isabelle

@medhakothari wait we had a lunch and learn at Celo about this!

TIL howey test has its roots in orange groves, fascinating

@FL0RAMICA @raincards @cnaut 🫶🫶

@IsabelleWei @raincards does @cnaut also know what a badass engineer you are???

I spent time recently thinking about @raincards Following them since 2023 back when i was interested to use the product Some quick & dirty thoughts: Rain sits in a uniquely rare position > Crypto-native speed + regulatory credibility > Infra adjacent to cc rails but not owned by them > A translation layer btwn tradfi, regulators, crypto issuers, and merchants that ofc creates asymmetric info leverage, but only if they can actively manage it imho, only a crypto person can connect enough dots and see this clearly enough for them, mainly bc fintech/tradfi just move w more limited context on the real scale of these opportunities (and just social familiarity w the tech) @ICONIQCapital can take Rain public. it’s their home court, their biggest value-add and Rain’s best champion there but Charles' last company exited via acquisition. so he knows buyout ball. Farooq doesn’t really look to have either operator outcome (yet), and he was a fmr banker so that’s the thing. public markets can be both seductive & completely unstable. obv an IPO can make perfect sense one quarter then be totally fcked the next, esp for anything crypto. even if ICONIQ can push and steward the IPO brilliantly, we all know crypto and macro and critical mass belief can be far from certain zoom out and you also got at least @SapphireVC and @NorwestVP publicly on the board. theyre perfectly happy w acquisitions meanwhile you can see Rain continuing to push hard into global licensing, compliance, ***revenue***... all good IPO prep, also great buyer bait at the series c $1.95B valuation, Rain is no longer “under the radar” but a potentially very strategic asset in the eyes of players like Visa/MC, Stripe/large payment processors, and banks w younger execs that wanna be experimenting w tokenized money Rain’s position of building this robustly compliant stablecoin payment infra, scaling globally (tysm internet money rails), and deepening their enterprise integrations/clients obv makes it attractive to incumbents if macro climates push IPO liquidity out another cycle, investors might actively favor the acq so Rain is at a critical point where its value can be determined by both execution (valuable in both IPO + acquisition scenarios), and by preserving optionality always tough for founders to do, but if @rooqster @cnaut + team can keep their endgame options open I think it's game on Hope they win big

i've had such a great time working in a team where everyone is high ownership, mission driven, and aligned. i'm incredibly excited for all the things that we will be building in the future! come join us! rain.xyz/careers

stablecoins have been slowly but steadily gaining the mainstream traction that everyone in the crypto industry is chasing, and Rain is at the forefront of building the rails and infrastructure to enable even greater adoption

on the heels of this announcement, it's thrilling to say that I joined Rain a couple months ago and have been loving it!

@_schmitted @argotorg Just saw this! Such a cool project, congrats!

Is now a good time to share that I joined @argotorg last month? I‘ll be working with ecosystem partners and supporters to help Argot sustain and grow the tools Ethereum relies on. If you‘re in public goods funding, I want to hear from you! Excited for what’s ahead!

wrote a little diary of my outfits and activities for a week while I was in Mexico City isabellew.substack.com/p/a-week-of-ou…

also very interesting for hair and shoe possibilities

@KaylaTrivieri 🗣️🗣️

when i attended waterloo, i was tutoring a group of phd engineering international chinese students english. they were some of the brightest individuals i’ve ever met—a group i spent a lot of time with and developed deep friendships during my four years in university. as much as i taught them english, they taught me so much and even helped me with my cs classes in exchange. they introduced me to apps like wechat, alibaba, wepay, and alipay. it was eye opening. their payment rails were almost a decade ahead of where we were with apple pay & tap. their social media platforms felt more advanced too—seamlessly integrating shopping, sharing, and connecting with friends. as a canadian, i’ve always felt our cultural view of china was relatively neutral. the predominant stereotypes were always based around being intelligent, “great at math,” and incredibly hard-working. when i moved to the u.s., i noticed a stark difference. as a canadian, the vitriol disdain for “china” was striking. there’s a pervasive narrative here: that china’s communist system hinders its ability to innovate. i’ve heard this repeated by peers, investors, coworkers, and others in the tech community. the belief that “nobody can innovate better than america” is almost taken as gospel. but to me america has been asleep at the wheel. its inability to view china as a real competitive threat is striking to me. this narrative—dismissing china as incapable of innovation because of its political system—feels lazy and outdated, creating a massive blind spot for competition. meanwhile, companies like meta and google have had their moments of glory but have grown too big and bloated to innovate effectively. it’s become more about preservation than progress. china, on the other hand, has been pushing forward—its tech infrastructure, hardware, fintech solutions, and social platforms have not only caught up but, in many cases, surpassed ours. platforms like tiktok and ai tools like deepseek are clear testaments to their innovation. ignoring this reality is one of america’s biggest risks to staying competitive.

Scroll is embarking on its first step towards decentralization. 𝐖𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 $𝐒𝐂𝐑 𝐭𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧. Our vision is to provide everyone, everywhere, access to a global distributed network of applications and services. To double down on our global mission, $SCR will soon be available on @Binance Launchpool and via our upcoming airdrop. 🔗: scroll.io/blog/scr-token 1/8 🧵

@ConejoCapital Also spotted in midtown

i didnt know that coinbase pizza ran deep on red hook. didn’t now coinbase pizza was chill like that

asked today if a film is from a16z.....meant to ask if it's from a24.......

@dberenzon @Scroll_ZKP and @axiom_xyz

🗽🗽🗽NYC CRYPTO ROLL CALL🗽🗽🗽 tag your favorite crypto companies with founders or offices in NYC (releasing a tool for the community next week so making sure I don't miss anyone!)

@kylehkhsu Wow so true bestie!!!!

[1/14] Real robot rollouts are the gold standard for evaluating generalist manipulation policies, but is there a less painful way to get good signal for iterating on your design decisions? Let’s take a deep dive on SIMPLER 🧵👇 (or see quoted video)!

A net gala evening with @IsabelleWei 🖤 wearing @quasimatt + @KaylaTrivieri designs™️

@gabriellemic omg me

get yourself friends like this

@KMFK40m they're at home

too much happiness on the streets in summer. where did all the haters go after winter

revisiting this tweet after the rise of the Trader Joe's totes 👀

@spenciefy Toronto

best Chinese food city outside Asia