Pantera Capital Partner: How to Build a Crypto Bank

Original Title: Building Permissionless Neobanks

Original Author: Jay Yu

Original Compilation: Ken, ChainCatcher

This is a 4000-word research report on storing, consuming, appreciating, and lending funds on the cryptocurrency track.

Introduction

Nowadays, regardless of which bank or fintech application you use—whether it's Bank of America, Revolut, JPMorgan Chase, or SoFi—browsing their user interfaces reveals that they are almost identical: accounts, payments and transfers, earning yields. This design reveals a potential commonality: banks are the interfaces for our four basic relationships with money:

• Storage: A place to store assets

• Consumption: A means of transferring funds for daily expenses

• Appreciation: A set of tools for passive or active wealth management

• Lending: A place to borrow funds

Over the past decade, mobile technology has driven the rise of "neobank" applications like SoFi, Revolut, and Wise, which democratize financial services and redefine what it means to "do banking," replacing physical branches with intuitive, always-online digital interfaces.

Today, as cryptocurrency enters its second decade, it provides a new blueprint for future development. From self-custody wallets to stablecoins, on-chain credit, and yields, the permissionless and programmable characteristics of blockchain make a global, instantaneous, and composable banking experience possible. If mobile technology gave birth to neobanks, cryptocurrency has brought about permissionless neobanks: a unified, interoperable, self-custodial interface for storing, consuming, appreciating, and lending funds in the on-chain economy.

History of Neobank Development in Fintech

Similar to cryptocurrency, neobanks rapidly emerged after the 2008 financial crisis. Unlike traditional banks that replicate physical branch layouts, neobanks operate as technology platforms, providing banking services through mobile interfaces. Most neobanks collaborate with partner banks behind the scenes to offer deposit insurance and compliance infrastructure while maintaining front-end customer relationships. With fast registration processes, transparent fees, and a digital-first design, many neobanks have become the preferred platforms for users to store, consume, and appreciate funds.

Looking at the development of these billion-dollar neobank startups, we find that their commonality lies in controlling customer relationships through unique digital products (such as refinancing, early wage access, and transparent foreign exchange rates), initiating user-driven transaction volume flywheels, and then expanding product lines to market high-value products to users. In short, the success of fintech neobanks lies in mastering the interface of user interactions with funds, changing the medium through which users store, consume, appreciate, and lend funds.

Today, the stage of cryptocurrency development is quite similar to the stage of neobank development 5-10 years ago. Over the past decade, cryptocurrency has developed its unique advantages: censorship-resistant asset storage through self-custody wallets, convenient digital dollar transactions via stablecoins, permissionless credit markets based on protocols like Aave, and 24/7 global capital markets capable of turning internet memes into wealth. Just as mobile infrastructure ushered in the neobank era, programmable blockchains now provide a permissionless financial infrastructure.

The next step is naturally to combine these permissionless backends with the convenient frontends of neobanks. The first wave of neobanks shifted the banking front end from physical stores to mobile interfaces while retaining the bank's backend; today, cryptocurrency neobanks do the opposite: they retain the convenient mobile front end but change the way funds flow from traditional banking channels to stablecoins and public blockchains. In other words, if neobanks rebuilt the front end of banking on mobile platforms, cryptocurrency now offers the opportunity to rebuild the backend on a permissionless platform.

Landscape of Cryptocurrency Neobanks

Caption: Overview of Cryptocurrency Neobanks

Today, many different projects are converging towards the vision of "cryptocurrency neobanks." It has been observed that many basic banking functions, such as storage, consumption, appreciation, and lending, have already been realized on permissionless cryptocurrency platforms—self-custody can be done using Ledger, consumption can be done with EtherFi cards or Bitget QR codes, appreciation can be achieved through trading on Hyperliquid, and lending can be done via Morpho. Additionally, many related participants support the underlying infrastructure, such as wallet-as-a-service, stablecoin settlement, licensing, localized fund transfer partners, and routing facilities.

