Infini Founder Christian: Good entrepreneurs must have the courage to give up

Interview: Kaori @0x35_kaori Beating

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How was your 2025? As the founder of Infini, the post-00 Christian openly hopes it will pass quickly.

For a fintech startup established only a year ago, whether it experienced a trust crisis caused by a theft or chose to transform by tearing down old answers with their own hands, these are not just minor setbacks that can be easily brushed off.

Rewinding three years, in 2022, Christian was a typical crypto Degen, obsessed with NFTs, then diving into DeFi and memes, with emotions fluctuating with market trends, relying on intuition and feel for judgment. It was an era where daring to act was enough, narratives ran ahead of risk control, and growth masked many details.

But now, from product, asset management to payment chains, industry feedback has changed. The brutal reality that a single incident can wipe out trust has made Christian realize that in finance, the most expensive thing is not efficiency, but trust.

Christian’s generation’s financial enlightenment was almost fed by products, from QR code payments to passwordless deductions, from one-click installment payments to contactless payments. The golden age of fintech lowered financial barriers and turned smoothness into the default.

But when they started their own businesses, the industry’s climate had changed. Many previous-generation entrepreneurs grew their businesses first on dividends and then learned the rest, while this generation often learns on the fly as they go.

So this dialogue discusses not just a product or a company’s path, but a more current portrait of entrepreneurs. In an era where rates are thinning, channels are more selective, and compliance increasingly resembles a matter of time cost, the real driver of business progress is a long-term deliverable experience.

Finance is not just a game for the “old-timers”; the new market must retain the ambitions of young people, while learning to become tougher at the most fragile links. 2025 will surely be remembered by Christian for a long time, because from this year, Infini and he truly entered the core of the financial business—not just to run fast, but to withstand slowness and pain.

Beating Highlights:

· The bigger opportunity may not only lie in B2B cross-border settlements, but in scenarios closer to the transaction point—how to make it easier for the new generation of entrepreneurs to receive payments and manage funds, and how to face the global market at the start of their business, which is the imminent value of stablecoins.

· What is truly hard to copy is the core of a company—how you treat and serve customers, especially whether you truly value their assets and are willing to respond 24/7 when issues arise. Nowadays, many product features are not that different; faster iteration, more refined user experience, more timely responses, and patience are actually decisive.

· Good entrepreneurs must have the courage to give up. Even if the business is doing well at the moment, if it cannot help us reach our goals within the expected timeframe, the team should be guided to find a more worthwhile direction.

· Instead of just offering a seemingly better asset management product, it’s better to help users truly understand risks, not to place trust in any single asset or institution, and at least maintain independent judgment.

· The details often make a product or team stand out—the details of each feature, each copy, each design element, and the implementation behind each function—all these will influence what the product ultimately becomes.

· The more layers and politics a startup has, the more it drags down efficiency and delivery. Everyone makes mistakes, including myself, and I am willing to admit it. But more importantly, when problems arise, you must dare to speak up; silence due to concerns will ultimately affect the entire team’s goals.

Below is the full content of the interview:

“Young people should have a sense of reverence” Beating: You previously said your journey was smooth sailing, but when your $50 million theft hit, what was your first reaction?

Christian: My first reaction was definitely shock, my mind went blank, thinking how could this happen to me. I had just seen a similar incident not long ago, and we paid close attention to it, but didn’t expect it to happen to us next.

But I quickly realized there were only two possible outcomes: either solve the problem, bear it, and continue moving forward with the team; or handle it poorly, which for most people would be game over.

The results that followed are also visible—fortunately, we got through it, and even after March or April, growth became smoother. That was my most genuine reaction at the time—didn’t think too much, just felt it was what I should do.

Beating: After experiencing this, what is the biggest thing in your mindset that you didn’t have before?

Christian: I think the biggest takeaway is “reverence.” Many young people don’t understand reverence, especially when everything is smooth sailing—they tend to get carried away. Cases like SBF are essentially about a lack of reverence and respect for the industry, the market, and users.

After this incident, I became more certain of two points. First, I am not omnipotent and will definitely make mistakes. The goal of risk control is not to never make mistakes, but to minimize losses when errors occur, preventing a single mistake from being fatal.

