profiles of people

Patrick McKenzie and Tyler Cowen in conversation.

Here’s a run-on sentence: “Tyler sat down with Patrick to discuss signature fields on the back of credit cards, whether bank tellers or waitstaff are more trustworthy, the gremlins behind spurious credit card declines, how debt collection and maple syrup […]

profiles of people

Byrne Hobart, the unlikely oracle.

“So, with the goal of attracting enough buzz to help him land writing gigs, he doubled down on writing his newsletter, then a substack on tech and finance, with an audience of around 1200, largely made of tech and startup […]

on the blockchain

Stablecoin mechanisms and use cases.

Patrick McKenzie (aka patio11) reluctantly talks about cryptocurrency. “In principle, you could use stablecoins as money, like how you use deposits as money. Stablecoins are not used like money; rather than facilitating almost the entire diversity of transactions in the […]

tech, startups, internet

Why finance is such a hard industry for startups

Patrick McKenzie, the author of How Discount Brokerages Make Money, has 100 insightful thoughts on financial services. “Geeks underestimate technical sophistication of the financial industry by a scandalous amount, largely because most of it happens below the waterline and not in […]