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The Ribbit Rebel Grid Ribbit Capital recently published a video series for the first time ever on their re-branded X account. It shows how a bunch of Rebels are tokenizing money, knowledge and power for machines to read, exchange and act on shared rails. What is this? Why do we need this? When did this start? << Fast-forward back << | 20 June 2024 | At the Endeavor Investor Meeting in San Francisco California, Allen Taylor and Micky Malka were talking about the future of fintech - and why money without context doesn't work: "Fintech, as we’ve known it for the past decade, is dead. The conditions that enabled its initial success - like building new apps or leveraging unstructured data - are no longer competitive advantages. The last decade was about giving people access to money. The next decade is about contextual money - tailoring financial services to individual needs using data, AI, and personalized interfaces. It’s an era of rebuilding infrastructure to support this shift." endeavor.org/stories/the-fut… | 01 August 2024 | Morpho announced that it secured $50M in Funding, led by Ribbit Capital. “We need to bridge the gap for DeFi and make the actual integration into the fintech world, and Ribbit was an obvious partner for that. Already there are incredible synergies in what we could achieve together for potential integrations in the real world, and not just like crypto leverage use case, which is, frankly, most of the use case of DeFi lending right now.” Paul Frambot, Co-Founder coindesk.com/business/2024/0… "As more assets are tokenized, one of the big beneficiaries will be DeFi ecosystems that enable token swapping, lending, borrowing, insurance, and more. Morpho gives people and agents safe ways to navigate the wild world of programmable money." Token Letter | 10 December 2024 | Micky was asked to describe his concept about the global digital grid in a podcast hosted by Patrick O'Shaughnessy – 'Building Ribbit': “The grid is our version of the Matrix - of that interconnectivity of different aspects that make us who we are and how we transact and live in this world. It means that knowledge, money and power are interconnected in ways that allows you to create use cases that we've never seen. AI agents are going to need access to money. AI agents are going to need access to the crypto rails to do that." Patrick also asks Micky where his personal dreams come from: "This concept of better money to improve people's lives. It means it's easier to access, it's easier to save, it's easier to get a loan, it's easier to do aspects with it that you couldn't do before, so you can build your vision and your life. So the metrics I care the most at Ribbit is the number of people that we touch every year in trying to make their lives better. Right now it is 900 million but I would like that number to be a couple of billions." podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas… | 21 January 2025 | TON becomes the exclusive blockchain for Telegram to support its global user base - which significantly exceeds 1 billion monthly active users - by providing the foundational infrastructure for essential financial applications. blog.ton.org/ton-telegram-ex… | 20 March 2025 | TON Foundation discloses leading VCs invest over $400M in Toncoin with participation from Ribbit Capital. "Ribbit partners with exceptional teams tackling and solving the world’s biggest problems. TON and Telegram exemplify this, working together to expand financial access globally by coupling the best technology with a seamless consumer experience.” Micky Malka blog.ton.org/ton-foundation-… Subsequently Ribbit made three further investments into the TON ecosystem in 2025. teapaw.org/tibbiracer/status/1952… | 04 April 2025 | Ribbit Capital is leading the Series A for SafetyKit. safetykit.com/news/safetykit… "SafetyKit is automating risk detection and policy enforcement for marketplaces and networks through a Vertical Token System that trains, orchestrates, and enables compliance agents." Token Letter | 30 April 2025 | Persona raises $200M co-led by Ribbit Capital to build the verified identity layer for an agentic AI world. prnewswire.com/news-releases… "Identity has become the foundation of every digital interaction, and in the age of AI, we believe solving identity will be more pivotal than ever. We've long admired Persona's ambition to build a verified identity platform and have been impressed by the diversity of industries, use cases, and geographies of their customers. Their rapid growth and adoption by leaders like OpenAI, LinkedIn, Etsy, Twilio, and Block are clear validation that they're solving real problems at scale." Nick Shalek, Partner at Ribbit Capital "Persona’s Reusable Personas (RPs) product helps users store identity tokens across devices and services; when an agent needs to make sure an RP user is a real or specific human, Persona will have an unfair advantage in providing that token." Token