On The Ground

140 companies just launched a stablecoin to take on Tether and Circle. Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Amex, BlackRock, Coinbase, Ripple, Google, Shopify, and DoorDash are all behind Open USDT. Unlike USDC and USDT, most of the reserve income gets shared back with partners instead of kept. Stripe already made it the default for its businesses. Circle's stock dropped 17% on the news, and CEO Jeremy Allai...

WorldPay went offline during England vs Ghana. Pubs, restaurants, Tesco — none of them could take card payments for hours. Transaction volumes in bars were up 148% that day. The cause was a third-party power grid disruption. Cash lines formed. OpenAI is pushing its IPO to 2027. Sam Altman won't go public below a $1 trillion valuation while burning $21B a year and paying Google, Microsoft, and AWS...

We discuss why the ecosystem nearly doubled in size, where venture capital is flowing, and which categories are emerging as the biggest winners. We also dive into one of the biggest announcements of the week: Adyen launching Agentic, a new orchestration layer that aims to connect merchants to AI commerce platforms through a single integration. Can Adyen challenge Stripe and become the operating sy...

This week on On The Ground, Sam and Otabek try a new format and bring their own biggest stories of the week to debate live. The result? One of the most important weeks we've seen across AI, payments, fintech, and technology. Topics covered: • Visa's new partnership with OpenAI and what it means for agentic commerce • Why Mastercard is building payments for AI agents and machines • The battle to be...

This week, we break down why JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon publicly challenged ‪Coinbase‬, why JPMorgan, ‪Citi‬, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo are building a tokenized deposit network, and why ‪stripe‬, ‪Visa‬, ‪Mastercard‬, and Coinbase are reportedly backing a new stablecoin platform that could reshape global payments. We also discuss why Mastercard is expanding stablecoin settlement across multiple...

Robinhood is letting AI agents trade and spend money on behalf of users. Visa is investing in agentic payments through Replit. Cash App is bringing stablecoins to nearly 60 million users. Tether is launching a national stablecoin with the Georgian government. PayPal and WeChat Pay are connecting payment ecosystems across China. Meanwhile, regulators are questioning whether traditional markets are...

JPMorgan says the future of Wall Street needs fewer bankers and more AI engineers. Klarna is bringing shopping directly into ChatGPT. Google wants to follow your shopping behavior across the entire internet. Revolut just launched a physical crypto card. Meanwhile, stablecoins are moving deeper into the financial system while regulators struggle to keep up. NOTICE: Nothing in this video is financia...

In this episode of the On the Ground Podcast, I break down the most important developments shaping fintech, banking, payments, AI, and digital assets. This week’s biggest stories include: Wise moving its primary listing from London to Nasdaq Circle raising $222 million from BlackRock and Apollo Global Management Kraken exploring fundraising at a $20 billion valuation JPMorgan Chase expanding token...

Welcome to the first episode of "On the Ground Show", where we break down the biggest stories shaping fintech, payments, crypto, and financial infrastructure. In this episode, we cover PayPal and Coinbase cutting thousands of jobs as both companies restructure around AI, signaling how automation is reshaping financial services. We analyze a wave of major acquisitions, including Kraken’s $600 milli...