September 15, 2025
In pictures: 2025 CEO Summit
Take a look back at photos from our 17th annual QED CEO Summit, held in Washington, D.C.
Take a look back at photos from our 17th annual QED CEO Summit, held in Washington, D.C.
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01
Settlement Collapse
Value transfer moves from days - corresponding banking, T+1 securities - to seconds. Working capital tied up in float is released.
02
Cost Collapse
Marginal transaction cost approaches zero: fractions of a cent, versus 1-6% on card and corresponding rails.
03
Programmability
Money becomes an object that carries logic - escrow, splits, rebates, compliance - executed by code, not back offices.
Pure infrastructure with no revenue accrual
General-purpose infrastructure without a revenue model we can underwrite.
Speculative asset creation
Speculative tokens or projects where returns are driven primarily by short-duration trading cycles.
Regulatory-arbitrage plays
Companies whose primary edge is operating where they have not yet been regulated carry compliance risk we are not compensated for.
Pure infrastructure with no revenue accrual
Layer-1 chains and general-purpose middleware — outside our circle of competence and typically outside our stage.
Speculative asset creation
NFT platforms, memecoins, prediction markets styled as products — mapping to none of the five functions; structurally uninvestable for us.
Three structural truths cut across all five functions.
(a)
Regulated-first wins
The 2020/21 cycle proved permissionless purity does not survive contact with real financial regulation. GENIUS, MiCA, CLARITY and the UK/Singapore regimes are producing founders who start from “how do we get licensed” and build backwards — precisely the founder profile QED has always preferred.
(b)
Incumbents upgraded, not disintermediated
JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are jointly building a tokenized-deposit network; Visa launched a stablecoin platform in July 2026; 140+ businesses signed an open stablecoin standard. Banks migrate — and new-generation infrastructure companies own the picks and shovels of that migration.
(c)
Emerging markets feel it first
Every function improves most where the fiat experience is worst: cross-border payments, dollar access, investment product availability, working-capital finance. Those are exactly the geographies where QED has fintech ventures’ deepest footprint. Our geographic distribution is not incidental to the tokenization thesis — it is the thesis.
Emerging markets feel it first
Every function improves most where the fiat experience is worst: cross-border payments, dollar access, investment product availability, working-capital finance. Those are exactly the geographies where QED has fintech venture's deepest footprint. Our geographic distribution is not incidental to the tokenization thesis — it is the thesis.
Regulated-first wins
The 2020/21 cycle proved permissionless purity does not survive contact with real financial regulation. GENIUS, MiCA, CLARITY and the UK/Singapore regimes are producing founders who start from “how do we get licensed” and build backwards — precisely the founder profile QED has always preferred.
Incumbents upgraded, not disintermediated
JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are jointly building a tokenized-deposit network; Visa launched a stablecoin platform in July 2026; 140+ businesses signed an open stablecoin standard. Banks migrate — and new-generation infrastructure companies own the picks and shovels of that migration.
Identity and compliance
KYC, fraud and transaction monitoring get rebuilt on-chain rather than removed. QED portfolio company Footprint sits here.
Trade & working-capital finance
Finkargo( LatAm import finance) and OatFi(B2B working-capital infrastructure) sit directly on flows whose logical settlement layer is stablecoin.
Collateralized digital-asset lending
Tokenized Treasuries, equities and stablecoin holdings as instant, programmable collateral.
On-chain private credt
Maple, Centrifuge and emerging institutional protocols - credit funds migrating to programmable rails.
Why QED is advanced
Credit is QED's craft: distinguishing lending businesses from fintechs pretending to be one, charge-offs earned from charge-offs deferred. On-chain credit is a straight-line extension, not a stretch.