Sam Broner spent two years at Andreessen Horowitz studying stablecoin startups from the investor side. Now he is building the infrastructure he kept telling founders was missing.
The Better Money Company, co-founded by Broner and former Eigen Labs general counsel Adam Zuckerman, has raised $10 million in a seed round led by a16z crypto, with participation from BoxGroup, Sunflower Capital, and angel investors including Circle co-founder Sean Neville and former Microsoft executive Charlie Songhurst.
The product is a stablecoin clearinghouse: any stablecoin in, any stablecoin out, at face value, with no slippage. The company plans to open customer access in the coming weeks.
The Problem Better Money Is Solving
The stablecoin market has a fragmentation issue that gets worse with every new entrant. Klarna, Cloudflare, Sony, and Fiserv have all launched or announced dollar-backed tokens in recent months. Each one adds another pocket of liquidity that does not talk to the others.
A business that receives USDC but needs PYUSD currently has three options: swap on a DEX and eat slippage, go through an OTC desk with high minimums, or run a multi-step conversion through an exchange. None of these are cheap, fast, or predictable at scale.
Better Money bypasses all three. Instead of routing through liquidity pools, it partners directly with stablecoin issuers and their banking counterparties to exchange collateral at par. The model mirrors how traditional banks clear dollar transactions between each other: a neutral intermediary settles the difference, and both sides get exactly what they asked for.
"If you want to have a growing stablecoin ecosystem, you need to have one place to access the breadth," Broner told Fortune.
Who Is Already In
The company says it has commitments from Paxos, Stripe's Bridge, and MoonPay, among others. That gives it early access to some of the largest stablecoin issuers and on-ramp providers in the market.
Mastercard's $1.8 billion acquisition of BVNK earlier in March showed how seriously traditional payments companies are taking stablecoin infrastructure. Better Money is attacking a different layer of the same stack: not issuance or on-ramps, but the plumbing between issuers.
Ali Yahya, general partner at a16z crypto, said Broner "very quickly became our stablecoin expert and taught us a lot" during his time at the firm. The investment is a16z backing a thesis they helped develop internally.
The USDT Question
Better Money will only support stablecoins that comply with the Genius Act, the recently signed US legislation regulating dollar-backed tokens. That means USDT, the largest stablecoin by market cap, is excluded from the clearinghouse.
Tether's US-specific version, USAT, does qualify and will be supported. But the core USDT token that dominates trading volume globally sits outside the Genius Act's compliance framework.
This is a deliberate design choice, not a technical limitation. Better Money is positioning itself as a regulated clearinghouse for the US market, which means working within the legislative boundaries Congress set. For businesses operating primarily in the US or serving US customers, the USDT exclusion may not matter. For global operations that rely on USDT liquidity, it narrows the clearinghouse's utility.
Why It Matters for Crypto Spending
Stablecoin fragmentation is not just a backend headache for exchanges. It directly affects anyone using a crypto card to spend.
Most crypto cards convert a user's balance to fiat at the point of sale. The conversion rate depends on which stablecoin the card provider holds, how deep its liquidity is, and what spread it charges on the swap. When a card issuer needs to move between stablecoins to settle with Visa or Mastercard, that cost gets passed to the user as a wider spread or higher foreign exchange fee.
A neutral clearinghouse that lets issuers and card providers swap stablecoins at par could compress those hidden costs. If Ramp's stablecoin accounts on Base showed how corporate treasuries are starting to hold stablecoins directly, Better Money is building the exchange layer that makes holding multiple types less painful.
The Founding Team
Broner's background is unusually deep for a seed-stage founder. Before a16z, he worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on fintech research. At a16z, he focused specifically on stablecoin investments, giving him direct exposure to issuers, regulators, and the gaps between them.
Zuckerman previously worked under a16z's Miles Jennings at Latham & Watkins before becoming general counsel at Eigen Labs. The two met as undergraduates in Massachusetts.
The combination, an investor who mapped the stablecoin landscape from the capital side and a lawyer who navigated its regulatory terrain, is what convinced a16z to fund them despite Broner's recent departure from the firm.
Overview
The Better Money Company raised $10 million from a16z crypto to build a stablecoin clearinghouse that converts between dollar-backed tokens at par with no slippage. Paxos, Bridge, and MoonPay have committed to the platform. USDT is excluded because it does not comply with the Genius Act, though Tether's US-specific USAT token is supported. The clearinghouse is expected to open to customers in the coming weeks.
