KYLE LIBRA

I've spent my career building products at early and growth-stage companies, mostly in fintech and crypto. I started as an engineer, moved into product, and have had two exits along the way. I like the messy, high-stakes part of company building: figuring out what to make, who it's for, and how to get it out the door before the opportunity window closes.

From 2019 to 2025 I worked at financial market infrastructure provider Paxos where I worked on a lot of interesting things, from stablecoins to the tokenization of gold to eventually leading the Brokerage business. It was a front-row seat to rapid evolution of an industry.

Today I'm a Partner at Gravity Labs, the incubation arm of Defy.vc, where I invest in and incubate early stage startups.

Outside of work I like to build things for fun, ski as much as possible, and am deeply into Formula 1 and sim racing.

Elsewhere on the Internet

// press & appearances

I co-authored a whitepaper with Predicate on a risk management framework for institutional liquidity on Uniswap V4, featuring a case study on Paxos's Lift Dollar (USDL). I appeared on the Coinshift podcast to talk about stablecoins, tokenization, and the new financial order. I occasionally speak on panels about crypto infrastructure and real-world assets, including the RWA Summit. I also made a viral video in the early days of YouTube.

Fun Things on the Internet

// personal favorites

Right now I'm enjoying the creative projects of Riley Walz, the general mayhem of art collective MSCHF, and the soothing minimalism of the indefinite backpack travel project.

Projects

// you can just make things

Thief — Rise of the Shadow Crown

A strategy game where decisions have consequences. Proof of concept for a larger idea.

Spy Hunter

Inspired by Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and a lot of spy-related things in the news.

Reel Feed

A Discord bot that integrates Letterboxd activity into our group chat via RSS.

Last Week in Crypto

An AI agent that pulls in crypto headlines and summarizes them weekly. An interesting experiment.

Other projects: Gen AI Biography, Six Degrees of Connection Movie Game, How Does Gravity Work?, DAT NAT Tracker, F1 Start Game, Tab De-Duplication, Cube Solver, I Will Build You A Website for $1, Bitcoin Flappy Bird.

Writing

// strange loops on substack

The Race to Be the New Everything Bank

Why the future of stablecoins is the future of finance and why crypto is valuable.

A Lot of What People Think About Stablecoins Is Wrong

Debunking prevailing narratives after six years building stablecoins at Paxos.

How to Write PRDs Using AI

How leveraging AI 10x'd the number of engineers I could support as a PM.

Also: Why Won't Bitcoin Go Up?, Where Do Good Startup Ideas Come From?, Which Is the Third Best Stablecoin?, How to Get Started Solving Problems with AI. MORE →