Pantera Capital Partner: How to Build a Crypto Bank

Original Title: Building Permissionless Neobanks

Original Author: Jay Yu

Original Compilation: Ken, ChainCatcher

This is a 4000-word research report on storing, consuming, appreciating, and lending funds on the cryptocurrency track.

Introduction

Today, regardless of which bank or fintech application you use—whether it's Bank of America, Revolut, JPMorgan, or SoFi—browsing their user interfaces reveals a nearly uniform design: accounts, payments and transfers, earning rewards. This design reveals a potential commonality: banks are the interfaces for our four fundamental relationships with money:

• Storage: A place to hold assets

• Consumption: A means of transferring funds for daily expenses

• Appreciation: A set of tools for passively or actively managing wealth

• Lending: A place to borrow funds

Over the past decade, mobile technology has driven the rise of "neobank" applications like SoFi, Revolut, and Wise, which democratize financial services and redefine what it means to "bank," replacing physical branches with intuitive, always-online digital interfaces.

Now, as cryptocurrency enters its second decade, it offers a new blueprint for future development. From self-custody wallets to stablecoins, on-chain credit, and yield generation, the permissionless and programmable characteristics of blockchain make a global, instantaneous, and composable banking experience possible. If mobile technology birthed neobanks, then cryptocurrency has ushered in permissionless neobanks: a unified, interoperable, self-custodied interface for storing, consuming, appreciating, and lending funds in the on-chain economy.

The Evolution of Fintech Neobanks

Similar to cryptocurrency, neobanks rapidly emerged after the 2008 financial crisis. Unlike traditional banks that replicate physical branch layouts, neobanks operate as technology platforms, providing banking services through mobile interfaces. Most neobanks collaborate with partner banks behind the scenes to offer deposit insurance and compliance infrastructure while maintaining front-end customer relationships. With fast registration processes, transparent fees, and digital-first designs, many neobanks have become the preferred platforms for users to store, consume, and appreciate funds.

Looking at the development of these billion-dollar neobank startups, we find a commonality: they control customer relationships by leveraging unique digital products (such as refinancing, early wage access, and transparent foreign exchange rates) to kickstart user-driven transaction flywheels, then expand their product lines to market high-value offerings to users. In short, the success of fintech neobanks lies in controlling the interface through which users interact with their funds, transforming the mediums through which users store, consume, appreciate, and lend funds.

Today, the stage of cryptocurrency development is quite similar to the stage of neobank development 5-10 years ago. Over the past decade, cryptocurrency has developed its unique advantages: censorship-resistant asset storage through self-custody wallets, convenient digital dollar transactions via stablecoins, permissionless credit markets based on protocols like Aave, and 24/7 global capital markets capable of turning internet memes into wealth. Just as mobile infrastructure opened the neobank era, programmable blockchains now provide a permissionless financial infrastructure.

The next step is naturally to combine these permissionless backends with the convenient frontends of neobanks. The first wave of neobanks shifted the banking front end from physical stores to mobile interfaces while retaining the bank's backend; today, cryptocurrency neobanks do the opposite: they retain the convenient mobile front end but change how funds flow from traditional banking channels to stablecoins and public blockchains. In other words, if neobanks rebuilt the front end of banking on mobile platforms, cryptocurrency now offers the opportunity to rebuild the backend on permissionless platforms.

The Landscape of Crypto Neobanks

Caption: Overview of Crypto Neobanks

Today, many different projects are converging towards the vision of "crypto neobanks." It has been observed that many basic banking functions, such as storage, consumption, appreciation, and lending, have already been realized on permissionless crypto platforms—self-custody using Ledger, consumption via EtherFi cards or Bitget QR codes, appreciation through trading on Hyperliquid, and lending through Morpho. Additionally, many related participants support the underlying infrastructure, such as wallet-as-a-service, stablecoin settlement, licensing, localized deposit and withdrawal partners, and routing facilities.

Moreover, in some cases, cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance and Coinbase have made significant strides, increasingly resembling fintech neobanks and gradually controlling more relationships between end users and their assets. For example, Binance Pay has supported over 20 million merchants globally, while Coinbase allows users to earn up to 4% rewards simply by holding USDC on the platform.

Therefore, in the face of such a complex landscape of crypto neobanks, it is worth carefully sorting out how different cryptocurrency platforms are competing for primary financial relationships with users and how they are approaching user storage, consumption, appreciation, and lending of funds.

