does the behavior survive when rewards end? here's the only question that matters when you put gamification mechanics into a money app: does the behavior survive when the reward is removed? run that test on most reward-led fintech and almost everything fails. the points, the cashback chase, the referral bonus, the spin-to-win. the behavior dies the same day, because people weren't saving or spending smarter. they were collecting a payout web3 is a live experiment in what happens when you reward everything. quests, points, leaderboards, token drops. and it's the same movie every time: if the underlying behavior has no substance, the conversion never becomes valuable long-term there were numerous eras of this in the industry: - DeFi summer, crazy yields and liquidity rewards - chain airdrops and liquidity hijacks - SocialFi and yapping - points and quest farming it's fascinating how this market evolved, because there were also great examples of rewards done right. every time it worked long-term, there was sustainable growth behind it and a real business underneath one of the best examples from DeFi summer is @aave. the yields and rewards were connected to a sound business model, a real revenue model, and smart economics. they did not just create temporary activity. they taught behavior and helped create an industry Pulsar started with a B2B vertical and one of the service lines was loyalty infrastructure for banks, festivals, neobanks and web3 projects. the team ran infrastructure behind many companies and different economic models. that is where you learn the real lesson: whenever you put rewards or loyalty infrastructure behind a product, it has to sit behind a business model and a revenue stream. otherwise, it is very hard for it to be successful long-term so the version we want to build further has to sit on real product value. the problem is that trying anything new takes effort, and people resist change even when it's good for them that's all the gamified layer is for: getting someone over that first bump, long enough to feel the value for themselves. the game gets them in the door; the value keeps them there. in doing so, you end up with people who are better with money than the day they signed up that's what drives real product growth i'm really curious to learn more about this, and I’d be glad to put down a full article on the lessons from what we built, what we saw, some of the crazy stories behind it, and what we are working on now as a new generation of loyalty infrastructure but my ask is simpler: what do you think is the most important part of rewards and loyalty in fintech? what are you most excited to see? and what would you actually want inside your money app at the intersection of rewards, behavior, and fintech?

really fun night! great conversations, great people and probably the best dinner of NY Tech Week. thanks @elliott__potter and @kenanhsaleh for organizing it! excited about @thelinqapp after I got to learn so many cool things about it! we might have some cool new ideas for @PulsarMoneyApp!

NY is for sure an important place to be if you build fintech

excited about @WalletConnect x @privy_io and @PulsarMoneyApp stablecoins get more useful when they work across the ways people already pay: card, tap-to-pay, QR, wallet checkout, merchant rails in simple: with these partnerships plugged in, spend from your non-custodial wallet balance as easily as scanning a QR

really enjoyed this article from @sserrano44 and the reactions & perspectives around it my take is that this exact opportunity, smashing fees and making UX better, is fueling the current consumer fintech app cycle I have been fascinated by onchain FX because it feels like one of the major use cases for stablecoins. not because it makes FX a little cheaper, but because it changes what has to exist for money to move between currencies and opening up some interesting new business models in the old model, every corridor is an operating business. BRL to ARS means bank relationships, prefunded accounts, payout partners, compliance, cutoff times and liquidity on both sides. add another corridor and you rebuild the machine again onchain, and inside this new fintech wave, the scheme is different. you operate access into each currency, and the FX leg in the middle can clear through a market. quote, execution and settlement collapse into one swap liquidity for non-USD stablecoins is still a constraint, and adoption even more so. local currency pools are thin today. but once local stablecoins get real depth, the product surface changes this is also why i find @circle, @arc and StableFX interesting. local stables do not weaken USDC. they probably distribute it. most liquidity still routes through dollars, so BRL, ARS, MXN, COP, EUR and other local stables become the front door, while USD stablecoins become the liquidity layer behind them then the user experience gets interesting. local currency in. global liquidity behind it. local spending and payout on the other side the fintech layer is what makes that liquidity useful every day: cards, payroll, merchant settlement, PSP routing, bank connections, neobanks, and all the infrastructure that hides the fragmentation in short, the fintech mania right now is the cycle connecting stablecoin infrastructure to actual use cases

packed week ahead, we will be in NY and Paris around 3 conferences if you’re around and building in fintech, stablecoins, wallets, cards, or anything around the next fintech gen, let’s talk!

new generation of fintech the Revolut & Wise generation was incredible. they disrupted a conservative market ruled by dinosaurs by making money movement feel natural. better onboarding, better FX, cleaner cards, faster notifications, a nicer app on top of a very old stack but the next wave is different because the stack itself has completely changed: → stablecoins make settlement global and 24/7 → self-custody lets the account belong to the user instead of the institution → bank rails and cards can sit at the edges of a stablecoin-native balance → DeFi protocols can sit underneath the account for swaps, yield, trading and credit → agents can start acting on clear rules and limits instead of leaving the user to manually move money between 5 products the old fintech product was: take the bank, make it mobile the new fintech product is: rebuild the financial account around money that moves, earns, settles and can be routed the line I keep coming back to is: → everyone earns on your money. except you banks earn on idle balances. card networks earn on every swipe. FX providers earn on every border. platforms earn on your deposits, transactions and data. the user is usually the last person to benefit from their own financial activity that's why the next generation of fintech that wins will be the one that inverts that your money should work for you first. it should earn while it waits, move globally when needed, stay under your control, and connect to the best financial infrastructure without forcing you to become a DeFi power user Pulsar is our view on the consumer side of this → a stablecoin-native money app where your balance can spend, send, earn and eventually route itself more intelligently, while still feeling like a normal everyday app and it all comes down to executing on that vision with surgical precision, because make no mistake, average consumers will accept nothing less

stablecoins become way more useful when yield moves to where users already hold balances not everyone should have to leave their wallet, neobank or app just to make idle dollars productive this is exactly the kind of infra stablecoin accounts need underneath them. congrats @stablecoin_p and @OseroHQ team for the launch!