Moreover, in some cases, cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance and Coinbase have made significant progress, increasingly resembling fintech neobanks and gradually controlling more of the relationships between end users and their assets. For example, Binance Pay has supported over 20 million merchants globally, while Coinbase allows users to earn up to 4% rewards simply by holding USDC on the platform.

Therefore, in the face of such a complex landscape of cryptocurrency neobanks, it is worth carefully sorting out how different cryptocurrency platforms are competing for the primary financial relationships with users and how they are entering the ways users store, consume, appreciate, and lend funds.

Using Cryptocurrency to Store Funds

To properly self-custody cryptocurrency assets and interact with the blockchain, users must have some form of cryptocurrency wallet. Broadly speaking, the cryptocurrency wallet market can be classified along two dimensions: "security vs. usability" and "consumer applications vs. enterprise infrastructure." Each dimension has seen the emergence of strong contenders with powerful distribution capabilities: Ledger offers secure and reliable consumer hardware wallets; Fireblocks and Anchorage provide secure enterprise-grade wallet infrastructure; consumer-focused wallets like MetaMask, Phantom, and Privy focus on enhancing usability and user experience; while Turnkey and Coinbase Prime occupy more user-friendly enterprise infrastructure markets.

One of the key advantages of building a neobank on top of wallet applications is that the wallet front end—such as MetaMask and Phantom—often controls the entry point for users to interact with their cryptocurrency assets. This "fat wallet theory" posits that the wallet layer captures most consumer-level distribution and order flow, and the switching costs for end consumers are extremely high. In fact, it is estimated that currently, 35% of Solana's transaction volume is conducted through the Phantom wallet, thanks to its excellent mobile user experience and user stickiness, creating a strong moat. Additionally, since consumers (especially retail users) often prioritize convenience over price, wallets like Phantom and MetaMask may charge fees as high as 0.85%, while token exchange protocols like Uniswap may only charge 0.3%.

On the other hand, building a complete digital bank solely with a wallet is far more challenging than expected. This is because, to achieve profitable scale, users need not only to store tokens but also to actively use them within the wallet. Phantom, MetaMask, and Ledger may be household names, but if users merely treat their cryptocurrency wallets as cash boxes hidden under their beds, they cannot be monetized. In other words, wallets must become active trading platforms to convert distribution into revenue.

MetaMask and Phantom both seem to be moving in this direction. For instance, MetaMask recently launched the MetaMask Card, aimed at providing value-added services to its existing cryptocurrency-native user base and striving to become the preferred solution for cryptocurrency payments. Phantom has also followed suit by launching Phantom Cash and providing in-app perpetual contract trading features through integration with Hyperliquid, venturing into the "appreciation of funds" space. As Blockworks noted, "While Drift or Jupiter may be popular native platforms for Solana, Hyperliquid is where the funds are truly flowing." This lesson applies to all companies in the wallet space—you not only need to win over users' wallets but also control the volume of funds flowing in and out of wallets through consumption, appreciation, and lending.

Using Cryptocurrency for Consumption

The second type of cryptocurrency neobank competitor is platforms that allow users to consume using cryptocurrency. Similar to the case of "using cryptocurrency to store funds," these cryptocurrency consumption applications can also be classified along two dimensions: on-chain transfers to off-chain purchases (e.g., buying coffee) and retail-facing applications versus enterprise infrastructure.

Interestingly, many emerging "neobank" projects that have gained attention in recent months, such as Kast, Tria, Tempo, and Stable, are attempting to solve the challenge of cryptocurrency consumption. Notably, the hotspots of the neobank trend are primarily focused on two areas of "cryptocurrency consumption": (1) retail consumption applications integrated with stablecoin cards, such as Avici, Tria, Redotpay, and EtherFi; (2) stablecoin-centric blockchains, such as Stable, Plasma, and Tempo, aimed at providing infrastructure for enterprise application scenarios.

