Geoffroy VIGNERON

Venezuela Just Proved the Bitcoin Bull Case, And No One Is Paying Attention Maduro used Tether to move 80% of Venezuela's oil revenue. Billions in sanctions evasion, settled on Tron since 2020. Then the US made a phone call. Tether froze the wallets. Game over. Everyone's focused on the arrest. The real story is the lesson every finance minister on earth just learned in real time: Stable coins are a leash, not an escape. If someone can freeze it, it isn't money. It doesn't solve sovereignty. First principles: USDT is dollar plumbing without SWIFT. Faster. Cheaper. Still has a CEO. Still has a compliance department. Still picks up when Washington calls. This is why USDT adoption exploded, 71-year-old grandmothers in Caracas pay their HOA fees in tether now. But useful ≠ sovereign. The entire value proposition for sanctions evasion just got publicly falsified. Now do the game theory: You're Iran. Russia. Any country hedging against dollar weaponization. You just watched Venezuela's "crypto solution" get shut off like a light switch. Where do you put reserves now? USDT? Compromised. Yuan? Political strings. Gold? Try settling $500M across borders in 10 minutes. CBDCs? Same kill switch, government branding. There's exactly one asset that clears final settlement without asking permission from anyone. 21 million units. No CEO. No freeze function. No phone number. This is the ad Bitcoin never had to buy. The most desperate, highest-stakes capital on earth just learned there's only one door. Price doesn't reflect it yet. It will.

Today we announce the acquisition of Curve by Lloyds Banking Group - the largest retail bank in the UK. This is a huge moment for Curve - not just as a milestone, but as a heartfelt reminder of what happens when a small team dares to dream big and sticks with it through the storms. Ten years ago, I sketched out Curve on a napkin in a London café: a simple idea to consolidate cards into one smart wallet and even a smarter card, sparing people the hassle of juggling plastics and apps. Back then, we were bootstrapping with grit, facing rejections, pivots, and those late nights where doubt creeps in louder than the excitement. But our north star never wavered: make people's financial lives simpler, fairer, and a little more magical. Features like Go Back in Time® - that quiet superpower for undoing a purchase gone wrong - born from real frustrations we all share. Dodging hidden FX fees on travels abroad. Stacking rewards without the fine print traps. These weren't just products; they were acts of empathy, built by a team that poured heart into every line of code and every user story. Today, joining forces with Lloyds Banking Group opens doors we could only imagine. Their scale and shared vision mean Curve's innovations can reach tens of millions more - empowering everyday folks across the UK and beyond to spend smarter, not harder. It's humbling to think how far we've come, and profoundly grateful for the investors, partners, and especially our incredible Curve team who've believed in this journey when the path wasn't always clear and through pure grit and resilience got us to this milestone. We're not slowing down. This is fuel for the next chapter: bolder ideas, deeper impact, and a world where money works for people, not the other way around. Onward, together.