The lesson I take from the SpaceX IPO is that the only thing stopping us from solving arbitrarily difficult problems is extreme creativity in business models. No amount of tax and spend programs got us reusable rockets and great electric cars. Customer delight is a necessary precondition for success. There seems to be some discussion around whether successful entrepreneurs should give up control of their companies so they can subsidize some philanthropic venture that otherwise has no value prop sufficient to run it as a business where customers voluntarily exchange money for goods and services at a competitive and reasonable price. This misses the point. Transformational products deliver tangible value at 1000x the rate of charities whose value cannot be tested in the market place. Think about the undeniable value of the smart phone, satellite Internet, electric consumer devices, etc etc. I think the transformational moment for SpaceX was when Elon stepped away from the philanthropic Mars greenhouse concept and fixed his resolve on unlocking radically better rockets for humanity. The greenhouse would have been, at best, a neat trick. Falcon and Starship give humanity a durable economic engine to maintain and improve access to space, forever.

🚀 A BIG week for x402 and payments! Here’s the latest: Updates: → Coinbase for Agents is live. Give your agent its own account to trade, manage your portfolio, and run autonomously under your guardrails. → @MurrLincoln gave a demo on the new, simpler sign-in for the Coinbase CLI and MCP using Claude. → Our developer wallets are now available via a Swift SDK, so you can build self-custodial wallets into native iOS apps. x402: → @travalacom introduced their Travel MCP: featuring gasless USDC transactions on @base via x402. → @Must_be_Ash gave a demo on booking travel with Claude connected to Base and Travala’s MCP. → @yugacohler and @programmer talked about agents and x402 at @ethconf. → @brian_armstrong shared: 160M agentic payments processed via x402 and ~$1T in annual stablecoin movement at Coinbase. Payments: → Our Head of Infrastructure Products, @alecglovett, broke down everything Coinbase has built for stablecoin payments. → Cross-border stablecoin payouts are live for @masspay_io, powered by Coinbase. Coming up: → x402 payments with user's retail USDC balances arrive in Coinbase for Agents in the coming weeks, stay tuned for updates. → System Update on June 16. The future of payments is built on Coinbase.

The most frequent feedback I get (especially at @coinbase) is that I could be more concise, or "Can you make this into a bullet point?" My usual defense was that I'm not trying to transfer information. I'm trying to infect people with a way of thinking or an idea. The bullet gives you the conclusion without the path, and the path is what changes how you see the next ten problems. And while I agree with my defense, it can also be an excuse. I kept trying to be more concise, but I didn't have a good forcing function for it, because "the idea needs room" justifies any length. This tweet from @paulg last week really stuck with me. I think about it every time I write now. (my agents too) P.S. This could probably be summarized better.

When we see CLARITY signed into law, there better be a big gold chair in the middle of the front row for @patrickjwitt . Heroic work being done to get this over the finish line.

It’s a good day for B2B cross-border payments. @MassPay_io is bringing the power of Coinbase payments to their global enterprise customers. Eligible MassPay clients can now send USDC instantly, anywhere in the world.

The Clarity Act passed committee. The floor is next. We did not come this far to quit at the 5 yard line.

Alpha School is building 4 types of high schools: Service, Division 1 Athletics, Entrepreneurship and "get into a Top 20 university" high schools: Service high schools will be where you do things like spend a year in Africa building an Alpha School and doing your top 1% academics 3 hours a day, but on site on a different continent. D1 Athletics high schools will be where you spend 5 hours a day building yourself into an elite college athlete, maybe with professional aspirations. Again, you'll do your top 1% academics in only 3 hours a day, opening up most of your day to be an incredible athlete. Entrepreneurship high schools like Founders School run by @nateliason will be where you learn how to earn a million dollars in profits during high school, starting at 12 pm, and only after doing your top 1% academics in only 3 hours a day. "Get into a top 20 college" high schools will have a focus on giving you 40 hours a week to build a portfolio of Olympic-level (academic) extracurriculars to go along side top 1% academics in only 3 hours a day. The common theme here is that when it is possible to get a 1560 SAT and 10 APs during high school in only 3 hours a day, teenagers can open up their schedule to spend their years doing the stuff they want to at the highest levels. This is much different than the best private high schools where classes and homework take up so much time that students only have at most ~20 hours a week to work on their passion projects and leadership activities. Alpha School gives teenagers 2X the time, which makes for much more interesting people at the age of 18. That's why I'm building Toronto into the first 1,000 student Alpha School city. Reach out if you are interested.