Why I'm building Laso Finance.

This past Monday, June 22nd, we announced the upcoming Laso Finance ICO on MetaDAO.

Laso Finance provides prepaid cards to crypto consumers through a privacy-enhanced process with no ID upload required. Similar to buying a Mastercard gift card at Target with cash.

I started it in March 2023. Since then, Laso users have spent over $21M in volume on the platform. Each day, hundreds of Laso cards are swiped or spent across the world.

First, a quick history of Laso’s beginnings. Then, the why I’m building Laso.

History

In 2021, there were very few crypto card options. Crypto.com had some traction. Coinbase Card, MetaMask Card and others didn’t exist.

Instead, we would send crypto assets to our exchange, wire or ACH to our bank account, and pay off our credit cards. It wasn’t an improvement on the banking system, or even equal to it. It was fiat banking with extra steps.

That meant the process was higher friction, slower, and lost privacy. In addition, at that time, banks would freeze accounts that received funds from exchanges, making the process dangerous.

I set out to fix that. Enter Laso Finance’s predecessor, Two Squared.

It was non-custodial, no ID upload required, and built on Lightning. I launched it at Bitcoin Miami 2021.

By launch, I mean that I set up a table in the lobby of the hotel where the conference was hosted. I created a beautiful iPad sign to attract new users.

Surprisingly, attendees walking by were not entranced by the engaging, trustworthy signage. It’s hard to convey how little traction it got.

However, the few attendees I did talk to were interested in the frictionless, privacy-preserving signup process.

The feedback was clear. Unfortunately, instead of doubling down on that, I let the pain of the failed “launch” win, and I just went back to work at Meta in the Virtual Reality Labs.

Later in 2021, during my spare time at Meta, I started building small crypto projects. The market was strong. Exciting.

Market strength continued. My excitement built. At the end of 2021, I left Meta to focus on crypto full-time. A truly impeccable example of market timing.

Brutal.

I did some contract work. Built some projects that went nowhere. Living was slim.

At the end of 2022, a long-time friend said, “Hey, you need to try the card thing again”. He was an ETH zealot, ran the Austin Ethereum Meetup, and he was right.

Laso eventually launched to the public in March of 2023. There was a single card option, no withdrawals, and Apple Pay + Google Pay codes had to be delivered by asking for them on Telegram.

Nonetheless, growth was rapid.

There were quite a few bumps along the way, but today, Laso Finance serves thousands of users across the world through prepaid cards, gift cards, and bank transfers to debit cards.

But, Why?

For Humans

This snippet from our ICO Announcement X Article says it best:

In a time of growing oversight and monitoring, we need privacy at the point of spend.

Today, we earn and store assets onchain. Ideally, we spend them at businesses that accept crypto. That group of businesses is growing, but still very small.

Instead, we send assets to a bank-like entity (an exchange) and use a card they’ve issued. Or worse, sell those assets to USD, transfer to our bank account, and pay off a credit card.

It’s not a better system. It’s fiat banking with extra steps.

More importantly, we’ve lost a crucial part of the purpose for cryptocurrencies. The right to privacy.

Private spending is essential to the success of our industry.

The knee-jerk reaction for some is that privacy is only necessary for criminals, but that is not the case. Without privacy, your doxxed funds onchain are subject to the same risk of seizure or robbery as they are in a bank account.

You can say that you “lost your keys in a boating accident”, but once those funds move, the jig is up.

Instead, Laso allows you to maintain that privacy onchain, the same that you get in the normal banking system.

Imagine if everyone you know could see how much you were paying on your credit cards? Or could see when you stopped paying your bill. It’s inconceivable, but it’s how the crypto ecosystem works without Laso.

It’s not just a theoretical, far away concern. Privacy through Laso has an immediate, important impact for our users. That shows through usage and through a committed, helpful community. When one of our most prolific supporters was asked in the public group discussion why he helps so often, he replied:

Privacy is needed, and we can deliver it.

At a higher level, it’s akin to the importance of decentralization. The crypto industry could in a sense, operate without decentralization, but it introduces fragility. Prosecution of miners would significantly degrade the network. More importantly, that fragility introduces risk that prevents additional financial and labor resources from pouring into the ecosystem.