Using Cryptocurrency to Store Funds

To properly self-custody crypto assets and interact with blockchains, users must have some form of cryptocurrency wallet. Broadly speaking, the crypto wallet market can be classified along two dimensions: "security vs. usability" and "consumer applications vs. enterprise infrastructure." Each dimension has seen the emergence of strong contenders with robust distribution capabilities: Ledger offers secure consumer hardware wallets; Fireblocks and Anchorage provide secure enterprise-grade wallet infrastructure; consumer wallets like MetaMask, Phantom, and Privy focus on enhancing usability and user experience; while Turnkey and Coinbase Prime occupy more user-friendly enterprise infrastructure markets.

One of the key advantages of building a neobank on wallet applications is that the wallet front end—such as MetaMask and Phantom—often controls the entry point for users to interact with their crypto assets. This "fat wallet theory" posits that the wallet layer captures most consumer-level distribution and order flow, and for end consumers, the switching costs of wallets are extremely high. In fact, it is estimated that currently, 35% of Solana's transaction volume is conducted through the Phantom wallet, thanks to its excellent mobile user experience and user stickiness, creating a strong moat. Additionally, since consumers (especially retail) often prioritize convenience over price, wallets like Phantom and MetaMask may charge fees as high as 0.85%, while token exchange protocols like Uniswap may only charge 0.3%.

On the other hand, building a complete digital bank solely with a wallet is far more challenging than expected. This is because, to achieve profitable scale, users need not only to store tokens but also to actively use them within the wallet. Phantom, MetaMask, and Ledger may be household names, but if users merely treat crypto wallets as cash boxes hidden under their beds, they cannot be monetized. In other words, wallets must become active trading platforms to convert distribution into revenue.

MetaMask and Phantom both seem to be moving in this direction. For instance, MetaMask recently launched the MetaMask card, aimed at providing value-added services to its existing crypto-native user base and striving to become the preferred solution for cryptocurrency payments. Phantom has also followed suit by launching Phantom Cash and providing in-app perpetual contract trading features through integration with Hyperliquid, entering the "fund appreciation" space. As Blockworks noted, "While Drift or Jupiter may be popular platforms native to Solana, Hyperliquid is where the funds are truly flowing." This lesson applies to all companies in the wallet space—you not only need to win users' wallets but also control the volume of funds flowing in and out of wallets through consumption, appreciation, and lending.

Using Cryptocurrency for Consumption

The second category of crypto neobank competitors are platforms that allow users to consume using cryptocurrency. Similar to the case of "using cryptocurrency to store funds," these cryptocurrency consumption applications can also be classified along two dimensions: on-chain transfers to off-chain purchases (e.g., buying coffee) and retail-facing applications versus enterprise infrastructure.

Interestingly, many of the emerging "neobank" projects that have gained attention in recent months, such as Kast, Tria, Tempo, and Stable, are attempting to solve the challenge of cryptocurrency consumption. Notably, the hotspots of the neobank trend are primarily focused on two areas of "cryptocurrency consumption": (1) retail consumption applications integrated with stablecoin cards, such as Avici, Tria, Redotpay, and EtherFi; (2) stablecoin-centric blockchains, such as Stable, Plasma, and Tempo, aimed at providing infrastructure for enterprise application scenarios.

The first category of retail-centric "consumption applications" fundamentally makes cryptocurrency applications very similar in user experience and interface to traditional banks and neobank applications, featuring familiar tabs like "home, banking, cards, and investments."

With the maturation of cryptocurrency card issuers like Rain and Reap, along with Visa and Mastercard's expanding support for stablecoins, cryptocurrency cards are gradually becoming a commoditized product. True differentiation lies in how to drive and maintain transaction volume—whether through novel cashback mechanisms, localized operations, or attracting non-crypto-native users to these platforms. This trajectory mirrors the rise of fintech neobanks, whose success is not based on issuing cards or developing applications but on winning specific customer segments—from students (SoFi) to low-income families (Chime) to international travelers (Wise and Revolut)—and building trust, loyalty, and expanding transaction volume on that foundation. If executed properly, these "payment-first" neobanks are poised to become significant drivers of cryptocurrency adoption, further promoting the adoption of blockchain infrastructure.

Crypto neobanks may also guide users toward the next generation of payment systems that transcend traditional card payment systems. Card-based consumption may merely be a temporary transitional model, still relying on the payment systems of Visa and Mastercard and inheriting their centralized limitations. Early signs of future trends are already emerging: wallets like Bitget Wallet have launched QR code-based stablecoin payments in merchant pilot projects in Indonesia, Brazil, and Vietnam, suggesting that future cryptocurrency-native settlements may completely bypass traditional issuing institutions.

