#629
Fintech in the Front, Crypto in the Back
Published:
Feb 14, 2026
Author:
Sarah Parsons Wolter
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Payments still have the vibe of international texting in 2010: slow, pricey, and built for a world where “instant” meant “sometime Tuesday.” Stablecoins are starting to deliver the WhatsApp moment for money, where moving dollars looks less like a wire transfer and more like sending a message.
The numbers are already too big to hand-wave away. Stablecoins moved over $12t last year after stripping out bot noise, drifting toward Visa’s roughly $17t. The pitch is not ideology. It is lower fees, faster settlement, and fewer middlemen taking a victory lap on every transaction.
The sneaky part is the best version of this is boring. As stablecoins plug into the existing financial system, most people will not think they are “using crypto,” they will just assume they are using dollars that actually move at internet speed. The industry even has a name for it: the “DeFi mullet,” fintech in the front, crypto in the back.
And this is where developing markets turn from edge case to main plot. When banking is fragile, fees are punitive, and getting paid can feel like a minor miracle, stablecoins start acting like basic infrastructure: a smartphone as a low-cost bank account, remittances that hurt less, and small businesses that get paid without donating a chunk to the toll collectors. This makes the DeFi mullet not just clever branding, but as glorious as the mullet sported by Seann William Scott (aka Peppers) in the film Old School.
Portfolio News
BlackRock offers DeFi trading for the first time, buys Uniswap tokens - BlackRock on Wednesday revealed it will be bringing its Treasury-backed digital token BUIDL onto Uniswap, a leading DeFi platform, where it will be bought and sold by institutional traders. As part of the tie-up, BlackRock is also purchasing an undisclosed amount of Uniswap’s own UNI token. Read more
Fintech in the Front, Crypto in the Back
The WhatsApp moment for money is here - The internet made information global. Crypto is making a similar impact on money. While recent headlines might fixate on prices of bitcoin, a deeper and longer-lasting shift is under way in digital payments. This is the year that stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies pegged to assets such as the dollar, are becoming part of the mainstream for online and international payments. Read more
Asia is turning stablecoins into banking infrastructure - Despite official wariness, crypto is flourishing across Asia—even in places like India, which has among the world’s strictest cryptocurrency policies, taxing gains at 30% and deducting a whopping 1% from transactions. India was home to an estimated $338bn in crypto inflows between the middle of 2024 and 2025, ranking it first in the world for the third year in a row on an index measuring global cryptocurrency adoption by Chainalysis, a data firm. Read more
Industry News
Super Bowl gives prediction bets record $1.2b trading day - Kalshi said it registered over $1b in trades related to the Super Bowl, a record surge that underscored the threat that booming prediction markets pose to traditional gambling companies. In addition to wagers on the game, prediction markets offered so-called event contracts tied to many other facets of the event, including several related to Bad Bunny’s halftime show. This created opportunity, but also controversy. Read more
KPMG pressed its auditor to pass on AI cost savings - The Big Four firm told its auditor, Grant Thornton UK, it should pass on cost savings from the rollout of AI and threatened to find a new accountant if it did not agree to a significant fee reduction. The discussions last year came amid an industry-wide debate about the impact of new technology on audit firms’ business and traditional pricing models. Read more
Erebor becomes first bank ok’d under new administration - Erebor is launching with $635m in capital, and has lined up a handful of potential defense and industrial tech-focused clients who say they want to work with a bank that grasps their needs. Among these customers are companies that construct AI-powered factories, a robotics startup, and a space company developing a way to make pharmaceuticals in low gravity. Read more
Big tech to spend $650b this year as AI race intensifies - The spending planned by Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, mainly for new data centers and all the gear housed within them, is in pursuit of dominance in the market for AI tools and will set a high-water mark for capital spending by any single corporation in any one of the past 10 years. Read more
Goldman Sachs taps Anthropic’s Claude to automate accounting, compliance roles - The bank has, for the past six months, been working with embedded Anthropic engineers to co-develop autonomous agents in at least two specific areas: accounting for trades and transactions, and client vetting and onboarding, according to Marco Argenti, Goldman’s chief information officer. The bank expects efficiency gains rather than near-term job cuts, using AI to speed processes and limit future head count growth. Read more
