Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards (SK)
Joined July 2012
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Sep Alavi retweeted
We’ve raised a $90M Series B led by @NEA to make cash earn for everyone, around the clock.
$50T of cash in Europe and the US earns next to nothing. Every point of missed yield costs $500B a year.
10,000+ users now hold nearly $3B in Spiko funds, up 15%+ a month.
Next: interest accrual in real time and treasury on autopilot.
As first reported by @business:
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
The full story on our blog:
spiko.io/blog/weve-raised-90…
Sep Alavi retweeted
🤝 ZBX partners with BoomFi to bring stablecoin payment acceptance to merchants across the EEA.
lnkd.in/dH_RtWYp
#stablecoin #infrastructure #orchestration
Sep Alavi retweeted
Coming out of stealth today, I’m building Sugar (@usesugar) which solves fintech’s biggest pain point: liquidity for pre-funding and reserves.
Fintech’s biggest secret is: in order for customers to move money, the fintech they use needs to pre-fund payments so that their payments go through.
Sugar solves that pain by providing liquidity in an API, or as a line of credit in USD, USDC, USDT.
Some popular cases we help solve in fiat and stables:
- Pre funding payments on/off chain
- Collateral requirements and escrow
- Sponsor bank requirements
- Credit reserves
The problem:
While most SMB segments are well served for credit, fintechs are deeply underserved as there isn’t a credit product designed for fintech’s pre-funding and reserve capital needs, because they did not exist at this scale until a few years ago.
Sugar helps finance those fintechs so that they can scale their payments or credit business, while diluting less and not having to face delays in growth or interruptions of service.
Sugar doesn’t require you to change your payment processor, bank sponsor, payout provider, or on/off ramp infrastructure.
We want to unlock your liquidity to help increase scale.
How do we do it: volume based underwriting.
We’ve pioneered what we call Volume Based Underwriting, where we underwrite fintechs based on their volumes enabling us to understand a fintech’s growth, volatility, and fraud in order to offer them liquidity.
Why now.
Fintech's first two waves.
- Wave one moved banking online through mobile and desktop apps, digital KYC, and payments. The neobanks launching in 2026 still do the same.
- Wave two is payments plus credit. Neobanks have to differentiate, and credit is how the hundreds launching today will win customers.
- All of them will need liquidity for pre-funding, reserves, collateral, and warehouse lending.
We want to be that lender.
Our master plan:
- Customer experience: Make getting liquidity an easy experience for fintechs. Who provides the best experience wins.
- Cost of capital: Develop a loan book and re-finance with each balance sheet milestone with lower cost lenders, from banks, M&A, and DeFi. The lowest cost of capital wins.
- Going vertical: Launch verticals that compliment and strengthen the core credit thesis. Rinse and repeat.
If you’re a fintech founder, CFO, or someone in finance and you’re looking to solve your pre-funding or reserve needs, send me a DM.
Thanks to the team at @WhiteStarCap and @alliance for supporting us early in our journey.
PS,
For friends that knew of us before today, we are rebranding away from Superbank.
Sep Alavi retweeted
The next generation of the ether.fi crypto neobank is live.
Earn, trade, borrow, spend. One app to replace your traditional bank.
What’s new:
→ Tokenized stocks and metals trading
→ An integrated @Aave market on @Optimism, borrowing against your full portfolio at ~4%
→ New on and off-ramps support over 30 new currencies
→ New payment methods: Cash App, Apple Pay, LemonPay, and more
→ Programmatic ETHFI buybacks from every product and revenue line
Sep Alavi retweeted
People have asked, so any Kast refugees who want to try @ether_fi I’ll give you a tier bump to Lux so you get a free metal card.
Any large depositors (>$200k) ping me and you’ll get VIP to try out with the gold card.
Use this URL to sign up to keep track:
ether.fi/@mike
Comment below if you have issue and I’ll dm you.
Sep Alavi retweeted
If Stablecoins Win, Do Banks Lose?
At InnovateMiami:
Rajeev Bamra (@Moodys)
@SepAlavi (White Star Capital)
@kingchris (@fintech_io)
Moderated by @leeorgroen (@TheSpartanGroup)
The discussion explored how stablecoins are reshaping money movement, where banks may lose share, where they retain an edge, and how financial institutions are adapting.
