I had a brilliant fintech operator in my office last week, just getting into stablecoins, said something that stuck with me: “Payments is 60% compliance.” It’s easy to focus on UI, speed, fees—but the real moat in money movement is trust. That trust is earned through licensing, audits, AML/KYC, regulatory fluency, and operational rigor. The institutions that have lasted—Visa, Western Union, legacy banks—didn’t just build pipes. They built compliance infrastructure that could scale globally and survive scrutiny. Stablecoins are now trying to rewire global payments from first principles. The tech is exceptional. The liquidity is real. But compliance? Still catching up. The mistake would be thinking that great code replaces great compliance. It doesn’t. If you want to move real volume through stablecoins—fiat on/off ramps, payroll, commerce, cross-border—you’ll run into the same expectations as any traditional financial institution. The unlock is this: treat compliance as a product. Design it, test it, scale it. Build it into the architecture, not as a patch. Just like security became invisible but essential in Web2, compliance will become the defining layer of trust in Web3 and payments. The future of stablecoin infra will be won by those who see compliance not as a bottleneck—but as a distribution and defensibility engine. If you’re building in this space and thinking deeply about how to integrate compliance from the ground up, reach out to me or the team @lateralcap . We want to hear from you.

Doom and gloom tweets about climate change are annoying and more corrosive than they are helpful. But i think it is important we galvanise enough effort to preserve our environment for the future. 🧵

Next DeFi🦄= Real Use Cases + Demand + Infrastructure + Ecosystem Build+ Network Effects + Regulatory Clarity Real use cases = global pain points + cross-border focus 🧑‍🤝‍🧑Users = (Pain Points × Smartphone Penetration) + (Unbanked Population × Digital Infra) Demand = Merchants x Users Infrastructure = Payment Infra + Local Channel Integration 🌐Network effects = Adoption = User Adoption × Merchant Acceptance ⚖️Regulatory Clarity = Licensing and Registration + Financial Stability and Systemic Risk Management

Nigeria’s crypto revolution can be a great blueprint for Africa’s crypto’s movement. Their adoption has been crazy but the features protecting users might be the ones keeping others out.

VC isn't a science with rigid formulas—it's an art of pattern recognition. Behind every investment is a dance of intuition, lived experience, and subtle signal detection.

VC firms trade in money, and our money is just as green as others’. It’s a commodity. But the difference is in what comes with the cheque. The relationships, the perspectives the insights... The right VC can be the difference between a company that grows and one that thrives.

In a portfolio, the companies that need the most attention are the worst performing ones. The cost of a bad investment is not just a dollar loss but a time loss. Failure is very time consuming.

[fin]tech works best when its invisible

Historically, energy transitions have taken many decades, even centuries. We are trying to do it in 30 years AND in a way that coincides with the need to expand access to energy for billions who still don't have it.

The forces favour the emergence of more efficient carbon markets, if we prioritise trading high integrity credits in a small number of exchanges linked to multiple registries.

we can be 8-9 bn and still be benign to the environment.

the amount of faux expertise in VC is dangerous. as a founder, you probably understand your business & market more

talent will find max value for itself globally. africa has and will lose talent. this is a huge incentive to nuture and enable the gig economy. digital platforms that will platform and verticalise africa's gig economy will win!

African founders working on the cross-border payments need to have passion and a very hig tolerance for pain.

Unicorn formula for Africa

Bad investors invest in Africa based on the conditions today when the better investors are looking at the conditions 10 years from now, at a minimum. Eg Africa will add more people to the workforce in the next 20 years than the rest of the world combined!

There is good innovation (software) and bad innovation (process engineering). Good innovation creates and improves products and lives and bad innovation that overcomplicates and obfuscates of how things work. Think crypto...