Fintech Stacks

Big bank earnings season just delivered something nobody expected: Bank of America's best EPS in nearly two decades, a certified record quarter from Morgan Stanley, and a quiet infrastructure play from PNC that every fintech investor should understand. We break down what the Iran war, AI anxiety, and a $40 billion Wall Street trading haul mean for your fintech portfolio — and why yesterday's run-up in HOOD, COIN, CHYM, and SOFI was more signal than noise.

Yesterday's big bank earnings weren't just a quarterly scorecard — they were a thesis statement about the future of money. We break down why JPMorgan's massive beat still came with a warning label, how Jane Fraser quietly pulled off one of the best quarters in Citi's history, and what Wells Fargo's miss actually tells us about the state of the deposit war. If you want to know what big bank earnings mean for your fintech portfolio, this is the episode.

Goldman Sachs posted the second-best quarter in its 157-year history on Monday — and the stock still dropped. Wise is abandoning the London Stock Exchange for a Nasdaq debut on May 11. And OpenAI acqui-hired the founders of an AI personal CFO startup backed by Ribbit Capital and General Catalyst, shutting it down to build something bigger. We're back from spring break and the market did not take the week off.

Goldman Sachs posted the second-best quarter in its 157-year history on Monday — and the stock still dropped. Wise is abandoning the London Stock Exchange for a Nasdaq debut on May 11. And OpenAI acqui-hired the founders of an AI personal CFO startup backed by Ribbit Capital and General Catalyst, shutting it down to build something bigger. We're back from spring break and the market did not take the week off.

Goldman Sachs posted the second-best quarter in its 157-year history on Monday — and the stock still dropped. Wise is abandoning the London Stock Exchange for a Nasdaq debut on May 11. And OpenAI acqui-hired the founders of an AI personal CFO startup backed by Ribbit Capital and General Catalyst, shutting it down to build something bigger. We're back from spring break and the market did not take the week off.

Important Update: I’ll be taking some time with my family for spring break and won’t be sharing an episode for the rest of the week. We’ll continue the daily podcast on Tuesday, April 14th.

Today's episode is a triple header that would make your econ professor's head spin. SoFi just launched a 24/7 business banking platform that blends fiat and crypto under one nationally chartered roof — with Galaxy, Wintermute, and Mastercard already signed on. Meanwhile, the OCC handed Coinbase a conditional trust bank charter, making it the latest in an 83-day wave of crypto firms getting federal credentials. And in the most satisfying plot twist of the quarter, US Bank and Mastercard just took Amazon's entire small business card portfolio straight from Amex. We break down what it all means, why it matters, and who's actually winning the race to own business banking.

TikTok just applied for two fintech licenses in Brazil — and Nubank's stock moved 6% the same day. We break down what ByteDance is really building and why it's a bigger threat than it looks. Then, U.S. Bank quietly picked one of the most important construction lending partners in the industry — and no, it's not the Bilt you know. We close out April Fools' Day with Liquity's fake Circle acquisition tweet that pumped a token 5% and landed the project in a market manipulation conversation. Big day for fintech, weird day for crypto.

Robinhood Banking just hit $1.5 billion in deposits — five months after launch — while somehow surviving an Elon Musk-induced IPO scare in the same afternoon. Monzo quietly killed its US operation today, serving as a brutal reminder that the American banking market eats neobanks for breakfast. And Public just became the first brokerage to let retail investors deploy AI agents that actually execute trades. Three stories, one very loud Tuesday in fintech.

The Senate just locked in an April markup for the CLARITY Act — and the central fight is whether stablecoins can pay you just for holding them. That single question puts $1.35 billion of Coinbase's annual revenue on the line. We break down the bill, Ramp's perfectly-timed public beta launch, and why Plaid crossing $500M in revenue with zero IPO urgency might be the most confident move in fintech right now.

The FTC just handed PayPal's brand new CEO a regulatory grenade on his first week on the job — and Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe aren't sleeping easy either. Then we get into Public's move to put crypto inside your IRA and what it means for every other brokerage sitting on their hands. And finally: the NYSE's parent company just dropped another $600M into a blockchain prediction market, because apparently "vibes" is now a financial asset class. All signal, no noise.