism,' CEOs
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Core value of fintech over the last decade+ was superior engineering, integrations & UX on top of regulated rails (which seemed incapable of modernization). When a 2-person YC team can build software integrations w/AI tools, value will accrue to modern regulated rails.
The current consensus view is saas is dead...presuming that's right, the next interesting next question is What companies are "safe from ai"? - handling money, regulation - agents on top of company data - most hardware? - maybe systems of record? - security? - marketplaces?
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real
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@frankdegods I should’ve added more context: Startups need the room to make drastic changes to the product — to find product-market fit (e.g., starting from scratch, renaming the app, etc). The narrative can get so complex that no audience can keep up. When you have a bunch of people
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the regulatory state accepting the value of open networks and allowing its institutions to use these networks is the biggest unlock in financial services since the invention of the web. crypto in 2026 is like railway standardization in 1886, international containerization in
1/ To every founder asking what to build next—whether in crypto, AI, or fintech: what if the greatest breakthroughs in human history weren’t new inventions, but the simple removal of... friction? 🧵
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ongoing trend of ai tools unlocking proprietary data monetization across legacy web
Today we're launching our first data partnership with @Similarweb Now, you can: 👉 Access 12 months of web traffic history 👉 Benchmark competitors instantly 👉 Analyze marketing channels and traffic sources 👉Get regional traffic breakdowns All powered by Similarweb's
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incredible
I built a Morning Brew-style daily newsletter that writes itself with AI (now at 10,000+ daily readers) (and I’m nuts for open-sourcing it) The AI system behind @therecapai clones how a human writer would function, but each step is packaged into an agentic workstream. The full
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Looks like lots of room for new partners in the capital markets practice of every biglaw firm.
TLDR on the market structure bill: this is a big win for the Democratic Members on Banking. I frankly think this is the kind of bill that could've passed in 2024. Thread on the key pieces of the bill.
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permissionless networks and data legos
Shipped a new thing: Polymarket Times 🗞️ A newspaper powered entirely by real-time prediction odds on @Polymarket. A front page where the headlines are dictated by global markets, not editorial boards. The future is finally priced in 🫡
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Chanced upon this post by @arfrank and it most succinctly sums up my views on the opportunity in stablecoins - the edges (base layer financial infra and distribution) should capture most of the value.
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.
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