Posts By Reeves Birner
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402Fintech NewsPeer-to-peer lending in the US: what is left of the original model, and what replaced it
When Prosper booked its first loan in 2006, the idea was almost utopian: ordinary US savers would fund ordinary US borrowers and...
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425Fintech NewsWealth management technology in the US: the quiet rewiring of the advisor stack
A US financial advisor in 2018 typically built a client meeting around three or four open tabs: a custodial portal, a financial-planning...
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260BlockchainAutomated market makers in US finance: how a constant-product equation became a $1T trading rail
In November 2018, a 25-year-old former Siemens engineer published a 250-line smart contract on Ethereum that let anyone swap one token for...
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322Fintech News
Equity crowdfunding in the US: ten years after the JOBS Act, what the data finally shows
When President Obama signed the JOBS Act in April 2012, the most-debated provision was Title III, which would eventually let ordinary US...
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298Fintech News
AI in US portfolio management: where machine learning has earned its seat, and where it has not
Two Sigma started training neural networks on equity-returns data when most US asset managers were still arguing about whether Bayesian regressions were...
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347Blockchain
Smart contract security auditing in US finance: how the audit industry grew up alongside the exploit losses
The first commercial smart contract audit in 2016 was a few engineers reading Solidity code by hand and emailing a PDF to...
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279Fintech News
How Kubernetes for Financial Systems Stopped Being a Controversial Choice in US Banks
The first time a senior US bank technologist proposed running customer facing services on Kubernetes, the response from the audit team was...
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471Fintech News
How the US FinTech Ecosystem Is Reshaping Itself in 2026: Rails, AI Underwriting and Embedded Finance
If you had asked someone working in U.S. financial services five years ago to describe the country’s fintech ecosystem, the answer would...
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280Blockchain
How 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...
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345Blockchain
Crypto 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...
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521Payments
Payment 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....
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369Blockchain
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...
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365Blockchain
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...
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447Payments
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...
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695Fintech 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...
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316Blockchain
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...
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318Blockchain
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...
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538Fintech 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...
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454Payments
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...
