Pantera Capital: Reasons for being optimistic about and investing in Coinflow

Authors: Mason Nystrom and Ryan Barney, Partners at Pantera Capital; Translated by Golden Finance

eBay's first employee was a check processor.

eBay was so successful right from its launch that it needed a full-time employee to help run the company and manage profitability. Could you find a better first employee?

Initially, eBay acted as a middleman, processing checks sent by people to trade goods. Naturally, online payment systems emerged, and PayPal even outperformed eBay's own subsidiary, Billpoint, and was eventually acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion. It was a win-win situation.

Ever since the internet sparked the online payments arms race, the very nature of finance has demanded faster and cheaper payments.

Every new payments innovation—whether it's the Automated Clearing House (ACH), Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) checkout, QR codes, point-of-sale solutions, API-first products, mobile payments, real-time payment networks (RTPs), or stablecoins—is moving toward the same goal: faster and cheaper payments. However, while the very nature of finance drives efficiency in the payments system, it also introduces inherent disorder, resulting in a sprawling network of payments. Each network adds a layer of integration complexity without addressing fundamental issues like settlement speed, fragmentation, or risk management. Thus, stablecoins and Coinflow were born. Today, we are excited to lead the Series A investment in Coinflow, a leading provider of payment infrastructure. Coinflow provides a unified payments architecture with instant settlement and fraud protection, addressing issues that traditional providers have failed to address. One reason for this fragmented payments landscape is that global payment channels and networks are fragmented by jurisdictional boundaries, like independent walled gardens. For example, the United States is unlikely to integrate with Brazil's PIX payment infrastructure, and vice versa, due to national interest considerations. Stablecoins hold the potential to provide interoperability across countries and networks, while offering cheaper and faster transactions than traditional payment infrastructure. Today, Coinflow offers a one-stop payment solution for global marketplaces, fintechs, remittance providers, gaming platforms, and e-commerce merchants. Its products include fiat and cryptocurrency payment options for end consumers, stablecoin payment options for merchants, and internal fraud detection models and chargeback protection for merchants. Coinflow's founding story mirrors that of PayPal, which recognized that accepting payments online was difficult, but it shouldn't be. When co-founder and CEO Daniel Lev founded his previous company, he similarly recognized that accepting stablecoin payments was difficult because the money supply wasn't connected, but that shouldn't be the case. Since its seed round in 2024, its revenue has grown 23-fold, its payment coverage has expanded to over 170 countries and regions, and its annual transaction volume has reached billions of dollars. The future of money will be programmable. Over the next decade, stablecoins and blockchain rails will rebuild and connect the global payment infrastructure. The very nature of finance demands cheaper and faster transactions. Modern money—stablecoins—requires modern payment solutions, just as the internet requires a new payment architecture. Coinflow provides the payment infrastructure for modern money.