yesterday’s post about credit-backed stablecoin cards brought up a lot of good conversations, especially around one question: if the first wave of these products was debit-style, what does credit actually change? with most stablecoin debit cards today, the payment flow is still very similar to a normal fiat account. you hold a balance and you spend from that balance the infra may be different & the UX may be better, but the basic function is still the same. credit, however, introduces a second layer: instead of every transaction being a direct deduction from the balance, the account can start deciding how to use the user’s financial position more intelligently that’s where the product starts to become more powerful because onchain credit can make a user’s money more flexible the same $100 can sit in the account, back credit, earn yield, and still support everyday payments without being moved/sold that matters in 3 practical ways: first, it makes the account more capital-efficient. the user does not have to interrupt their position every time they spend. the card becomes access to liquidity second, repayment can become programmable. incoming stablecoin flows, idle balances, or yield can reduce the credit line automatically based on rules the user sets. the experience can still feel like a normal card, but the account underneath can manage repayment much more intelligently than a monthly statement cycle third, risk can be handled continuously. live LTVs, dynamic limits, top-up rules, repayment triggers, and alerts can sit inside the account instead of being exposed as a DeFi dashboard the user has to manage manually for this to work, I think there are 2 underestimated challenges: 1/ UX - making DeFi great again by making it understandable to a regular consumer. both in terms of displaying info & managing account settings 2/ account logic - when to spend from balance, when to borrow, when to repay, when to route yield, when to top up collateral (and so on) - these sound like small product decisions, but they actually are the product. the flywheel works if all pieces are aligned however, I think we're in for an exciting ride and credit on crypto infra can make everyone's dollars more useful once they are truly here

NYC has some of the best coffee shops will be there in a few days, excited to meet friends and have good chats over some exceptional coffee ☕ planning to try a few from @swang_co’s list below

one thing after watching stablecoin cards lately in the US, credit is the default. people "put it on the card" and the card almost always means credit. rewards, points, credit score, the whole social contract of how you spend lives there. in most of europe and a lot of asia, the opposite. the card is debit. you spend what you have. credit is a separate product you opt into. and i think this is what's actually shaping stablecoin cards right now because the first wave of stablecoin cards is basically the european version. debit-style, spend crypto through a card. you swipe, your balance drops, you sold an asset to buy a coffee. useful, but it's the smaller version of the product the next wave is the american version. credit attached to the account. you don't sell when you spend, you borrow against what you hold. onchain, that architecture can actually be cleaner than the legacy version collateral is liquid, transparent, programmable and composable. credit lines can sit behind the user experience, while settlement still happens in the format merchants already understand this is why infra like @sprinter_ux is interesting one credit line, collateral across chains, USDC drawn to a receiver address. for a card program, that receiver can simply be the settlement layer. user taps, USDC settles, the credit line sits behind the experience, and the user never has to think about chains @Morpho matters for the same reason not as the card layer, but as part of the credit and yield layer underneath the account. if stablecoin apps become real financial accounts, they need lending markets, curated vaults and idle-balance yield underneath them so the cards are the interface people already understand, while the account behind the card is the actual product. the goal is to make that feel normal to use, just like traditional credit accounts. of course, still real work to do on risk, LTVs, liquidations, refunds, tax, compliance, chargebacks, but the direction is pretty clear; and that's a big part of what we’re building at @PulsarMoneyApp looking deeply in this space so let me know if you have any other ideas and views on these infra protocols we should take a close look at

Pulsar cafe coming this summer to SF & NY ☕

delivering great products is no longer enough to build a moat some takes from the Lovable coffee: AI is decentralizing development and vibecoding will become insane during the next years. everyone becomes a builder. product quality is slowly becoming the standard, not the differentiator the bigger moat increasingly becomes distribution and brand - distribution through partnerships, integrations, ecosystems and real use cases - brand through community, power users, culture and how people perceive and represent your company one thing that impressed me about Lovable was the evolution of the company itself. they started as GPT Engineer. very technical positioning, builder-first, little focus on branding. then they made a strong pivot toward community, non-technical users and brand development probably one of the best examples of how AI startups need to evolve now. AI lowers the barrier to building. brand and distribution decide who wins at scale. thanks @felixhhaas for the coffee meetup and chats

/Pulsar make me breakfast not really but, you will be able to order breakfast from your favorite restaurants nearby via Pulsar soon from unsubscribing to ordering things online to managing the portfolio, the Pulsar AI module will be quite a big differentiator

the SF house that helps founders build, raise, cook and go viral went to @theresidency dinner, met great builders, heard crazy stories and got to chat with @GilboaAmitay after seeing him go viral the day before one of our portfolio companies is there too, excited to share which soon founders in locked in mode. the energy there is very much in the spirit of SF, impressed by @theresidency project and people there

Europemaxxing

We’re not building Pulsar as a Europe-only company. Pulsar is global. But for the first iteration, Europe gives us a very specific set of use cases that are hard to ignore. Historically, startups have not always chosen Europe early because it can feel like hard mode: fragmented markets, heavier regulation, different banking behaviors and more operational complexity. That is changing lately and I am really proud about that. The startup culture here is much more ambitious now, especially across AI, fintech and payments. At the same time, users are already living across borders, currencies, accounts and rails. That creates a real opening. At Pulsar, we’ve found use cases where we think a new money app can do more than match the current fintech landscape. It can outperform it through better UX, AI-native workflows, stablecoin and card rails, more flexible money movement, and products built around how people actually spend, earn, and move globally.

get in the car stablecoin payments are about to get a lot more mainstream

in SF for the next weeks

what about perps in a Neobank?