金融模式 · 103

a16z: TradFi is not embracing the DeFi model, but is accelerating the adoption of blockchain technology

Comparing news, a16z published a blog post saying that as traditional financial institutions accelerate their exploration of blockchain technology, the market generally believes that the future will usher in the full integration of DeFi (decentralized finance) and TradFi (traditional finance), forming a new financial model by combining decentralized finance with institutional distribution systems. However, this may not be the case in reality. The core driving force for traditional financial institutions to adopt blockchain does not accept the concept of decentralization, but rather values its commercial value in reducing costs, improving settlement efficiency, expanding distribution channels, and optimizing customer relationship management. What is more likely to emerge in the future is a new programmable financial infrastructure based on blockchain underlying technology but optimized for institutional needs rather than a simple fusion of traditional finance and DeFi. Institutions are selectively absorbing some of DeFi's technical capabilities and adapting them to their own regulatory, risk management, and operational requirements. For example, atomic settlement can reduce counterparty risk, shared ledgers can reduce back-office reconciliation costs, programmable funds can automatically execute processes such as interest payment, margin management, and corporate actions, and automated market-making models are also being applied to the pricing of on-chain foreign exchange and tokenized assets. But at the same time, native DeFi features such as open access, anonymity, and trustless execution often conflict with institutions' requirements for compliance, control, and accountability tracking. Therefore, cases such as J.P. Morgan's institutional blockchain project, BlackRock and Franklin Templeton's tokenized fund, are essentially not traditional finance entering DeFi, but rather using blockchain technology to improve existing financial business processes. In the future, the blockchain industry will have two development paths at the same time: on the one hand, enterprises and financial institutions will continue to promote the implementation of blockchain infrastructure that meets regulatory requirements and expand the scale of the industry through applications such as stablecoins, tokenized assets, and on-chain settlement; on the other hand, open networks will continue to assume the role of a source of innovation and continuously generate new financial primitives and market mechanisms to provide technical reserves for future institutional infrastructure. TradFi and DeFi are not in a competitive relationship, but are growing together in different directions. Traditional finance may not fully adopt the DeFi model, but will gradually adopt parts of it that suit its own needs. True integration may eventually occur at the underlying blockchain network level, rather than one party replacing the other. For developers, the key is not to pursue all markets at the same time, but to specify who to serve: for institutions, they need to build products around compliance, risk control, and long-term business processes; for open networks, they need to continue exploring innovation, liquidity, and network effects. The future financial system may run on blockchain infrastructure, but the most important innovations may come first from open networks.

39d ago

Adam Back: Strategy won't return to zero, there is no basis for being bearish on STRC

Comparing news, crypto-punk pioneer Adam Back said that the market's negative views on Strategy and its preferred stock STRC have no basis because “what Strategy is doing is essentially just selling Bitcoin to pay shares”, has not changed its Bitcoin reserve strategy, and is “proving that returns can be paid to investors with Bitcoin while reducing debt ratios.” Adam Back further pointed out that Strategy is showing the market a new financial model, that is, Bitcoin may become an alternative asset to cash in the future for corporate asset management and capital operations, and the FUD sentiment surrounding MSTR and STRC is exaggerated, and Strategy will not “return to zero”. Its long-term value lies in continuing to hold Bitcoin and promote the market's understanding of Bitcoin's monetary attributes.

62d ago#Strategy topics

Mexico's Fintech Industry Pushes for Fintech 2 Act Reform to Clarify Crypto Asset Regulatory Rules

Comparatively, according to La Política Online, the Mexican fintech industry is seeking to push forward the reform of the Fintech 2 Act under the leadership of Ángel Cabrera, the new head of Mexico's National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV). The industry believes that the Fintech Law passed in 2018 can no longer keep up with the pace of innovation, leading to bottlenecks in the approval process, and there is an urgent need for more clear and flexible regulatory standards. Key demands include speeding up the authorization process, implementing hierarchical risk management, conditional authorization, and fully standardizing the open finance model. Regarding crypto assets, Mexico's financial authorities currently maintain restrictions on such instruments, although the global crypto market continues to grow. The industry is seeking progress in crypto asset regulation, hoping to establish more clear rules. Furthermore, the industry also wants to promote a hybrid model, allowing the same platform to integrate services such as payment, credit, and insurance. Experts pointed out that about 85% of transactions in Mexico are still carried out in cash, and a large number of people are not covered by the traditional financial system. Updating regulations will help accelerate financial inclusion.

