VP @lightspark | Founding Team @twifintech (acq. @Plaid) | 12+ years in B2B Fintech | 👼Investor | Views are my own
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Gino Hard
congrats @zbruhnke!
More fintech consolidation as @monarch_money acquired MBI (fka @hmbradley)
Monarch also announced it crossed $100M ARR!
Monarch is a PFM app for budgeting, net worth, cash flow + planning
Been quite the run for Monarch in the wake of Mint shutting down:
- Nov '23: @Intuit announces @mint shutdown, Monarch ships a Mint data importer & paid subs grow ~20x over the following year
- May '25: $75M Series B co-led by @FPVventures & @ForerunnerVC at an $850M val (anecdotally heard they were at ~$40m ARR at the time of the round)
- Mar '26: passes 1M members, 2x+ YoY
- Oct '26: $100M ARR
Co-founder/CEO @valagostino was the first PM on the original Mint team
prnewswire.com/news-releases…
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payouts to 🇹🇷
now live on @lightspark
Türkiye is now live on Lightspark
US companies imported $16.4 billion in goods from Türkiye last year. Now they can pay those suppliers in lira, in real time
Send money, pay suppliers, and convert stablecoins to lira
docs.lightspark.com
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today i got preselected to the correct network based on the destination wallet address i inputted (solana).
for how far this space has come, it still feels like the early innings.
bullish.
one of my biggest goals over the last few years has been to make crypto onboarding feel completely frictionless.
just take a look at how far we’ve come (h/t @AlanaDLevin)
what used to require creating a wallet, saving a seed phrase, funding it, switching networks, and dealing with a ton of operational overhead has now been boiled down to a simple login flow.
we’ve made crypto onboarding 100x easier over the last few years.
there’s still so much work left to do, but every once in a while it’s worth taking a step back and appreciating how far we’ve come as an industry and how much easier crypto is to actually use today.
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According to the New York Times, the terrorist hijacker was simply anti-Zionist, and not anti-Semitic.
Breaking news: A plane flying from Dubai to Israel was diverted after an altercation between the pilot and co-pilot, Israeli officials said. nyti.ms/4rHOvin
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Update: she’s a lifetime broadway nerd and now she wants to work for @tryramp
Thank you @eglyman, @kendallhtucker and the entire team who put this Industrial on—what a perfect date night to teach my wife about about Bill Pay. Masterfully done.
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Also, most people don’t know—An industrial musical is a private, Broadway-style theatrical production commissioned mainly by corporations from the 1950s through the 1980s to train dealers and hype up sales forces, and boost overall employee morale.
They’ve largely gone away, but were crucial for the oft-financially struggling actors and the #Broadway community to make ends meet.
Major props to @tryramp for bringing this back in support of @broadwaycom.
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Launching a card program is one of the hardest things in fintech. We learned that the hard way at Rize.
The graveyard is full of teams who got as far as writing the code, and then died on everything after.
Today we're showing what it looks like when the toughest parts are already done. Issue a branded Visa debit card and watch the API calls fire as you go:
docs.lightspark.com/cards/de…
Massive props to our product, eng and design teams for cooking on this.
Announcing the Lightspark Cards Playground
Design your Visa debit card, issue it in your app, and watch the API calls fire as you go.
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Why it matters: GENIUS takes effect in Jan 2027. These banks have junk platforms want federally regulated partners, not licensed fintechs, and they maintain that one federal supervisor beats 50 state licenses. They believe the stablecoin stack is getting chartered (I remain hesitant).
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The problem: most of these are conditional approvals, and community banks are fighting them tooth and nail.
This can be undone with the stroke of a pen. But the question remains; is the genie out of the bottle? 🧞♂️
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Full-bank lane: @ereborbank (FDIC-insured, final charter in Feb), Augustus (a stablecoin/AI clearing bank that serves Kraken), and @OpenReserveBank (@deechoubey, $210M in capital, tokenized deposits), and @Bastion (just moved to full bank lane offering white-label stablecoins, powers @sonybank_jp’s).
Fewer than 10 full-service national charters have been granted since 2010.
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The #OCC is handing out crypto charters in batches. On Sept 18, @Bastion, @catena_labs and @withAUSD got national trust charters, and two weeks earlier @OpenReserveBank got a full national bank charter. Stablecoins are moving inside the federal perimeter 🧵
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Now there are two lanes—
National trust bank: custody, fiduciary services, stablecoin issuance. No deposits, no loans, no FDIC insurance.
Full national bank: deposits, lending, FDIC insurance. It takes far more capital.
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@Rodney_e_hood changed that. In May 2025, as Acting Comptroller, he issued IL 1183 and killed the non-objection requirement, and the FDIC and Fed followed. Then the GENIUS Act let national trust banks issue stablecoins. That was the starting gun.
OCC-regulated banks may buy and sell assets held in custody and are permitted to outsource bank-permissible crypto-asset activities, including custody and execution services. occ.gov/news-issuances/news-…
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How we got here: in Nov 2021, the OCC's IL 1179 made banks get a written non-objection before touching crypto custody or stablecoins. The FDIC and Fed copied it. The permission existed on paper, but in practice you ended up waiting forever.
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They should call him Jev
San Francisco’s celebrity Steller sea lion, named Chonkers, has left the docks of Pier 39. Now there’s a new heavyweight in the city.
This video shows SF's new Steller sea lion, who does not have a name yet, Wednesday morning.
Story: kron4.com/news/bay-area/afte…
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