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.

Today we're breaking down three stories that all point in the same direction: crypto infrastructure is going fully mainstream, and the fintech companies building the rails are getting paid. Coinbase and Better just launched the first Fannie Mae-approved crypto-collateralized mortgage. BitGo posted 424% revenue growth and quietly became the only federally chartered public digital asset company. And SoFi locked in $3.6 billion in new capital-light loan agreements before lunch. Grab your AirPods — this one moves fast.

Klarna invites in activist giant Elliott and signals a new era of discipline, Paychex drops a quiet earnings beat that says more about the economy than headlines admit, and MrBeast steps into fintech—sparking a real debate about teens, money, and regulation. Three stories, one big question: who actually shapes the future of money?

Crypto stocks just got a reality check. Coinbase (COIN) slides as DC starts circling stablecoin yields, Circle (CRCL) gets absolutely smoked on regulatory fears, and Robinhood (HOOD) does the opposite—dropping a $1.5B buyback like it’s been here before.

In today’s episode, we break down why stablecoins are suddenly the center of the fintech universe, how Washington could reshape crypto business models overnight, and why Robinhood is quietly evolving from trading app to capital allocator.

HSBC is in cost-cutting mode. Palantir is poking around mortgages like “we can fix this.” And Kalshi just raised $1B to let you trade…reality.

This episode is all about how companies that aren’t fintech are becoming fintech anyway—and what that says about where money, markets, and software are headed.