67d ago

6% annualization, Musk declared war on traditional banks

Author: Cathy Original title: 6% annualization. In early March 2026, Musk declared war on traditional banks, American actor William Shatner (William Shatner) — Captain Kirk in “Star Trek” — posted a screenshot on X. It's no big deal, it's just that he's testing a new product called X Money. There is a line of figures in the screenshot, annualized rate of return: 6%. The post didn't get any major retweets, but it quietly blew up in the financial world. Not because of William Shatner, but because of that 6%. You open an ordinary savings account at J.P. Morgan Chase, and the deposit interest rate is 0.01%. You're at Wells Fargo, and the answers are similar. Save $100 and the big bank will give you a penny after a year. And X Money gives you $6. Gap, 600x. This is how Musk declared war on traditional finance — not with technical white papers, nor with regulatory PR, but with a screenshot. The appearance of a black metal card X Money is easy to understand: a digital wallet that can send, receive, and store money, and also comes with a physical debit card. But every detail reveals ambition. That debit card, in black metal, has your X username (Handle) laser engraved on it. It's not your name, it's not your account number, it's your social identity on the X platform. This design is no accident. It ties social accounts and spending power together. Every time you check out a card, it shows not only a payment tool, but your digital identity. The stickiness of the X ecosystem is layered on top of each other. At the settlement level, X Money is connected to Visa Direct. Traditional bank ACH transfers take 1 to 3 business days to arrive, and Visa Direct can be delivered in seconds. For the gig economy and content creators, this speed gap is a real experience improvement. Deposits are managed by Cross River Bank (a member bank of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), and each user is protected by up to $250,000 in federal deposit insurance. Summarize this product in one sentence: 6% APY, laser-engraved ferrous metal card, instant settlement, zero overseas processing fees, 250,000 insurance limit. It's hard to be picky just by looking at the parameter table. Why can you give 6% is the most critical question. 6% APY, where did the money come from? X Money isn't burning money to subsidize users — at least the current business logic isn't. The answer lies in an inconspicuous difference in cost structure. Traditional large banks maintain a complete physical network: branches, tellers, ATM fleets, and decades-old IT systems. These are huge fixed costs, and they are there no matter how the size of the deposit changes. X Money, on the other hand, is a cloud-native, API-first platform with no physical outlets and no historical baggage. X is responsible for the front-end user experience, leaving bank compliance and fund custody to Cross River Bank. This embedded financial model of “the front end is a technology company and the back end is a licensed bank” has drastically reduced operating costs, and the space saved can be distributed to users. This logic itself isn't new. Robinhood, Ally Bank, and SoFi are following the same path. But X Money has one thing traditional fintech companies generally lack: over 500 million monthly active users, and almost zero user acquisition costs (CAC). You don't need to spend money to get new ones; you just need to keep users who are already on X and keep their money in X. Who is being threatened by X Money has far more opponents to squeeze than it seems. The first is the traditional deposit market. The business model of big banks relies on a premise: savers don't have a better choice, or are too lazy to switch. The 6% APY breaks that premise. When over 500 million X users can access this interest rate, the pressure to migrate funds will become real pressure. In order to retain depositor customers, banks had to raise their own deposit interest rates, and interest spreads were reduced. About 60% of the US banking industry's revenue comes from net interest differences. This is no small matter; it is a systematic fluctuation in the profit structure. Next is the payment middle tier. Social payment players such as Venmo, PayPal, and Cash App have become accustomed to their position in this field. But none of them have social platforms with more than 500 million users as traffic entrances. X Money's core logic is to build a “closed loop of money”: money comes in...

169d agoburnking#X Money #Traditional banks #financial management #Musk

Vitalik: Concerned about predicting the current state of the market, efforts should be made to push it towards broad hedging use cases

According to Twitter, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin posted on social media that recently, I began to worry about predicting the current state of the market. Although predicting market trading volume is large enough to make meaningful bets, and some people can even use this as a full time job and supplement news information to a certain extent, excessive reliance on short-term cryptocurrency prices, dopamine-type gameplay such as sports and entertainment lacks long-term value, and also makes it easy for platforms to pursue low-quality traffic, leading to commercial degradation. To overcome this dilemma, it is possible to push the prediction market to a new use case — generalized hedging. By designing the market as a risk management tool, users can use predictive markets to hedge against future uncertainties, such as fluctuations in corporate or individual spending, thereby improving long-term effectiveness. Compared to the current model of relying on dumb investors, this approach is more sustainable and can also attract high-quality capital to participate. Further, it may be possible to build a future financial model that does not require fiat money: build a forecast market based on price indices for major consumer categories, and each user generates personalized combinations from a local AI model to cover their anticipated future expenses. In this way, people can not only hold growth assets (such as stocks, ETH), but also obtain stability by predicting the market, achieve the next generation of decentralized finance, and surpass the current short-term speculative ecosystem.

