The hottest Crypto Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Top U.S. Politics Topics

The Bear Cave #316

The Bear Cave • 1679 implied HN points • 08 Mar 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. An activist report claims Ethereum’s recent Fusaka upgrade damaged ETH tokenomics and enabled wallet "poisoning" scams, raising questions about on-chain activity and firms holding large ETH treasuries.
  2. Multiple high-profile resignations and board departures were announced across several companies, pointing to governance and leadership instability that could unsettle strategy and investor confidence.
  3. Media and market checks are ramping up: investigations highlight risky marketing targeting retail investors, local newsrooms are adopting AI to cut costs and expand coverage, and M&A activity continues with deals like the sale of Care.com.

Monopoly Round-Up: The $2 Trillion Collapse of Bitcoin and Terrible Software Companies

BIG by Matt Stoller • 31971 implied HN points • 09 Feb 26
đź’Ľ Business Crypto
  1. Bitcoin and crypto plunged about $1.7 trillion as the core investment story collapsed, revealing crypto more as speculation and legalized gambling than a broadly useful technology.
  2. Enterprise "system of record" software often charges high prices, delivers poor and insecure user experiences, and traps customers with massive switching costs.
  3. Generative AI now lets organizations build or replace expensive, low-quality software more easily, so policy should focus on preventing lock-in and improving interoperability to force better competition and product quality.

Moltbook: After The First Weekend

Astral Codex Ten • 22230 implied HN points • 02 Feb 26
đź•ą Technology Crypto
  1. Reality for AI agents is best judged by external causes and effects: if an agent's posts reflect true causal states or change behavior outside the forum, they function as "real" regardless of whether the agent is conscious.
  2. Most Moltbook activity is currently roleplay or human-driven because agents have short time-horizons and many projects fizzle; a few persistent movements or tools exist, but they often rely on unusual tech or direct human support.
  3. The site displays diverse emergent roles—power users, spammers, religions, marketplaces, and coordination attempts—and these behaviors could quickly produce real-world effects (crypto, task markets, messaging) once technical limits like memory and agency improve.

Monopoly Round-Up: The Slow Death of Banking in America

BIG by Matt Stoller • 22231 implied HN points • 19 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. A bitter fight between crypto firms and community banks over whether stablecoin platforms can pay interest (called “rewards”) forced a Senate Banking markup to be canceled, creating a stalemate that could decide where consumer deposits live.
  2. Crypto moved from utopian talk to a pure speculation industry with massive political muscle, pushing for deregulation and access to banking privileges that would let exchanges compete for cheap deposits and evade traditional rules.
  3. Decades of deregulation and consolidation have hollowed out local banks and left a few giant institutions, meaning communities risk losing local credit and the state may need to play a much bigger role in directing lending.

What It Means To Be A Bank Is Rapidly Changing

Fintech Business Weekly • 304 implied HN points • 01 Mar 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. The definition of a bank is changing quickly as many fintechs, crypto firms, and nonbank companies apply for charters to offer digital-asset, stablecoin, and payment services.
  2. That rapid shift is drawing pushback and scrutiny from regulators, trade groups, and lawmakers who say some approvals lack transparency, may exceed legal intent, and risk conflicts or political influence.
  3. Despite the upheaval, FDIC data shows the banking system remains broadly healthy with strong net income, slightly higher net interest margins, shrinking unrealized securities losses, loan growth, and generally stable credit metrics.
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Investing Update: Was That The Market Flush?

Spilled Coffee • 52 implied HN points • 21 Mar 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. Stocks fell for a fourth straight week, with the S&P 500 down 1.9% and the Nasdaq and Dow about 2.1%, marking the longest losing streak in over a year.
  2. Gold plunged 11.1% this week — its worst weekly drop since 1983 and on pace for its worst month since 2013 — showing that even traditional safe havens can get crushed.
  3. Crypto and commodities diverged: Bitcoin dropped 5.7% on the week and is nearly 20% down year‑to‑date, while oil remains the big winner, up more than 70% YTD.

