The Ledger, every show

“GDPR alone is estimated to have reduced profits for small tech firms in Europe by up to 12%.”

“In 25, the price of Bitcoin dropped precipitously and is now 50% down from October, but stablecoin payments volume doubled to around 400,000,000,060 percent of which is estimated to represent B to B payments.”

“Klarna, whose CEO was once a self-proclaimed crypto skeptic, became the first bank to launch a stablecoin, Klarna USD, on the Tempo testnet, using Bridge's open issuance to facilitate faster and cheaper cross-border settlement.”

“Businesses that received and accepted capital offers grew, on average, 27 percentage points faster over the following year than the otherwise equivalent businesses who didn't.”

“The rate for sports betting companies is around 10%, and the order of magnitude for prediction markets is, you know, one percent or a few points.”

“Cursor, the AI-powered coding assistant, raced to over one hundred million dollars in recurring revenue in just three years.”

“We're also seeing the likes of Lovable, which hit seventeen million dollars ARR in just three months, Bolt, achieving twenty million ARR in two months, and Kodo, radically lower the barrier for turning software ideas into working applications.”

“SpaceX uses Bridge to repatriate funds from Starlink sales in Argentina, Nigeria, and other markets.”

“Stablecoin transaction volumes more than doubled between Q four, 20, 23 and Q four, 20, 24. And the number of monthly active stablecoin wallets has now reached forty million.”

“We further note with interest that despite regulatory uncertainty in the United States, early stablecoin adoption has shown a notable US dollar preference, with an estimated 99% of stablecoin balances being USD-based.”

“While the economies of the US and Europe were similarly productive in 1990, there has since been a stark divergence, with US productivity per hour works reaching 104 dollars, as compared with a plateau of something closer to 85 dollars per hour in Europe.”

“Today, the most profitable third of publicly listed companies in the United States accounts for two-thirds of the total market capitalization, the highest share since data began in 1963.”

“Brands already onboarding to ACS include Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters, Etsy, Coach, Kate Spade, and a bunch more.”

“And we partnered with OpenAI to power the first shopping experience inside ChatGPT.”

“We just worked with Shopify to, like they now offer a stablecoin Payments on all of their checkouts, or they're rolling that out on all of their checkouts. That's just not a thing that would have made sense even three or four years ago.”

“It's more than a trillion dollars a year.”

“Indeed, Anthropic just installed workday, very famously.”

“Back in 1957, companies could expect to remain in the index for 61 years. In 1980, the average tenure was 36 years. Today, it's just under 20 years.”

“Harvey, whose AI legal assistant is used by many Fortune 500 companies, quadrupled revenue in 2024.”

“By 2023, more independent pizzerias launched in America than in any other year on record.”

“Over a quarter of Australian small businesses are using vertical SaaS, as are nearly a fifth of small businesses in the UK. Other markets like Singapore, 14%, France, eight percent, and Germany, five percent are more nascent, but adoption is growing quickly.”

“In the US, almost 80% of corporate lending is now from non-bank sources, compared to just 32% in the EU.”

“While the US invests around 0.7% of GDP in high growth firms, that figure is less than 0.3% in Europe.”

“After years of relative calm, the number of iOS apps released in December 25 jumped by 60% year over year.”

“The team recently celebrated one million books sold.”

“If you invested a dollar in Booking.com and a dollar in Google 20 years ago, you made much more money as a Booking.com shareholder, and I think people don't appreciate that fact.”

“U.S. Dollars are not that big a share of global currency balances, but the, you know, U.S. Dollars are 95 plus percent of steelbook coin balances.”

“Nomad List got to 700 K in ARR. Remote OK has gotten to 3.4 million dollars in revenue. Photo AI got to 600 K in ARR.”

“We got our first paying customer way before we raised any money for the business.”

“You sold 50,000 dollars of pre-orders for your book before you had written any of the book. You just said, I might write a book and buy it here. And you got 50,000 dollars of sales.”