The first category of retail-centric "consumption applications" fundamentally makes cryptocurrency applications very similar in user experience and interface to traditional banks and neobank applications, featuring familiar tabs like "home, banking, cards, and investments."

With the maturation of cryptocurrency card issuers like Rain and Reap, along with Visa and Mastercard's expanding support for stablecoins, cryptocurrency cards are gradually becoming a homogeneous product. True differentiation lies in how to drive and maintain transaction volume—whether through novel cashback mechanisms, localized operations, or attracting non-cryptocurrency-native users to join these platforms. This trajectory mirrors the rise of fintech neobanks, whose success was not based on issuing cards or developing applications but on winning over specific customer segments—from students (SoFi) to low-income families (Chime) to international travelers (Wise and Revolut)—and building trust, loyalty, and expanding transaction volume on that basis. If executed properly, these "payment-first" neobanks are poised to become significant forces in driving cryptocurrency adoption, thereby promoting the adoption of blockchain infrastructure.

Cryptocurrency neobanks may also guide users toward the next generation of payment systems that go beyond traditional card payment systems. Card-based consumption may merely be a temporary transitional model, still relying on the payment systems of Visa and Mastercard and inheriting their centralized limitations. Early signs of future trends are already emerging: wallets like Bitget Wallet have launched QR code-based stablecoin payments in pilot projects with merchants in Indonesia, Brazil, and Vietnam, indicating that future cryptocurrency-native settlements may completely bypass traditional issuing institutions.

The second recent category of "neobank" applications is stablecoin infrastructure projects built for enterprises, including Stable, Plasma, Tempo, and Arc, often referred to as "stablecoin chains." Their rise is likely driven by the increasing demand from institutional participants—traditional banks, fintech companies like Stripe, and existing payment networks—for more efficient channels for fund flows. Many "stablecoin chains" are designed with similar functionalities, such as stablecoin Gas tokens (supporting the use of stablecoins to pay Gas fees), simplified consensus mechanisms (processing simple, large payments from A to B via "fast lanes"), enhancing the privacy of token transfers through trusted execution environments (TEE), and custom data fields to better comply with international payment standards like ISO 20022.

However, these technological improvements alone do not guarantee widespread adoption. For payment chains, the true moat lies in merchants. The key is how many merchants and businesses decide to migrate their operations to a specific payment chain. For example, Tempo aims to leverage Stripe's vast merchant customer base and payment channels to drive transaction volume, adoption, and revenue growth, thereby bringing a new batch of merchants into the cryptocurrency track. Other payment chains, such as Plasma and Stable, aim to become "first-class partners" of Tether (USDT) to facilitate the transfer of this stablecoin between different institutions.

One of the most enlightening cases is Tron, which handles 25-30% of global stablecoin transaction volume. Tron's rise is largely attributed to its dominance in emerging markets like Nigeria, Argentina, Brazil, and Southeast Asia. With low fees, fast final confirmations, and global coverage, Tron has become a common settlement layer for many merchants' payments, remittances, and dollar savings accounts. For all these emerging payment chains, Tron is the gatekeeper they must surpass. This requires achieving tenfold improvements on already low-cost, fast, and globally covered payment chains—focusing on merchant onboarding and network scale rather than minor technological improvements.

Utilizing Cryptocurrency for Appreciation

The third relationship between "cryptocurrency neobanks" and their customers is the ability to "appreciate." This is the area of highest innovation in the cryptocurrency space, accelerating the development of numerous foundational technologies from 0 to 1, such as staking vaults, perpetual contract trading, token issuance platforms, and prediction markets. As before, applications that help with "appreciation" can be classified along two different dimensions—passive income to active trading, and front-end interfaces to back-end liquidity.