Second, many problems ultimately come down to people. Whether intentional or unintentional, it’s always someone who didn’t do their job properly. So after the incident, we put a lot of effort into rebuilding and strengthening our recruitment, screening standards, and team mechanisms.

I actually appreciate this experience. If it hadn’t happened, the team’s state and capabilities at Infini might not be as good as they are now. It forced me to iterate continuously, align standards, and made me realize that people whose values and pace don’t match will find it hard to stay long-term.

At first, I was quite upset, but now I feel more gratitude. Problems will eventually be resolved; the key is how you resolve them, and whether your reputation and trust can be maintained long-term.

Beating: “The general public may not need financial products, but they need financial perspectives.” Why did you have this realization?

Christian: Over this year, we experienced a black swan event in the industry. Whether crypto or traditional finance, there are no products that are problem-free forever. The so-called more excellent people are just those who understand risk control better and are more responsible, capable of doing things more long-term.

But if someone places all their assets on trust, even if the probability of an incident is one in ten thousand, it would be unbearable if it happens.

So I increasingly believe that helping everyone establish the correct financial outlook is more important. Instead of just offering a seemingly better asset management product, it’s better to help users truly understand risks, not to place trust in any single asset or institution, and at least maintain independent judgment.

Because of these reflections, our direction is adjusting—from initially focusing only on asset management to now prioritizing payments and collection. I increasingly believe that these two will eventually need to be integrated—you must first solve “how to make money, how to collect money” before you can accumulate principal and then manage and safeguard it. This has been my biggest insight this year.

Fearless of first-mover advantage, Infini’s underlying ambitions

Beating: Infini has made a significant pivot, retreating from to-C business and shifting focus. How did you make this decision? Where did the resolve to change come from?

Christian: During the to-C phase, our team was relatively young and lacked relevant experience, and we encountered many pitfalls. Some pitfalls you wouldn’t know unless you experienced them firsthand, and no one would tell you proactively. For many, this lack of transparency was actually a key to making money and arbitrage.

But I really dislike this system. I’ve always believed that the payments industry should be more transparent. Plus, at that time, we weren’t quite ready overall, and doing it was very challenging.

At the same time, our business model wasn’t very clear. For example, U Card business hardly made any money because we wanted to keep costs as low as possible, so more people could use it at lower thresholds, not just serve big clients.

But as the user base grew, problems arose. These users might not bring you revenue, yet you have to invest a lot of time and effort to handle various issues. During that period, the team was basically pushed by problems, everyone was exhausted and unhappy.

R&D was often firefighting, customer service had to work overnight, complaint volume was huge, and many issues weren’t even solvable by us because the entire chain was too long, with too many links—any problem segment was hard to contain.

Because of this, we became more interested in blockchain-based solutions, with more certain underlying chains and fewer supply chain issues. As long as we do our part well, we can deliver more stable products and experiences.

Furthermore, we realized that no matter how well this path is done, it doesn’t create truly new value at its core.

It’s more like regulatory arbitrage, which indeed brings convenience to those who find traditional bank cards inconvenient, but the underlying network remains unchanged, costs and efficiency are not fundamentally improved, and because the chain is more complex, optimization costs are higher, ultimately passed on to consumers.

Instead of continuing to grow in a track with limited differentiation that ultimately only leads to price wars, I believe good entrepreneurs must have the courage to give up.

Even if the business was doing well at the time, if it cannot help us reach our goals within the expected timeframe, the team should be guided to find a more worthwhile direction. Compared to that, the path we are on now is worth long-term development, and there are still many infrastructure and standard gaps to fill.

Beating: Now Infini has expanded into merchant acquiring, a direction that highly values channels and operations. How did you find your first customers? What needs did you hit?

Christian: Acquiring is definitely our core segment, but we won’t stop there. Our positioning is more like a Financial OS, at least capable of providing experiences and functions close to banking-level.

Specifically, for acquiring, there are roughly two types of problems to solve. The first is providing overseas entrepreneurs and small teams with lighter payment and collection accounts. My judgment is that in the future, many people will start creating products and accepting payments without necessarily having a bank account first.

Especially in the AI era, the time from development to launch is greatly compressed by various tools. You can’t still wait for traditional bank processes. In the past, opening an account and integration might take a month, but with Infini, an account could be opened in ten minutes, and in the fastest case, integration could be done in a day, starting to accept payments.

