Author Charlie, Head of OSL Americas, Venture Partner at Generative Ventures. Previously served as Vice President of the cryptocurrency unicorn Strike (involved in El Salvador's Bitcoin bill and responsible for Bitcoin Lightning Network and stablecoin payment operations in Latin America), macro and currency analyst at trillion-dollar fund Franklin Templeton, and an early member of global payment giant Adyen.
The article represents the author's personal views and does not reflect the positions of related companies.
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Over the past week, OpenClaw and Tempo have almost become the secret handshake phrases within the crypto community.
Many people have noticed the buzz, and everyone knows that Stripe has joined the game, with Visa and Lightspark also taking sides.
What hasn't been fully understood yet is not the news itself, but the fact that control points for payments are shifting.
In the past few months, the market has been filled with imagination regarding Agent Payments.
Coinbase will launch x402 in May 2025, transforming HTTP 402 into a payment language; Cloudflare quickly integrated it into agentic payments...

Author Charlie, Head of OSL Americas, Venture Partner at Generative Ventures. Previously served as Vice President of the crypto unicorn Strike (participated in El Salvador's Bitcoin bill and was responsible for Bitcoin and stablecoin payment operations in Latin America), macro and currency analyst at the trillion-dollar fund Franklin Templeton, and an early member of global payments giant Adyen's North American team.
The article represents the author's personal views and does not reflect the positions of related companies.
This weekend, WeChat public accounts and Twitter feeds in the Chinese crypto community were flooded: Following ICE's investment in OKX, rumors spread that Coinbase was in talks with Bybit, with U.S.-compliant institutions cheaply invading offshore markets, and white capital beginning to harvest Chinese-run exchanges once again.
Then switching to the English side, the tone of Bloomberg and Reuters reports was completely different. They discussed the strategic complementarity between traditional exchange infrastructure and crypto distribution networks, and how the two systems are integrating under the trend of tokenization.
Both sides were looking at the same event, but the stories they read were entirely different.
This phrase in the Chinese-speaking community sounds satisfying, even cathartic, as it naturally fits the familiar dramatic structure: on one side are developed countries with rule-setting power at the center, and on the other are emerging markets struggling...

Author Charlie, Venture Partner at Generative Ventures. Previously served as Vice President of Strike, a cryptocurrency unicorn (involved in El Salvador's Bitcoin bill and responsible for Bitcoin and stablecoin payment businesses in Latin America), macro analyst at Franklin Templeton, a trillion-dollar fund, and an early member of Adyen North America, a global payment giant. Currently serves as a cryptocurrency strategic advisor to multiple public companies, startups, and investment firms.
Last week was San Francisco's Stablecoin Week, bringing together stablecoin industry leaders from around the globe.
After attending various events, I had an increasingly strong feeling: everyone is talking about 'stablecoins,' but they're no longer referring to the same thing.
In some venues, discussions centered around Circle’s stock price, financial reports, and valuation reassessments.
In other venues, topics included agents, wallets, authorization, payment protocols, and whether AI really needs a card.
In yet other venues, the discussions were less glamorous, focusing more on practical issues like Brazil, Europe, corporate treasury management, local fund inflows and outflows, non-US dollar liquidity, and cross-border fund transfers. Each jurisdiction has its own compliance logic, banking restrictions, and settlement bottlenecks—transferring money is never as simple as just 'sending it over.'
On the surface, everyone is talking about stablecoins...

The news that 'Stripe is reportedly considering acquiring PayPal (all or parts)' broke a few days ago. By internet standards, this already counts as 'old news'.
But I think the moment when the buzz dies down is actually the best time to clarify what’s really going on.
Because almost all the discussions over the past few days have been circling around the same template: new king replacing the old king, epic acquisition, deal of the century, antitrust crackdown, whether Stripe can swallow PayPal whole... None of these are wrong, but they’re like gusts of wind blowing attention toward 'scale' and 'drama,' while obscuring the fork in the road that truly determines where this goes.
That fork in the road boils down to an unassuming phrase: all or parts.
This isn’t just a rhetorical flourish tossed in by bankers. It determines whether we're talking about a 'game-changer' or simply an 'acceleration' of something already in motion.
And it will decide the success or failure of this epic acquisition, as well as whether Stripe can seize Meta’s renewed RFP for stablecoins.
1. All the surface-level excitement holds true, but none of it addresses the fundamental question.
Let’s first put the two most common questions on the table.
First, 'Can Stripe afford it?' Of course it can — whether using cash, debt, stock, or some hybrid structure.
Stripe's valuation, financing capability, and capital market imagination are all evident. If they truly proceed...

The recent buzz around OpenClaw isn't captivating because it answers questions more humanely, but because it has started 'doing things for you.' The shift from 'help me think about this' to 'let me do this' doesn't just involve a UI upgrade; it's a complete switch in risk structures. When software can invoke tools, alter states, and access accounts and permissions, it stops being an assistant and becomes a potential economic actor.
This makes the timing of Nearcon2026 particularly interesting. NEAR has long branded itself as 'the chain for the AI era,' and Illia Polosukhin is no ordinary AI founder—he’s one of the co-authors of 'Attention Is All You Need.' Illia is among the most authoritative voices on how the line of research stemming from that paper evolved into today’s agents.
So when OpenClaw reignited the term 'agentic commerce,' it's expected that everyone will be eager to see what NEAR plans to unveil at Nearcon and how they intend to ground 'agents taking action' in terms of transaction and privacy infrastructure.
Even more subtle is that OpenClaw casually delivered an 'undignified but real' reminder over the past couple of days: A certain individual working on AI alignment at Meta...

