The Fintech Blueprint

In this episode, Lex chats with Steven Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of Whop, the Brooklyn-based marketplace where almost 100,000 people earn money each month selling software, education, communities, physical goods and clipping campaigns through a single API-first stack.

Lex and Steven discuss how Whop went from a license-check tool for a handful of Mac and Windows apps to a global commerce platform settling nearly $500M a month in top-of-funnel income to users, and why Tether’s $200M investment at a $1.6B valuation makes stablecoins the only unifying rail capable of paying earners in Morocco, Nigeria, Vietnam or El Sa...

In this episode, Lex chats with Simon Taylor, who heads up market development at Tempo, the payments-native blockchain built by Stripe as a high-performance settlement layer for stablecoins and tokenized money. Simon is also the founder of Fintech Brain Food, one of the sector's most widely read newsletters. They discuss why there is no Fedwire for the internet, and why the next wave of on-chain volume is coming from enterprise money movers like Deel rather than crypto-native builders. Simon explains why tokenized deposits, stablecoins and TradFi settlement will converge on a single chain, why agentic commerce is still stuck...

In this episode, Lex chats with Edward Woodford — Founder and CEO of zerohash, a crypto and stablecoin infrastructure platform that lets banks, brokers, and fintechs embed digital-asset trading, payments, and tokenization through a single API. Four years on from their last conversation, zerohash has settled over $65 billion in volume across 7 million customers, gone global under MiCA and EMI licensing in Europe, and onboarded institutions like Morgan Stanley.

They discuss the pivot from embedded crypto to pure-play B2B infrastructure, and why the product zerohash actually sells is trust — with licensing treated as a bar, not a goal — in a w...

In this episode, Lex chats with Srini Krish — Co-Head of Financial Solutions at Fiserv, one of the original fintechs, in business for nearly five decades and sitting at the intersection of commerce and banking.

Lex and Srini discuss how Fiserv acts as the technology backbone for 5,000+ US banks and credit unions that lack the wherewithal to match JPMorgan or Wells Fargo on their own, and how the firm is packaging AI into that distribution layer through Agent OS and partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic. Srini lays out his four-bucket framework for enterprise AI - better client service, in...

In this episode, Lex chats with Jeff Grimes — who is Head of Live Events Products at Perplexity, the AI company that has evolved from an "answer engine" into an "agent platform" built around Perplexity Computer, its multi-agent digital worker. They discuss how Perplexity has shifted financial research from the how to the what, letting a user describe an outcome in a single sentence while Computer orchestrates 20+ frontier models, direct tool calls to licensed live data, and finance-specific skills to produce the artifact.

Jeff explains the enterprise strategy behind traceability - the north star that 100% of every quantitative fi...

In this episode, Lex chats with Cactus Raazi — CEO Americas at B2C2, one of the original and largest institutional market makers in digital assets, serving roughly 1,500 institutions and pricing across more than 40 exchanges globally.

They discuss what a market maker actually does, how balance sheet and signal generation underpin roughly $1 billion a day of stablecoin flow at B2C2, and why the two extremes of crypto market making - riskless principal aggregation versus proprietary alpha - produce very different client outcomes that buyers rarely understand.

Cactus explains B2C2's 18-month bet that the Ci...

In this episode, Lex chats with Mike Milotich — Chief Executive Officer of Marqeta, the modern card issuing platform that processed nearly $400 billion in payments volume in 2025, and is certified to operate in 40+ countries, growing over 30% for the third straight year. They discuss how Marqeta's separation of bank, processor, and brand armed fintech's largest winners across buy now pay later, on-demand delivery, neo-banking, and expense management with the Lego blocks to build their own card programs. 

Mike explains how the company's growth is shifting from enabling new use cases to displacing volume on legacy bank platforms, and they exp...

In this episode, Lex chats with Evan Malanga — Chief Revenue Officer of Yuma, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group focused on growing the Bittensor ecosystem. They discuss how Bittensor's $6 billion protocol incentivises AI builders worldwide through token emissions across 128 competing subnets, and why the network has produced real commercial outputs — including a 72 billion parameter model trained on-chain and a coding agent rivalling Claude at a fraction of the cost. Evan explains Yuma's role as the institutional gateway to Bittensor through its validator, accelerator, and asset management products, and they explore why the concentration of AI in OpenAI and Anthropic is a...

In this episode, Lex chats with Immad Akhund, CEO and founder of Mercury, a leading neobank for businesses. Immad shares his entrepreneurial journey, explaining how frustrating banking experiences inspired Mercury's creation.