A classic example of how "appreciation" applications gradually evolve into comprehensive "neobanks" is centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Binance or Coinbase. The initial value proposition offered by centralized cryptocurrency exchanges is simple yet effective—"This is the ideal place for you to trade cryptocurrencies and achieve wealth growth." As trading volume gradually increases, exchanges not only become typical venues for wealth growth but also important places for storing and managing wealth. Both Coinbase and Binance have launched their own blockchains, wallets, institutional services, and crypto cards, providing value-added services to their core user base through new products and network effects. For example, the popularity of Binance Pay continues to rise, with merchants increasingly using it to accept cryptocurrency payments for everyday goods.

Decentralized finance projects have also adopted similar strategies. For instance, EtherFi initially started as an Ethereum liquidity staking protocol, providing passive income for stakers by re-staking ETH on EigenLayer. Subsequently, they launched "Liquid," a decentralized finance strategy vault that allows users' funds to operate within the decentralized finance ecosystem for higher yields and risk management. They then expanded to the EtherFi "Cash" product, a groundbreaking credit card that allows users to spend their EtherFi balance in the real world. This expansion roadmap closely resembles the model of fintech neobanks—establishing a foothold through unique products (passive staking and yields), becoming a leader in the field to gain transaction volume, and then expanding the entire product line to market high-value services to customers through the EtherFi card.

Today, cryptocurrency has brought numerous innovations from 0 to 1, enabling users to "appreciate"—perpetual contract trading platforms like Hyperliquid have become some of the most profitable cryptocurrency companies, while prediction markets like Polymarket have also entered the mainstream. The next step for these platforms is likely to enhance their fee-generating capabilities by offering novel products—allowing consumers to spend more on these platforms, store more funds, while leveraging network scale advantages.

As "appreciation platforms," especially those starting as active trading platforms, one significant advantage is that these platforms typically have very high trading volumes and frequent transactions. For example, Hyperliquid has processed $30 trillion in transaction volume over the past 18 months. This means that compared to "fund storage platforms" and "fund consumption platforms," "fund appreciation platforms" have a stronger user flywheel effect. This implies that when users migrate to other platforms, the platform has a larger potential customer base for conversion and revenue growth. At the same time, these platforms are highly dependent on the market and often carry the stigma of being "financial casinos." This stigma may limit their ability to attract genuine global retail users. After all, people's attitudes toward banks and casinos are usually starkly different.

Using Cryptocurrency to Borrow Money

Like traditional economies, the ability to borrow in the cryptocurrency space is a significant driver of on-chain economic growth. For cryptocurrency neobanks, lending is also one of the most important sources of sustainable revenue. Lending activities in traditional finance require high levels of permission and are constrained by factors such as KYC (Know Your Customer), credit profiles, and borrowing history; whereas cryptocurrency lending systems have both permissioned and permissionless models, with varying collateral requirements.

The mainstream model in today's cryptocurrency space is permissionless on-chain systems that require over-collateralization. Decentralized finance giants like Aave, Morpho, and Sky (formerly MakerDAO) adhere to the principle of "code is law," embodying the spirit of cryptocurrency: since blockchains cannot access users' FICO credit scores or reputation information, they require over-collateralization to ensure solvency, sacrificing some capital efficiency in exchange for broader availability and security against defaults. Morpho particularly represents the next-generation evolution of this model, introducing a more modular, permissionless system and employing more efficient risk pricing mechanisms to enhance capital efficiency.

On the other hand, permissioned lending has gained popularity mainly due to an increasing number of institutional capital allocators beginning to interact with decentralized finance, such as through market makers. Protocols like Maple Finance, Goldfinch, and Clearpool aim to target these institutional users, effectively building traditional credit desks on-chain. They allow non-fully collateralized loans through strict KYC verification and off-chain legal agreements with institutional borrowers. Their moat lies not only in liquidity (as opposed to permissionless funding pools) but also in the compliance framework and business development expertise brought by selling B2B products. Other protocols in the permissioned lending space, such as Figure Markets, Nexo, and Coinbase's Lending product, prioritize compliance and target retail borrowing users. They require borrowers to undergo KYC verification and over-collateralize these assets, sometimes "wrapping" them with protocols like Morpho. In these cases, the main attraction may lie in faster fund settlement and acquisition compared to traditional bank loans.

