6 min read · 15 sources

Ramp is in early talks to raise roughly $1 billion in primary funding at a ~$60 billion valuation, just three months after being valued at $44 billion. The talks are ongoing and details could change, but the trajectory is the story: spend-management platforms are printing money in this cycle. Engineers should watch this as a signal of continued aggressive growth in fintech spend-management platforms, though no technical specifics were disclosed.

The rest of the day is a mix of charter grabs, stablecoin infrastructure, and one very expensive night out that brought down a crypto scam ring.

Robinhood Chain’s $1.7 billion in daily DEX volume and $15.5 million in daily app fees make it the top fee-generating protocol in DeFi.

Chime Buys Its Bank: $590 Million for Stride Bank

Source: businesswire.com ↗

Chime agreed to acquire longtime partner Stride Bank for $590 million in cash. The deal gives the fintech a national bank charter and brings banking infrastructure in-house under the future Chime Bank, N.A. It is expected to be immediately accretive and generate more than $100 million in net synergies through lower partner-bank fees, cheaper funding, and expanded lending, while giving Chime tighter control over product development.

For engineers, this is the classic “rented rails versus owned rails” decision. Chime has been running on Stride’s charter for years; now it is internalizing the compliance, core banking, and regulatory overhead. Expect the migration to be a multi-quarter project with real risk around core system cutover, even if the press release says the deal is accretive on day one.

Block Wants a Federal Trust Bank Charter

Source: theblock.co ↗

Jack Dorsey’s Block has applied for a federal trust bank charter from the OCC. The move would give Block a federal framework for certain digital asset activities and adds it to a growing group of fintech and crypto companies seeking national bank charters.

The charter would cover custody and fiduciary services, which is the boring-but-lucrative end of crypto. Block already runs Cash App’s Bitcoin trading; a trust charter lets it hold assets directly rather than through a third-party custodian. This is a regulatory moat play, not a product launch, and it will take months or years to clear.

PayPal Lets Developers Mint Their Own Stablecoins

Source: finextra.com ↗

PayPal is working with crypto specialists MoonPay and M0 on an infrastructure platform that lets developers create application-specific stablecoins backed by PYUSD. Launched in 2023, PYUSD is PayPal’s own dollar-backed stablecoin, issued by Paxos Trust Company, a federally regulated national banking association.

The pitch: instead of every app issuing its own unbacked token, developers get a regulated wrapper around PYUSD. The market potential is the headline number - some projections see application-specific stablecoins rising to $50 trillion if adoption accelerates. Engineers should note this is an issuance layer, not a payments rail; the settlement still runs on whatever chain PYUSD is on.

Robinhood Chain Is the Top Fee Generator in DeFi

Source: lex.substack.com ↗

Robinhood Chain, an Arbitrum Orbit L2 for tokenized equities, launched this summer and now shows $900M TVL, $1B stablecoin marketcap, $1.7B daily DEX volume, and $15.5M daily app fees. It is the top fee-generating protocol in DeFi at $1.45M/day.

The novel mechanic: stock tokens instead of SOL as the quote asset. The structure mirrors Olympus DAO’s 2021 bonding trick, using real equity exposure as collateral to give meme coins a quoted price. One case pushed a wrapped HIMS token to $132 versus a $28 real close. Engineers should note the revenue dominance and the quote-asset mechanic, which may signal a shift in meme-coin infrastructure toward regulated equities as collateral.

Visa Brings Onchain Lending Into Everyday Payments

Source: investor.visa.com ↗

Visa is bringing onchain lending into everyday payments, using its transaction data to underwrite real-world financing backed by crypto collateral. The model is already live with Credit Coop, which has financed more than $350 million of originations using rent as a high-frequency payment signal.

This bridges crypto lending into mainstream payments. Visa’s edge is underwriting: it sees spending patterns that no DeFi protocol can match. For engineers, the interesting part is the data pipeline - real-time payment performance feeding loan origination decisions, which is a very different risk model from the collateralized-debt-position approach most crypto lenders use.

ION and Coinbase Clear Kalshi's Event Contracts

Source: prnewswire.com ↗

ION announced that Coinbase selected its XTP for Event Contracts to support clearing for Kalshi, the world’s largest prediction market. The platform offers fully automated, real-time creation/resolution/settlement of event contracts, onboarding tens of thousands of accounts per day, and processed its first one million trades over Super Bowl weekend.

The 24/7 processing and multiexchange connectivity lets FCMs run event contracts alongside existing ETD/cOTC business in one system. Prediction markets are no longer a novelty - they are a clearing problem, and ION is positioning itself as the back-office for the category.

US Bank Pilots a Custom-Built Stablecoin

Source: finextra.com ↗

US Bank is piloting a custom-built dollar-backed stablecoin, USBDC. A national bank issuing its own stablecoin is a meaningful step past the PayPal model, which relies on Paxos as issuer. This is the “charter as stablecoin infrastructure” thesis: once you have the charter, the stablecoin is a product, not a partnership.

The $240 Million Bitcoin Scam That Ended With a $569,000 Night Out

Source: carriermanagement.com ↗

A network of young scammers, allegedly led by 22-year-old Malone Lam, stole over $240 million in bitcoin via a social engineering attack on a Washington, D.C., resident in August 2024. They then went on a month-long spending spree - including a $569,000 night out that helped attract attention before investigators closed in. Eighteen people have been charged, with Lam expected to become a cooperating witness.

Engineers should care about the rising sophistication of social-engineering attacks and the regulatory vacuum that may be enabling them. The attack vector was not a zero-day; it was convincing a human to hand over keys. That is an operations problem, not a cryptography problem.

Savvy Wealth Raises $100 Million Series C

Source: businesswire.com ↗

Savvy Wealth raised a $100 million Series C led by Ryan Smith and Ryan Sweeney’s Halo Fund, bringing total funding to more than $200 million. The company is positioning itself as an alternative to traditional wealth management, operating infrastructure without requiring advisors to give up their independence.

Bracket22: A Hedge Fund Run Entirely by AI Agents

Source: cnbc.com ↗

Hedge-fund manager Brian Kelly founded Bracket22, a trading firm powered entirely by AI agents, replacing his former staff and cutting labor costs from ~$5 million a year to a fraction. His agents include “Steffi” (technical analysis), “Desmond” (quant strategies), and “Houston” (mission control), each designed as an isolated specialist.

The architecture is notable: isolated, role-specific AI agents for trading, with a mission-control agent coordinating. No performance data was provided, so treat the cost savings as real and the returns as unproven.

Felix Pago Raises $200 Million to Push Past Remittances

Source: pymnts.com ↗

Felix Pago raised $200 million to expand beyond its core remittance business. The company has processed transactions for over 6 million people across 11 countries, and plans to use funds to enter Brazil and Venezuela. The push into AI-driven customer support adds competitive pressure on traditional remittance providers like Western Union in a $160 billion market.

Consumers Still Don't Trust AI With Their Money

Source: finextra.com ↗

While consumers are increasingly using AI across the shopping journey, only 23% of US consumers trust GenAI to handle payment transactions on their behalf. The gap between AI-assisted shopping and AI-authorized payments is the adoption ceiling for agentic commerce, and it is not moving fast.