They discuss Banking as a Service, open banking, embedded finance, and core banking systems. Immad details Mercury's product philosophy, team structure, and migration away from Synapse before its collapse. He also outlines Mercury's impressive growth, with 300,000 customers, $650M in annual revenue, and three years of profitability.

The conversation concludes with Mercury's future plans, including lending expansion, a bank charter application, and hopes for smarter...

In this episode, Lex chats with Marc Boiron — CEO of Polygon Labs. Marc shares his journey from law to blockchain, discussing the challenges of navigating crypto’s evolving legal landscape and the complexities of structuring compliant DeFi projects. He explains Polygon’s strategic pivot to focus on stablecoin payments, leveraging its proven blockchain and global partnerships.

Marc highlights Polygon’s real-world adoption, competitive edge, and vision to become the leading platform for on-chain payments. The episode offers insights into regulatory hurdles, industry trends, and Polygon’s mission to transform digital money movement.

NOTABLE DISCUSSION POINTS:

In this episode, Lex chats with Alex Gluchowski — Cofounder and CEO of Matter Labs, about the transformative impact of zero-knowledge proofs (ZK proofs) on blockchain scalability and privacy. They discuss Matter Labs’ evolution, the development of zkSync, and how ZK proofs enable secure, private, and efficient blockchain transactions.

The conversation explores enterprise adoption, regulatory shifts, and the potential for blockchain to revolutionize global finance by enabling privacy-preserving, interoperable networks anchored to Ethereum, ultimately highlighting the growing role of cryptography in advancing financial sovereignty and innovation.

NOTABLE DISCUSSION POINTS:

In this episode, Lex chats with Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO of Alpaca — a brokerage infrastructure company that provides API-based trading and custody services to fintechs and developers globally.

The conversation begins with their shared experience at Lehman Brothers during the 2008 financial crisis, where Yoshi worked in fixed income securitization and learned that even when market participants sense a bubble, they keep dancing because timing the exit is impossible. After Lehman's collapse, Yoshi pursued entrepreneurship, building a computer vision AI company acquired by Kyocera before founding Alpaca in 2017. Initially inspired by Robinhood, Yoshi pivoted after experiencing firsthand the friction of...

In this episode, Lex chats to Joseph Chalom, CEO of SharpLink, a Nasdaq-listed leader in digital asset treasury management focused on Ethereum. Joseph shares his journey from BlackRock and the Aladdin platform to pioneering digital asset strategies, including staking and tokenization. The discussion explores the evolution of fintech, the integration of crypto into institutional finance, and the future of decentralized finance (DeFi) and AI-powered financial agents. 

Joseph highlights SharpLink approach to making Ether productive for investors and the growing institutional adoption of blockchain technologies.

NOTABLE DISCUSSION POINTS:

In this episode, Lex speaks with John Caplan — CEO of Payoneer, a public fintech company driving over $85 billion in annual cross-border payment volume. With roots as a prepaid card provider, Payoneer has evolved into a global financial operating platform serving 2 million entrepreneurs across 190 countries.

Caplan shares insights from his entrepreneurial journey—from building OpenSky and scaling it to $50 million in revenue before its acquisition by Alibaba, to now leading Payoneer’s transformation into a full-service banking alternative for global SMBs.

We explore how Payoneer is addressing the complex financial needs of international businesses, competing in a dyna...

In this episode, Lex speaks with Michael Egorov - Founder of Curve Finance and YieldBasis. Kicking things off about his journey from experimental physicist to founder of Curve Finance and YieldBasis, highlighting how theoretical physics concepts influenced his creation of financial invariants in DeFi protocols.

Curve pioneered fully automated concentrated liquidity for stablecoins and introduced veTokenomics, a governance model rewarding long-term commitment with voting power and protocol fees. Egorov defends veTokenomics against criticisms of unlock-driven volatility, citing that most CRV locks average over 3 years and behave like permanent commitments. YieldBasis expands Curve’s approach by offering impermanent ga...

In this episode, Lex speaks with Gracy Chen - Bitget’s CEO, who transitioned from a fintech entrepreneur to leading one of the top five global crypto exchanges. Bitget processes $10–20 billion in daily trading volume and serves 120 million users across centralized and decentralized platforms. Its geographic base is mostly in Asia, but it’s expanding into Europe through regulatory compliance and new products like tokenized US stocks, which have already surpassed $20 billion in trading volume.

Bitget differentiates through security features, including a $600 million protection fund, and user acquisition via both brand campaigns (e.g. Messi sponsorship) and local...