This is very practical for independent developers, solo entrepreneurs, and small startups. Among our fewer than 20 seed merchants, AI application developers make up a high proportion, and there are indeed “one-person companies” using it. Their most urgent need is to get payments running first.

The second is enabling merchants to connect to stablecoin payment channels earlier. Today, most companies still settle revenue in fiat, but I believe the proportion of stablecoins in wallets will increase, especially in regions like Latin America.

We previously observed with U Card that many users just want to pay for Netflix, Starlink, or shop on Amazon. Why do they have to go through the detour of converting stablecoins into cards before spending? There’s inevitable wear and tear in the process. If they could pay directly with stablecoins, the chain would be shorter, and the experience better.

For merchants, having an additional stablecoin payment method essentially means an extra revenue stream. Just like adding another wallet channel in traditional payments, the customer coverage often improves slightly.

We’ve also seen cases where stablecoin acquiring brings in new users, not just better experiences for existing ones. The scale is still small, but the earlier you connect, the more this channel will grow as merchants expand and user habits develop.

Beating: After a decade of accumulation, mature fintech companies like Revolut have scale, data, and strong compliance capabilities. Even if they are not the first to develop new features, they can quickly copy and distribute to hundreds of millions of users; in contrast, crypto-native companies are often constrained by fundraising, licensing, and compliance. How do you compete with this first-mover advantage? In your so-called Financial OS route, what is Infini’s core moat?

Christian: I think it can be viewed from two angles. First, the fintech industry itself doesn’t have strong network effects like social products do.

Many small fintech companies can thrive because trust is often the core factor for customer choice.

In fact, every era has giants and challengers. But today, this trend is reinforced. Some large domestic companies can quickly launch features that attract attention and then use multiple times or hundreds of times the resources to fight back. This exists and the probability is increasing.

But I don’t focus on preventing imitation; ideas are not valuable in themselves, and features or interfaces can be copied.

What’s truly hard to copy is the core of a company—how you treat and serve customers, especially whether you truly value their assets and are willing to respond 24/7 when issues occur.

Nowadays, many product features are not that different; faster iteration, more refined user experience, more timely responses, and patience are actually decisive.

The true mission of financial products is to promote equality.

Beating: Many believe that the past twenty years’ innovations mainly stayed at the distribution layer, optimizing experience, but the underlying logic of capital flow remains traditional, leading to homogenization, thin profits, and fierce competition. As a new generation of fintech entrepreneurs, what do you most want to improve?

Christian: I agree with this judgment. Looking at the timeline, many familiar fintech products were born roughly in the last fifteen years.

The first-generation unicorns indeed brought a lot of innovation, but most of their innovations still operated within the paradigm of traditional banking and payments, essentially building better products and experiences on the old system.

A long-standing unresolved issue within this traditional paradigm is access. Many fintech products require users to have a traditional bank account first before they can use them.

No matter how much innovation you do on top, you still need to sync a lot of information and details down to the underlying banks; as long as you rely on bank licenses and systems, these limitations cannot be bypassed. The second issue is the cost of transfer networks, especially cross-border—high fees, small transfers are hard to settle, with unstable timing, and complex mutual recognition and anti-money laundering procedures between countries.

Beating: Where is your value capture?

Christian: For ToB companies, one of the biggest values in the future is enabling enterprises to access and use financial services without relying on traditional bank accounts as the foundation. For independent developers, small teams, or small startups, this will bring a quantum leap in onboarding efficiency.

Our advantage as a new type of entrepreneur is that, from infrastructure and technology, we can build a more globalized business today, especially to cover emerging markets faster, allowing users to register and use more freely and smoothly.

Of course, in the long run, everyone will move toward more complete compliance and licensing layouts, but the initial paths are different.

In product design, we try to build new payment networks based on stablecoins. Traditional players are also exploring similar directions, but most still revolve around card organizations like Visa and Mastercard for settlement.

My judgment is that the bigger opportunity may not only be in B2B cross-border settlement but in scenarios closer to the transaction point—how to make it easier for the new generation of entrepreneurs to receive payments and manage funds, and how to face the global market at the start of their business, which is the imminent value of stablecoins.