Letter | 23 June 2025 | Just one year after emerging from stealth, Decagon has raised a $131M series C at a $1.5B with new investors including Ribbit Capital. decagon.ai/resources/series-… “Customer agents will become the collectors and curators of the most important data in the enterprise. Businesses will live or die based on how well they can implement personalization. Platforms like Decagon are offering the infrastructure enable this.” Token Letter "Today, it's support. Tomorrow, every customer will have an agent that knows their preferences by heart and can get help seamlessly 24/7." Jesse Zhang, Co-founder teapaw.org/DecagonAI/status/19883… | 10 September 2025 | PsiQuantum raises $1 Billion to build fault-tolerant Quantum Computers and announces collaboration with NVIDIA. New investors include Ribbit Capital. quantumcomputingreport.com/p… | 23 October 2025 | Crusoe raises $1.375 billion to power the future of AI infrastructure. New investors include Ribbit Capital. crusoe.ai/resources/newsroom… "We consider founders from Crusoe and PsiQuantum as the leaders in AI data center orchestration and quantum computing, respectively. Internally, we have been calling this broader set of companies “Real World Token Factories” – businesses that leverage and are levered to the growth of digital intelligence, but where the complexity of coordinating atoms and bits creates real moats." Token Letter | 30 October 2025 | Jessi Brooks from Ribbit Capital published the paper 'Trust Without Intermediaries: A Programmable Risk Management Framework for the Future'. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.… "As traditional and decentralized financial markets converge, the need for a trust architecture that preserves openness while ensuring security is paramount.  This paper introduces a framework for programmable risk management that embeds security, oversight, and compliance directly into different parts of decentralized finance protocols." The paper is not only showing why risk management matters, but how it can be embedded natively in tokens, wallets, and smart contracts. It also highlights the importance of identity without intermediaries and AI Agent safeguards to address agentic trading risks. It's also worth to take note that SafetyKit is directly referenced in the paper while Sigal Mandelker, who was reviewing the paper and providing valuable input, is also sitting in their advisory board. teapaw.org/tibbiracer/status/1957… The conclusion - from theory to practice: "The next phase must focus on implementation: pilot programs, shared standards, and regulatory engagement. Builders, institutions, and policymakers should collaborate to design risk-based, privacy-preserving standards for identity, data exchange, and on-chain scoring that preserve decentralization and neutrality. " | 16 December 2025 | Token factories... explained by some of the rebels shipping them. "Together, they're building the foundation of our tokenized future, one where energy powers intelligence, data becomes context, value flows freely and identity endures to protect both humans and agents. To make that tokenized future a reality, each of these companies provides an essential piece of that economy." Now let's see how we can interpret and structure these essential pieces. The Open Platform -> Distribution "Blockchain is just a technology that helps us tokenize information, identity and digital assets. Telegram is that sort of rails to distribute that technology. We bring ownership back in the form of tokens, so I think it's very important to understand how tokens are connected with people." Decagon -> AI Agents "We are the conversational Frontend for large brands. As soon as we start working with our customers, it only matters how quickly and how efficiently can you download all their context into the AI agent." Morpho -> Money "We are leveraging all the tokens to prove the trustworthiness of individuals to provide them an interest rate at which they will be able to borrow money tokens. In a world where everything is tokenized, the more tokens we have, the more we can fluidify trust." Persona -> Identity "Our goal is to make sure that that link between the agent and the people behind it is stronger than ever. Your identity is the root token for every other token out there. Our long-term vision was that there could be this kind of universal identity network for any sort of use case out there." SafetyKit -> Trust "As SafetyKit becomes a larger token factory, it can build a network of essentially every pair of businesses that transact with each other. SafetyKit in 10 years will sit underneath essentially every commercial transaction and provide that trust layer for every single node in the network." PsiQuantum -> Knowledge "The Quantum Computer is the fountain of knowledge, spitting out a categorically different kind of token that you can't get out through any other mechanism." Crusoe -> Power "Our role is to make intelligence more accessible. This