Over the past week, everyone following the market’s heartbeat has probably felt it speed up and slow down unpredictably. Some friends and companies I advise are actually quite panicked and anxious—after all, just a month ago, Bitcoin was near the 90,000 mark, but last week it was suddenly driven below 60,000, and recently it has barely stabilized around 70,000.
This is an extremely volatile market that plays with people’s nerves; many are confused: Why has the market suddenly turned like this? What exactly triggered this round of panic and sell-offs?
I think that to explain this story clearly, we need to shift our focus away from the cryptocurrency charts for a moment and take a look at what has happened in the outside world over the past two weeks. Because during these two weeks, several very significant events occurred around the world:
Kevin Warsh was nominated as the next Federal Reserve chairman;
Silver and gold experienced extremely sharp fluctuations after hitting record highs;
Several narratives related to AI erupted simultaneously at the same time;
In the general election held in Japan over the past weekend, Sanae Takagi achieved an overwhelming victory;
Regarding AI, events such as the OpenClaw incident we discussed last week;
And last week's sharp drop in software stocks triggered by the new product launch from Anthropic;
Also, Oracle is planning to lay off 20,000 to 30,000 employees as it prepares for AI data centers.
These events seem disparate...

Author Charlie, Venture Partner at Generative Ventures. Previously served as Vice President of Strike, a cryptocurrency unicorn (involved in El Salvador's Bitcoin bill and responsible for Bitcoin and stablecoin payment businesses in Latin America), macro analyst at Franklin Templeton, a trillion-dollar fund, and an early member of Adyen North America, a global payment giant. Currently serves as a cryptocurrency strategic advisor to multiple public companies, startups, and investment firms.
This article is the AI-generated transcript of a podcast recorded on February 2nd US time. Interested readers can click [View Original] to listen.
This week, you've likely been bombarded with two terms: OpenClaw and Moltbook. Many people’s first reaction is: another wave in the AI trend, another round of excitement.
But I see it more as a rare, even somewhat brutal public experiment: For the first time, we are witnessing 'actionable AI agents' being deployed on a large scale across real networks, attracting massive attention and speculation.
You will see two extreme emotions emerging simultaneously: on one side is excitement — “AI can finally do my work for me,” not just writing code, creating spreadsheets, or drafting design sketches; on the other side is fear — you’ll come across...

Hello everyone, welcome to a new episode of 'The Fuzzy Lion of Sand Hill Road.' In this episode, I want to walk you through two major news stories from last week: both related to M&A (mergers and acquisitions), but in completely opposite directions.
The first is a story that surprised many: Brex was acquired by Capital One for $5.15 billion. The second is the opposite direction: Zero Hash rejected a $2 billion acquisition offer from Mastercard, choosing to remain independent and seek another round of funding.
Strictly speaking, these two deals are not in the same space: Brex leans more towards traditional fintech and even close to the banking ecosystem; Zero Hash is infrastructure built around the stablecoin 'orchestration layer / orchestrator / processing layer.'
But within the larger trend at present, they are essentially telling the same story: stablecoins are becoming the new foundational infrastructure for fintech and banks; regulatory frameworks are also forcing the industry to restructure and reprice. And these two deals happen to be samples of such 'repricing.'
Let's break it down step by step.
One, Capital One’s acquisition of Brex: A big deal, but not friendly to the seller
At first glance, $5.15 billion...

Hello everyone, today we are discussing a very important event from last week: the CLARITY Act, which the Senate Banking Committee originally intended to advance, was put on hold just before markup and entered a suspension period for negotiations.
It has taken up quite a few headlines and revealed industry divisions that many had not seen before: Coinbase and most other players in the industry have publicly split; conflicts between the crypto industry and the banking system, as well as traditional Wall Street interests, have surfaced. Meanwhile, an alternative route has emerged within Congress—the Senate Agriculture Committee (Senate Ag) is preparing to push forward its own market structure draft, and their announced timeline is moving very quickly.
What is the Clarity Act and its key development milestones
First, let’s talk about what the CLARITY Act itself is. In a nutshell: it is a comprehensive framework for the digital asset market structure. It seeks to answer: should a token be considered a security or a commodity? Should it be regulated by the SEC or the CFTC? How will obligations such as brokerage, custody, disclosure, and investor protection on trading platforms be implemented?
The industry has been looking forward to it for a long time because, for many years, U.S. regulation has largely relied on enforcement actions. For both startups and public companies, whether a new product can be launched or how far it can go often depends on guesswork. Everyone hopes that a clear set of rules will bring this uncertainty to an end.

Today, let's talk about a very eye-catching financing news from last week: Rain just closed a $250 million Series C round, with a valuation reaching $1.95 billion, led by ICONIQ.
One particularly interesting aspect of this news to me is that the partner leading the investment from ICONIQ, Kamran Zaki, was my first boss at Adyen. At that time, he was the head of Adyen’s U.S. market and later became the global COO.
Another connection with Rain is that Rain recently announced a partnership with Lithic, a card issuance technology service provider, and Lithic’s Chief Product Officer (CPO), Robin Gandhi, who was also my second boss at Adyen.
This is very interesting because although Adyen is not a company involved in stablecoin payments — in the payment field, Stripe has fully embraced stablecoins, while Adyen hasn't made any moves yet — these former core executives of Adyen have actually developed connections and relationships with stablecoins at various levels.
01｜Why this round of financing is 'more important': It’s not just about card issuance, it’s not just about payments
Then this round of...