189d ago

Wintermute Ventures: Our top 6 judgments on digital assets in 2026

Original author: Wintermute Ventures Original title: Wintermute Ventures: Our Top 6 Judgments on 2026 Digital Assets Compilation: Bibi News Over the decades, the Internet has enabled information to flow freely across borders, platforms, and systems. However, the flow of “value” has always lagged behind. Money, assets, and financial contracts still rely on fragmented infrastructure, flowing between old tracks, national borders, and layers of intermediaries, extracting costs at every step. And this gap is being filled at an unprecedented rate. This creates an opportunity for a class of infrastructure companies — they directly replace traditional clearing, settlement, and escrow functions. Infrastructure that allows value to flow freely like information is no longer just a theoretical idea; it is actually being built, deployed, and used on a large scale. Over the years, although crypto assets have existed on the chain, they have been disconnected from the real economy. Now, that's changing. Encryption is becoming the clearing and settlement layer that the Internet economy has been lacking: a system that can operate 7×24 hours, is transparent, and does not require permission from a centralized gatekeeper. The following topics represent our judgment on the direction of digital asset development in 2026, and it is also an area where Wintermute Ventures is actively supporting entrepreneurs. Everything will become tradable, and more assets and real-world results are becoming tradable through new financial primitives, including predicting markets, tokenization, and derivatives. This shift has provided a layer of liquidity in areas where there were no markets in the past. Tokenized and synthetic assets bring liquidity to known assets; while predictive markets go one step further, pricing things that were “impossible to price” in the past, turning raw information into tradable financial instruments. The prediction market continues to expand, both as a consumer product and as a new financial instrument, supporting hedging, outcome-linked transactions, and the expression of highly segmented events. They are also beginning to replace some of the functions of traditional financial infrastructure. Insurance is a prime example: outcome-based markets can directly price specific risks and provide cheaper and more flexible hedging methods than traditional insurance or reinsurance. Users no longer need to buy hurricane insurance covering the entire region; instead, they can hedge for a specific time, at a specific location, and at a specific wind speed. Over a longer time scale, these highly personalized risks can also be finely combined according to individual needs through agency-enabled workflows. As the forecasting market infrastructure expands, new data products will be created around topics that have never been priced before. We expect there will be a market for trading and quantifying objective indicators such as “perception, sentiment, and collective opinion.” These emerging markets are a natural extension of decentralized finance, opening up new ways to price and exchange “the information itself.” When everything can be traded, the infrastructure to provide liquidity, enable price discovery, and ensure settlement will become critical. This structural change will concentrate value on the infrastructure layer and directly affect how capital is allocated. We're actively supporting teams that build core market and settlement infrastructure, data layers for verification and proof, and new data products that support previously untradable results. At the same time, we are also focusing on new abstraction models to make these markets programmable and composable, enable them to embed real-world workflows, and gradually replace some traditional financial and insurance systems. Stablecoins have become a layer of trust, and banks that are responsible for settling digital assets during the transition period still lack a robust system similar to settlement banks and clearing institutions in traditional finance. Stablecoins provide an open, programmable form of value, but in the absence of settlement infrastructure, fragmentation between different systems still creates friction and limits their large-scale application. As stablecoin issuers using different collateral models continue to emerge in various ecosystems, the market's demand for a reliable interoperability layer is rising to combine and coordinate these assets. For this system to truly expand, the crypto industry needs an infrastructure that enables net settlement, exchange, and settlement between different stablecoins and different chains without introducing additional credit risk, liquidity risk, or operational complexity. The missing key abstraction is to transfer exchange and credit risk to the stablecoin issuer's balance sheet, achieved through “balance sheet interoperability,” rather than letting end users bear their own exchange rates, path choices, or counterparty risks when trading across stablecoins. We think of it as an “on-chain agent banking system”: settlement takes only a few seconds, completely for app developers...

