Posts By Reeves Birner
-
256BlockchainHow Consensus Mechanisms in America Are Maturing: Proof-of-Stake, Restaking and the Regulatory Bar Ahead
Consensus mechanisms used to be a topic that lived in computer science papers and crypto Twitter threads. In 2026 they have become...
-
322BlockchainCrypto Trading and Markets in America in 2026: ETFs, Custody and the New US Order Flow
A useful way to think about U.S. crypto trading in 2026 is that it has stopped being a market built around enthusiasts...
-
492PaymentsPayment Security and Fraud Prevention in the US in 2026: AI Risk Scoring, Passkeys and the Push-Fraud Problem
U.S. payment fraud in 2026 looks different than it did three years ago, and the underlying defense stack has changed even more....
-
346Blockchain
Layer 2 Scaling in America in 2026: How Optimistic and ZK Rollups Are Carrying US Onchain Activity
If you talked to a U.S. blockchain engineer in 2022, the dominant complaint was gas fees. If you talk to the same...
-
342Blockchain
Real-World Asset Tokenization in America in 2026: $18B Live and the Issuers, Categories and Rules Driving It
Real-world asset tokenization has spent five years being described as the next big thing in U.S. finance. In 2026 it is finally...
-
416Payments
Contactless Payments in the US in 2026: How Tap-to-Pay Finally Won and What That Unlocks Next
Contactless payments took longer to win in the United States than almost anyone in the industry expected when the first contactless Visa...
-
662Fintech News
Personal Finance Apps in the US in 2026: How Budgeting, Saving and Credit-Building Tools Are Actually Used
U.S. personal finance apps are in a strange position in 2026. The category lost its most recognizable brand when Intuit shut down...
-
290Blockchain
Web3 Financial Applications in America in 2026: Where Wallet-Native Finance Has Actually Found Users
Five years ago, “Web3 financial applications” was a label that mostly described decentralized exchanges, lending protocols and a handful of early NFT...
-
293Blockchain
DAO Governance Models in America in 2026: How On-Chain Voting Has Actually Performed
DAO governance was one of the most-hyped ideas of the 2021 crypto cycle, and one of the most criticised after the 2022...
-
508Fintech News
Credit decision engines: how US lenders are rebuilding the underwriting stack
A US personal-loan fintech rebuilt its entire underwriting stack in under 18 months, replacing a rules-and-score decisioning system with a machine-learning model...
-
425Payments
Payments systems and infrastructure: the US rails every fintech has to think about
The US has more payment rails in production use than any comparable economy in the world, four widely used systems for domestic...
-
250Blockchain
Blockchain fundamentals: what US financial institutions actually need to understand
A US regional bank’s chief technology officer recently described blockchain education inside her organisation this way: “Most of my senior team can...
-
458Fintech News
Machine learning in finance: where US firms are actually getting value
A mid-sized US lender replaced a 20-year-old rules-based fraud system with a machine-learning model last year and cut its false-positive rate by...
-
310Payments
ACH systems in the US: the rails underneath almost every fintech product
On a typical Wednesday afternoon, more money moves through the US Automated Clearing House network in a few hours than most state-level...
-
403Fintech News
The economics of fintech: how the US industry makes money now
A venture investor who led a Series A in a US consumer fintech in 2019 recently described the deal as a product...
-
260Payments
Payment apps in Connecticut: what’s driving adoption in a state with a banking pedigree
In a Hartford coffee shop, the barista rings up a customer through a Square terminal and the customer pays with Apple Pay...
-
273Blockchain
Blockchain development labs: who’s building the next wave of US financial infrastructure
One of the largest US asset managers maintains an internal team whose only job is to write production code against public blockchains,...
-
326Fintech News
Metaverse and financial services: what US banks actually built after the hype wore off
A major US bank opened a virtual branch inside a gaming platform in 2022, held a press event for it, and quietly...
-
337Fintech News
Platform economics in US fintech: why the unit-economics conversation has changed
A US neobank with over 10 million users spent most of 2023 explaining to investors that scale without net interest margin is...