Beating: The previous generation of fintech entrepreneurs also tried “specialization,” such as targeting students, gig workers, teenagers, but ultimately they were forced to turn into large super apps.

Christian: I think this is not just a fintech logic but a path all applications will eventually follow. True growth often starts with precise targeting of a small group’s pain points.

First, deeply solve this pain point, then extend outward along demand, discovering more adjacent groups with similar issues, and continuously design and iterate, gradually expanding boundaries.

Of course, at a certain stage, companies will differentiate. Some founders are more satisfied with perfecting a niche, and if they solve that problem well enough, they are willing to hold the ground and deepen their service.

Others think further ahead, aiming to serve more people, see more needs, and from a business perspective, pursue larger scale, profits, and capitalization.

Beating: If you had to describe your ideal fintech product in one sentence, what would it be?

Christian: My ideal, and what we hope to create in the future, is a form of equality: providing banking and financial services in a more unbiased, fair way to everyone who needs it—especially every aspiring entrepreneur. To me, the true mission of financial products lies here.

The management outlook of the new generation of entrepreneurs

Beating: Some say that being a bit older gives an advantage in finance. What do you think of this?

Christian: I think the phenomenon of fintech favoring older, more experienced founders is more common in Asia, but there are also many very young and talented entrepreneurs in Europe and America.

The difference mainly comes from environment and ecosystem choices. I’ve asked many investors, and they indeed prefer to invest in slightly older, more experienced people, especially in heavily regulated, risk-controlled industries like fintech. Many pitfalls are learned through experience over time, so they have an advantage in that regard.

But I also don’t think age itself is a decisive factor. We don’t judge ability solely by age when hiring. Being older doesn’t mean lacking innovation, and being young doesn’t mean you can’t do well.

The key is two things: whether you’ve experienced pitfalls, and your understanding of risk and bottom-line control.

Since everyone makes mistakes, another variable is growth and iteration speed. Young people might need to pay some tuition, and I’ve paid quite a bit myself, but if you can improve quickly during the process and truly understand compliance and risk control, you can do very well too.

Beating: You said you pretended to be an entrepreneur for a while—where was the pretense?

Christian: It’s a state of mind, especially for founders who are older and come from management backgrounds in big companies. After starting a business, it’s easy to carry over old habits—thinking that as long as you handle a few management tasks, find funding, recruit, and set direction, everything will go smoothly. These are of course the responsibilities of a CEO, because no one else can do them for you.

If you think doing these three things well will make everything naturally follow your ideal path, I think that’s a fallacy and a common pitfall.

What really makes a product or team stand out is in the details—every detail of the product, every copy, every design element, and the implementation behind each function—all these will influence what the product ultimately becomes.

The same applies to team management. It’s not that the team can’t do well, but if the founder personally prototypes and sets standards from the start, subsequent execution will be much smoother, and the overall quality more consistent.

Beating: You must have gained many insights into organizational management during your entrepreneurial journey.

Christian: Besides not pretending to be an entrepreneur, another is to lead by example—you need to be on the front lines with the team, at least willing to understand the work. If you don’t understand or have no interest or curiosity to learn, colleagues will find it hard to see it as something they are responsible for to the end.

Of course, you can’t be an expert in everything, but your attitude is very important—showing that you are continuously thinking and improving. Often, morale is built this way.

And then, it’s crucial to find the right people. The biggest killer of efficiency isn’t ability but slowing down the organization’s iteration speed. Some people are very good but more suited for big companies; in startups, they may struggle to adapt, unable to keep pace, and their delivery may fall short.

One of the most important traits of a startup is the courage to make choices—early on, let the wrong people go, and keep looking for better fits.

Assessing whether a startup team is strong depends on whether the overall average quality is high enough—ideally, everyone can handle their own responsibilities, and deliver at a high standard. With AI tools, team sizes are likely to become leaner, and the expansion to hundreds or thousands of people is unlikely.

But the smaller the team, the higher the requirement for each person’s level—any attitude or ability gap can drag down the entire team’s speed.

So, besides product development, continuous evaluation, timely adjustments, and making the team stronger are very important.

Beating: How do you select suitable entrepreneurial partners?