201d agoLuxurytracy

CZ talks about the future in Davos: the integration of tokenization, payments, and AI is accelerating

Summary: One Fish CoolFish Original title: CZ Davos Full conversation: Optimistic about tokenization, payments, and artificial intelligence, and I'm very excited about the three new fields Moderator: Over the past few days on the forum, I feel like there have been almost two very different conversations going on here. One category is geopolitical and macroeconomic discussions, and concerns about the fragmentation of the global trading system, debt, and the role of the dollar. These conversations are often very frustrating and worrying. Another focus is on discussions about artificial intelligence, innovation, and technology. These discussions about future possibilities are full of energy, and many exciting technological breakthroughs are taking place. In today's seminar, we'll take a bold step to blend these diverse discussions — not only focusing on how innovations happen and what the future may bring, but also considering the regulatory and geopolitical context in which these innovations are located, and how these contexts influence financial innovation. We had four outstanding guests. First, we had Steven van Rijswijk, CEO of ING Group from the Netherlands. Then there was Jayee Koffey, Chief Enablement Officer and Global Affairs Officer at Bank of New York Mellon (BNY). Next is Fred Hu (Fred Hu), founder, chairman and CEO of Chunhua Capital Co., Ltd. from China. Finally, there's Binance founder Zhao Changpeng from the UAE — we're used to calling him CZ so I don't have to fiddle with the name again. Now that CZ is no longer restricted in speaking, I'm sure he will bring a particularly wonderful sharing. The topic of this discussion is how technology is reshaping the global financial landscape. Those interested in this field should note that many changes are currently taking place. Payment methods and monetary systems are undergoing drastic changes, and the underlying infrastructure for financial transactions is rapidly iterating. These changes are overwhelming. To begin the discussion, I'll ask for advice one by one in the order in which they were seated: What do you think was the most far-reaching restructuring? What is the direction of development that excites you the most? It can be a specific market sector — private equity, investment, Bitcoin, stablecoins, digital currency, etc.; it can be a breakthrough at the technical level — Bitcoin ledger technology; or an innovation at the infrastructure level. The discussion is completely open, so feel free to speak up. Please tell us what exciting new developments you think will have the most profound impact on the financial sector. CZ: Of course. I'm focusing on a very narrow field in the financial market, mainly cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and Web3, whatever you want to call it. I'm sure this technology is a game changer, and I think we've proven over the past 15 or 16 years that it won't go away. Binance is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. Fred Hu: It's actually the biggest CZ: it's the largest to date, larger than the top five exchanges combined. But let's look at some data — Binance has 300 million users. It's probably bigger than any bank I know. The trading volume not only surpassed the Shanghai Stock Exchange, but also surpassed the New York Stock Exchange last year. However, there are currently only two major sectors in the crypto sector that are truly mature: exchanges and stablecoins, both of which are huge commercial systems. I'm really excited about the other three new areas. I think tokenization (tokenization) is a huge field — I am currently discussing asset tokenization solutions with more than 10 governments. The government can use this to take the lead in achieving financial benefits, thereby promoting the upgrading of industries such as mining and trading markets. We've tried in the payment sector but haven't really conquered it — to be precise, cryptocurrencies haven't really entered the payments sector yet. We tried, but no one actually paid with cryptocurrency. However, now we see that traditional payment methods are quietly integrated with cryptographic technology: when consumers use credit cards, cryptocurrencies are deducted from their accounts, and merchants receive fiat payments such as US dollars and euros. When these bridges are built, the payment sector will usher in a major breakthrough. The third field is artificial intelligence, and the native currency for AI agents will be cryptocurrencies. Cryptographic blockchain will become the most native technical interface for artificial intelligence agents. Current artificial intelligence is far from the level of intelligent agents; they can neither buy tickets for you nor pay for meals — but when they have these capabilities, all payments will be made through cryptocurrency. Concerns about some areas of the future Moderator: This is the best situation, and it's an exciting place. Now I want to change the subject and talk about how every time we go through such a period where innovation and experimentation coexist, some of our attempts will succeed and others will fail. So I'd like to explore a...

