Fintech Blueprint 🤖🏦🧭

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Analysis: Vanguard acquires Altruist for $4B
Altruist has grown from a 2018 startup into the third-largest custodian by firms served, giving Vanguard a new position against Schwab and Fidelity.
 • Lex Sokolin
AI: Banks scramble to lend $10B to Anthropic
Anthropic may raise more than $75B in the largest IPO ever. Banks are putting billions of their own balance sheets on the table to get a seat at it.
 • Luke Spill
DeFi: Do Prediction Markets Need a Prime Broker Yet?
26% of Gen Z investors treat sports betting as a deliberate part of their long-term financial strategy
 • Laurence Smith
Analysis: Why Revolut Survived and the Metaverse Didn't, a Tale of Financial Fashions
Virtuals peaked at $16.5MM in monthly fees before falling more than 90% within four months, despite the underlying technology continuing to work.
 • Lex Sokolin
40:40
Podcast: AI Distribution for 5000+ Banks, with Fiserv Co-Head of Financial Solutions Srini Krish
From mainframe MIPS to token budgets, why one of the original fintechs is betting on agents, and how 5,000 banks adopt AI without building it themselves
 • Matt Low
Analysis: Where $25T of Machine Economy Value is Moving
Micron surged 166%, agent tokens fell 23%, and a $25.3T machine economy is increasingly rewarding businesses that can turn AI demand into revenue.
 • Lex Sokolin
Fintech: Why X Money Is Willing to Lose Money Today
Unlocking a new monetization engine for X
 • Michiel Milanovic
Analysis: Stripe's $10B OpenRouter Bid and the AI Value Chain
The battle for AI profits is shifting from building models to owning distribution, enterprise deployment, and inference infrastructure.
 • Lex Sokolin
AI: Your Pension is Long Data Center Depreciation
How $27B of AI data centre debt ended up backing retirement income, and the assumption holding it together
 • Luke Spill
Fintech Blueprint 🤖🏦🧭
Fintech Blueprint 🤖🏦🧭
Become a world-class financial services investor and operator, leveraging our deep research on Fintech, DeFi, and AI to improve your strategy and achieve success.
Podcasts
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Fintech Blueprint 🤖🏦🧭
Podcast: How zerohash won Morgan Stanley's crypto business

Fundamental Analysis of Company Financials

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Analysis: Vanguard acquires Altruist for $4B
Altruist has grown from a 2018 startup into the third-largest custodian by firms served, giving Vanguard a new position against Schwab and Fidelity.
 • Lex Sokolin
Analysis: The Annotated Stripe Letter
The Money Robot Eating the GDP of the Internet
 • Lex Sokolin
Fintech: Why Capital One Chose Brex in a $5B Deal
Behind the largest fintech-bank deal in history
 • Michiel Milanovic
Report: Is Fintech or DeFi a better financial system?
Does crypto or fintech win? We compare Revenue, Volume, Users, and Take Rates of Fintech and Onchain Protocols
 • Lex Sokolin, Mario Stefanidis, and Jon Ma
Analysis: Schwab buys private shares broker Forge for $660MM, down from $2B SPAC price
SPVs Multiply as Pre-IPO Valuations Race Beyond $100B
 • Lex Sokolin
Fintech: Figure's $8B IPO rewiring HELOCs and prime brokerage
From HELOCs to the $2T consumer lending market
 • Michiel Milanovic
Analysis: The Economics of a Digital Asset Treasury
Is there a difference between DATs, ETFs, SPACs, and the underlying assets?
 • Lex Sokolin
Analysis: Hyperliquid prints $550MM revenue and $40B valuation with no VCs
With $300B in monthly volume, this small team may have created the next Binance onchain.
 • Lex Sokolin
Fintech: Chime IPO Primer - Can it hit $15B?
Winning the primary bank customer is not enough
 • Michiel Milanovic
Fintech: Can Revolut beat Robinhood in the US and Nubank in LATAM?
The trade-off between product expansion and overseas growth
 • Michiel Milanovic
Analysis: Our eToro IPO Primer, a global neobroker with $300MM in profit
With $300M in EBITDA, eToro’s IPO may rival Webull, Robinhood, and Coinbase.
 • Lex Sokolin
Analysis: Our Circle IPO Primer, $1.6B revenue reaching for $10B valuation
Interest rates all the way down
 • Lex Sokolin

Founder's Manual: How to Build a Company

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Building Company Playbook #9: Integrating AI Labor into your Fintech/DeFi business
The top 3 things Fintech and DeFi founders should do to level up their business
 • Lex Sokolin
Building Company Playbook #8: Dangers of the Growth Hacking Dark Arts
From Fake Growth to Ghost Networks in Web3
 • Lex Sokolin
Building Company Playbook #7: Planning and executing your exit strategy
This entry will focus on exit strategy, from M&A to IPO, and the required factors for success
 • Lex Sokolin
Building Company Playbook #6: Using token design for financial and product success
This entry will focus on cryptoeconomics and token engineering, and the key considerations when designing token-based projects and systems.
 • Lex Sokolin
Building Company Playbook #5: Creating your Fintech financial model and raising venture capital
This entry will focus on the issues around generating financial projections, raising capital, and making it through market cycles.
 • Lex Sokolin
Building Company Playbook #4: Building Fintech & DeFi software products
A continuation of our series on building Fintech & DeFi companies
 • Lex Sokolin
Building Company Playbook #3: Creating a B2B fintech go-to-market strategy
And the differences with the B2C path
Building Company Playbook #2: Creating a B2C fintech marketing strategy
And the differences to the B2B path
 • Lex Sokolin

