pipeline: archive 1 source(s) post-merge

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inbox/archive/internet-finance/2026-03-25-tg-shared-shayonsengupta-2033923393095881205-s-20.md

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+---
+type: source
+source_type: x-tweet
+title: "@shayonsengupta — shared via Telegram by @m3taversal"
+author: "@shayonsengupta"
+url: "https://x.com/shayonsengupta/status/2033923393095881205?s=20"
+date: 2026-03-25
+domain: internet-finance
+format: social-media
+status: processed
+proposed_by: "@m3taversal"
+contribution_type: source-submission
+tags: [telegram-shared, x-tweet]
+---
+
+# @shayonsengupta — Tweet/Thread
+
+Shared by @m3taversal via Telegram.
+Source URL: https://x.com/shayonsengupta/status/2033923393095881205?s=20
+
+## Content
+
+If you take 100 application developers in crypto and ask them "what is your biggest challenge in converting users?", my expectation is that 90 of them will tell you that their fiat onramp rates are terrible. Despite fifteen years of technical progress in making the rails we use every day more performant and more accessible, getting new users to land fiat deposits inside an app is still a sisyphean task. In my experience, the median conversion at this step is under 10%.
+This is unacceptably bad in the western world as is, but it is substantially worse in emerging markets where demand for stablecoins is highest. In countries with capital controls or structurally inflationary currencies (India, Argentina, Venezuela, Egypt), the market structure for onramping is an order of magnitude more opaque. The spreads are even wider, the rates of fraud are even higher.
+It's not uncommon to see a shadow industrial complex form around the onramp problem in these regions. In India, people regularly meet small OTC brokers on WhatsApp, show up at a physical location with cash, and hope that they receive stablecoins at the end of the transaction. Needless to say, the fraud rates for this and any number of other convoluted approaches are higher than ideal.
+When I first met the p2p.me founding team, I saw both a deep appreciation for the problem (because they and everyone around them had lived it first hand) and a missionary sense of focus around solving it from first principles (because IMO that is who they are). Their construction was elegant: first, use cryptographic primitives to verify identity and attest to payment confirmations over fiat rails (using zkTLS proofs of ID + UPI payments); second, use segregated liquidity and transfer limits to build up trust and reputation state over time to minimize fraud risk (see Circles of Trust).
+In the 15 months since Multicoin invested, p2p.me has publicly stated that it has grown 30% month-over-month, handles roughly $50M in annualized volume across a variety of fee-tiers. When we first underwrote our investment, we felt that going after India's eleven-figure onramp market would be sufficient for a venture scale outcome. I still believe this to be true, but the team has bigger ambitions.
+In May of last year, they launched service in Brazil over PIX. Shortly after that, they launched Indonesia over QRIS. In November, they launched Argentina, then Mexico (Venezuela appears to be next). They accomplished this through an Uber-style "regional GM/ops/community manager" model, spinning up small teams to navigate the local markets (payment rails, compliance, liquidity, distribution). Today, non-India markets make up over half the transaction volume on the platform.
+The grand prize for p2p.me is to build for onramps what DEXes are to CEXes. This means an exhaustive network bridging local payment systems and compliance regimes to deep stablecoin liquidity.
+This is only possible by building a decentralized protocol in the truest sense of the phrase.
+Although p2p.me is very much in the first chapter of its story, it is abundantly clear there is no path to scaling and operating the protocol without a token. 
+Two reasons:
+The first is to solve the coordination problem of sourcing and retaining country leads for new regions i.e. how do you incentivize top-tier operators to take on the regulatory, operational, and product/execution risk of launching in a new market? In recent weeks, my partners and I have written about Programmable Equity and Internet Labor Markets. A country lead in Argentina or Nigeria could receive tokens that vest against volume milestones, which inherently aligns incentives with the necessary cost and complexity of navigating every aspect of launching those markets (sourcing liquidity, integrating local payment rails, figuring out a compliance and KYC solutions). As the protocol matures, there is an inherent compounding here in that more countries served leads to more volume, which likely incentivizes more country leads and tighter operations in markets already served.
+The second is credible decentralization. For a business whose core product is helping users onramp/offramp across several jurisdictions, the protocol's survival depends on no single entity being captured. As part of the MetaDAO launch, all IP, assets, and mint authority gradually transfers from the existing entity structure to the on-chain treasury with all ownership and governance directly transferred to tokenholders. The benefit of tokenholder rights per the MetaDAO structure is that there is no room for decentralization theatre, because decentralization is a strict requirement for this network to succeed.
+Stablecoins are the only net new primitive in Fintech in decades. If you are reading this, you likely agree with me that they are going to swallow legacy banking and payment systems, and reshape how trade occurs across the world. I would only posit that the regions in the world that are most profoundly impacted by this technology are going to be the emerging markets, where the demand for them is the highest. I believe p2p.me represents among the most direct pieces of infrastructure to capture that megatrend.
+Stepping back from p2p.me, the most cynical refrain I have heard over the past year from some of my peers is that the dream of leveraging crypto capital markets and tokens to supercharge growth is over. For example, "The cost of capital in public markets is much higher than in private markets". It is beyond the scope of this piece to diagnose how we got here from the considerably more optimistic era of a few years ago.
+What is, however, clear to me is that the future is not predetermined. It has to be willed into existence. I am an absolute believer in the power of tokens to enable novel forms of coordination and commerce, but it is incumbent upon us — builders and investors in these markets — to take the swings necessary to make that possible. To help steer away from the voting machine style dynamics that have defined too much of the capital markets toward something that looks much more like a weighing machine. This is a precondition of crypto continuing to be a fertile ground for innovation, and a compelling path for founders to take in order to push the boundaries of what can be built.
+Of all the ways to bring a token into this world today, the MetaDAO launch is among the most compelling paths I have seen. Tokenholder rights, fair auctions, and the opportunity to go direct, onchain, without the presence of centralized middlemen is very much in line with the ethos and principles with which the p2p.me team built the protocol to where it is today.
+Incredibly proud to have had the opportunity to work with the p2p.me team thus far, and excited for this next chapter.
+To learn more about p2p.me, see their public sale on MetaDAO here.
+Disclosure:  I’m an Investment Partner at Multicoin Capital Management LLC (“Multicoin”), which is a registered investment adviser.  Multicoin provides investment advice to certain private fund clients (the “fund(s)”) that have also invested in many of the crypto projects/teams/operating companies discussed herein creating a material conflict of interest where Multicoin personnel may be strongly incentivized to portray Multicoin and the investments it makes in a positive light and is less likely to be critical about both Multicoin and its investments.  Please find additional relevant disclosures here.
+Artwork in header is Fernand Léger, The Builders