Christian: I focus on three things more than experience, background, or education. First is iteration speed and curiosity—learning ability. It’s not necessarily related to age, especially since we’re working in a new field with no mature paradigms or products to copy; learning and thinking ability are top priorities.

Also, if someone rarely uses AI or other productivity tools in their current workflow, I’d think they lack awareness of maximizing efficiency.

Second is long-termism—whether they can work with the team to sustain the effort. Many in crypto prefer short-term gains, which is understandable, but we don’t see ourselves as a pure Web3/Crypto company; we’re more like building a long-term internet product and platform.

We don’t plan to issue tokens or pursue short-term monetization; often, we need to sacrifice short-term cash flow for long-term value. Decision-making in this process is complex, with low tolerance for mistakes. Anyone just in it for quick profits probably isn’t suitable for us.

Third is absolute honesty. The more layers and politics a startup has, the more it drags down efficiency and delivery. Everyone makes mistakes, including me, and I’m willing to admit it. But more importantly, problems must be spoken out—silence due to concerns will ultimately harm the team’s goals.

Beating: Who do you admire most in your entrepreneurial journey?

Christian: The founder of Revolut, which is also a company I greatly admire. They have absolute execution power and extreme standards for their team.

From the product perspective, Revolut’s early offerings weren’t revolutionary—they provided card issuance and forex exchange, which are essentially traditional banking functions. But what I truly admire is their fighting spirit and speed of progress.

People often think European companies are slow and inefficient, but Revolut proved that Europe can have the speed and grit of domestic internet companies. Their strength lies in quickly replicating a basic product, then continuously optimizing and beating competitors. This ability is very strong, and I hope we can develop it too.

But it’s not just about speed; every feature must genuinely solve user problems and do so better than others. Revolut’s rapid iteration is partly due to fast development, but more importantly, they accurately grasp user needs, ensuring the product is used as soon as it’s launched. I really appreciate this.

Another is the founder’s attitude toward team management. He has a famous phrase: get shit done. I even use it as a signature in our internal collaboration tools.

It’s not about promoting 996 work culture or relying on rules to pressure people, but about building a team with mutual selection—people who join must have responsibility. How is responsibility shown? First, curiosity; second, a desire to do things well and to the utmost.

Behind this is a very strict management philosophy—he demands very high standards, and those who don’t meet them are asked to leave. This almost ruthless standard makes the team highly combat-ready, with high quality and fast progress.

That’s what I aspire to, and I also want to emulate as much as possible. Of course, everyone will eventually find their own management style.

Beating: Which book has inspired or pleased you most this year?

Christian: After finishing “Li Zhi in Chang’an,” I realized I didn’t know much about the Tang Dynasty, so I read three related books in a row. As I read, I was deeply touched—the most exciting part of history often involves Li Shimin, and his experience gave me strong inspiration. Ancient warfare and today’s entrepreneurship are quite similar—both fundamentally require leadership and a team to turn an idea into reality.

I especially admire Li Shimin’s broad-mindedness and vision, which is almost universally recognized among emperors. He could consolidate and trust even former enemies and rivals after victory.

Entrepreneurs should also have this kind of broad-mindedness because the best people are often rebellious and hard to persuade. If you can make them willingly follow you, that’s a rare and crucial ability.

Another aspect is that he seized power through a coup and even rebelled against his own father. Maybe because I study philosophy, I think about what kind of circumstances would lead someone to make such a seemingly treacherous choice within traditional moral frameworks?

For me, this isn’t simply about good or bad, merits or faults. It’s more about providing a perspective—there might be a class of people in a different moral state. How each person chooses in different situations is thought-provoking and worth pondering long-term.

Beating: 2025 might be a bit challenging for you. What would you write in your year-end summary?

Christian: I sincerely hope 2025 will pass quickly (laughs). It’s not that this year was only difficult, but it was quite tough. Looking back, I feel very fortunate to have experienced so much at this age—this was also my fastest-growing year.

My year-end summary boils down to one question: if I could do some things over again, what could I do better? What lessons should I learn? Of course, most of the time I’m thinking about what to do next. I’m also very lucky to have many people around me—colleagues, friends, family—walking through this tough time with me.

At the same time, this year has made me clearer about who can still solve problems with you during difficult times, who you can trust more, and who is worth working with long-term.