In this week’s issue:

• Touch Grass: DeFi-ing Gravity (nope, your money doesn’t need business hours)

• Hodl Me Tender: 🔥 Web3, Crypto + AI Jobs of the Week

Hodl Me Tender: 🔥 Web3 + AI Jobs of the Week

Looking for your next move in (or into) web3, crypto, or AI? Here are some fire openings for this week, all remote, all posted in the past four days:

• Uniswap Foundation needs a Senior Analytics Engineer 🔥

• They (Uniswap FDN) are also looking for a Senior Data Analst 🔥

• TRM Labs needs a Senior Analytics Engineer as well

• Berachain needs someone to be their Head of Product

• Tether is looking for a AI Research Engineer 🔥💰

• Figment is on the hunt for a Director of Product Marketing 🔥💰

• Risk Labs wants to find a Smart Contract Engineer

• Polygon Labs needs a Treasury Manager —is it you?

• Glide is looking for a Data Analyst 🔥

• Want to be the Senior Social Media Manager at Apollo.io? Get it.

Want to see your company's job listed here? Reply to this email and lmk.

Before we begin: DeFi = Decentralized Finance

Which translates to: DeFi is basically all the financial services you need, but faster, more transparent, and without having to ask anyone's permission to use (or receive) your own money.

The traditional finance speed trap (and other fun features)

As someone who runs a small business, let me paint you a picture of traditional finance (TradFi) in 2025:

A client pays an invoice on Monday. The payment "processes" for 3-5 business days (not including weekends or holidays, obvs, because money apparently needs to rest).

During this time, your money exists in some kind of banking purgatory where it's not in your account but also not really anywhere else you can access it. When it finally lands, there’s a delay in “funds availability” until it actually lands. Now, because I use a business banking account to receive all of my invoice payments, I then have to transfer the money to my personal checking account. Which means more days and more time.

And if someone pays me by check? Even though I request ACH transfer? Jesus h. christ the waiting game—which includes waiting for the actual check to arrive in the mail—is in-sane.

On the other end of the stick, I can send money on Base to someone in Japan and they'll have it in seconds. For about $0.10. On a Sunday. At 3am.

The speed difference isn't just annoying—it's economically limiting. When you're waiting days for payments to clear, you're essentially giving banks free loans of your money while they earn interest on the float.

Literally, fuck that.

What you actually own vs what you think you own

Here's something wild: apparently when you deposit money into a bank, you don't technically own that money anymore. You own a debt instrument—a promise that the bank will give you money when you ask for it. Your bank can freeze your account, limit your withdrawals, or decide your transactions are "suspicious" and hold everything up. Kinda like LinkedIn and other centralized platforms.

In DeFi, you hold your assets in your own wallet with your own private keys. No one can freeze them, no one can deny your transactions, and no one can decide you're not allowed to access your own money. It’s true ownership, not just the illusion of ownership.

The permission-asking problem

I’ve always been an “act first, ask for permission—or forgiveness—later” kinda gal. Traditional finance is built on asking permission. Want to send money internationally? Please fill out forms explaining why. Want to invest in certain assets? Sorry, you're not "accredited." Want to earn meaningful interest on your savings? Sorry, you don't have enough money to matter.

DeFi operates on a permissionless basis. The protocol doesn't care who you are, where you live, or how much money you have. If you can provide collateral, you can get a loan. If you have tokens, you can trade them. If you want to earn yield, you can provide liquidity.

The DeFi toolkit (or finance that actually works for you)

1. Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) - Trading at internet speed

Uniswap, SushiSwap, and similar platforms let you trade tokens instantly, 24/7, without creating accounts or waiting for approvals.

The magic: Automated market makers replace traditional order books. Instead of waiting for someone to match your buy/sell order, you trade directly against liquidity pools.

Real-world impact: I can swap tokens at 2am on Christmas if I want to. Try doing that with traditional stock markets.

The tradeoff: No customer service to call if you mess up, and you pay network fees that can spike during busy times.

2. Lending and Borrowing - Credit scores are optional

Protocols like Aave and Compound offer instant loans based on collateral, not credit history.

How it's different: Interest rates adjust automatically based on supply and demand. Need money? Put up crypto collateral and borrow immediately. Have extra assets? Lend them out and earn interest that actually matters.

