If you’re going to overthink, overthink the positives.

Not because it’s always true, but because it makes you more willing—and more able—to make it true.

And just like that we are on the last update of the year. December’s fintech headlines kept saying the same thing we’ve been tracking all year:

• We’re wiring a new nervous system for money — inside the perimeter, not outside of it.

• Stablecoins are turning into settlement and treasury infrastructure, not a “crypto side quest.”

• Agentic AI is shifting from “assistant” to “authorized actor,” and the ecosystem is starting to standardize around it.

• And the fintech stack keeps collapsing: platforms are buying their way into completeness — compliance, wealth, mortgages, custody.

November’s fintech headlines all pointed in the same direction: We’re wiring a new nervous system for money, inside the perimeter, not outside of it. The through-line: we’re moving from “crypto vs banks” to digital money on bank-grade rails, managed by software in real time.

Ever notice how CEOs and founders seem effortlessly connected?They remember names. Spot patterns. Bring the right people together at the right moment.It’s not magic. It’s environmental conditioning.

If the discomfort of learning is just your brain making new connections, then maybe that uncomfortable "Imposter" feeling is simply your psyche's reaction to being stretched.

Imposter Syndrome, in this light, is not a sign that you are a fraud; it's a sign that you are in a new territory and you care deeply about doing well.

You don't feel like an imposter when you're doing the laundry or making a sandwich—activities you've mastered. You feel it when the stakes are high, the challenge is new, and you've been given a level of responsibility that requires you to step up.

It’s not often that a new form of money movement rivals the giants of global payments. But according to data from a16zcrypto, stablecoins processed more than $46 trillion in transaction volume over the past year — a figure that now sits between Visa ($16 T) and ACH ($87 T).

Even when “adjusted” to exclude inorganic activity like bots or exchange wash trading, the number — $9 trillion — still positions stablecoins alongside some of the world’s largest payment networks. That’s an inflection point worth paying attention to.

October’s fintech landscape showed a clear shift from experimentation to execution. Money20/20’s tone and market activity pointed toward profitability, compliance, and embedded value as the new competitive edge for fintech founders and product leaders.

Is life a game of perfect strategy, or one of skillfully managed chance?

We are living in an era of infinite supply. For every customer problem, there are a dozen well-funded, well-designed solutions vying for attention. The bottleneck is no longer invention; it is awareness.