FINTECH IS DEAD

Summary from the TLDR Crypto newsletter

Fintech's founding assumptions (mobile-first, cloud-native, and API banking) have become table stakes across all financial services, driving the sector's share of global VC from 14.5% in 2021 to 12.3% in 2025, while the share of fintech capital flowing to AI companies jumped from roughly 10% to 70-80%. The successor architecture runs on two primitives: intelligence tokens and value tokens, joined by a router layer that prices AI inference in deterministic on-chain value millions of times per second. Stripe's $7B acquisition of OpenRouter and Ramp's simultaneous launch of Router.com signal that both operators concluded AI token routing is core financial infrastructure. Downstream, Revolut's PRAGMA model detected 130% more bad credit risk, Figure's tokenized HELOC marketplace cleared $2.8B in quarterly volume at 95% adjusted net-revenue growth, and Robinhood opened 100,000 MCP-enabled agent accounts.