The second recent category of "neobank" applications consists of stablecoin infrastructure projects built for enterprises, including Stable, Plasma, Tempo, and Arc, often referred to as "stablecoin chains." Their rise is likely driven by the increasing demand from institutional participants—traditional banks, fintech companies like Stripe, and existing payment networks—for more efficient channels for capital flow. Many "stablecoin chains" are designed with similar functionalities, such as stablecoin gas tokens (supporting payments of gas fees with stablecoins), simplified consensus mechanisms (processing simple, large payments from A to B via "fast lanes"), enhancing the privacy of token transfers through trusted execution environments (TEEs), and custom data fields to better align with international payment standards like ISO 20022.

However, these technological improvements alone do not guarantee widespread adoption. For payment chains, the real moat lies in merchants. The key is how many merchants and enterprises decide to migrate their business operations to a specific payment chain. For example, Tempo aims to leverage Stripe's vast merchant customer base and payment channels to drive transaction volume, adoption, and revenue growth, thereby bringing a new batch of merchants into the cryptocurrency space. Other payment chains, such as Plasma and Stable, are committed to becoming "first-class partners" of Tether (USDT) to facilitate the transfer of this stablecoin between different institutions.

One of the most enlightening cases is Tron, which handles 25-30% of global stablecoin transaction volume. Tron's rise is largely attributed to its dominance in emerging markets like Nigeria, Argentina, Brazil, and Southeast Asia. With low fees, fast final confirmations, and global coverage, Tron has become a common settlement layer for many merchants' payments, remittances, and dollar savings accounts. For all these emerging payment chains, Tron is the gatekeeper they must surpass. This requires achieving tenfold improvements on an already low-cost, fast, and globally covered payment chain—this task necessitates focusing on merchant onboarding and network scale rather than minor technical improvements.

Utilizing Cryptocurrency for Appreciation

The third relationship between "crypto neobanks" and their customers is the ability to "appreciate" funds. This is the area of highest innovation within the cryptocurrency space, accelerating the development of numerous foundational technologies from 0 to 1, such as staking vaults, perpetual contract trading, token issuance platforms, and prediction markets. As before, applications that help with "appreciation" can be classified along two different dimensions—ranging from passive income to active trading, and from front-end interfaces to back-end liquidity.

How "appreciation" applications gradually evolve into comprehensive "neobanks" is best exemplified by centralized cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance or Coinbase. The initial value proposition offered by centralized cryptocurrency exchanges is simple yet effective—"This is the ideal place for you to trade cryptocurrencies and grow your wealth." As trading volume gradually increases, exchanges not only become typical venues for wealth growth but also important places for storing and managing wealth. Both Coinbase and Binance have launched their own blockchains, wallets, institutional services, and crypto cards, providing value-added services to their core user base through new products and network effects. For instance, the adoption rate of Binance Pay continues to rise, with merchants increasingly using it to accept cryptocurrency payments for everyday goods.

Decentralized finance projects have also adopted similar strategies. For example, EtherFi initially started as an Ethereum liquidity staking protocol, providing passive income for stakers re-staking ETH on EigenLayer. Subsequently, they launched "Liquid," a decentralized finance strategy vault that allows users' funds to operate within the decentralized finance ecosystem for higher yields and risk management. They then expanded to the EtherFi "Cash" product, a groundbreaking credit card that allows users to spend their EtherFi balance in the real world. This expansion roadmap closely resembles the model of fintech neobanks—establishing a foothold with unique products (passive staking and yield) to become a leader in the field to gain transaction volume, then expanding the entire product line to market high-value services to customers through the EtherFi card.

Today, cryptocurrency has brought numerous innovations from 0 to 1, enabling users to "appreciate"—perpetual contract trading platforms like Hyperliquid have become some of the most profitable cryptocurrency companies, while prediction markets like Polymarket have also entered mainstream visibility. The next step for these platforms is likely to enhance their fee-generating capabilities by offering novel products—allowing consumers to spend more on these platforms, store more funds, while leveraging network scale advantages.

As "fund appreciation platforms," especially those starting as active trading platforms, one significant advantage is that these platforms typically have extremely high trading volumes and frequent transactions. For instance, Hyperliquid has processed $30 trillion in trading volume over the past 18 months. This means that compared to "fund storage platforms" and "fund consumption platforms," "fund appreciation platforms" have a stronger user flywheel effect. This implies that when users migrate to other platforms, the platform has a larger potential customer base for conversion and revenue growth. Meanwhile, these platforms are highly dependent on the market and often carry the stigma of being "financial casinos." This stigma may limit their ability to attract genuine global retail users. After all, people's attitudes toward banks and casinos are typically starkly different.

