
Head of Capital Markets @joinrepublic Co-founder @profitr | fmr ceo @enigma_sec
New York, USA
Joined July 2015
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Today we're launching Money Moves, a weekly show built around a conversation that's been missing from finance: what actually happens when traditional capital markets and onchain infrastructure fully converge.
I’m joined by Samantha Lewis of Mercury Fund and Dave Sutter, previously head of network strategy at Centre, the Coinbase + Circle joint venture that governs USDC, and now co-founder and CEO of OpenTrade. Between the three of us, we're covering macro, crypto infrastructure, and early-stage investing.
We're dropping three episodes at launch. The first two set the table: why this moment in financial history is different, and why stablecoins are the killer app that made it possible. Episode 3 is where we discuss the de-dollarization narrative and arrive somewhere that will probably surprise both the dollar bulls and the dollar bears.
Youtube:
youtube.com/@themoneymovespo…
Spotify:
open.spotify.com/show/1cgewM…
Apple Podcasts:
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
Some people enjoy the seasons
once ASI is here and living somewhere because of "work" becomes pointless, people with money will just move to the nicest places on earth
Mediterranean climate, ocean, mountains, good food, beautiful isolated towns
places like this are going to become insanely valuable
probably worth buying real estate there now
Ian Epstein retweeted
I will die on this hill: you simply cannot be a great founder and great investor at the same time.
The way you think about everything in life as a great investor is orthogonal to being a great founder.
You don’t have an unbiased objective view of the world as a founder.
Don’t miss the salient point: hit the bid. Brought in the sails and to the people that eat gross dollars he’s dope. Today he locked in scoreboard. Don’t know the guy don’t the view. But if scoreboard is the game he’s winning . Fk the schadenfreude.
I think it’s cool that funds like Situational Awareness can exist in America and that there’s a market for them.
But the outcome was never about being right or wrong on AI. At ~150% vol, variance drag alone is ~113%/yr, and risk of ruin is roughly a coin flip over the fund’s life. A child can do the math on a napkin (Claude did it for me: “ruin wasn’t unlikely, it was roughly even money”).
Volatility that high pierces every other fact about a portfolio: the thesis, the timing, the talent. The initial success and the margin call are draws from the same distribution.
cnbc.com/2026/07/30/leopold-…
Ian Epstein retweeted
I think it’s cool that funds like Situational Awareness can exist in America and that there’s a market for them.
But the outcome was never about being right or wrong on AI. At ~150% vol, variance drag alone is ~113%/yr, and risk of ruin is roughly a coin flip over the fund’s life. A child can do the math on a napkin (Claude did it for me: “ruin wasn’t unlikely, it was roughly even money”).
Volatility that high pierces every other fact about a portfolio: the thesis, the timing, the talent. The initial success and the margin call are draws from the same distribution.
cnbc.com/2026/07/30/leopold-…
Ian Epstein retweeted
To our community, today we’re thrilled to announce that @opentrade_io has raised a $17M in a Strategic Round, led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital, with participation from @a16zcrypto, @AlbionVC, and @CMCC_Global.
Over the past year, the platform has also crossed two milestones that matter even more to us: $200M+ Total Value Locked; $300M Transaction Volume already processed in 2026 with $1B transaction volume projected in 2026.
Those numbers are the result of something we set out to prove from the beginning: that fintechs, exchanges, and neobanks want to offer stablecoin yield to their users, but they shouldn’t have to build the entire financial infrastructure stack to do it.
Platforms around the world are now offering stablecoin yield products powered by @opentrade_io, reaching millions of users; many of whom live in markets where earning reliable dollar returns isn’t just a nice feature, it’s genuinely transformative.
Seeing those products live in the world, being used every day, has been one of the most rewarding parts of building this company.
The funding we’re announcing today allows us to keep building toward that vision by expanding our engineering and trading teams, scaling both our permissioned and permissionless infrastructure, and supporting more partners integrating stablecoin yield products.
If you’ve been following our journey, building with us, or supporting the ecosystem along the way - thank you.
It genuinely means a lot. We’re still early, but the direction of travel feels clearer every year. Excited for what comes next.
1/ OpenTrade has raised $17M in a strategic round, bringing total capital raised to over $30M. Led by @mercuryfund and NotionCapital, with participation from @a16zcrypto, @AlbionVC, and @CMCC_Global.
Ian Epstein retweeted
April was a month I'm genuinely proud of not just for the numbers, but for what they represent.
$200M+ in TVL. #1 and #2 on @stablewatchHQ. The launch of Curation+ and the Prime+ Vault on @avax. And the first episodes of @Money_Moves_Pod with @sjolewis and @eppy314.
Every one of these took months of hard work across our team and our partners, and seeing it all come together in a single month is a reminder of what we're building toward.
@BTC_Jeff's Cointelegraph piece captures the bigger picture well: $33 trillion in stablecoin transaction volumes in 2025 and the real question isn't supply, it's who captures the value moving through that infrastructure. We believe the answer has to include the users and platforms driving that velocity, and that's exactly what OpenTrade is built to enable.
