Stepan | squads.xyz

Popups are the new startups. We spent the last 2 years traveling around the world hosting popup villages with @solana Announcing our next chapter. We're going permanent, and we chose the UK 🇬🇧 Here's why:

Tomorrow. Miami. Live at 9AM ET from @solana Accelerate. We are on the ground interviewing: @altitude| @lifiprotocol | Entrendre Finance | @SolanaFndn | @alfredpayio | @moonpay | @range_org | @stable Full coverage dropping all week.

If you're coming to Accelerate and are managing a protocol or significant treasury assets - strongly recommend attending

In Miami for Accelerate + Consensus. DM if you want to talk @altitude.

@GillVerd squats

Saturdays are for Squats and vibe coding

Seeing some of you are disagreeing in replies, my message for you is as follows

@jahris good Toly bait

From a purist perspective, neither socialism nor capitalism has ever existed outside of theoretical blueprints; both are utopian ideals that immediately corrupted upon contact with human reality. True orthodox socialism demanded a stateless, borderless society where workers directly controlled the means of production. A dream that collapsed in 1914, subsequently mutating into either the authoritarian state-capitalism of Marxism-Leninism or the reformist compromises of Social Democracy. Similarly, pure capitalism promised a frictionless free market driven entirely by unhindered competition, voluntary exchange, and zero state interference. Yet, no capitalist system has ever survived without immense government intervention, central bank bailouts, protectionist tariffs, and corporate subsidies. In the end, the pure versions of these ideologies are just theoretical ghosts haunting the messy, fundamentally mixed economies we actually inhabit.

@thenouxnoux 🏔️

ok i’m fully packed for miami

Accelerate

Miami next week. Catch us at: May 4th - Solana Consumer Day May 5th - Solana Accelerate May 6th - Palms and Stables happy hour with Altitude and @range_org May 7th - @GarrettHarper_ on stage at @consensus2026 See you!

@stabledash @multisig everything is computer

As stablecoins become the backbone of modern money, the question isn't whether banks survive - it's what they become. Squads ( @multisig) CEO @SimkinStepan on the modular bank model: "Banks are not going away. Their role transforms - they hold reserves for stablecoins." "For @Altitude, banks are modular. Your money is in a programmable account onchain. If you want to settle through a specific rail, you can tap a bank in the US or globally." "Thinking of a bank as a place where you store money is antithetical to the way the internet works."

@maxekaplan @solstrategies @orangefincrypto legendary run

Bit of an announcement Tomorrow marks my last day as CTO of @solstrategies It's been an absolutely incredible ride. From starting @orangefincrypto , to coming onto SOL Strategies, to being the first Solana focused company ever to get listed on Nasdaq, to being the staking provider for an ETF, to so much more, it's been an experience I wouldn't trade for the world. None of it would be possible without the amazing team I had the pleasure of interacting with. This includes @m_hbbrd , @Ehrls15 , @AfroMonkey404 , @coderigo , @TrilliumJohn and more that aren't on X, but appreciate them just as much. Thank you to all of you for being amazing to work with. Additionally, I wanted to give a shout out to the @darklakefi team that have already brought such amazing energy and ideas to the company in @vitorpy , @DuchessofSOL , @yesjess , and the rest of the team. I'm super excited to see what the rest of you build! Lastly, as far as the team goes, I'd like to also give a public shout out to @LeahWald , @TonyGuoga , and @moeadham . Thank you for bringing me on board, taking a chance on me, and teaching me many things I'll take with me for the rest of my life. In addition to the team, I'd like to shout all the investors and ecosystem teams I have had the pleasure of working with. There's far too many to name, and because I don't want to risk forgetting to include one, I won't name any. But please know if I have ever talked to you, I appreciate you 🙏. As for what's next, I'll continue to be involved in SOL Strategies as a consultant, helping to ensure everything operates smoothly and providing help in any place I can. Additionally, I plan on trying to find a happy balance between touching grass and experimenting with AI more 😀. My thoughts on Solana and crypto overall remain unchanged. If you are a builder on Solana and need (free) help with anything such as intros, fundraising, technical advice, etc, don't hesitate to reach out. If there is a way I can help you, I intend to do my best to do so. Thank you 🫶

Context really matters here. In the article I'm making a technology argument. Programmable blockchains, stablecoins, and stablecoin orchestration let you build an alternative architecture for how businesses hold their money and run their finops. Most of the stack becomes software. You hold your balance in stablecoins, you own it directly and you interact with banks in a modular way for the things banks are good at. Credit, FX, repo, those sit with banks and will for a long time. Altitude relies on banking partners through the orchestration network for many of those capabilities. None of this is about banks being bad, or the people working there not doing great work. We're simply presenting an alternative architecture for a specific kind of customer that changes the nature of their relationship with banks and how they receive financial services.

With all respect, @SimkinStepan, let’s be honest about why banks exist. And most likely they always will. Outside of the FDIC insurance (and all local equivalents), where the governments gave banks a crazy moat, banks do incredibly complex things that power economies. They have also figured out how to do those things without blowing up (in most cases, sometimes they do). Those of us who are old enough to remember the GFC, know that the world almost collapsed when banks stopped lending. Stablecoins are cool and stuff, but storing value is the easiest part of banking. Try credit, try FX, try margin, try repo…. There are millions of highly talented and motivated people in banking. They will adopt stablecoins. And they will build amazing products on top of them. Because they know how. We need these people. And we need banks.

Excited to say I’ve joined @altitude. I’ve known @SimkinStepan and the team for years, and the execution from @multisig and now Altitude has been relentless. It’s an honor to join the team. In Miami next week! DM me to catch up and see how teams can operate on the frontier of finance.

@JorgeSelva @altitude @multisig Letsgooo

I built an AI friend called Locky. It has one goal, to help you actually build the thing you keep putting off. You can @textlocky directly on iMessage. Here's what it can do today:

Squads / @multisig, CEO @SimkinStepan on what a financial operating system actually is - and why businesses no longer need a bank account: "We started from a very crypto-native and infrastructure-focused place, building Squads Protocol." " @Altitude is a natural extension of this journey, leveraging everything we built." "How you as a business can go bankless and run your business on a programmable wallet account with stablecoins, soon with agents running things on top."

@a16zcrypto /\

🤔

Blown away by yesterday. Record signups. You should run your business on stablecoins. Open your account at altitude.xyz.