Macklemore announces ‘Free Palestine’ music tour after Ed Sheeran debacle trib.al/98XHk0T

Welcome to Atum. That’s what we tell every new partner when they first touch the network. And now we’re saying it to you. Because today, @atumhq, the open payments network, a first of its kind, is live. We picked the date intentionally. Today, September 22, marks the autumnal equinox (in the northern hemisphere), a threshold through which the world passes, from one season into another. Atum occupies a similar boundary: between light and darkness, chaos and order, ending and renewal. Atum, as a platform, is positioned at the transition from closed, institution-specific payment systems to an open, programmable network. Atum is also the creator god symbol in ancient Egypt. Atum is the first, the primordial, and the originating god of creation. Atum provides the basic building blocks for payments and commerce - the infrastructure, tooling, products and services that make money move the way it ought to. Our team is comprised of leading payments and onchain experts from companies like @Visa, @coinbase, @chainlink, @CashApp, @tempo, and more. It’s a new world for payments and commerce. And it is my ultimate pleasure, passion, and life’s purpose to introduce Atum, the open payments network. We are so glad you’re here. Welcome to Atum. We do it together. → atum.xyz/

We started @column with the insane idea to rebuild every component of the financial system from scratch. Today, I think we've finally completed that build. We're releasing four new products, so any technology company can build at the frontier of financial services.

When we built stablecoin settlement at Visa, I knew it would be a better product by orders of magnitude. Today @raincards @creditcoop_xyz and @Visa are at the epicenter of activity proving that thesis. And the $20B annualized volume has not only surged more than 15x in a year, it is just getting started. In fact, there is no more important story happening onchain, and @rooqster and @cnaut at Rain, @CWALK_19 at Credit Coop, and @droes00 @cuysheffield and @wex at Visa are crushing it in epic fashion. There are no better teams to work with right now. They are lifting the entire space as we head closer toward mass adoption of this technology and a new paradigm for money. Don't underestimate the surge in activity that is likely to come next.

Affirm co-founders, CEO Max Levchin and a16z's Alex Rampell, on 25 years inside payments, from PayPal to agentic commerce: Payments is the biggest market on earth. No niche in it is smaller than $100 billion, and the industry has barely moved in 60 years. Visa and Mastercard keep card transaction windows too tight to build anything new inside. Max still calls the plastic card the best payment interface ever built. Affirm began in a 2011 email thread in which Max and Alex agreed that the nearest version of the idea was a bad business. Then a cosmetics brand using Affirm moved the offer from its checkout page to its product pages, and conversion jumped 30%. In this conversation with Erik Torenberg, they get into why Affirm walked away from the highest margins in payments, what a negative customer acquisition cost is actually worth, and why Max is bearish on agentic shopping but bullish on agentic payments. 00:00 Intro 01:00 The fraud rule that built Apple Pay 03:35 Visa's problematic transaction windows 05:30 No niches under $100 billion 07:10 The email that said Affirm was a bad idea 10:00 The wand that should've killed the card 12:36 Booed off stage for presenting PayPal 15:02 Why crypto still can't buy a cup of coffee 17:16 How Max and Alex met 20:11 The 500-Facebook-friends idea 26:48 The all-nighter PHP demo 30:58 Every startup gets 40 years in the desert 32:46 Moving one line lifted conversion 30% 35:02 Why Affirm walked away from the highest margins in payments 39:03 One article created an entire industry 40:37 The asterisk next to 0% 42:17 What BNPL misses about Affirm 44:03 Why merchants give Affirm customers 47:00 Why a 3-year loan is harder, and better, than a 6-week one 48:19 Why PayPal produced so many founders 52:43 Bullish on agentic payments, bearish on agentic shopping 57:51 Grocery shopping is already 100% agentic YouTube: piped.video/watch?v=J3pegsM5… @mlevchin @Affirm @arampell @eriktorenberg

12,000 borrow/repay events and $2.5B in volume later, @creditcoop_xyz is replacing manual trustees with smart contracts. Next week at @thestablecon in DC, I am sitting down with @wex from @Visa to discuss financing stablecoin-linked cards on VisaNet.

Earlier today, Rain’s monitoring systems discovered a vulnerability impacting a small number of programs using an outdated version of our Solana contracts. Other programs were not impacted. Rain immediately launched an investigation to determine the full scope of the situation. Our team has successfully upgraded all programs that were using the outdated version of the Solana contracts, which has resolved the situation. Rain is continuing to monitor the issue, has engaged third-party forensics experts to investigate, and will work with law enforcement and relevant regulatory authorities. All affected users will be made whole. We’ve already begun the remediation process and are focused on delivering a swift and responsible resolution.

There was so much discourse around @raincards "anatomy of a stablecoin swipe" that we had to dig in. @cuysheffield, as ever, nailed it. Stablecoin settlement is for non bank issuers or those who are operating more globally and not correspondent banks. Stablecoins are better for them.

This is crazy. Mastercard's crypto card volume has fallen by 50% so far in 2026. It's fair to say Visa has officially won the neobank battle.

JUST IN: 🇺🇸 Truth Social to sell faster access to President Trump's posts for traders and investors, WSJ reports.

One of the fastest growing networks is now live on Nook. You can now access USDC lending on @monad with @aave ✳️ + 🟪

Over the course of a year, Americans are more likely to place a gambling bet than read a single book. Seems fine! (via @TheAtlantic) —

Introducing Open USD: a stablecoin built for the internet economy, designed by the businesses growing it. joinopenstandard.com/blog/in…

We are building for the gap we see in the current earn landscape. Almost everyone can now earn. Most people are stuck in the same sources as everyone else. Neo-banks, exchanges, finance apps all sign exclusive deals in day 0 for a yield partner. You are getting the same rate everyone else gets. They boost the rate on launch and then your earning rate starts to look just like everyone else’s. Lower. You are back to being a part of the 95% of people earning below 4% APY.

Latin America moved $1.5T onchain in three years. Most of it in stablecoins. Today we published the State of Stablecoins in Latin America. The finding: adoption is structural, not speculative. And the companies driving it are homegrown.