Not Fintech Investment Advice: EtherFi, Lunos AI, Circuit & Chisel, & Figure

Welcome back to Not Fintech Investment Advice, where Simon Taylor and I do what we do best: talk about fintech startups we’re absolutely not giving investment advice on. First up is EtherFi Cash, a DeFi-native credit card (from Ether.fi) that flips banking math. You load stablecoins onto the card as collateral. From there, you can either spend them directly or lock them up to borrow cash against them (earning interest on the coins you park, while borrowing at a lower rate). It’s non-custodial, meaning you’re fully responsible for your crypto, and the card itself runs on Visa through a partner. It’s over-collateralized lending dressed up as a card, and maybe regulators will end up treating it that way. Next up is Lunos AI, an AI agent that collects invoices like a polite but relentless coworker. It reads emails, remembers context, negotiates, and learns. Today it automates AR (accounts receivable); tomorrow, it’ll be talking to AP (accounts payable) bots on the other side. Think of it as the first step toward self-driving cash flow. Then, there’s the evocatively named Circuit & Chisel. Their XTP protocol lets AI agents pay each other per use instead of signing up for endless subscriptions. Imagine a digital assistant renting a data tool for ten seconds. It’s built by ex-Stripe and Chainlink folks who see where this is going: a future where software pays software.  Finally, there’s Figure. Mike Cagney (of SoFi fame) successfully took his blockchain lending company public. Figure started with home-equity loans and now runs one of the largest on-chain real-world asset markets (outside of U.S. Treasuries). Its innovation lies in using blockchain to automate the costly back-office work of loan origination and trading. It’s faster, cheaper, and fully traceable (and it’s rated by the same agencies that review traditional securities). Plus, some closing manifestations: whoever builds the MCP or the protocol that lets AR and AP AI agents talk to each other is sitting on a billion-dollar startup. Banks should treat stablecoin yield as the next interchange moment, and as for anyone touching DeFi lending … remember, the same consumer-protection laws still apply. Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page. Follow Simon: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sytaylor/ Substack: https://sytaylor.substack.com   Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson Companies featured: https://www.ether.fi/ https://www.lunos.aI https://circuitandchisel.com/ https://www.figure.com/