BigCat

When money moves slower than shipments, markets never form. @0xdirichlet on how correspondent banking gaps quietly kill trade corridors before they take shape, and what opens up when settlement is measured in minutes instead of weeks.

The smoothest way to move in and out of stablecoins

1/ Sphere Labs is now the presenting partner of @NYAtlantics_, the reigning City’s Cup champions. Why is a cross-border payments company sponsoring a professional padel team?👇

Crypto Bahamas was only four years ago btw

🌐 What really sets stablecoins apart in today’s financial ecosystem? In the latest episode of Around The Coin, Stephen Sargeant (@lifesgt) sits down with Arnold Lee, CEO and Co-Founder of @sphere_labs, to unpack what’s actually happening on the ground, not just the headlines. From helping businesses move money across borders faster and cheaper, to navigating complex compliance landscapes, Arnold shares how real-world demand, not hype, is driving stablecoin adoption in emerging markets. His perspective cuts through the noise and focuses on what truly matters: solving problems for people who need it most. If you want a deeper, more practical understanding of where fintech is heading and why stablecoins are gaining traction globally, this is a conversation you don’t want to miss. 🎧 Tune in now and hear it for yourself. 🔗aroundthecoin.com/podcast/why-st… #aroundthecoin #podcast #Fintech #Crypto #Tax #Regulation #Compliance #Blockchain #AI

The end goal is to max U(stablecoins), U: S → {0, 1, …, |H|}, where H is some global set of humans and U(s) = |{h ∈ H : h has access to F}|, F = {buy, spend, pay, invest, save, …}, eg. the core functions of finance. Suspect in the age of AI, hack will trend up structurally eg. |attack| > |defense| in interaction complexity. Recent news is probable further evidence that argmax U sits at the harmony of local social contracts and global onchain release valves. We’ll know we did our jobs right if no one knows what any of this means in decades.

Current market sentiment is eerily similar to 2023. Market trending down, early-stage builders struggling, and literally everyone is pivoting to AI - again 😭. Back then, there was a 👠 TG chat that had the, like, ~50 people that still believed in @solana when everyone else had left. Some in that group went on to create @bonk_inu. Many of them are now the founders you know and love. Hard times bring people together. An early "aha" moment for @sphere_labs was when our on/off-ramp made it easier for those 50 people to angel invest in each other when no one else would. Three years later, we're proud to keep supporting crypto-native builders. Move your raised funds into your bank account for min fees and headache. Just keep doing the thing.

As the first and only U.S. state to launch its own stablecoin, Wyoming is setting the standard for responsible innovation in digital assets. Yesterday our team attended the @wyostable meeting alongside Chairman @GovernorGordon, Executive Director @wyoapollo and Senior Business Project Manager @heystephchan. Proud to support their vision and contribute to the next chapter of stablecoin development in the U.S.

Cross-border payments still run on old banking rails. @Sphere_Labs replaces them with settlement across 160+ countries in minutes, not days. Powered by stablecoins on Solana Fiat in, fiat out, faster, cheaper, compliant. Billions processed. Expanding into the UAE ↓

