Block, Inc.

Chamath support ×2 ▲ on 📈 Fintech feature consolidation: licensed platforms become consumer-finance superpowers E217 · 2025-03-01 ▶ 21:55

The first takeaway for me was the value of Stripe's ecosystem is probably underappreciated. ... But in the report, they talk about all the additional products that they're able to build around core payments. And one of them is the billing product. It's half a billion dollars a year of ARR. That's just incredible. And I think if they figure out network effects inside of the Stripe ecosystem, that's interesting. So that's first, which is the hub and spoke of payments being at the center, but all of these other incremental services.

Jason support ×2 ▲ on 📈 Fintech feature consolidation: licensed platforms become consumer-finance superpowers E172 · 2024-03-29 ▶ 1:09:34

I have one company myself and I'm proud to say I've sold no shares of my Robinhood. I keep all my Robinhood shares. ... Their whole plan was always to provide the full suite of services.

Friedberg oppose ×2 ▲ on 📈 Fintech feature consolidation: licensed platforms become consumer-finance superpowers E163 · 2024-01-26 ▶ 1:13:12

their margins and their LTV to CAC or their return on invested capital, it looks the same or in some cases worse than the traditional financial services businesses that they're meant to disrupt

China's e-commerce percentage is about 25% of their overall retail. Here it's about 14%. Again, y'all are smart. We can see where this is going. ... In China, about 85-ish percent of their transactions are mobile. Here, that's barely 30%. Where is that going? How does that work? Again, you can see what's happening.

Chamath support ×1 ▼ on 🏛️ Financial deplatforming becomes the next big political fight E75 · 2022-04-09 ▶ 45:12

we've seen sort of random decision making that seems arbitrary by a lot of these technology companies, and the payments companies. Friedberg was mentioning Visa and MasterCard earlier in the group chat.

Sacks support ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ Financial deplatforming becomes the next big political fight E75 · 2022-04-09 ▶ 57:29

And they're not just doing it on speech. They're also taking away your right to engage in payments, in transactions, to earn a living. And unless we stop this now, it'll keep going.

Chamath support ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ Financial deplatforming becomes the next big political fight E68 · 2022-02-19 ▶ 14:42

The idea that you can deep platform one or the other or fire them from their job or prevent them from having access to the money that they've earned or preventing other people from donating money, that's really, it's a really low bar. ... And I think when you normalize this kind of behavior, it's a very slippery slope.

Sacks support ×3 ▼ on 🏛️ Financial deplatforming becomes the next big political fight E68 · 2022-02-19 ▶ 3:00

wrote a piece for Barry Weiss' substack talking about how financial de-platforming would be the next wave of online censorship ... What I could not have predicted is that it would occur in our mild-mannered neighbor to the north and that the reprisals would be directed by the government itself, not just a consortium of private actors.

Sacks support ×3 ▼ on 🏛️ Financial deplatforming becomes the next big political fight E66 · 2022-02-05 ▶ 54:24

And you know, what was PayPal doing? I wrote a story for Barry Weiss, for her substack about how PayPal was taking the lead in financial deplatforming. They were working with the ADL and the SPLC to kick to identify groups to kick off their platform. So that's what management was spending their cycles on figuring out how not to grow, how to kick people off their platform and trying to figure out how to get more people on it. ... You can waste your management cycles on stuff like that. Now their stock is down 25%.

Sacks support ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ Financial deplatforming becomes the next big political fight E59 · 2021-12-17 ▶ 18:51

I wrote a piece called the No Buy List where I basically you had companies like PayPal and some of these other financial firms were starting to deny service to customers, to users based on their political affiliations. ... if this equity auditors tells you, well, look, I don't think it's equitable to allow these conservative groups to, you know, be a user of your product. Well, what's the company going to do? They're going to have to listen to that. ... And that is a plausible scenario, given that it's already occurred.

Sacks support ×2 ▲ on 📈 Fintech feature consolidation: licensed platforms become consumer-finance superpowers E43 · 2021-08-06 ▶ 1:24:13

Right, but who are the big winners in this wave of consolidation going to be at the end of the day? It's going to be Square, it's going to be Stripe, it's going to be PayPal, it's going to be the big online companies, not the offline legacy banks.

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on 📈 Fintech feature consolidation: licensed platforms become consumer-finance superpowers E43 · 2021-08-06 ▶ 1:16:16

I have a big thesis and a big belief that over the next decade, we're going to see those five categories start to merge and you're going to have three to five superpowers that are going to offer a consolidated stack of services.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on 📈 Fintech feature consolidation: licensed platforms become consumer-finance superpowers E43 · 2021-08-06 ▶ 1:13:35

And so if Square can basically continue to acquire or build adjacent features that consolidates the financial services stack for their consumers, the stock market will reward these guys. They'll be able to grow and buy things for free for the next five or 10 years. ... If you can see folks acquiring adjacent features, or if you can see folks taking expense lines and turning them into revenue lines, these are, in my opinion, sure bet companies that compound forever in the public markets.

Sacks support ×3 ▼ on 🏛️ Financial deplatforming becomes the next big political fight E43 · 2021-08-06 ▶ 1:07:38

If you try to deny Americans their right to access the new economy, we see no reason for your company to get any bigger. We're going to oppose every acquisition you ever do. ... I'm predicting right now that financial deplatforming is going to be the big hot potato, political hot potato over the next year. This is the next wave of censorship.