Using Cryptocurrency to Borrow Money

Similar to traditional economies, the ability to borrow in the cryptocurrency space is a significant driver of on-chain economic growth. For crypto neobanks, lending is also one of the most important sources of sustainable revenue. Lending activities in traditional finance require high levels of permission and are constrained by factors such as KYC (Know Your Customer), credit profiles, and borrowing history; whereas cryptocurrency lending systems can operate in both permissioned and permissionless modes, with varying requirements for collateralized capital.

The mainstream model in today's cryptocurrency space is a permissionless on-chain system that requires over-collateralization. Decentralized finance giants like Aave, Morpho, and Sky (formerly MakerDAO) adhere to the principle of "code is law," embodying the spirit of cryptocurrency: since blockchains cannot access users' FICO credit scores or reputation information, they require over-collateralization to ensure solvency, sacrificing some capital efficiency in exchange for broader availability and security against defaults. Morpho particularly represents the next-generation evolution of this model, introducing a more modular, permissionless system with more efficient risk pricing mechanisms, thereby improving capital efficiency.

On the other hand, permissioned lending has gained popularity primarily due to an increasing number of institutional capital allocators beginning to interact with decentralized finance, such as through market makers. Protocols like Maple Finance, Goldfinch, and Clearpool aim to target these institutional users, effectively building traditional credit desks on-chain. They allow non-fully collateralized loans through strict KYC verification and off-chain legal agreements with institutional borrowers. Their moat lies not only in liquidity (unlike permissionless capital pools) but also in the compliance frameworks and business development expertise brought by selling B2B products. Other protocols in the permissioned lending space, such as Figure Markets, Nexo, and Coinbase's Lending products, prioritize compliance and target retail borrowing users. They require borrowers to undergo KYC verification and over-collateralize these assets, sometimes "wrapping" protocols like Morpho. In these cases, the main attraction may lie in faster capital settlement and access compared to traditional bank loans.

However, the "holy grail" of cryptocurrency lending lies in non-fully collateralized consumer credit—financial technology products like SoFi and Chime have successfully provided "banking services for the unbanked" through this entry point. Cryptocurrency has yet to fully rise in this area and has not replicated the "consumer credit flywheel effect" created by fintech neobanks. This is because cryptocurrency lacks a robust anti-witch attack identity layer and sufficient default penalty mechanisms. The only exception is "flash loans"—a purely cryptocurrency-native form of short-term uncollateralized lending, stemming from the characteristics of blockchain mechanisms, but these are still primarily utilized by arbitrage bots and complex decentralized finance strategies rather than ordinary consumers.

For the next generation of crypto neobanks, the key to competition may lie in how to converge towards the center of this map, combining the speed and transparency of permissionless decentralized finance with the capital efficiency of traditional lending. The ultimate winners are likely to be the platforms that can solve the decentralized identity layer issue or commoditize it to unlock consumer credit, allowing cryptocurrency to effectively rebuild the consumer credit card mechanism. Until then, crypto neobanks may still rely on existing over-collateralized lending mechanisms to support decentralized finance revenues.

Accelerating Fund Flow

Fundamentally, the core value proposition of crypto neobanks is to accelerate the flow of funds—just as fintech neobanks like SoFi and Chime did through mobile applications a decade ago. The blockchain track effectively "eliminates" the distance between any two accounts, allowing transactions to be completed with a single transfer without the need to navigate through international banks, SWIFT, and countless complex systems.

Although each relationship of funds—storage, consumption, appreciation, and lending—utilizes this "blockchain flattening" effect in different ways, providing different trade-offs and monetization models, I believe they ultimately form a pyramid defined by their "velocity of money." At the top of the pyramid is "appreciation funds," which have the highest velocity of money (e.g., trading fees on Hyperliquid), followed by lending (monetized through interest), consumption (monetized through card fees and forex spreads), and finally storage (monetization through deposit and withdrawal fees and B2B integrations).

From this perspective, the simplest way to build a crypto neobank may be to start from the appreciation and lending layers, as this tier has the highest capital turnover and user engagement. Those protocols that first capture value in the "flow of value" can then extend down the pyramid, converting existing users into full-stack financial customers.

