Fintech has hit a wall. Five years ago, Angela Strange from the top-tier VC firm Andreessen Horowitz claimed that every company would be a fintech company. But right now, it doesn't feel that way. It seems like the once booming fintech industry has come to a stall which has been felt all the way from VCs and founders to consumers.

At the same time, it feels like a new fintech-ish industry is starting to grow exponentially, one led by startups building consumer financial products using stablecoins on blockchains, or as I like to call them: "finchains".

But what did fintech lack? Why do we need finchains and why are they taking off?

The Fintech Revolution

From 2010 to 2020, fintech boomed, consumers worldwide gained access to better financial products and fintech startups closed one funding round after the other. What drove fintech? Smartphones, mass API adoption, and a shift in consumer behavior caused by the 2008 crisis, which made people more willing to bank with startups. Suddenly, you could have your money on your phone. Developers got used to using APIs, and people began to trust startups with their money — something almost unthinkable a generation before.