In this episode, Lex speaks Friederike Ernst, co-founder of Gnosis. Together, they explore the evolution of Gnosis from an Ethereum-based prediction market project into a major infrastructure provider powering over $100 billion in DAO treasuries and $10–15 billion in monthly DEX trading via CowSwap. Tracing the company’s journey from a 2017 ICO raising $12.5 million in ETH (now worth ~$450 million) to spinning out critical tools like Safe, CowSwap, and Zodiac, all originally built for internal use.

Despite their success, Gnosis recognizes that the crypto-native user base is limited and has now pivoted to building user-centric, mainstream products like the upcoming Gnos...

In this episode, Lex speaks with David Namdar - CEO of the BNB Network Company, kicking off with his journey from early Bitcoin adoption in 2012 to co-founding Galaxy Digital and now leading the BNB Network Company. Namdar explains the evolution of public markets’ engagement with crypto, highlighting how regulatory hurdles and speculative cycles shaped market participation. He outlines the rise of Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) companies, crediting Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy for pioneering the model by converting $400 million in cash to Bitcoin - now holding over $75 billion in BTC. We examine how Binance, with 290 million users and 40% of global cryp...

In this episode, Lex speaks with Jess Houlgrave, CEO of WalletConnect. In this episode Jess explains how WalletConnect bridges wallets and decentralized applications (dApps), simplifying secure blockchain interactions for millions of users.

Together, Lex and Jess discuss the platform’s origins, technical innovations, and massive scale - supporting over 700 wallets and 70,000 projects. The conversation covers challenges in integrating traditional finance with Web3, regulatory compliance, and WalletConnect’s decentralized, token-incentivized network. Jess also shares insights on the future of on-chain commerce, global adoption trends, and the evolving relationship between fintech and blockchain infrastructure.

NOTABLE DISCUSSION POINTS:

In this episode, Lex speaks  Mike Sha - the CEO and co-founder of Tandems (formerly SigFig), a leading provider of AI-powered software for wealth management firms and financial institutions. Together, Lex and Mike discuss the evolution of wealth technology through the lens of Mike’s entrepreneurial journey from founding Wikinvest in 2006 to building Tandems. Wikinvest pivoted to portfolio tracking and then to a B2B model, powering major portals like Yahoo Finance and managing over $500 billion in tracked assets. The team’s insights into poor retail investment behavior led to building SigFig, a B2B robo-advisor, eventually serving banks like...

In this episode, Lex speaks with Marcelo Ruiz de Olano, Co-Founder of KPK (Karpatkey), an on-chain asset management firm born out of Gnosis DAO. Marcelo recounts KPK’s evolution from stewarding Gnosis’s $1B treasury to advising on more than $2B for leading protocols like ENS, Balancer, and the Ethereum Foundation. The discussion dives into the mechanics of non-custodial treasury management - balancing governance, security, and risk - along with strategies across lending, liquidity provision, and stablecoin yields. Marcelo also shares why the rise of large Ethereum treasury companies could be a turning point for DeFi, injecting institutional-scale liquidity and...

In this episode, Lex speaks with Ravi Adusumilli - President and GM of the Americas at Airwallex. Ravi and Lex discuss how Airwallex has evolved into a global financial platform by offering businesses an integrated suite of cross-border payments, treasury, and banking services. Founded in 2015, Airwallex now supports 150,000 customers, processes $130 billion in annualized volume (up 73% YoY), and projects a $1 billion revenue run rate by year-end.

The company’s success stems from its end-to-end infrastructure, homegrown payment rails, and multi-product strategy, with 80% of revenue now coming from customers using more than one product. Airwallex differentiates itself by focusing on...

Lex chats with Matthew Le Merle - CEO of Blockchain Coinvestors, a leading blockchain and AI fund-of-funds. He reflects on the limitations of large institutions in adopting disruptive technologies and why he chose to back innovators over incumbents, using stablecoins as an example of asymmetric value creation. Le Merle explains his evolution from angel investor to institutional LP, highlighting the benefits of leveraging top-tier venture capitalists’ expertise in inefficient early-stage markets. He outlines the psychological challenges of venture investing, where failures appear early and outsized wins often take a decade, contrasting this with the faster liquidity but higher existential ri...

Lex chats with Harish Natarajan - Practice Manager, Financial Inclusion and Infrastructure, Finance, Competitiveness & Innovation at the World Bank, and Carlos Brandt - The Senior Advisor for Pix at the Central Bank of Brazil. Together they discuss the remarkable success of Pix, Brazil's real-time payment system, which now sees over 6 billion transactions per month and is used by more than 90% of the adult population and 80% of companies. Lex explores how Pix was created by the Central Bank of Brazil with strong public-private collaboration, backed by regulatory authority and supported by a co-creation model with stakeholders. Key to its adoption...