I am a Web3 Ambassador at World Liberty Financial. There are 12 of us on the team page. 4 are named Trump. 3 are named Witkoff. The page calls us "the passionate minds shaping the future of finance." 600,000 wallets bought our memecoin. They lost $3.87 billion. The family collected $350 million in trading fees. It launched 3 days before the inauguration. 80% of the supply went to CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC. I did not choose the names. I designed the allocation, the vesting, the timing, and the distance between the product and the President. The distance is my best work. I am the reason these events are unrelated. World Liberty Financial sends 75 cents of every dollar to DT Marks DEFI LLC. That is the family entity. Zero capital contributed. Zero liability assumed. I wrote this into the Gold Paper. Page 14. The lawyers bound it in white leather. The binding cost more than the due diligence. Justin Sun invested $75 million. He was facing SEC fraud charges. The SEC dropped the case. He is now our advisor. These events are unrelated. Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to federal money laundering violations. He received a presidential pardon. The SEC dropped its lawsuit against his exchange the same week we listed our stablecoin. Then the exchange settled a $2 billion deal entirely in that stablecoin. These events are unrelated. Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed of BitMEX pleaded guilty to Bank Secrecy Act violations. All 3 received presidential pardons. Then the company itself was pardoned. $100 million in fines. Gone. An American first. These events are unrelated. Sheikh Tahnoun of Abu Dhabi paid $500 million for a 49% stake that was never publicly disclosed. Then the administration approved semiconductor exports to his companies over national security objections. These events are unrelated. Everything is unrelated. I track the unrelatedness on a dashboard I built. The dashboard has 7 columns now. I am proud of the dashboard. On May 22nd, 220 people paid a combined $148 million to eat dinner with the America First president. Over half were foreign nationals. Justin Sun paid $18.5 million for the first seat. He visited the Executive Office Building the day before. I designed the seating chart. I put it on the Investor Confidence page. That page is doing well. The team page lists 3 Witkoffs. All 3 are Co-Founders. Steven Witkoff is the President's Middle East envoy. He testified as a character witness at the President's fraud trial. His son Zach runs the crypto operation. His son Alex is also a Co-Founder. I have not been told what Alex co-founded. The father runs the diplomacy. The sons run the platform. The family runs both. That is organizational efficiency. Barron is 19. His title is Web3 Ambassador. The same as mine. Donald Jr. called the conflicts of interest "complete nonsense." Eric launched a Bitcoin mining company called American Bitcoin. America First. The mining partner is Hut 8. Hut 8 was founded in Canada. America First means the name. On March 6th, the President signed Executive Order 14233 creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The order directs the government to hold Bitcoin. The President's family holds billions in Bitcoin. The executive order appreciates the President's assets by presidential decree. I did not write the executive order. I made sure it looked unrelated to the portfolio. Trump Media put $2 billion of Bitcoin on its balance sheet. The ticker symbol is DJT. His initials. The press secretary said it is absurd to insinuate the President profits off the presidency. Forbes calculated his crypto holdings exceed the combined value of Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower. I would call that absurd too. That is my job. 600,000 wallets bought in. 1 of them asked why she could not withdraw her funds. I told her the protocol was experiencing dynamic market conditions. She asked what that meant. I sent her the Gold Paper. She said she had read the Gold Paper. I muted her channel. Dynamic means the conditions change. The condition that changed was her access. A congressman called us the world's most corrupt crypto startup operation. We put it on a coffee mug. Ironic merchandise. $45. The revenue split on the mug is also 75/25. My own tokens vest on a different schedule. I wrote that schedule. That is not in the Gold Paper. The memecoin funds the family. The family funds the platform. The platform funds the stablecoin. The stablecoin funds the deals. The deals require the pardons. The pardons free the partners. The partners fund the platform. The President signs the executive orders. The executive orders inflate the assets. The assets fund the family. I am the reason these events are unrelated.

On the latest Solana is Global: @afscott and Arnold Lee, Co-Founder & CEO of @sphere_labs, talk about what's shaping the future of digital assets and cross-border payments Check out the full episode on Spotify or Apple ft. @0xdirichlet

1/ Wire payments by businesses often show the payment processor's name on the recipient's bank statement. Not the actual sender's. Named Wire Payouts from Sphere fixes this. Your company name on every USD wire, automatically.

If it’s any good, everyone will dismiss it

Make the contrarian bet. To move an industry forward with novel solutions, you have to be willing to be misunderstood. Local teams, local entities, and bespoke infrastructure in high friction markets.

Founders matter. Conscious capitalism matters. The reasons we do things matter. They are actively solving massive friction in cross-border payments for the emerging markets that legacy finance has historically ignored. What they are solving is important to the greater good. Sphere is a constant reminder to me of why I fell in love with this space. It had the chance of real change. They are doing it.

Left everything behind. Lived on the ground in Latin America. Built stablecoin rails for markets no one else touches. That's Arnold Lee (@0xdirichlet) of @sphere_labs. Full ep with @afkehaya on @theindexshow → youtu.be/2q65AQ5jcmI

I think coding is slowly killing my design taste. ever since I started spending more time inside IDEs, something’s shifted in my brain. earlier, my default mode was pure design, obsessing over spacing, micro-interactions, tiny details that no one notices but everyone feels. now I start with constraints. scalability, edge cases, timelines, dev effort. “can we build this?” shows up way before “does this feel right?” and the weird part is I still see everything. I know when something feels off, when it could be pushed further, when it lacks that sharpness. I just… don’t go there anymore. I cut iterations faster. I compromise earlier. I settle for “this works” instead of “this feels right.” I think being close to code rewires you. you start filtering ideas through feasibility, and slowly, taste takes a backseat to practicality. craft gets replaced by closure. and it’s such a silent shift you don’t even realise it’s happening. is this growth or is this how designers slowly lose their edge without even noticing it ?

happy customer, been using sphere for 1+ year, no issues and off-ramps have gotten so fast lately. like 1 min fast.

I left Polkadot to join Solana. These are WORLDS apart. How I remember vividly how the DAO (run by a handful of power-hungry whales, not by the community) kept rejecting startup initiatives, over and over again. Over time this pushed all of the best talent and especially builders out. I wish I was exaggerating. —>Build on Solana & join Superteam, as easy as that.