Opportunities for Neobanks

So, what is the future direction for crypto neobanks? What opportunities exist for building the next generation of permissionless neobanks? I believe there are several (interrelated) directions that still need further exploration: (1) achieving equal levels of privacy and compliance, (2) real-world composability, (3) leveraging permissionless advantages, (4) localization and globalization, (5) non-fully collateralized loans and consumer credit.

1 - Achieving Equal Levels of Privacy and Compliance

Stablecoins and cryptocurrency tracks have many advantages over traditional tracks, especially in terms of speed and usability. However, for crypto neobanks to compete directly with fintech pioneers and existing banking tracks, they must achieve functional parity in the critical dimensions of privacy and compliance.

While privacy may not seem like a primary concern for retail consumers, and stablecoins have reached considerable scale without privacy guarantees, privacy becomes crucial as more enterprise applications—such as payroll management, supply chain financing, and international settlements—migrate to on-chain tracks. This is because public transactions in B2B transfers can likely leak trade secrets and other sensitive information. I believe this is part of the reason many newly launched stablecoin chains emphasize privacy protection in their development roadmaps.

On the other hand, crypto neobanks need to consider how to bring their platforms to the same level of compliance as their predecessors. This includes gradually building a global regulatory moat and licensing system, assuring consumers and merchants that crypto solutions are as compliant as traditional solutions—perhaps achievable through innovative technologies like zero-knowledge proofs. Only by addressing the dual challenges of enterprise-level privacy and compliance can crypto neobanks truly surpass their fintech predecessors and achieve scalable growth.

2 - Real-World Composability

Composability achieved through universal standards, frameworks, and smart contracts is often regarded as a significant advantage of the cryptocurrency track. However, this composability is often limited to other components within the cryptocurrency domain: connections with other decentralized finance primitives, yield protocols, and (primarily EVM-based) blockchains. The real challenge of composability lies in how to connect these blockchain standards with traditional real-world standards from different eras: for example, international banking systems like SWIFT, merchant POS systems and standards like ISO 20022, and local funding tracks like ACH or Pix. With the growing adoption of crypto cards and the increasing application of stablecoins in international payments, this field seems to be actively developing in this direction.

Moreover, many crypto card products today are typically aimed at crypto-native users, serving as exit channels for "crypto whales." However, the real challenge for crypto neobanks lies in how to expand their user base beyond crypto-native users and attract entirely new user segments to these tracks by providing real-world composability and fundamentally innovative primitives. Crypto neobanks that can solve these composability issues will have a better user experience for deposits and withdrawals, thereby attracting user traffic more effectively.

3 - Leveraging Permissionless Characteristics

Fundamentally, crypto neobanks aim to reshape a more efficient monetary standard—a currency standard designed for immediacy, global liquidity, infinite programmability, and free from bottlenecks imposed by any single entity or government. Currently, anyone with a crypto wallet can trade on Hyperliquid, send USDC transfers, or earn yields from the EtherFi vault without intervention from fiat currency authorities. Crypto neobanks should fully leverage their permissionless nature to accelerate the flow of funds, creating a more efficient system.

With the cryptocurrency track, global capital will flow at internet speed, coordinated by incentive mechanisms and game theory rather than statutory decrees. The next generation of neobanks will utilize the permissionless characteristics of blockchain systems to rapidly integrate new primitives such as perpetual contracts, prediction markets, staking, and token issuance platforms with existing financial tracks.

Additionally, in economies with high stablecoin adoption, there is an opportunity to build a permissionless card network similar to Visa or Mastercard. Such a system could operate in reverse to existing crypto card processes. Settlements would default to being completed on-chain through crypto-native acquiring institutions, rather than using fiat acquiring institutions and withdrawing stablecoins at the point of sale. To maintain compatibility with traditional payment methods (such as fiat credit cards), these systems would convert fiat payment deposits into stablecoins.

Of course, the permissionless characteristics are not limited to human users—they may also give rise to an entirely new economy of intelligent agents. For AI agents, obtaining a crypto wallet is far easier than acquiring a bank account; with stablecoins, AI agents can create on-chain transactions either through user-signed authorizations or pre-approved strategies. I have written extensively about emerging intelligent agent payment standards, such as Coinbase's x402, and how they can open up a new model of e-commerce. Permissionless neobanks are foundational to achieving this goal and serve as the interface for the human-machine interaction economy—AI agents can become autonomous wealth managers, shopping assistants, helping you obtain credit lines, and more.