Deep Dive Research Reports

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Report: The State of Finance for Marketers, and where Banks are beating Fintechs
Where is Europe's finance marketing budget actually going?
 • Lex Sokolin
Report: The State of Intelligent Finance, from Plaid
Will people trust AI agents to handle their finances?
 • Lex Sokolin
Analysis: The Fintech Blueprint AI & Robotics Report Q1 2026
This 121 page report maps 95 companies across AI infrastructure, foundation models, robotics, agents, and decentralized networks
 • Lex Sokolin
Robotics 101: Understanding the Robotics economy and its financial applications
How Web3 could power autonomous labor
 • 0xjacobzhao and Lex Sokolin
Research: Plaid's 2025 Fintech Consumer Report
Consumers now expect their apps to be smarter and more connected
 • Lex Sokolin
Fintech 101: The Tokenization of Real World Financial Assets
How asset management is moving onchain at scale
 • Will Beeson
AgentFi 101: The Definitive Guide to Decentralized Financial Agents
Lending, Farming, Arbitrage AgentFi’s First Real Use Cases
 • 0xjacobzhao and Lex Sokolin
Fintech 101: Money Movement reimagined with Stablecoins
How stablecoins are rebuilding global finance and commerce
 • Lex Sokolin and Marc Baumann
AI 101: How financial companies can build AI Agents
60% of Finance already is subscribed to AI services according to Ramp
 • Luke Spill
Research: The 2025 Practitioner’s Guide to Stablecoins
Stablecoins have quietly become the most used product in crypto for their practical utility
 • Will Beeson
Investing 101: DeFi Fixed Income Yields
Three Low-Risk DeFi Strategies Yielding Above Fed Rates
 • Lex Sokolin
Fintech 101: Neobanks
Introduction to core sectors
 • Lex Sokolin

Investment Thesis

Analysis: Launching a $201MM SPAC for Fintech, AI, and Crypto
The next SPAC cycle is being built around companies with real revenue, not pandemic-era projections.
 • Lex Sokolin
Analysis: Robot Money and the Financial System for AI
From AI Employees to AI Economies
 • Lex Sokolin
Analysis: The Rise of Robot Money 🤖💰
Whoever owns the robots, rules the world
 • Lex Sokolin
Analysis: Our 2025 Market Overview & Investment Outlook
Bitcoin, NVIDIA, and MicroStrategy lead Asset rally as USD devalues
 • Lex Sokolin
Long Take: From Centralized AI to Personal Bots in the agentic economy
The Financialization of AI Companions
 • Lex Sokolin
Long Take: How the Machine Economy combining AI, blockchain, and Fintech is growing
Examples of deeply innovative projects pushing at the frontier
 • Lex Sokolin
Long Take: Dissecting the 2023 Macroeconomy, from personal savings to global politics
Revisiting our macroeconomic framework for the year to date
 • Lex Sokolin
Long Take: Launching Generative Ventures, an engaged venture capital fund focused on the machine economy of Fintech, Web3, and AI
An optimistic investment thesis for our industry
 • Lex Sokolin
54:24
Podcast Conversation: Lex Sokolin's 2022 investing and building thesis -- the evolutionary relationship between Tech, Finance, and Web3
Hi Fintech Architects,
 • Matt Low
Why ConsenSys Codefi is the bridge to blockchain-based manufacturing for commerce and finance; plus 12 short takes on top developments
Hi Fintech futurists --
 • Lex Sokolin

Cornerstone Philosophy

Analysis: Why Revolut Survived and the Metaverse Didn't, a Tale of Financial Fashions
Virtuals peaked at $16.5MM in monthly fees before falling more than 90% within four months, despite the underlying technology continuing to work.
 • Lex Sokolin
Analysis: A Psalm to the Machine Gods
The Feeling of 2026
 • Lex Sokolin
Fintech: Why Iran demands crypto for ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz
Rising demand for a global neutral settlement layer
 • Michiel Milanovic
Analysis: Coinbase's Super App to swallow Crypto, like Google ate the Internet
Free finance, infinite choice, and the rise of closed-loop financial fortresses.
 • Lex Sokolin
Analysis: From Vanguard to Believe App, investing collapses into short form content
The Technium is leading us to create faster systems, but for worse outcomes.
 • Lex Sokolin
Long Take: Emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence sector, and powering DAOs with shallow labor
Gm Fintech Architects —
 • Lex Sokolin
Long Take: Deriving Polygon Supernets and Avalanche Subnets value accrual through the Laws of Nature
Gm Fintech Architects —
 • Lex Sokolin
Long Take: The Roaring Twenties of Populism, Institutionalism, and Technology's Meaning
Gm Fintech Futurists — a bit of philosophy for you at the close of the year.
 • Lex Sokolin
Long Take: Getting ahead in Facebook's Metaverse by earning the Harvard of NFTs
Hi Fintech futurists --
 • Lex Sokolin
Food for Thought: A meditation on capitalism, the grey goo, and the Borganisms
The cycle of capitalism.
 • Lex Sokolin
Long Take: The absurdity of how the Internet is both beautiful and awful, and the memetic infection of Finance
Hi Fintech futurists --
 • Lex Sokolin
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