However, the "holy grail" of cryptocurrency lending lies in non-fully collateralized consumer credit—financial technology products like SoFi and Chime have leveraged this entry point to "provide banking services to the unbanked." Cryptocurrency has yet to fully rise in this regard and has not replicated the "consumer credit flywheel effect" created by fintech neobanks. This is because cryptocurrency lacks a robust anti-witch attack identity layer and sufficient default penalty mechanisms. The only exception is "flash loans"—a purely cryptocurrency-native form of short-term uncollateralized borrowing that arises from the characteristics of blockchain mechanisms, but these are still primarily utilized by arbitrage bots and complex decentralized finance strategies rather than ordinary consumers.

For the next generation of cryptocurrency neobanks, the key to competition may lie in how to converge towards the center of this map, combining the speed and transparency of permissionless decentralized finance with the capital efficiency of traditional lending. The ultimate winners are likely to be the platforms that can solve the decentralized identity layer issue or commoditize it to unlock consumer credit, allowing cryptocurrency to effectively rebuild the consumer credit card mechanism. Until then, cryptocurrency neobanks may still rely on existing over-collateralized lending mechanisms to support decentralized finance revenues.

Making Funds Flow Faster

Fundamentally, the core value proposition of cryptocurrency neobanks is to make funds flow faster—just as fintech neobanks like SoFi and Chime did through mobile applications a decade ago. The blockchain track effectively "eliminates" the distance between any two accounts, allowing transactions to be completed with a single transfer without having to navigate through international banks, SWIFT, and countless complex systems.

Although each type of relationship with funds—storage, consumption, appreciation, and lending—utilizes this "blockchain flattening" effect in different ways, providing various trade-offs and monetization models, I believe they ultimately form a pyramid defined by their "velocity of money." At the top of the pyramid is "appreciation funds," which have the highest velocity of money (e.g., trading fees on Hyperliquid), followed by lending (monetized through interest), consumption (monetized through card fees and foreign exchange spreads), and finally storage (transfer fees and B2B integrations).

From this perspective, the simplest way to build cryptocurrency neobanks may be to start from the appreciation and lending layers, as this level has the highest capital turnover and user engagement. Those protocols that first capture value in "value flow" can then extend down the pyramid, converting existing users into full-stack financial customers.

Opportunities for Neobanks

So, what is the future direction for cryptocurrency neobanks? What opportunities exist for building the next generation of permissionless neobanks? I believe there are several (interrelated) directions that still need further exploration: (1) achieving equal levels of privacy and compliance, (2) real-world composability, (3) leveraging permissionless advantages, (4) localization and globalization, (5) non-fully collateralized loans and consumer credit.

1 - Achieving Equal Levels of Privacy and Compliance

Stablecoins and cryptocurrency tracks have many advantages over traditional tracks, especially in terms of speed and usability. However, for cryptocurrency neobanks to compete directly with fintech pioneers and existing banking tracks, they must achieve functional parity in the key dimensions of privacy and compliance.

While privacy may not seem to be a primary concern for retail consumers, and stablecoins have already reached considerable scale without privacy guarantees, privacy becomes crucial as more enterprise applications—such as payroll management, supply chain financing, and international settlements—migrate to on-chain tracks. This is because public transactions for B2B transfers can likely leak trade secrets and other sensitive information. I believe this is part of the reason why many newly launched stablecoin chains emphasize privacy protection in their development roadmaps.

On the other hand, cryptocurrency neobanks need to consider how to bring their platforms up to the same level of compliance as their predecessors. This includes gradually building global regulatory moats and licensing systems, assuring consumers and merchants that cryptocurrency solutions are as compliant as traditional solutions—potentially achievable through innovative technologies like zero-knowledge proofs. Only by addressing the dual challenges of enterprise-level privacy and compliance can cryptocurrency neobanks truly surpass their fintech predecessors and achieve scalable growth.

