build products and businesses for economic leverage. ex @Paxos, @Coinbase, @Square. exploring AI + finance. invest via @a16z. dad x3. @ChelseaFC supporter.
Brooklyn, NY
Joined March 2009
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Fun read from @DanteReminick on the role of a bank and how the core jobs wont change but how and by whom they get solved for the customer will change dramatically in the coming decade.
I wrote this article purely for my own benefit. I wanted to be able to organize my thoughts around a subject that I've spent lots of time researching/thinking about. I shared this with some friends who said I need to publish it.
Hope you enjoy.
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Ronak Daya retweeted
Rain continues to lead in payment products, first with cards, then with ramps and orchestration, and now with agentic vaults that actually provide value back to the customer's program, and do so globally, because money doesn't see borders and the payments companies shouldn't be the only ones accruing value from your users.
Thanks for the h/t, @sytaylor. Tokens vs balance is a fight over how the payment settles. The bigger one is who keeps track of what each agent is still allowed to spend.
Would I leave a balance with my agent? Yes. I suspect these start acting a lot like a Venmo balance, and eventually earn rewards. For one shopping agent it's also the simplest way to make a limit hold, because the money left and the authority left are the same number.
Once I'm running several agents with their own budgets, those numbers split. Someone has to track what each agent has spent and reserved, whether the payment settles as a token, a balance or my own card. Nobody owns that yet.
AI agents are starting to shop for us. But agentic commerce is a mess.
If your agent buys the wrong thing, who pays?
While banks figure that out, some apps are giving agents their own money to spend. We might not need banks at all.
Fascinating times.
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Learnt this morning on walk to soccer ⚽️ practice with almost 6y old that he thought we looked alike because our bdays are close (4 days apart on calendar month) and that obviously made sense because my younger brother and I are 3 days apart and look similar. Ha
Such a fun alternate reality to imagine and then we got into chatting about genes 🧬, which are equally fascinating.
Now he’s very into it and I’m vibe building a game/site with @ChatGPT to teach him to pull on his version and teach him about genes while he plays soccer.
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Agents are getting wallets and balances! @stripe launched @link balance: fund, set a limit, and the agent buys without asking.
A balance is the start of a much wider stack. Some early thoughts on how this might evolve here writing.ronakdaya.com/p/givi…
How do you see it? DMs open.
This is wild.
Side quests are Block >> voice AI companies that raised billions of dollars??
Meet Dessa, our AI model trained from scratch on nothing but speech.
We believe speech is the natural interface for technology. So we built Dessa.
And we’re inviting AI safety researchers to explore Dessa.
Learn more: block.xyz/dessa
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Ronak Daya retweeted
Brutally honest and reflective look at the end of a company I loved for its product and culture.
Foursquare was acquired last month. The outcome was disappointing. It's taken me a while to write this, but I think I'm finally done grieving it. Here are some thoughts on our final years, an effort to honor the team who helped build & maintain FSQ's legacy, and my attempt to finally get some closure. teendrama.substack.com/p/som…
Yep. Been true for a bit now. Tradfi will catch up too.
hot take: crypto and fintech are basically the same industry now.
stablecoins and blockchain rails ARE a financial technology.
crypto native companies are now launching cards, bank accounts, other financial products, while traditional fintechs are integrating wallets, stablecoins and blockchain rails at an unprecedented rate.
we’re watching both industries attack the same problems from opposite directions until they eventually meet in the middle.
crypto companies are becoming fintechs and fintechs are becoming crypto companies.
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Wallet coming to @ChatGPT soon? 👀
Suspect it’s a way to store card credentials with a control layer, but would be fun to see if they build their own wallet to hold balances and support stablecoins!
Ronak Daya retweeted
Apparently, customers selecting a better rate is a “bank run” now.
This will happen with or without agents. Better infra makes idle cash easier to deploy.
The threat to banks’ net interest income isn’t stablecoins either. It’s losing friction as a business model.
Ronak Daya retweeted
My agents should be able to do anything I can on a computer or a phone ( and I should be held accountable for their behavior).
Clearly King Zuck (@Muse) is human if he can pass a hotel’s human verification check?
So much of the web is just not prepared for the latest set of agents with dedicated computers.
Going to be a wild few months.
Meta fulfilling it’s destiny as the mega app for the rest of the world outside of China?
Wasn’t on my bingo card for 2026, but then again, not was instinct.
It’s funny, Meta went from having my Instagram and WhatsApp data to now having access to my email, calendar, DoorDash, Amazon and pretty much everything.
In the last 24 hours, it bought me socks, ordered my Whole Foods groceries, booked a cleaning service and got me a burger for dinner.
Meta’s last disclosed North American Facebook ARPU was around $227/year, largely from ads. I suspect it can push that number significantly higher now that it understands not only what I look at, but what I need, what I buy and what I’m planning to do.
Also the much bigger opportunity might be becoming the aggregation layer between me and the entire internet. If Meta can take even a tiny percentage of the commerce it facilitates, or of the money it saves me, this could become enormous!
It already saved me $200 by canceling subscriptions and services I no longer needed. This feels much bigger than better ad targeting. Ads are useful but giving me money back is better imo.
One additional thought: the agent is increasingly making the decisions for me. I knew nothing about that burger place. The agent researched it, told me which burger I should order, and I just said “okay” without giving it much more thought.
Agents are becoming the decision makers in both B2C and B2B. Increasingly, every business will be selling not just to humans, but to their agents.
Everything becomes B2A: business to agents.
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