Lex speaks with Ali Niknam, CEO and founder of Bunq, a leading European neobank. Ali shares Bunq’s journey from its founding during the financial crisis to becoming Europe’s second-largest neobank. The conversation explores Bunq’s user-centric philosophy, innovative products, and unique organizational design. Ali discusses overcoming regulatory challenges, prioritizing cultural values, and fostering accountability within teams. The episode also examines the complexities of the European fintech landscape and Bunq’s mission to revolutionize banking by focusing on user needs and continuous improvement.

MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION

Topics: Bunq, ING, Revolut, B...

 Lex chats with Edward Woodford - CEO of Zerohash. They discuss Zerohash’s growth, the rise of stablecoins, and the evolving fintech landscape. Edward explains how stablecoins now make up half of Zerohash’s volume, highlights regulatory shifts in the U.S. and abroad, and explores the distinction between crypto and stablecoins. The conversation covers usability challenges, emerging payment use cases, and the future of embedded finance, emphasizing the need for regulatory clarity and collaboration between fintechs and traditional financial institutions.

Notable discussion points:

1. Stablecoins Overtake Crypto in Volume: Stablecoins now make up...

Lex chats with Yuval Rooz, CEO and co-founder of Digital Asset, about the company’s transformation from its early institutional blockchain experiments to launching the Canton Network - a purpose-built, privacy-enabled smart contract platform designed for financial markets. Rooz shares insights into why Digital Asset was inspired by Bitcoin’s financial principles rather than its technical assumptions, highlighting the importance of rethinking blockchain infrastructure rather than replicating flawed legacy models. He also unpacks the hard lessons from high-stakes projects like the Australian Stock Exchange overhaul, emphasizing why large-scale financial infrastructure must evolve incrementally to succeed. Finally, the conversation dives into...

Lex chats with Stani Kulechov - founder and CEO of Aave, a leading decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol. They explore the evolution of DeFi, Aave’s growth, and its architectural shift from a peer-to-peer model to pooled liquidity. Stani reflects on the early days of DeFi, the impact of the FTX collapse, and the increasing adoption of DeFi over centralized exchanges. They discuss Aave’s strategies for attracting assets, the importance of capital efficiency, and future innovations, including the tokenization of real-world assets and the role of stablecoins.

Notable discussion points:

1. Aave Reache...

 Lex chats with Avlok Kohli - the CEO of AngelList, about the company's significant evolution. Initially a platform for startups to connect with venture capitalists, AngelList has transformed into a comprehensive fintech entity encompassing private equity and cryptocurrency. Avlok discusses the strategic pivots, including the introduction of syndicates and rolling funds, that have redefined the company's business model. The episode also explores the broader implications of crowdfunding and the unique challenges in the crypto space, offering a deep dive into AngelList's impact on the financial services industry.

Notable discussion points:

1. AngelList’s Sec...

Lex chats with Jamie Burke - founder of Outlier Ventures, about the current state and future of Web3, decentralized finance, and the metaverse. Jamie highlights Outlier Ventures' impressive growth, with a portfolio of around 400 startups, and discusses successful projects like IOTA and Fetch.ai. The conversation delves into the open metaverse, emphasizing the importance of infrastructure and middleware in blending physical and digital realities. Jamie also explores the transformative role of AI in the metaverse and offers practical advice for entrepreneurs navigating this rapidly evolving landscape.

Notable discussion points:

1.The “Post-Web” Is an...

Lex interviews Josh Reeves, co-founder of Gusto, a company specializing in payroll, HR, and benefits solutions for small businesses. Josh shares his journey from academia to entrepreneurship, highlighting the challenges and strategies involved in building Gusto. The discussion covers the evolution of technology from Web 2.0, the importance of understanding customer needs, and maintaining strong unit economics. Josh emphasizes Gusto's mission to simplify payroll and HR tasks for small businesses, aiming to improve their survival rates and overall efficiency. The episode underscores the significance of product quality and customer satisfaction in navigating industry competition.

Notable discussion p...

Lex interviews David Snider - founder and CEO of Harness Wealth. David shares his extensive fintech journey, including his pivotal role at Compass, a real estate technology firm. He discusses the challenges of aligning agents with new technology and the evolution of Compass's business model to empower agents with better tools and incentives. Transitioning to Harness Wealth, David explains his vision to enhance tax advisory services through a modern platform, addressing complex financial needs. The episode underscores the importance of innovation and human expertise in fintech and real estate.