2 - Real-World Composability

Composability achieved through universal standards, frameworks, and smart contracts is often considered a significant advantage of cryptocurrency tracks. However, this composability is often limited to other components within the cryptocurrency space: connections with other decentralized finance primitives, yield protocols, and (primarily EVM-based) blockchains. The real challenge of composability lies in how to connect these blockchain standards with traditional real-world standards from different eras: for example, international banking systems like SWIFT, merchant POS systems and standards like ISO 20022, and local fund tracks like ACH or Pix. With the growing popularity of cryptocurrency cards and the increasing application of stablecoins in international payments, this field seems to be actively developing in this direction.

Additionally, many cryptocurrency card products today are often aimed at cryptocurrency-native users, serving as exit channels for "crypto whales." However, the real challenge for cryptocurrency neobanks is how to expand their user base beyond cryptocurrency-native users and attract entirely new user groups to these tracks by providing real-world composability and fundamentally innovative primitives. Cryptocurrency neobanks that can solve these composability issues will have a better user experience for fund transfers, thereby attracting user traffic more effectively.

3 - Leveraging Permissionless Characteristics

Fundamentally, cryptocurrency neobanks aim to reshape a more efficient monetary standard—a monetary standard designed for immediacy, global liquidity, infinite programmability, and free from bottlenecks imposed by any single entity or government. Currently, anyone with a cryptocurrency wallet can trade on Hyperliquid, send USDC transfers, or earn yields from the EtherFi treasury without intervention from fiat currency authorities. Cryptocurrency neobanks should fully leverage their permissionless nature to accelerate fund flows, thereby creating a more efficient system.

With the cryptocurrency track, global capital will flow at internet speed, coordinated by incentive mechanisms and game theory rather than statutory decrees. The next generation of neobanks will utilize the permissionless characteristics of blockchain systems to rapidly integrate new primitives such as perpetual contracts, prediction markets, staking, and token issuance platforms with existing financial tracks.

Moreover, in economies with high stablecoin adoption, there is an opportunity to build a permissionless card network similar to Visa or Mastercard. Such a system could operate in reverse to existing cryptocurrency card processes. Settlements would default to being completed on-chain through cryptocurrency-native acquiring institutions, rather than using fiat acquiring institutions and cashing out stablecoins at the point of sale. To maintain compatibility with traditional payment methods (such as fiat credit cards), these systems would convert fiat payment deposits into stablecoins.

Of course, the permissionless characteristics are not limited to human users—they may also give rise to a new, intelligent agent economy. For AI agents, obtaining a cryptocurrency wallet is far easier than acquiring a bank account; with stablecoins, AI agents can create on-chain transactions either through user-signed authorizations or pre-approved strategies. I have written extensively about emerging standards for intelligent agent payments, such as Coinbase's x402, and how they can open up a new model of e-commerce. Permissionless neobanks are foundational to achieving this goal and serve as the interface for the human-machine interaction economy—AI agents can become autonomous wealth managers, shopping assistants, helping you obtain credit lines, and more.

4 - Localization and Globalization

Cryptocurrency neobanks also face strategic choices between depth and breadth. Some neobanks may follow the Nubank model, dominating a single region through deep localization, cultural fit, and regulatory expertise, before expanding outward through various remittance channels (like the US/EU/UAE and India/Latin America/Southeast Asia) and supply chains (like the EU/US/Latin America with China/Hong Kong). Other neobanks may adopt a "global-first" model, launching permissionless products globally and doubling down in regions where network effects emerge the fastest. Both paths are viable: the former wins through local trust and distribution channels, while the latter relies on scale and composability. Stablecoins can serve as the high-speed highway for international payments, but cryptocurrency neobanks still need "local exits," requiring deep integration with regional payment systems like Pix, UPI, Alipay, and VietQR to ensure local availability and merchant acceptance.