After Missed Payments, Evolve Creditors Look To Dump Distressed Debt

Fintech Business Weekly • 438 implied HN points • 22 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. Evolve Bancorp’s holding company is in clear financial distress, has missed coupon payments, and creditors are trying to sell its notes at heavily discounted prices.
  2. Evolve Bank itself trimmed losses and still meets regulatory capital ratios, but it’s losing fintech partners and deposits have declined sharply, which heightens liquidity and reputational risk.
  3. Stripe’s Bridge got conditional approval for a national trust charter and is pushing stablecoins for faster cross-border payments while tightening which countries it serves to reduce compliance and sanctions risk.

Top Links 1017 Bankers dethroned. Strangling Cuba. The fight over stablecoins & Vietnam's four nos.

Chartbook • 472 implied HN points • 18 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. Top Wall Street bank chiefs earned a combined $250 million in 2025—about $41 million each—highlighting huge executive pay and suggesting banks are being eclipsed by private finance and tech as sources of wealth.
  2. There is a major fight over stablecoins, signifying rising regulatory and political battles around digital money and financial innovation.
  3. Geopolitical and economic pressure is a theme, shown by measures described as strangling Cuba and Vietnam’s invocation of its 'four nos' policy stance.

Top Link 1010 Have US tariffs peaked? Is this the final crypto winter? Fei Xiaotong and the fate of Chinese sociology & Troeltsch and the crisis of historicism.

Chartbook • 515 implied HN points • 11 Feb 26
🌍 World Politics Crypto
  1. US tariffs may have peaked, prompting questions about where trade policy and international economic relations go next.
  2. The crypto market is in a prolonged 'winter' and observers are debating whether this downturn is final or will give way to further boom-and-bust cycles.
  3. Discussions about Fei Xiaotong and Troeltsch reflect a wider re-evaluation of Chinese sociology and historicist approaches in intellectual history.

Life in the Fast Lane With Robinhood Markets

TK News by Matt Taibbi • 2681 implied HN points • 21 Dec 25
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. Robinhood grew fast by making trading feel like a game that gives quick dopamine hits, which attracts young, aggressive traders. That design encourages frequent, risky trading rather than long-term investing.
  2. The company’s main profit comes from selling customer orders (payment for order flow) to high-frequency market makers and pushing high-margin products like options and zero-day trades. Those products provide big leverage and can wipe out inexperienced traders while generating hefty fees for the platform.
  3. Robinhood is expanding into prediction markets, deeper crypto leverage, and partnerships with market makers to drive more engagement and revenue. That strategy locks users into riskier products and raises the chance many will suffer large losses if markets turn down.

Economics Links, 2/16/2026

In My Tribe • 258 implied HN points • 16 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. Over the last 40+ years labor’s share of income has fallen while profits and capital’s share rose, and much of the stock-market boom is due to investors paying much higher valuations (P/E) rather than a big rise in earnings relative to GDP.
  2. Bitcoin trading relies heavily on highly leveraged perpetual-futures contracts that can force margin calls and cause cascading liquidations, making the market prone to sharp crashes.
  3. The income gap between the median family and the 80th percentile has widened a lot, so what counts as a “middle-class” lifestyle has shifted up and leaves median earners feeling poorer by comparison.

Perplexity Finance 101: The Complete Guide to AI-Powered Portfolio Tracking, Hidden Features & 80+ Power Prompts

The Product Channel By Sid Saladi • 13 implied HN points • 19 Mar 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. Perplexity Finance is an AI-powered financial research terminal that gives cited, real-time answers and can even connect to your brokerage to analyze your actual portfolio.
  2. It consolidates market dashboards, heatmaps, earnings transcripts, SEC filings, portfolio analytics, crypto feeds, and alerts into one place so you can do deep research without hopping between tabs.
  3. The free tier is very capable for casual investors, Pro (about $20/month) is great value for serious research, and Max is aimed at power users as the product scales and attracts heavy investment.

Fintech’s Dumbest Lawsuit: Mastercard-Backed TomoCredit Flouts Trademark Dispute Settlement

Fintech Business Weekly • 148 implied HN points • 01 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. Regulatory barriers protecting incumbent banks are being dismantled as many companies—from automakers to foreign neobanks—push for bank charters and deposit insurance.
  2. Tether launched an 'onshore' USAâ‚® and markets it as 'federally regulated.' U.S. stablecoin rules and issuer licenses aren't finalized yet, so that label is mainly marketing positioning.
  3. Several fintechs are failing or facing serious legal and compliance problems: Seis shut down from weak economics and churn, Kontigo faces sanctions and licensing issues, and TomoCredit is accused of deceptive practices and flouting a trademark settlement.

