Here are all my secrets We cover crypto, AI, and the machine economy. The weather changes but the stars point in the same direction. Really enjoyed this conversation with @francescoswiss

Looking to add a few to the rotation, what are your favorite podcasts these days? Any topic goes.

Earlier this year, I almost fell for an elaborate phishing attempt. It was convincing enough that I nearly went along with it. For an entire weekend I felt shame. Unfortunately, the latest “Black October” security findings suggest things are going to get worse. Old security flaws that once took too much time to exploit can now be targeted by 10k agents working overnight for the cost of a Pumpkin Spice Latte (okay... or two). A few things people much smarter than me have noticed over the past week: • Amazon spotted an attempted attack on website software four days before the public warning went out. The flaws could let someone take control without a password. Businesses were being targeted before they knew they needed a fix. • PHP, the software behind WordPress and many other websites, needed emergency fixes for two flaws that could let attackers take over servers without a login. Vercel added firewall protections before the public warning, but website owners still need to update PHP itself. • One of the secret keys used to help verify that websites are genuine was simply the number 4. Eight keys at certificate provider eMudhra were easy to guess. Updated browsers have protections, but older software may still trust the affected certificates. • NorForge researchers found criminals putting AI agents to work against online shops and payment systems. One group had more than 1,100 attack projects across its dashboards. • Quest Diagnostics, one of the biggest medical companies in the U.S., disclosed a breach this week and believes someone accessed patient records. It is still investigating how many people were affected. AI didn’t cause all of these failures. But it does make existing weaknesses cheaper to find and exploit. Not to play the doomer or alarmist, but now is a good time for a few reminders. -Use a password manager. -Turn on two-factor authentication. -If someone unexpectedly asks you to send money or download something, check through a number or account you already know. -Follow trusted security experts online. Working in tech or being chronically online doesn’t make you immune. Be safe out there.

When Vanguard agreed to buy Altruist in August, I wrote about what it meant for the companies selling software to financial advisors. I think that part of the deal deserves more attention. Altruist holds the client accounts and provides the software advisors use to manage them. It can earn money on cash and other financial products, which gives it room to charge less for the software. Having helped build AdvisorEngine, I recognize the difficulty here. You can build a good product and still depend on a custodian for the data that makes it work. That custodian can also offer its own version. An advisor may like your software... but they still have to justify paying for it when something similar comes with the accounts. With Vanguard backing that model, an independent software company needs a good answer for what makes the extra bill worth paying. lex.substack.com/p/analysis-…

Most new exchanges pay market makers to bring liquidity. Papertrade lets their customers lose the money instead. The 'losers' get tokens, and winners may have to wait for the next trader’s loss to get paid. This week’s Fintech Blueprint looks at an exchange whose hardest problem may be finding enough people willing to lose next week.

In a past life I helped build a robo-advisor before they were cool. Now we’re teaching AI to do financial analysis, and I can feel the enthusiasm again. There’s something satisfying about watching software do work that used to take someone hours. You can see why firms want more of it. Getting people to trust it with their savings takes longer. With robo-advisors, choosing investments was only part of what people paid for. They also wanted someone to call when the market fell and they were scared. We could automate the investing. People still wanted to talk to someone. AI can do much more of the work now. But when a client wants to sell everything, I still want to know who takes that call. I suspect a fair amount of the fee will stay with whoever does.

Last week I spoke to an investment management group about the machine economy. The part I keep thinking about is junior hiring. Firms say they still need young people to learn the work. I believe them. But a firm can say that and still leave an empty seat unfilled when someone quits. AI makes that choice easier to justify, one vacancy at a time. Eventually, you have fewer people who know how to do the work without it. I’m excited by what these tools can do. I’m less comfortable with the idea that we can remove the first rung of a career ladder and somehow keep the people who would have climbed it. I wrote more about that tension, and the financial incentives behind it, in this week’s Fintech Blueprint. lex.substack.com/p/analysis-… As always, lmk what you think.

It’s not a surprise that when you sell financial drugs to people they get addicted and lose all their money Then Pikachu face when nobody around in a year

Hey look it’s all of us on the web A little fruit fly that’s brain simulated in a fake world

Zoom out Everything post Covid is down But inflation

Ramp is currently valued at $60 billion. That price assumes it keeps taking work away from the finance department. The product line says as much. Ramp now closes your books, tracks what you spend on AI, and routes which model answers the question. Fintech Mercury hooked its accounts and payments into AI agents, with a human tap required before money leaves. Software has handled corporate spend for years. What changes now is that it starts making the call on where the cash sits and which rail the payment takes. Banks spent a decade competing for the CFO. The CFO is increasingly a workflow with a budget attached, and it does not care about your app redesign.That is the real bet inside the valuation. Not a better card. A customer who decides where the deposits go. I wrote about it in the latest Fintech Blueprint, including the debt quietly underwriting all this conviction: lex.substack.com/p/analysis-…

What's your go to AI of choice now?

The machine gods of money are coming

Morgan Stanley's wealth arm took in $232 billion of new client money last quarter, a record. Just over half was IPO money, largely employees whose company shares had just gone public. The cheapest way to win a wealth client is to run their stock plan before the IPO.

Standard Chartered pushed back its $2 trillion stablecoin forecast by two years because supply stopped growing. Its report says each of these crypto dollars now gets spent about twice as often as last year. The forecast counts the dollars. The dollars are working twice as hard.

Super excited to support @multiliquid on its mission to making digital assets seamless to use at institutional grade.

Agentic payments - check Agentic banking - check Agentic trading - check Agentic wealth mgmt - ?