Curation+ is a direct expression of that conviction. Bespoke vaults, actively managed, built for fintechs and neobanks that need predictable yield without the operational overhead. The Prime+ Vault is just the first.
There is a lot more to come.
1/ April was a big month for OpenTrade. Here's what happened 👇
We crossed $200M+ in TVL, launched Curation+ and the Prime+ Vault, held top spots on @stablewatchHQ, and kicked off a new podcast with @mercuryfund.
Ian Epstein retweeted
@"Money Moves Episode 04: Wall Street Walks Into the Cantina"linkedin.com/pulse/money-mov… on @LinkedIn
@"Money Moves Episode 04: Wall Street Walks Into the Cantina"linkedin.com/pulse/money-mov… on @LinkedIn
Ian Epstein retweeted
3 games in. Not slowing down.
Free Skate is live on Poki 🛹
Open world skating, tricks, missions - all playable right now.
The game is completely free !
Drop in 👉 poki.com/fr/g/free-skate#
Amazing letter by @Cornell President rejecting the resolution. Should be read by all:
Dear Zora,
Thank you for conveying SA Resolution 61: Calling for the Termination of Cornell University’s Partnership with the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology While Preserving Cornell Tech. I reject this resolution, which fundamentally conflicts with Cornell’s principles of academic collaboration and our core commitment to academic freedom.
Cornell Tech is not a political entity. It is an academic partnership, created through shared investment by Cornell University, the Technion, and the City of New York for the benefit of the city and the state, according to a negotiated set of conditions that govern its development and the terms of its 99-year ground lease on Roosevelt Island. As one of Cornell University’s many international partnerships and collaborations, Cornell Tech deepens, enriches, and strengthens the ability of our students, faculty, and staff to pursue knowledge and advance the university’s academic mission. The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, the core international partnership upon which Cornell Tech is based, is an extraordinarily valuable collaboration focusing on education and research in health tech, media tech, and urban tech, and supporting the development of new startup companies.
Severing our relationship with the Technion—or with any entity affiliated with governments, institutions, or enterprises with which some of our community members disagree—as a statement of political protest, would not only hinder our research, teaching, and public engagement; it would imperil our academic principles.
Our university, like all of our peer institutions, regularly faces pressure—from across the political spectrum, from within and beyond our own community—to make academic decisions according to political priorities. The phenomenon is not a new one: universities have grappled with such pressures from governments and societies for as long as the institution of the university has existed. When we yield to these pressures and proscribe specific collaborations or collaborators on grounds other than merit, we compromise our principles of academic freedom, undermine our own institutional excellence, and damage public trust in our work.
Moreover, this resolution inaccurately asserts that “the continued operation of Cornell Tech as a Cornell University campus does not require an ongoing partnership with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.” Cornell Tech, while part of Cornell, is a joint effort of the university, the Technion, and the City of New York. It is no more possible for Cornell to unilaterally terminate that effort and claim full control of the campus than it would be for the Technion or the City of New York to do the same.
Finally, I am deeply troubled by the selective manner in which this resolution singles out the Technion, alone of Cornell’s many international partners, for censure. Cornell currently maintains 159 active agreements with institutions in 59 nations and regions; all of these institutions have some government affiliation, and many conduct research with military and security applications. Cornell itself has military research contracts, conducts research with potential military applications, and has relationships with companies whose products are used in military contexts. Cornell also has relationships with institutions in countries whose governments have been accused of human rights violations—as our own has been.
None of these publicly available facts are mentioned in the resolution; only our partnership with an Israeli institution is targeted for erasure. The political bias evident in this selective approach is deeply disturbing, and the resolution is incompatible with both the Student Assembly’s purpose and Cornell University’s core values. I reject it fully and forcefully.
Sincerely,
Michael Kotlikoff
President and Professor of Molecular Physiology
Cornell University
Congrats !!
Well, it’s official now
I have joined @AvaLabs as the new Head of Emerging Tech with the laser focus to get blockchain tech embedded in more businesses
After a year off for baby-rearing I am thrilled to be back in the saddle, working alongside an amazing team that I’ve had the privilege of calling friends over the past years
Let’s put a nail in the coffin of “blockchain is useless” articles and start showing the world how much more efficient they can be on digital financial rails
Ian Epstein retweeted
For the last year there has been a whole lot of “just asking questions”
About Jewish Americans loyalty to 🇺🇸
Jack Hughes (Jewish) is the perfect metaphor
Taking a stick to the face to win Team USA gold against Canada
Then spouting pure patriotism 🫡
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As proud @UCBerkeley alum I know how important our institution has been for the world and how imperative it is that this must change.
Thank you.
Thanks for hosting @TheTieIO and thanks for joining me on stage @eppy314 @minhdo @pdmccaffery9 @sjaitly to discuss Exit liquidity in crypto, the state of the IPO and Token markets
Let’s talk best and worst of #rwa space; best and worst
anecdotes to come……….























