Welcome to another issue of Net Interest, my newsletter on financial sector themes. If you’re new here, thanks for signing up. Every Friday I go deep on a topic of interest in the sector and highlight a few other trending themes below. If you have any feedback, reply to the email – I’d love to hear from you. And if you like what you’re reading, please spread the word.

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In case you didn’t hear, this week the price of Bitcoin went through $50,000.

It’s been on quite a journey since breaking out of a white paper in 2008. At the beginning it was touted as a currency, a new medium for facilitating commerce. “Electronic cash,” Satoshi said. People still talk about that time Laszlo Hanyecz bought two Papa John’s pizzas for 10,000 bitcoin – “like maybe two large ones so I have some left over for the next day.” (Ouch.)

In the early days, the goal of pioneers in the space was to get Bitcoin accepted by merchants as a medium of payment. Soon after its launch as a Bitcoin wallet, C…