Fintech

Launching a Neobank in 2026: How Long Does It Actually Take? TL;DR Building a neobank from scratch isn’t a weekend project — it’s a multi-year journey involving regulatory hurdles, card network partnerships, and serious infrastructure work. A recent Reddit thread on r/fintech sparked exactly this question: how long does it actually take to get a neobank live these days? The fintech community is clearly wrestling with this, and the answer is: it depends heavily on your geography, your licensing strategy, and the partners you choose. Visa and Mastercard remain the backbone of any card-issuing operation, and platforms like GoodFirms can help you research the service providers who do the heavy lifting. ...

Why AI Still Hasn’t Disrupted Retail Investing — And What That Actually Tells Us TL;DR A recent discussion in r/fintech is asking a deceptively simple question: why hasn’t AI fully disrupted retail investing yet? Despite years of hype, tools like Personal Capital’s ML-powered platform represent incremental progress rather than wholesale transformation. The gap between AI’s promise and its real-world impact on everyday investors is real, and the fintech community is starting to call it out. This article digs into what the conversation reveals — and what it might mean for the future of investing. ...

Stablecoins vs. Banks: Who’s Really Winning the 2026 Settlement War? TL;DR The financial world is quietly splitting into two camps: traditional banks clinging to legacy settlement infrastructure, and stablecoin platforms promising faster, cheaper, and more transparent transactions. A heated Reddit discussion in the fintech community is asking the question everyone in payments is thinking about — who actually wins? The answer isn’t as clean-cut as either side wants you to believe. Institutional players like Stripe are already placing their bets (a $1 billion acquisition of Bridge doesn’t lie), while USDC and USDT continue to dominate the liquidity side of the equation. ...

X Turns Into a Trading Platform: Bitcoin Smart Cashtags Are Here TL;DR Elon Musk is pushing his vision of X as a “super-app” one step further. According to BTC-ECHO, X is rolling out a feature that lets users trade Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies directly within the platform—no need to leave your feed. The new “Smart Cashtags” feature integrates crypto trading into the social experience, though details on pricing, supported assets, and regulatory compliance remain sparse. This move positions X as a direct competitor to traditional social-trading hybrids like eToro and could mark a significant shift in how retail investors discover and trade digital assets. ...

I Gave My AI Agent $50 and Let It Trade on Kalshi: What Happened Next TL;DR A developer decided to experiment with autonomous AI trading by giving an AI agent $50 and letting it trade independently on Kalshi, a prediction market platform. The experiment was shared on Hacker News, sparking interest in the growing trend of AI agents managing real money in financial markets. While the source package doesn’t reveal the detailed results, this experiment represents a microcosm of the broader debate around AI autonomy in trading, risk management, and whether we’re ready to trust algorithms with our money. If you’re curious about AI trading agents or considering building one yourself, this experiment offers a real-world case study worth examining. ...