Jim Smith

New post! I recently spoke with @NizanGP about gamification, #gamblification, #financialinclusion, and the right way to regulate the digital engagement practices of mobile trading apps. #fintech #cryptotrading #finreg bit.ly/447EbEJ

@FintechKristen So you’re building great stuff in spite of all the impediments Block puts in your way?

I went out for drinks with some engineers in the fall. I got really excited about an idea. Like REALLY excited about it. They also seemed pretty excited. I said, "we should just build this. Screw priorities, this is magic." We fought for a quarter to get staffing, hacking together prototypes to show leadership at any opportunity. Jack saw the vision. We got greenlit. We sold the experience with prototypes. We started building in February. We lost half the team a few weeks ago. Some of our best. I lost all my capacity as a player coach with much bigger remit and had to hand it off to a (great) PM on my team. The team picked up the pieces. Kept going. I've watched for the last month as we got closer to shipping. Today, I got to test it. End to end. We'll pilot it in a few weeks. Then we'll ship it to all of you. And I'm so proud, not just of the feature, but of the grit the team has had to get it to you all. Building is hard. But it is worth it. 💚

Steven Sinofsky once ran the operating system on more than 90% of the world’s PCs, and now quietly sits as a board partner at Andreessen Horowitz. He’s also a former Microsoft insider who turned to Jeffrey Epstein as a seven‑figure fixer on his way out of the company. bit.ly/4bpZhBX

Australia is facing pressure to protect the Iranian women’s soccer team, the Lionesses, as the squad faces criticism at home over their failure to sing the national anthem at a Women’s Asian Cup match on the Gold Coast last week bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

TomoCredit, which numerous complaints on BBB & TrustPilot call a "scam" and "fraud," has filed a meritless defamation lawsuit against me, personally. The company is pressuring me to remove articles & posts, and, per its suit, is asking the court for $1 million in damages.

@WallandBroad @moorehn I think this is correct. Netflix hung around long enough to get the Ellisons to over extended themselves. I await a detailed analysis of the financial stress Paramount will be under.

@moorehn LOL Paramount grossly overpaid. It became an alpha male contest. Netflix can do plenty with the money they saved. Warner played them both to crank up the price.

Ugh. Warner Bros plans to merge with Paramount, a media conglomerate owned and badly mismanaged by the evil, genocidal Ellison family. Very likely that this was arranged by Trump's corrupt connections to the Ellisons.

@moorehn The buck stops where?

Don't worry, guys, our national security is in the hands of the two biggest dipshits in the entire country.

@moorehn We didn’t send France our best.

SCOOP: Top investigators at Binance were fired after they uncovered evidence of more than $1 billion in Tether flowing to Iranian entities through the exchange in potential violation of sanctions laws. fortune.com/2026/02/13/bin… New piece w/ @bdanweiss

Dimon calls Armstrong a liar. Says Armstrong is "full of shit".

‼️ Trump’s acting cybersecurity chief who heads CISA uploaded sensitive government contracting documents marked “For Official Use Only” to public ChatGPT Mr. Gottumukkala triggered insider threat alerts, prompting an internal investigation. Gottumukkala is currently the senior-most political official at CISA, an agency tasked with securing federal networks against sophisticated, state-backed hackers from adversarial nations, including Russia and China.

Incredible work by @mikulaja @kontigo_app was at best a naive puppet for sanctions violations At worst a knowing participant. The whole stablecoin industry is on notice Get your AML and Sanctions controls buttoned up or there will be blowback It's when not if. fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/p/kontigo-ycom…

Jay Lucas, failed Republican candidate for governor of New Hampshire, charged with defrauding investors in the private equity firm he founded: bit.ly/4jt92my

Gary Pilgrim, a founding partner of Pilgrim Baxter who committed securities fraud and breached his fiduciary duties to mutual fund shareholders in order to enrich himself and his friends, has died. bit.ly/4sEPvUz

Now, it appears, private equity is teaming up with McKinsey to try to ruin fly fishing. bit.ly/4p3y5Og

NEW INVESTIGATION: Workplace safety violations against Elon Musk’s Boring Co. were rescinded after the Nevada Governor’s office got involved. 🧵 fortune.com/2025/11/12/elo…

For the parents of children who have money to launder, @binance now offers Binance Junior, a new, parent-controlled crypto account for kids. bit.ly/49VvTV6

@mjnblack Cross country skiing in Vermont (in Stowe, Woodstock, or Chittenden, etc.).

what’s the best 4-5 day winter vacation from nyc

@tghilarducci @Forbes By lowering initial monthly payments on home purchases, wouldn't 50-year mortgages be good news for PulteGroup?

New analysis: 50-year mortgages offer lower monthly payments — but at what cost? In my latest @Forbes piece, I dive into how stretching the term to 50 years may slow equity building and amplify lifetime interest burdens. forbes.com/sites/teresagh…

John E. Waldron and his wife Amanda Waldron violating the law and damaging the environment on Martha's Vineyard. He is reputedly the COO of @GoldmanSachs. bit.ly/4odsTYp

@americanrivers I am going to unfollow you here and then follow you over at the other place.

One of the many things we've learned over the decades working to make our rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands clean and healthy is that some of the smallest and least conspicuous river critters can play an outsized role in this work. 🦗 Learn more: americanrivers.org/2025/10/the-ca…