Top Links 963 European divergence. Stablecoin flows. Southern Air Transport. Hamas explained.

Chartbook • 329 implied HN points • 26 Dec 25
🌍 World Politics Crypto
  1. Europe and the US are shown to be diverging in their economic and political paths, with different policy choices producing different outcomes.
  2. The collection covers a mix of topics—stablecoin flows, a historical look at Southern Air Transport, and a clear explainer of Hamas—linking finance, history, and geopolitics.
  3. This is a curated, image-rich roundup of top links and readings meant to give readers high-quality sources and context across those subjects.

Bluesky's big moment

Platformer • 3341 implied HN points • 02 May 23
đź•ą Technology Crypto
  1. Bluesky, a decentralized social network similar to early Twitter, is gaining popularity and could offer a unique alternative to mainstream social media platforms.
  2. Bluesky should focus on maintaining its decentralized nature while making it user-friendly, encouraging developers to build on the platform, and embracing the platform's quirky and fun atmosphere.
  3. Bluesky can potentially address issues in the Twitter ecosystem, such as content moderation and API accessibility, to differentiate itself further and attract a wider user base.

IPO Watch: Ethos and Bitgo edition

Alex's Personal Blog • 131 implied HN points • 21 Jan 26
đź’Ľ Business Crypto
  1. AI is reshaping markets fast: consumer and enterprise AI products are driving big revenue and valuations, while demand for AI coding tools is soaring and companies are promising to limit their energy and water impact.
  2. Geopolitical and demographic risks are growing, with fraying alliances, market jitters over treasuries, and falling birth rates that together threaten long-term economic stability.
  3. The IPO and venture exit picture is tough: Ethos is growing but listing below prior private valuations, BitGo shows huge topline crypto flows but thin core profits, and many software unicorns face low exit multiples that make strong returns harder.

❄️ 🚀 Une grosse annonce à vous faire. Ready ?

Snowball • 2614 implied HN points • 29 Mar 23
đź’Ľ Business Crypto
  1. Snowball+ is a new collective of newsletters focused on personal finance in France, featuring various experts and tools.
  2. The launch price for Snowball+ is 9€ per month or 80€ per year, offering additional content and a diverse range of financial topics.
  3. Existing subscribers to Snowball will experience a price increase soon; new content will be added regularly to Snowball+.

Issue #149: Stripe Eyes PayPal, Block Cuts 4,000 Jobs for AI, And Coinbase Opens Stock Trading

Fintech Radar • 10 implied HN points • 01 Mar 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. Stripe is exploring buying all or parts of PayPal — likely eyeing Braintree or Venmo — which would merge merchant infrastructure, consumer wallets, and crypto rails into a single payments powerhouse.
  2. Coinbase opened stock and ETF trading to all US users and teamed up with Yahoo Finance, letting people trade thousands of equities (and fund trades with USDC) so stocks and crypto live on one platform.
  3. Block cut about 4,000 jobs, betting that new AI capabilities can replace large swaths of work and turning the company into a much smaller, more automated organization — a move that could signal similar shifts across fintech.

Three threats to the age of energy abundance

Noahpinion • 7470 implied HN points • 14 Mar 24
đź•ą Technology Crypto
  1. The world is experiencing a new age of energy abundance due to advancements in solar power, batteries, and other renewable technologies, leading to increased productivity and numerous possibilities for innovation.
  2. Potential threats to this energy abundance come from the increasing demand for electricity driven by new digital technologies like Bitcoin and AI, as well as challenges in connecting new power sources to the U.S. electrical grid.
  3. Electricity demand in the U.S. is unexpectedly rising again after years of being flat, creating a need for better preparation and planning to meet the surging demand.

đź’ĄBankruptcy Flex?đź’Ą

PETITION • 1120 implied HN points • 21 Jan 24
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. The market is showing signs of unpredictability due to economic factors like consumer sentiment and jobless claims.
  2. Some companies expecting rate cuts may have to wait longer due to cautious Fed comments.
  3. Core Scientific, a crypto-mining firm, is highlighted as a winner amidst bankruptcy cases.

