Rod Askarov

The SpaceXAI IPO produced more exit value than the previous five years of venture exits combined. 2022 raised: $222 billion 2025 raised: $75 billion 2026 YTD exits: $2.18 trillion Full piece on our Substack: Catching The (Venture) Bus by Jen Kha

Coinbase got paid $1.4 billion last year for something your company does for free. It held customer dollars. That is the whole trick. Circle keeps the interest on the Treasuries behind USDC and pays Coinbase for every dollar parked on its platform. Tether does the same job with about 200 employees and cleared more than $10 billion. The people whose dollars those were got 0%. Nobody outside crypto cared, because it was crypto money. Then on September 30 a stablecoin called OUSD went live, and the names behind it are Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, Coinbase and about 140 others. Mint for free, redeem for free, and the interest on the reserves goes to whoever brought the customer. Not to the issuer. I had to sit with that one for a while. Because if you run a bank, a fintech, a marketplace, a payroll company, anything that holds a balance for somebody else, the exact same thing has been happening to you. Every dollar in your customers' accounts earns close to 4% right now. Somewhere. Not with you. The reserve was never the hard part. BlackRock will hold Treasuries for anyone who asks. The hard part was getting a million people to leave their money inside your product, and you already did that. Circle paid Coinbase because it had no choice. This week Coinbase joined the group that does not want to be paid anymore. It wants to own the thing. I don't think this is a stablecoin story. It is the oldest fight in banking, who keeps the float, with new plumbing underneath. Your competitors read the memo on Tuesday. Your CFO will ask about it by January. Which side of that $1.4 billion are you on?

Fall 2026 Issue Cover