The speed factor: Loan approval happens in seconds, not weeks. No paperwork, no income verification, no waiting for some underwriter to decide your fate. No participation in the inequities of the credit scoring system.

The responsibility factor: You're fully responsible for managing your collateral ratios. You're fully responsible for monitoring your collateral ratios—if its value drops too much relative to your loan, the protocol will automatically sell your collateral.

3. Staking - Getting paid to help secure networks

Put your crypto to work by staking it to help secure blockchain networks, and earn rewards for participating. Staking public goods through Octant is a good place to start.

How it works: You lock up tokens (like ETH or SOL or GLM) to help validate transactions on the network. In return, you earn staking rewards—typically 3-8% annually.

Why it's appealing: More predictable returns than yield farming, and you're actually contributing to network security rather than just chasing yields.

The simplicity: Many platforms now offer "liquid staking" where you can stake your tokens but still use them in DeFi (through wrapped versions like stETH).

The catch: Your tokens are locked up for a period (varies by network), and if validators misbehave, you could lose some of your stake (though this is rare with reputable staking services).

4. Stablecoins - Crypto speed with fiat stability

USDC, DAI, and other stablecoins give you the speed and programmability of crypto without betting on price volatility. Stablecoins are huge becoming huger—I mean, Shopify just integrated them in order to offer borderless payments for merchants. Which is huge.

The utility: Send $10k internationally for very little in fees and like 2min of time. Compare that to wire transfers, which cost $30+ and take days.

The innovation: Programmable money that can be integrated into smart contracts, automated payments, and complex financial instruments.

The bridge: Stablecoins connect traditional money to DeFi protocols, letting you earn yield and access services without crypto price exposure.

The real af ownership mindset shift

Using DeFi changes how you think about money and financial services. Instead of being a customer who asks permission to use services, you become someone who directly interacts with financial infrastructure.

You hold your own keys, you assess your own risks, you make your own decisions. There's no bank deciding your transaction is suspicious, no brokerage limiting your trading, no institution holding your money hostage during "business hours."

It's simultaneously liberating and terrifying. Maximum control, maximum responsibility. Not for everyone, but certainly for some and by some I mean many.

The reality check: DeFi isn't perfect (yet)

Speed vs. stability: DeFi moves fast, which is great until markets crash and liquidations happen faster than you can react.

Complexity tax: The user experience often sucks. Interacting with smart contracts requires understanding gas fees, slippage, and other technical concepts. The less complex we make this for everyday users, the better.

No safety nets: Make a mistake? There's no customer service to call, no FDIC insurance to protect you, no way to reverse transactions.

Regulatory uncertainty: Governments are still figuring out how to regulate DeFi, which creates ongoing legal and tax complications.

Smart contract risk: Smart contract bugs can be exploited by hackers to steal funds from protocols—and there's no FDIC insurance to cover your losses.

Why this matters beyond just making money

For real, traditional finance isn't pure evil (I mean it is and it isn’t). FDIC insurance, customer service that can reverse fraud, user experiences designed for people who don't want to think about money—all of these things have value.

Fortunately, the majority of us don't have to choose sides. If we’re lucky enough to have one, we can keep an emergency fund in a traditional savings account for safety. And we can use DeFi when we need speed or better returns on money we can afford to risk.

The business owner reality check (my personal pov)

Running a business in traditional finance is an exercise in frustration. Payments take forever, banks treat every transaction like potential money laundering, and you're constantly planning around delays and fees.

When someone pays me in crypto, I have the money immediately and can put it to work. The difference in cash flow management is night and day, and that’s pretty damn valuable.

One (of many) takeaways

DeFi isn't trying to replace traditional finance—it's building a parallel system that prioritizes speed and user control. Both have their place, but the performance gap is getting harder to ignore.

You don't need to go all-in to benefit from understanding how this works. But experiencing financial services that operate at internet speed does inherently change your expectations for everything else.

We're still early days in this transition. The tools are improving, the risks are becoming better understood, and the benefits are becoming harder to dismiss. Whether you use DeFi or not, it's definitely worth understanding what's being built and why what’s being built matters beyond money itself.

PS: Subscribe now if you want in on this arithmetic. Miss the last issue? It’s right here. Also literally none of this is ever financial advice. I’m sharing what I learn through Babe, and perhaps you’ll learn from my mistakes. Hopefully, maybe, who knows, ily.