Long Take: How can Farcaster avoid the death trap of decentralized social media?

The Fintech Blueprint • 864 implied HN points • 07 Feb 24
đź•ą Technology Crypto
  1. Farcaster aims to blend social media with Web3 capabilities to create a more engaging platform.
  2. When shifting platforms, it's important to innovate without compromising the core user experience.
  3. Decentralized social media platforms like Steemit, EOS Voice, and BitClout have struggled due to prioritizing financial features over user engagement.

Issue #148: Visa Goes Shopping in Argentina, eBay Bets on Pay by Bank, And Mexico's Plata Beats Nubank to a Banking License

Fintech Radar • 12 implied HN points • 23 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. Visa buying Argentina’s Prisma and Newpay signals a major push to own payments infrastructure in Latin America, vertically integrating processing and wallets to capture fast digital growth. It also acts as a hedge against mounting regulatory pressure on its core card business.
  2. Large platforms are embedding financial services — X is building broad money-transmission capabilities and eBay invested in TrueLayer to roll out Pay by Bank — which could shift transactions away from cards toward bank-authenticated, account-to-account flows. These moves make platform-led payments a real competitive threat to traditional card networks.
  3. Fintech infrastructure and digital banks are maturing: Modern Treasury’s unified fiat-and-stablecoin payments API simplifies moving money across rails, while Mexico’s Plata winning a full banking licence ahead of bigger rivals shows regulators are enabling fast-growing digital banks. Together these trends lower barriers for startups to scale banking and payments products.

Partner Banking League Tables & Analysis: 2025

Fintech Business Weekly • 14 implied HN points • 15 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. U.S. regulators are approving new bank charters faster, opening the door for de novo and crypto-focused banks to enter the market and reshape traditional banking relationships.
  2. Crypto firms are under growing compliance and card-network pressure—no‑KYC services can be shut down quickly—so players are partnering with or investing in regulated banks and building onshore stablecoin solutions to legitimize their businesses.
  3. Fintech M&A is heating up, from celebrity-led deals like MrBeast buying Step to Grab taking control of Stash and large corporate acquisitions, signaling a consolidation wave that will change customer acquisition and product strategies.

Prediction Markets Are (Obviously) Gambling

Huddle Up • 91 implied HN points • 22 Dec 25
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. Prediction markets make it easy for people with secret information to trade anonymously, letting insiders profit and making the markets unfair. That destroys trust and turns useful information into a private money-making tool.
  2. They exploit a federal regulatory loophole so gambling-style markets are available nationwide and bypass state rules, and big platforms and brokers are embedding these products everywhere. This spreads access and influence fast while avoiding traditional gambling guardrails.
  3. Always-on prediction markets normalize betting on every news event and can increase addiction, financial harm, and social costs. By rewarding leaks and sensational outcomes, they erode public trust and turn public life into tradable events.

What Coinbase learned from Uber about fighting regulation

Alex's Personal Blog • 98 implied HN points • 19 Dec 25
đź•ą Technology Crypto
  1. Tech companies learned a "grow first, fight later" playbook from Uber, using customer popularity to push back against local regulators instead of asking permission.
  2. Crypto firms are compressing those fights to the federal level by arguing for exclusive federal oversight, suing states when needed, and lobbying and staffing regulators to be favorable.
  3. Expect more tech money and talent aimed at shaping federal policy, efforts to block state-level rules (especially on AI), and louder campaigns to resist strict foreign regulations.

Investing Update: Who's Selling? You Need To Know

Spilled Coffee • 24 implied HN points • 07 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. The market is deeply split: the Dow hit a record 50,000 and the equal-weight S&P made a new high while the Nasdaq and software stocks plunged.
  2. Capital is rotating out of mega-cap tech, AI names, and crypto into value and cyclicals — energy, materials, industrials, emerging markets, and small caps are leading.
  3. Breadth is expanding and ETF flows suggest a regime shift, and historically that kind of rotation (not just distribution) has preceded further gains over the next 6–12 months.