Notable discussion points:

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Lex interviews Scott Woody, CEO and founder of Metronome, a usage-based billing platform. Scott shares his journey from academia to entrepreneurship, detailing his experiences at UC Berkeley, D.E. Shaw, and Stanford, where he studied biophysics. His tenure at Dropbox, where he tackled billing system challenges, inspired the creation of Metronome. The discussion highlights Metronome's real-time billing data capabilities, which aim to improve business efficiency and customer experience. Scott also explores the broader implications of AI in fintech, emphasizing the shift towards usage-based business models and the importance of real-time data.

Notable discussion points:

Lex interviews Sam Williams - founder of Arweave. This episode delves into the innovative aspects of Arweave, a protocol designed for permanent data storage and computation within the Web3 ecosystem. The discussion covers a range of topics, from the economic models underpinning Arweave to its potential applications in decentralized finance (DeFi) and beyond.

Notable discussion points:

The Founding of Arweave and its Mission – Sam Williams’ interest in distributed computing and concerns about authoritarianism led him to create Arweave in 2017. Inspired by the Snowden leaks, he saw the need for a blockchain-based perman...

Lex interviews Andrew Jamison - CEO and Co-founder of Extend - a financial infrastructure platform that helps banks innovate financial product development with capabilities while working with their existing systems, starting with virtual cards. Andrew shares his journey into fintech, detailing his experiences at American Express and the evolution of virtual cards. He discusses the challenges and opportunities in the virtual card space, the founding of Extend, and its innovative approach to simplifying spend management. The episode highlights Extend's rapid growth, unique market position, and the future of financial management, emphasizing real-time transactions and integrated solutions for businesses.

Lex interviews Jayendra Jog - co-founder of Sei Labs, about his professional journey and the innovative Sei protocol—a high-performance parallel blockchain. Jay shares insights from his time at Robinhood, emphasizing the importance of distribution over technology and the challenges of scaling a fintech company. He discusses the limitations of Ethereum's transaction processing and how Sei Labs aims to address these through parallelization. The conversation also covers the future of blockchain in finance, the need for regulatory clarity, and the potential of high-performance blockchains to support emerging industries like AI and decentralized science.

Notable discussion poi...

Lex interviews Arun Kumar, the CTO of Socure, an identity management and risk assessment company. In this exciting episode, Arun touches on: (1) his experience building large-scale, high-throughput, and low-latency systems at companies like Amazon and Citadel, and how he applies that expertise to the identity verification and fraud detection challenges at Socure. (2) Socure's rapid growth, serving over 2,700 customers including 9 of the top 10 U.S. banks and over 30 state agencies, processing hundreds of millions of transactions per month. (3) Socure's approach to building a real-time identity graph by aggregating signals from devices, phone numbers, IPs, and other data points to detect...

Lex interviews Shachar Bialick, the founder and CEO of Curve, a fintech mobile wallet. In this exciting episode, Shachar touches on: (1) his background as a serial entrepreneur and his experience in the Israeli military shaped his ability to solve problems and work in high-stress environments, which are key traits for a successful founder. (2) The initial idea behind Curve was to create a "wallet to rule them all" - a single interface that could consolidate and manage multiple payment cards and accounts, providing more value and convenience to customers. (3) Building Curve involved navigating complex challenges, such as convincing payment networks...

Lex interviews Michael Heinrich, co-founder and CEO of 0G (Zero Gravity) Labs. In this exciting episode, Lex and Michael explore the concept of decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) and how it differs from centralized, closed-source AI models provided by big tech companies. Michael kicks off with his background in tech and finance, and how he became interested in decentralized AI as a solution to the issues with closed AI systems. Notable discussion points: (1) Decentralized AI provides transparency and verifiability around the data, training, and model alignment used, unlike closed AI systems. (2) Blockchain-based systems can help enforce a "code of conduct"...

Lex interviews Tom Duff Gordon, the Vice President of International Policy at Coinbase, where he drives the company’s engagement with policymakers in global markets across the UK, Europe, APAC,  LatAm, and the MENA region. Together, Tomm and Lex discuss the importance of policy work in the financial services industry, especially after the 2008 financial crisis, and how policy teams collaborate with regulators to shape the regulatory environment; the reasons why the financial services industry is heavily regulated, including the systemic and interconnected nature of the financial system and the need to protect retail consumers; the regulatory approaches to cryptocurrency and...