Notably, cryptocurrency-first neobanks have a unique opportunity to "provide banking services to the unbanked," offering capital channels (priced in dollars and cryptocurrencies) in regions with inadequate financial infrastructure or weak local currencies, just as Argentina's hyperinflation accelerated the adoption of cryptocurrency in the country. Therefore, a scenario may emerge where regional "super apps" coexist with borderless, globally composable neobanks, each leveraging the underlying permissionless substrate in different ways.

5 - Non-Fully Collateralized Loans and Consumer Credit

Finally, non-fully collateralized loans and consumer credit may be the "holy grail" for cryptocurrency neobanks. It combines many of the challenges mentioned above. First, in terms of compliance/KYC, non-fully collateralized loans require robust identity verification and anti-witch attack systems, which differ from existing over-collateralized lending platforms (like Aave, Morpho, MakerDAO). This robust identity mechanism could be achieved through biometric verification like Worldcoin or through zero-knowledge proof-based methods, such as DECO. Second, it requires a protocol to connect off-chain credit profiles with on-chain credit profiles (for example, through 3Jane). Additionally, on-chain defaults can affect off-chain records. Credit models and credit statuses may vary regionally and geographically and need to be compatible with traditional systems, further complicating this challenge. These difficulties may explain why non-fully collateralized lending in decentralized finance is currently primarily focused on institutional private credit (like Maple Finance, Goldfinch) rather than consumer credit, despite the latter being much larger in scale in traditional finance.

Perhaps part of the answer lies in unique mechanism designs. For example, flash loans are an excellent example of a purely cryptocurrency-native uncollateralized loan (albeit for a short duration) based on blockchain characteristics. Similarly, constructing secured revolving credit lines using stablecoins and yield-bearing collateral (LST/LRT) holds enormous potential, enabling real-time loan-to-value management, automatic liquidation buffers, and automatic repayment of staking yields. These smarter collateral management techniques are expected to lower collateral requirements for on-chain lending. In fact, if successful, on-chain non-fully collateralized lending and credit will accelerate the flow of on-chain funds, providing unbanked individuals with compelling reasons to use on-chain services and greatly promoting the development of the on-chain economy—just as non-fully collateralized lending in the real world drives economic growth.

Conclusion

Just as the rise of fintech neobanks a decade ago aimed to reshape the way funds are stored, consumed, appreciated, and lent in the digital age, the rise of cryptocurrency neobanks today seeks to do the same. However, unlike fintech neobanks that primarily focus on front-end innovations (providing backend services in collaboration with FDIC banks and creating intuitive mobile front ends), cryptocurrency neobanks aim to upgrade the banking backend—using stablecoins and public blockchains to construct a global, composable, censorship-resistant remittance method. In this way, cryptocurrency neobank applications are not just interfaces but potential gateways to a new programmable financial system.

However, this is just the beginning of the journey. Building a full-stack "cryptocurrency neobank" is far more complex than merely launching a cryptocurrency card or a simple wallet protocol with a user interface. Like fintech neobanks, cryptocurrency neobanks need to consider who their target audience is—whether it is "providing banking services to the unbanked" or offering seamless stablecoin QR code payments for merchants in emerging economies—and quickly expand their product offerings. While each banking domain—storage, consumption, appreciation, and lending—has its own monetization models and trade-offs, revenue ultimately stems from leveraging "value flow." From this perspective, the greatest opportunity for cryptocurrency neobanks may lie in areas with fast capital turnover—lending—before extending down the "velocity of money pyramid" into consumption and storage.

As neobanks continue to tackle challenges related to privacy and compliance, real-world composability, leveraging permissionless characteristics, addressing regional disparities, and providing non-fully collateralized consumer credit, they are likely to evolve from niche portals for digital assets into the default operating system for the global economy. Just as the first wave of neobanks transformed the banking interface through mobile technology, the next wave of neobanks is expected to reshape the fundamental logic of money itself through cryptocurrency.