Ben Milne

In 2018 I built a network model to figure out where to invest my time in the Iowa technology community.

I wanted to see if an agent could pay to send me a message.

Last week Brale and Visa announced a new project running on Canton.

In the past few weeks, dozens of reporters and conference organizers have reached out about Dwolla’s sale to NMI.

Years ago I made a post called Visualizing ~$500MM in Transactions.

Day Zero is back.

The last few months have felt like an unprecedented rate of change.

I had the chance to join Denelle on Block by Block.

Privately, I’ve been talking a lot about the physics of money at Brale for the last few years, but this is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to unpack the idea further on the record.

I use a simple model when thinking about how value moves across the internet: ValueType defines what is moving – dollars, euros, stablecoins, digital deposits, whatever.

The speed at which we move says a lot.

I stepped off of Dwolla's board today.

Brale recently shipped an updated version of the stablecoin APIs.

There’s a recurring idea that surfaces in work and life: “I can always do it again.”

Fund flows are kind of a pain.

There’s been a lot of noise in D.C. lately around stablecoin regulation, and some of it actually seems productive.

My life these days seems to be all stablecoins all the time.

Today marks my three-year anniversary with Brale.

Brale rolled out SBC (Stable Coin) as it’s own entity which is exciting for a few reasons.

Brale just posted this on brale.com.

Most accounting systems are based on two decimal systems.

The last post about issuance kicked off a series of emails from friends I thought were kind of interesting.

Stablecoins are new-ish, but ways to think about the structure of how money moves is not.

For the last few years, a team of us has been working to build infrastructure that simplifies creating stablecoins.

A friend emailed me last weekend about his project, and this line stuck out.> Am I just not finding the right pockets, or is the whole market shrinking?

The Brale team released SBC a few weeks ago, requesting comments from industry participants.

The brand narrative at Brale and the visual elements have started to come together and it feels really special.

The Brale team spends an inordinate amount of time these days talking about, thinking about, and working with folks new to DeFi protocols.

Since I wrote the original value layer blog post, I’ve wanted to expand on the idea and start cataloging the different global systems connected through these primitives.

Updated 2026.

Iowa capital pools, venture funds, and venture-funded businesses are everywhere.

At Money 20/20 last week, a topic that came up over and over in discussions was blockchain performance compared to traditional databases used to ledger transactions.

Sharing observations and findings after spending more time in the DeFi world has been a fun part of the journey.

The old saying goes something like, “fast, cheap, and good. pick two “.

Brale made a subtle update today, and two things feel perfect about it.

It has been surprising how much discussion has been about creating new regulatory frameworks, particularly for fiat-backed stablecoins.

Matt Harris did this fantastic talk about the verticalization of FinTech a few year ago.

The team at Brale hires infrequently but did post a few new roles today.

Harper was posting random things about Midjourney last night and it got me thinking about this entry.

Over the last few months, the team at Brale has been diving deep into DeFi and it’s impossible to avoid the stablecoin discussion.

I’m not sure how this entered my feed, but it was left open on a browser tab.

The last v-sum was unique because it was the first time the tech briefings focused on an ecosystem stack or companies working together to solve different layers of a problem.

The leverage someone or something gets through access to information, a computing system, or a database.

Brale A bit more at https://brale.xyz

A few years ago Jami bought me a notebook with Bad IDEAS inscribed on the cover.

My son plays Fortnite like a lot of people.

Yesterday was V-Sum_Eight, which was great.

There are tens of billions of Internet connected devices and a litany of software runs on them.

CBDC is a fascinating topic.

The phrase the value layer of the internet is peppered throughout my work.