211d agoLuxurytracy#Binance #viewpoints #Zhao Changpeng

Finally, it's our turn to “fix up” the bank

Source: The Token Dispatch Author: Thejaswini M A Original title: The Money Lives Where Your Wealth Lives Compiled and organized: bitPushNews In behavioral economics, there is an interesting concept called a “mental account” — we treat money differently because we place them in different places. For example, you think you can spend 100 yuan in your checking account anytime; but you can't move the same 100 yuan in your retirement account. The essence of money is the same, but where it is placed directly changes the mentality of how we use it. Frax founder Sam Kazemian further refined this phenomenon into a “net worth theory”: people are always used to putting pocket money where most of their wealth is located. If your main assets are shares and bonds in Carson Wealth Management, then you will naturally also put cash in the linked bank account — since transfers are almost imperceptible, there are no barriers to using money. Similarly, as your net worth is increasingly stored in Ethereum wallets or DeFi protocols, you also want the cash on hand to interact seamlessly with the crypto world. Today, however, things are changing: for the first time, quite a few people actually have their major wealth left on the chain. For them, having to “bridge” assets back to traditional banks every time in order to buy a cup of coffee has become an exhausting and tedious operation. Crypto-digital banking solves this problem by building an infrastructure that integrates everything in one place. Through these platforms, you can store funds in interest-bearing stablecoins and spend with a Visa card without having to touch a traditional bank account at all. The rapid growth of these platforms is the market's response to the fact that the crypto world finally has enough real users and enough real money on-chain to make it worth building it all. For more than a decade, cryptography has promised to eliminate middlemen, reduce fees, and give users more control. But there's always a problem: merchants don't accept crypto payments, and it's impossible to convince them to start accepting them at the same time. You can't pay rent with USDC. Your employer won't pay wages in ETH. Supermarkets do not accept stablecoins. Even if all of your wealth is held in crypto, you still need a traditional bank account to make ends meet. Every conversion between crypto and fiat money means fees, settlement delays, and friction. That's why most crypto payment projects fail. BitPay has tried to get merchants to accept Bitcoin directly. Lightning Networks built peer-to-peer infrastructure, but struggled with liquidity management and route reliability. Both failed to achieve meaningful adoption because the conversion costs were too high. Merchants need to be confident that customers will use this payment method. Customers need to be sure that the merchant will accept it. No one wants to take the lead. Crypto-digital banking has made this coordination problem invisible. You spend stablecoins from a self-hosted wallet. The digital bank converts it into dollars and settles with the merchant via Visa or Mastercard. The coffee shop received dollars in its bank account as usual. They had no idea that cryptography was involved. You don't need to convince every merchant to accept crypto payments. You just need to abstract the conversion layer so that users can spend with crypto assets at any merchant that accepts regular debit cards, and this basically covers everything. The three parts of the infrastructure matured at the same time, making it now possible after years of failed attempts. First, stablecoins became legalized. The GENIUS Act passed in July 2025 provides a clear legal framework for stablecoin issuance. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent predicts that payment stablecoins will reach $3 trillion by 2030. This is the US Treasury stating that stablecoins are now part of the financial system. Second, the commercialization of card infrastructure. Companies like Bridge provide white label APIs that allow teams to launch complete digital banking products within a few weeks. Stripe bought Bridge for $1.1 billion. Teams no longer need to directly negotiate with card organizations or establish banking partnerships from scratch. Third, people do now have wealth on the chain. Early crypto payment attempts failed because users didn't hold significant net crypto assets. Most of the savings are held in traditional brokerage accounts and 401k pension accounts. Crypto assets are a target for speculation, not a place to store your lifetime savings. This is no longer the case. Young users and crypto natives now hold sizable wealth in Ethereum wallets, staking positions, and DeFi protocols. A mental account happened...

297d agoWendy#crypto banking

Vitalik: Using AI governance is not recommended, which can easily lead to a proliferation of jailbreak tools and defraud donations

Comparing news, Vitalik opposes AI governance, believes that it is easy to be deceived by jailbreak tools to leak data, and supports the information finance model: open market+spot check mechanism+manual jury evaluation.

343d ago

The Mecca ecosystem received $8 million in strategic investments, including Gemhead Capital

Comparatively, according to reports, the blockchain-based Mecca ecosystem has received $8 million in strategic investment from a consortium of global investors, including Gemhead Capital, Alpha Capital, BD Ventures, and some well-known Asian family offices. This round of financing is being carried out in a market environment where venture capital in the blockchain sector is cautious. Mecca aims to create a next-generation financial and payment ecosystem. The core principles include a sustainable reward-driven financial model, a transparent participant center revenue structure, and an environmentally conscious blockchain framework. Its design is scalable and meets the needs of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to achieve seamless integration across industries. Mecca's decentralized application (dApp) payment solution based on Solana is expected to be launched in the next few months. The platform will support online and offline transactions and embed Mecca tokens into real-world payment systems to improve utility. Currently, Mecca plans to use the financing to accelerate development, strengthen the technical base, and drive innovation in the blockchain industry.

352d ago