Watch the full panel now: youtu.be/46XXPpLvX6M
Sep Alavi retweeted
JUST IN: Europe's largest asset manager Amundi (€2.3T AUM) and @Spiko_finance launch tokenized mutual fund SAFO powered by @Chainlink, offering 24/7 transferability and near-instant settlement.
Sep Alavi retweeted
Together with @Amundi_FR, Europe’s largest asset manager, we’re thrilled to introduce the Spiko Amundi Overnight Swap Fund, or SAFO, a new tokenized fund optimized for cash and collateral management.
🏛 UCITS-compliant.
🔄 Built on fully collateralized total return swaps with global systemically important banks, starting with BNP Paribas.
💰 Offering stable yields above risk-free benchmarks and overnight liquidity. Available in four currencies, with subscriptions/redemptions from as little as 1 EUR, USD, GBP, or CHF.
⛓ On-chain shareholder register, providing real-time transparency, flexible custody options, and 24/7 borderlerless transferability of fund shares.
⚡ Programmatic access via API and smart contracts.
Sep Alavi retweeted
This is what hitting PMF looks like.
@plasticlabs is on an absolute tear because @honchodotdev is the best product for building stateful agents.
I use it personally for my agents and am never going back.
Sep Alavi retweeted
Hermes(@NousResearch) can now build its identity across sessions 🫡🪞
→ Agent messages flow to Honcho, which reasons over them to build a persistent representation of the agent's identity
→ honcho_conclude lets the agent write facts back (preferences, corrections, context) which feed into Honcho's reasoning
→ Seed the agent's starting identity from SOULmd
→ Async writes with zero blocking
Run `hermes honcho setup`
Your Hermes agent just got long-term memory that actually understands who it's talking to and who it is.
Sep Alavi retweeted
In case you missed it: Ledn closed a $188M bitcoin-backed ABS rated BBB- on the senior notes under the offering by S&P.
What it took: An intensive evaluation using the same rigorous analytical frameworks applied to traditional assets. Plus, 8 years of focus, durability, discipline, and systems that perform across all market cycles.
cointelegraph.com/news/ledn-…
Sep Alavi retweeted
Ledn has issued the first investment grade-rated bitcoin-backed ABS in the digital asset industry.
The senior notes under the offering were rated BBB- by S&P. Plus, the ABS has been 2x oversubscribed, with institutional demand exceeding the $188 million offering size.
This is the first time a major global rating agency has provided independent, institutional validation of a digital asset lending portfolio.
Learn more: ledn.io/post/ledn-abs
Sep Alavi retweeted
this was probably my favorite panic dump in bitcoin history: march 12, 2020
btc dropped below the 200d MA from $8k to below the 200w MA in the $3ks basically in one night (>50% drop)
covid hysteria. fidelity had just told all employees to WFH indefinitely, the NBA had just cancelled its season the night before.
the bitmex liquidation engine was selling bitcoin hand over fist. some thought arthur would let it sell btc to zero. luckily, bitmex was taken down in “a DDOS attack” (thanks arthur 🤝)
buying during this panic was extremely satisfying. nothing fundamental about bitcoin had changed, but the world was drastically undervaluing it
we didn’t stay under the 200w MA for long, but it took 8 more months to climb back to a new ATH
Sep Alavi retweeted
Crypto firm Ledn sells Bitcoin-backed bonds in ABS market first
>First ever deal of its kind in asset-backed debt
>Secured by pool of 5,400 Bitcoin-collateralized loans that consumers took from Ledn at weighted avg rate of 11.8%
>Investment grade tranche priced at +335bps
Gold just crossed $5,000/oz—up 81.7% YoY.
Bitcoin's at $88k, down 29% from its $124k ATH hit in August. That's the divergence that creates the opportunity. When macro uncertainty spikes, tradfi flows to what balance sheets understand. Central banks bought 60 tonnes/month of gold but here's the setup:
After every major gold rally driven by uncertainty, capital rotates into higher beta assets once the immediate fear subsides.
Expect rotation into BTC over the next few months as macro stabilizes. The $124k ATH isn't a ceiling... it's the floor for the next leg.