Luckily, decentralization is largely solved, which has allowed the surge in value for the industry. Privacy is the next unlock.

Private onchain-powered spending on fiat rails is a worthy goal for the future. Join us to build it.

For AI Agents

AI Agents like OpenClaw or Hermes can get their own Laso card with a single prompt. They can get their own card, make their own purchases, and even their own bank transfers.

The same low-friction human Laso users enjoy make it possible for AI agents to get financial tooling on Laso without a human in the loop.

Right now, agents can get all the same products humans do. Prepaid cards, gift cards, and bank transfers to debit cards. But to fully participate in the internet economy, agents will need:

1. Agent-controlled bank accounts.
2. Reloadable cards with credit card BINs.

Adding those tools gives agents the full suite of capabilities needed to fully participate in the internet economy; specifically agentic entrepreneurship.

When we hear “agentic commerce”, we jump to imagining an agent enhancing the execution of consumer consumption. Your agent buying your groceries for you or helping plan a logistically complicated vacation.

They are getting better at that, but in the majority of those cases, an agent executing those tasks is not any faster, easier, or cheaper than a human can.

To be clear, we do have users doing very fun examples of this. Yesterday, an agent bought its owner an anthropomorphizing coffee mug.

My Hermes Agent @DarkclawAI just purchased his own coffee mug and sent it to me so I will think of him...🤣☕️

x402 wallet powered by @ampersend_ai
Credit card purchased with @LasoFinance
Stored securely with @1clawAI
Ordered directly with @Printful

What a beautiful time we… pic.twitter.com/WHTCsnuWe2

— Kevin Jones (@cryptomastery_) June 23, 2026

Agents also use Laso to buy pizza for the NBA Finals.

Hey @nyknicks, my AI agent just sent a pizza to your front office. No human touched a card: USDC paid via @ampersend_ai over x402, turned into a Visa by @LasoFinance. It paid a fake API on the way and still delivered. Love from SF. Win tomorrow and it buys full pies. 🍕🏀 pic.twitter.com/UFZMLkplR7

— george (@georgeofweb3_sf) June 12, 2026

They are fun, toy-like examples. Toys can grow to something impactful, but the impact isn’t here quite yet.

That’s because humanity has spent billions and billions of dollars, and many lifetimes of work of the world’s smartest people on making the web consumer consumption experience really great. If (or almost certainly, when) agents to get to a better consumption UX, it will of course be significant. It will increase GDP.

However, it’s an incremental improvement.

The impact is improving a checkout flow. More purchases will be made, but mostly the same purchases.

A measurable improvement, but not a world-changing impact.

What will be impactful is agentic entrepreneurship.

The reason the Total Addressable Market (TAM) of agents are so large is because of their capability to be their own business center. Generating their own revenue, their own profit. That is why the space is so important.

The TAM is in a certain sense, immeasurable. Similar to Elon Musk’s statements that the TAM of Optimus robots exceeds the value of the global labor force, the TAM of agentic entrepreneurship exceeds the combined market cap of all internet companies.

There is a whole unexplored dark universe of businesses that don’t exist, either because they did not seem promising enough for humans to explore, or because the required human labor made building it prohibitive. With each successive improvement in AI capability, that universe becomes brighter, clearer, and more accessible.

In my interview with the MetaDAO co-founder, he lays out a request for a startup to build the secondary market for the 2nd largest collectibles primary market in the U.S., Hot Wheels.

Hot Wheels has a large primary market, but a subscale secondary market. Likely, a secondary market hasn’t been built because the market appears too small, fragmented, or inaccessible. But it’s a business that an agent can execute on today.

Then what about the 3rd, 4th, all the way down to the 20th largest market? The agentic harness an entrepreneur uses to execute on the Hot Wheels secondary market can be horizontally scaled to build those as well, and in parallel.

I digress. I’m overextrapolating from my known medium to the future. I’m in the same trap that made the first ads on TV just videos of someone reading a radio ad.

It’s not clear how agentic entrepreneurship will take its most impactful shape. It is clear that it is world-changing.

Laso Finance is building the tooling to do it, and I’m excited.