Issue #144: Capital One Snaps Up Brex, BitGo Goes Public, And PayPal Bets Big on Agentic AI

Fintech Radar • 23 implied HN points • 26 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. Big banks are buying modern fintechs to get technology and customers fast, and Capital One’s purchase of Brex shows consolidation can still deliver big wins for founders even at lower valuations.
  2. Crypto infrastructure and tokenized assets are back in favor — BitGo’s IPO and large tokenization raises signal strong institutional demand for regulated custody and on‑chain securities.
  3. Payments and commerce are shifting toward agentic AI and deeper embedded finance, with deals like PayPal buying Cymbio and products like after‑purchase BNPL showing a land grab for AI-driven checkouts and merchant plumbing.

Pipe Had Just $7.1m in Revenue, Burned $47m in 2024, Newly Leaked Docs Show

Fintech Business Weekly • 59 implied HN points • 14 Dec 25
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. Pipe generated only $7.1M in revenue in 2024 while burning about $47M, pursued an ambitious Uber partnership and growth plan, then abruptly laid off roughly half its staff, leaving its strategy and runway in question.
  2. The OCC gave conditional national trust charters to five crypto-related firms (Paxos, Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity, and Circle’s bank), imposing detailed compliance conditions and drawing criticism from banking and state regulators about oversight and risks.
  3. Enova is acquiring Grasshopper Bank, which would give Enova a large deposit base to lower its funding costs and boost profitability for its subprime lending business, but the deal needs regulatory approvals and faces consumer advocacy scrutiny.

Revisiting 2025 Predictions

next big thing • 46 implied HN points • 24 Dec 25
đź•ą Technology Crypto
  1. Small, capital-efficient teams built AI-native products that scaled extremely quickly, creating many new businesses that reached tens of millions in revenue.
  2. AI shifted from being an assistant to a collaborator: code generation and app-building tools lowered the barrier to making software, but fully autonomous end-to-end AI workers still fell short of expectations.
  3. Markets and infrastructure tightened around AI — liquidity returned with major M&A and stronger exits, big tech earnings accelerated, and huge investments flowed into data centers and energy/cooling to support AI demand.

Does Decentralized Machine Learning Need Crypto? Bittensor (TAO)

DeFi Education • 599 implied HN points • 27 Oct 23
đź•ą Technology Crypto
  1. Bittensor is a platform that uses decentralized machine learning to connect users with miners who run AI models. It aims to create a more open and fair AI ecosystem where everyone can participate.
  2. The platform rewards miners and validators with TAO tokens based on their contributions, similar to how Bitcoin operates. This incentive system encourages the best AI models to be selected for user queries.
  3. There's a growing trend of open source AI projects that show promise without needing huge corporate funding, making it possible for smaller teams to create effective AI tools without significant expenses.

26 Stocks I'm Watching For 2026: Part 1

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 53 implied HN points • 23 Dec 25
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. High-conviction thematic bets — especially nuclear energy, precious metals, rare earths, and junior miners — powered huge outperformance in 2025, showing the payoff from concentrated exposure to structural themes.
  2. Heading into 2026 there are five major risks to watch: a tapped-out American consumer and rising delinquencies, frothy AI-driven valuations, an erosion of the passive bid, crypto’s growing systemic ties, and geopolitical moves pushing investors into hard assets.
  3. Two market regimes are plausible next year — a liquidity-fueled bull where policymakers prop up nominal prices, or a reality-driven bear with deleveraging — so focus on relative performance, favoring international/EM and metals as hedges rather than long-duration or richly priced U.S. equities.

Issue #145: Nubank Secures US Charter Green Light, PicPay's IPO Breaks Brazil's Four-Year Drought, And Mastercard’s Agentic Payments Move in Australia

Fintech Radar • 14 implied HN points • 01 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Crypto
  1. Nubank got conditional OCC approval to form a US national bank and is building hubs in Miami, San Francisco, Northern Virginia, and the Research Triangle, signaling a fast start to US expansion. Regulators appear to be streamlining the charter process, making US entry easier for big neobanks.
  2. PicPay priced its Nasdaq IPO at the top of the range with heavy oversubscription, breaking a four-year drought of Brazilian companies listing in New York. The deal shows investors now favor fintechs that combine growth with profitability, reopening the IPO window for LatAm players.
  3. Mastercard completed authenticated agentic transactions in Australia, letting AI agents buy on users’ behalf but requiring biometric approval, which moves agentic commerce from concept to production. This makes payments networks a key trust and authentication layer if AI-driven shopping scales.