ranges from actually building the infrastructure to creating further layers of abstraction that turn that infrastructure into something useful, something of value, a token, a unit of intelligence. In 10 years, I imagine Crusoe being the operating system for the intelligent economy." | How can the users benefit from the tokenized grid? | > Every user/business is gaining access to Decagon's enterprise-grade AI agents through Telegram > Every AI agent can act on behalf of a user through Persona identity tokens (KYA) > Every AI agent is getting access to better money through Morpho > Every AI agent is getting access to expertise knowledge through PsiQuantum computers > Every transaction is protected through SafetyKit agents > Every agentic interaction is powered by Crusoe's AI factory | How can the token factories benefit from the grid? | > The Open Platform can attract more users and businesses by offering better personalization > Decagon can gain access to more users while optimizing their AI models > Morpho can gain more market share while optimizing interest rates > Persona can increase their business through a universal identity-network > SafetyKit can become a larger token factory by securing and managing more transactions > PsiQuantum can accumulate more money and power to provide more expertise > Crusoe can increase their business by enhancing AI capabilities and making intelligence more accessible | How can the grid grow? | By connecting themself to the tokenized grid, Rebels are able to grow their business while improving their own capabilities rather than operating in silos. Instead of looking at each token factory as an irreplaceable building block for the grid I rather prefer to think of it as a "minimum viable grid" within a layered architecture. Recalling the paper "Trust without intermediaries", a standardized framework would allow each layer to be complemented by even more participants. Below you can see a selection of potential candidates based on Ribbit Rebels and other competitors: Distribution (Application) Layer > Financial Apps: NuBank, Coinbase, Robinhood, Revolut, OnePay, Klarna, PayPal > Social Apps: WhatsApp, TikTok, WeChat, X > Commerce Apps: Amazon, Flipkart, Walmart > Tech Platforms: Google, Microsoft, Apple, OpenAI AI (Agent) Layer > Web3: Base, Virtuals Protocol, FetchAI, Bittensor > Payroll/workforce/ERP: Tako, Deel, Campfire > Accounting: Multiplier Holdings > Wealth management: Nevis > Insurance: Justos > Mathematical superintelligence: Harmonic > Voice agents: Sesame AI > Robotics: OpenMind > Coding agents: Devin, Cursor > Support agents: Salient, Scale, Gretel > Self-driving cars: Waymo > Mortgage lender: Tomo Money (DeFi) Layer > Blockchains: Bitcoin, Ethereum (+Base), Tempo, Solana > Cross-chain Bridges: Wormhole, LayerZero > Stablecoin Infrastructure: Crossmint, Bridge, M0 > DEX: Lighter, Hyperliquid, Uniswap > Bitcoin ZK rollup: Alpen Labs > Liquid Staking/MEV: Jito Identity Layer > Agent companies: Cognition, Cursor, Replit, OpenAI > Human Identity Providers: IDme, CLEAR, Plaid > Security Infrastructure: Evervault, Footprint, Privy > HRIS Platforms: Workday, Rippling, Deel > IAM Leaders: Okta, CyberArk, Microsoft Entra Trust Layer > Blockchain Security: Kroll, Blockaid, Chainalysis > Web3 Compliance: Bluprynt Power (Physical) Layer > Renewable Energy Supplier: FUSE Energy > Residential battery leasing: Base Power The invisible Layer "To make autonomous agents real counterparties, we will need systems for agent governance, identity, and reputation. Autonomy comes with obvious risks, so it will be critical to understand what agents can and are allowed to do, as well as how that authority is managed. Reputation will also be key. Agents will (like people) not act in perfectly deterministic ways, so we’ll need objective metrics to track like task success rates, fulfillment histories, or peer endorsements. And provenance will matter – like who trained the agent, who signed its permissions, and what data it was built on – all of which can be cryptographically-attested. Building these systems may turn out to be one of the most important applications of blockchains; smart contracts give us transparent ways to build tamper-proof reputation signals and encode agents’ scope, permissions, provenance, and upgrade logic (i.e. who can modify them). The importance of all this becomes abundantly clear when you think about physical robots. As robots become more capable – and we grant them additional autonomy to learn and execute more tasks – transparency in their programming and governance will be critical to customers, businesses, and governments. Nobody should want an unpredictable robot!" Token Letter "It’s going to be invisible for the user, it's infrastructure, it’s not consumer facing – yet. But you will see it in ways that it may look to you as personalization." youtube.com/watch?v=pdFfT8dX… "One lesser-known agent has taken a particular interest in fintech and frogs (make of that what you will)."