Reflections on 2026

I haven’t written much since I joined Bridge (and now Stripe). We also welcomed our third kid, Juni, this year. It’s been fun and chaotic in the best way.

To revitalize the pen, here are three thoughts I’ve had this year.

Stablecoins as Infrastructure

Stablecoins are evolving from “USD parking for crypto traders” into real financial services infrastructure: wallets as accounts and instant, permissionless settlement built on programmable dollar rails.

The GENIUS Act being signed into law (July 18, 2025) mattered because it made stablecoin regulation and product strategy mainstream.

In this new world, a modern neobank may never need traditional fiat rails at all. You can build “bank-like” experiences on stablecoin rails end-to-end (Dolar is a good example of the shape of this). We believe this thesis at Bridge/Stripe and see it reflected in our business. Not just with startups but with established fintechs (e.g. Klarna, Revolut) and traditional financial services companies (e.g. banks like JPM) – they each have a stablecoin strategy.

Meanwhile, crypto “blue chips” (BTC/ETH/SOL) are now boring. ETFs, institutional allocations, normalized narrative and 1-2% of a sensible capital allocation strategy. The upside isn’t dead, but culture has moved on to the next thing.

Where attention is now: memecoins (yes, including $TRUMP), prediction markets (Kalshi, Polymarket), and perps (Hyperliquid). That is where the next generation of young investors are taking risk, forming identity, and earning bragging rights.

I liked this post on the psychology:

Editing with LLMs

I use ChatGPT and Gemini daily. LLMs are now genuinely useful thought partners, especially for things that are personal (money, relationships) and for pressure-testing ideas with quick iterations. The feedback loop is incredibly fast and the introduction of memory gives the models even more context.

But they still hallucinate. The skill is not “prompt engineering.” It’s editing: taste, skepticism, and knowing what to incorporate and discard.

If you know nothing about a topic, you can’t critique the output, which means you can’t safely use the tools. The people who will get the most leverage from the tools will have both breadth (to navigate) and depth (to judge).

This isn’t the end of engineering or research. It’s an amplifier for people with taste and good judgment.

Aaron Levie’s Jevons Paradox thread is great:

Redefining Wealth

For most of my life, I thought “wealth” meant money. But over time, it’s becoming more evident that most valuable resources aren’t material possessions—they’re health, relationships, and unstructured time.

  • Health is a strong, resilient body and a calm mind. Neither is free and both require consistent investment. For me this means staying disciplined on diet and daily workouts and prioritizing consistency/injury prevention over peak performance.
  • Relationships are the same. Love and loyalty are earned and if you don’t invest, even the closest relationships can erode over time. For me, this means immutable date nights with my wife, creating space for fun with friends, and showing up for my kids at school drop-offs and bedtimes.
  • Unstructured time is underrated. It’s where curiosity returns. It’s where your mind wanders and you remember what you actually enjoy. For me, that’s rabbit-holing on Japanese knives, playing squash, or going on a long bike ride.

You can’t excel in every dimension at once. Tradeoffs are real. The only question is whether you choose them intentionally or let work and inertia choose for you.

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