Is AI rewriting the rules of insurance distribution and valuation? - A sudden market sell-off in global insurance broking stocks has done more than rattle investors. It has crystallised a shift already under way: artificial intelligence (AI) is moving from back-office support to the front line of customer acquisition, forcing a rethink of value, margins and growth. How a promising but still immature technology may redefine the way investors view the insurance industry. Read more
Nuveen to buy U.K. asset manager Schroders for $13.5b - The deal is the latest between active money managers trying to keep up with passive investment giants like BlackRock and Vanguard as well as private-market specialists. The takeover would also end the independence of one of London’s last remaining major financial dynasties, after American and European banks swooped on the City in the 1980s and 1990s. Read more
iCapital announces strategic expansion of solutions for asset managers with the acquisition of Passthrough - The acquisition will elevate the private markets investment experience by enabling greater automation for GPs, supporting all their fundraising efforts across their various LP channels. Read more
Junior bankers are teaching their elders how to use AI - Bloomberg highlights how junior bankers are driving AI adoption inside major banks, using tools to accelerate modeling, research, and meeting prep, while senior leaders slowly embrace the tools. Read more
Coinbase debuts crypto wallet infrastructure for AI agents - The cryptocurrency exchange says its Agentic Wallets let users quickly equip agents with autonomous spending, earning and trading capabilities. Coinbase says this new offering builds on its AgentKit, created to build wallets into agents. Read more
UK's FCA confirms new protections for BNPL borrowers - The new rules mean that BNPL lenders will now have to provide clear, upfront details to consumers using their services covering payment due dates, the total repayment amount, and information regarding missed payments. Read more
YouTube star MrBeast buys youth-focused financial services app Step - The world’s largest YouTuber by subscriber count, Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has acquired the financial services app Step, marking his company’s entry into fintech with a focus on serving younger users. Read more
A ‘privacy coin’ takes over dark web, frustrating crime fighters - In early January, hackers drained over $200m from a crypto wallet and swapped some of the loot into Monero, a type of digital token designed to be near-impossible to trace. To Monero’s most devoted fans, it was a sign that things were working just the way they should. Read more
Select Financings
Bracket - London based AI powered treasury and FX automation platform raised $7m in Seed funding led by Macquarie Group and Blackfinch Ventures. Read more
Bretton AI - San Francisco based AI platform for financial crime compliance raised $75m in Series B funding led by Sapphire Ventures. Read more
Didero - San Francisco based AI powered manufacturing procurement automation platform raised $30m in Series A funding led by Chemistry and Headline. Read more
EnFi - Boston based commercial lending workflow platform raised $15m in Series A funding led by FINTOP. Read more
Equal Parts - Austin based insurance agency acquisition and AI operations platform raised $23m in Series A funding led by Inspired Capital. Read more
Ever - San Francisco based AI native auto retail platform raised $31m in Series A funding led by Eclipse. Read more
Lassie - Stockholm based prevention-first pet insurance company raised $75m in Series C funding led by Balderton Capital. Read more
ManageMy - London based insurance orchestration platform raised $20m in Series B funding led by Ventura Capital and OCVC. Read more
Meridian - New York based AI powered financial modeling startup raised $17m in Seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and The General Partnership. Read more
Porters - Zurich based AI platform for back office banking operations raised €2.7m in Pre-Seed funding led by Earlybird. Read more
Sapiom - San Francisco based financial infrastructure platform for AI agents raised $15.75m in Seed funding led by Accel. Read more
Smart Bricks - San Francisco based AI infrastructure startup for real estate investing raised $5m in Pre-Seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. Read more
Tangible - London based debt financing platform for hardtech companies raised $4.3m in Seed funding led by Pale Blue Dot. Read more
Tem - London based electricity trading and utility startup raised $75m in Series B funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Read more
Uptiq - Dallas based AI startup for building lending, digital banking, and wealth management agents raised $25m in Series B funding led by Curql. Read more
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