4 - Localization and Globalization

Crypto neobanks also face a strategic choice between depth and breadth. Some neobanks may emulate the Nubank model, dominating a single region through deep localization, cultural fit, and regulatory expertise before expanding outward—such as through various remittance channels (e.g., US/EU/UAE and India/Latin America/Southeast Asia) and supply chains (e.g., EU/US/Latin America with China/Hong Kong). Other neobanks may adopt a "global-first" model, launching permissionless products globally and doubling down in regions where network effects emerge fastest. Both paths are viable: the former wins through local trust and distribution channels, while the latter relies on scale and composability. Stablecoins can serve as the high-speed highway for international payments, but crypto neobanks still need "local exits," requiring deep integration with regional payment systems like Pix, UPI, Alipay, and VietQR to ensure local availability and merchant acceptance.

Notably, crypto-first neobanks have a unique opportunity to "provide banking services for the unbanked," offering capital channels (priced in dollars and cryptocurrencies) in regions with inadequate financial infrastructure or weak local currencies, just as Argentina's hyperinflation has accelerated the adoption of cryptocurrency in the country. Therefore, a future scenario may emerge where regional "super apps" coexist with borderless, globally composable neobanks, each leveraging the underlying permissionless matrix in different ways.

5 - Non-Fully Collateralized Loans and Consumer Credit

Finally, non-fully collateralized loans and consumer credit may be the "holy grail" for crypto neobanks. This integrates many of the challenges mentioned above. First, in terms of compliance/KYC, non-fully collateralized loans require robust identity verification and anti-witch attack systems, which differ from existing over-collateralized lending platforms (such as Aave, Morpho, MakerDAO). This strong identity mechanism could utilize Worldcoin-style biometric verification or be achieved through zero-knowledge proof-based methods, such as DECO. Secondly, it requires a protocol to connect off-chain credit profiles with on-chain credit profiles (for example, through 3Jane). Additionally, on-chain defaults can affect off-chain records. Credit models and credit statuses may vary by region and locality, and need to be compatible with traditional systems, further complicating this challenge. These difficulties may explain why non-fully collateralized lending in decentralized finance is currently primarily concentrated in institutional private credit (such as Maple Finance, Goldfinch) rather than consumer credit, despite the latter being much larger in scale in traditional finance.

Perhaps part of the answer lies in unique mechanism designs. For example, flash loans are an excellent case, representing a blockchain-native uncollateralized (albeit short-term) loan. Similarly, building secured revolving credit lines using stablecoins and yield-bearing collateral (LST/LRT) presents significant opportunities, enabling real-time loan-to-value management, automatic liquidation buffers, and automatic repayment of staking yields. These smarter collateral management techniques are expected to lower collateral requirements for on-chain lending. In fact, if successful, on-chain non-fully collateralized lending and credit could accelerate on-chain capital circulation, providing strong reasons for the unbanked to utilize on-chain services and significantly promoting the development of the on-chain economy—just as non-fully collateralized lending in the real world drives economic growth.

Conclusion

Just as the rise of fintech neobanks a decade ago aimed to reshape how funds are stored, consumed, appreciated, and lent in the digital age, the emergence of crypto neobanks today seeks to do the same. However, unlike fintech neobanks that primarily focus on front-end innovations (partnering with FDIC banks to provide backend services and create intuitive mobile front ends), the goal of crypto neobanks is to upgrade the bank's backend—using stablecoins and public blockchains to build a global, composable, censorship-resistant remittance method. In this way, crypto neobank applications are not just an interface but a potential gateway to a new programmable financial system.

However, this is just the beginning of the journey. Building a full-stack "crypto neobank" is far more than just launching a crypto card or a simple wallet protocol with a user interface. Like fintech neobanks, crypto neobanks need to consider who their target audience is—whether "providing banking services for the unbanked" or offering seamless stablecoin QR payments for merchants in emerging economies—and rapidly expand their product offerings. While each banking domain—storage, consumption, appreciation, and lending—has its own monetization models and trade-offs, revenue ultimately stems from leveraging the "flow of value." From this perspective, the greatest opportunity for crypto neobanks may lie in areas with fast capital turnover—lending—before extending down the "velocity of money pyramid" into consumption and storage.

As neobanks continue to tackle challenges related to privacy and compliance, real-world composability, leveraging permissionless characteristics, addressing regional disparities, and providing non-fully collateralized consumer credit, they are poised to evolve from niche portals for digital assets into the default operating system for the global economy. Just as the first wave of neobanks transformed the banking interface through mobile technology, the next wave of neobanks is expected to reshape the fundamental logic of money itself through cryptocurrency.