In 2019, entrepreneur Bryan Johnson began to experiment on himself by taking daily injections of rapamycin. This immunosuppressant drug is typically used to prevent organ rejection after transplants, but the 48-year-old technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist had a different goal ' to extend his life. He tested several protocols, experimenting with weekly, biweekly and other schedules. He tried 5-milligram doses as well as 6-mg and 10-mg ones. But in September 2024, Johnson decided to end his personal trial with rapamycin: the benefits didn't outweigh the drawbacks, which Johnson outlined in a post on social-media platform X. He had intermittent skin infections, high glucose levels and abnormalities in his blood lipid levels, plus a heightened resting heart rate. 'With no other underlying causes identified, we suspected Rapamycin, and since dosage adjustments had no effect, we decided to discontinue it entirely,' he wrote. Johnson, who sold his mobile-payment business Braintree to financial-technology firm PayPal in 2013 for US$800 million, often tinkers with his daily regimen of drugs, peptides in the form of both supplements and injections and other medical interventions in pursuit of a longer life. He's part of a growing crowd of tech entrepreneurs who are seeking extra years by hacking their own bodies ' and sharing their exploits widely through social media and other channels....

Good morning & happy Tuesday! FinTech M&As are back, so today we're diving into Nuvei's $2.75 billion acquisition of payments heavyweight Payoneer (what it's all about, why it makes sense & why it's actually a Private Equity M&A masterclass disguised as a payments deal + bonus deep dive into Capital One's acquisition of Brex, & M&A resources to save you from bad deals inside), Zelle, which just made stablecoins a banking feature (why Zelle's expansion into India '' and ZelleUSD is a very calculated bet & what it means for their competitors in the space + bonus dive into why Coinbase, Visa, Mastercard, & Stripe are thinking of launching their own stablecoin & the ultimate list of stables resources inside), and Adyen that just spent $1.2B in 2 months on M&As (what their acquisition of Orb is all about, & how it strengthens Adyen's positions for the AI-first era + bonus deep dive into Coatue, which just told founders exactly where the next $12 trillion in AI spend is going inside). So let's jump straight into the interesting stuff ''...

Good morning & happy Thursday! Today's issue is incredibly packed as we're diving deep into finance giants Visa & Mastercard, both of which just launched agentic AI payment platforms (what it's all about, why it matters & why payment titants have a volume problem here + bonus reads into other Visa & Mastercard's agentic AI moves, & how Google wants to be the OS for all commerce inside), Vinyl that just raised 20M to replace the fax machines in the public markets (what's the USP here, why it's interesting, and what to watch for next + bonus looks into the IPOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, & the list of top AI & Tech VCs of 2026 inside), and Revolut's secret ECB restrictions (what happened, why it didn't hurt the valuation, but could hurt the IPO + bonus dive into Revolut's latest financials, & deep dive into their AI model for money inside). So let's jump straight into the finnovative stuff '' The simultaneous timing was read by most as defensive urgency: two incumbents scrambling to protect a combined $1.05 trillion market cap from an agentic economy forming outside their rails on open stablecoin protocols like x402....

They're the 63rd and 29th best teams in the world, according to FIFA rankings. The game will be played at the San Francisco Bay Area Stadium (officially called Levi's Stadium) in Santa Clara, yet both nations' diaspora are more heavily concentrated on the East Coast. And alongside exorbitant ticket prices and travel costs, Algerians hoping to make the trip have faced up to $15,000 US visa bond payments. Despite this, FIFA is charging $450 for a so-so view by the corner flag. Yet on its official marketplace, where existing ticket holders can sell, the price has cratered. On May 17, it became the first game to fall below $100 a ticket'a landmark celebrated on the r/WorldCup2026Tickets subreddit. What began as an ordinary soccer fan community for finding tickets to the most-expensive-ever World Cup has transformed into a grassroots, AI-powered movement with its own ticketing infrastructure, operating in near real time. Redditors'r/WorldCup2026Tickets has more than 140,000 members'report on surprise ticket drops from FIFA, sharing game availability and price volatility. They post DIY tools that unearth cut-price deals, then exchange tickets on back channels, hurting the back pockets of FIFA and scalpers....