Our Top Reads of 2024

It’s hard to believe that another year is almost over, despite it being an eventful one. Since putting out last year’s reading list, we’ve seen a global IT system outage, the Summer Olympics, a presidential election, multiple mergers and acquisitions across tech, and AI’s continued rise.

2024 flew by, and not just because I spent the latter half of it on maternity leave. And because I spent a lot of my time with a tiny human, and because we’re on record as a company of readers, I’ve asked some of Modern Treasury’s leadership to help me compile this year’s list of our favorite reads (and listens).

I asked them all the following four questions. In 2024, what was your favorite...

• …news article?
• …podcast episode?
• …moment Modern Treasury produced?
• …non-fintech read?

This is how they answered.

Dimitri Dadiomov, Co-founder and CEO

• Article: The Federal Reserve's releases of FedNow volume.
• Podcast: “Micky Malka - Building Ribbit” from Invest Like the Best with Patrick O’Shaughnessy.
• Modern Treasury moment: Our Fall Release.
• Non-fintech read: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. Just got into his books this year.

Sam Aarons, Co-founder and CTO

• Article: Anything written by Patrick McKenzie in his Bits About Money blog. I really enjoyed the article, “Guys what is wrong with ACATS”; it's a fascinating look at system that most people never even think about.
• Podcast: I only listen to comedy podcasts so my pick is going to be from that realm. Every episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast has been a real gem.
• Modern Treasury moment: I really loved Ani Narayan's article Accelerating Corporate Adoption of FedNow and RTP: The 3 I's Framework. Although it's written specifically for RTP and FedNow, there are lessons in there that really apply to all payment systems both present and future.
• Non-fintech read: I loved reading the science fiction book Pandora's Star and its sequel Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton. Some of the best examples of the Space Opera genre ever written.

Matt Marcus, Co-founder and CPO

• Article: Can’t think of one, but probably something from WSJ.
• Podcast: The BG2 podcast, any episode.
• Modern Treasury moment: Transfer.
• Non-fintech read: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

Rachel Pike, COO

• Article: “UX isn’t given enough credit as a fintech superpower” by Simon Taylor.
• Podcast: Watching Ben & David do Acquired live at Chase Center. So proud of them!
• Modern Treasury moment: Sticker swarming at Money 20/20. People loved our stickers!
• Non-fintech read: So many books! James by Percival Everett, Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah, Born Standing Up by Steve Martin, Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen, On Writing by Stephen King, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers by Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Art Thief by Michael Finkel, and there were others earlier in the year, too.

Julie Mullins, VP of Marketing

• Article: I loved this article about one of my true loves, coffee, and how it's actually good for you from the Mayo Clinic. Vindication!
• Podcast: Our favorite podcasters, Ben and David, from Acquired interviewed the all time great, Joe Montana, at Transfer and ran it on ACQ2.
• Modern Treasury moment: Transfer!
• Non-fintech read: I loved The Showman, which is the story of Volodymyr Zelensky and his unusual path to leading a country.

Molly Fischer, VP of Sales

• Article: I love a good retrospective, and I own my recency bias, so it’s Fintech Brainfood’s “State of Fintech 2025: The Age of the Fintech Hyperscaler.”
• Podcast: Acquired’s Visa episode, though that’s technically from last year.
• Modern Treasury moment: Our new platform demo!
• Non-fintech read: Dilla Time by Dan Charnas.

Kunal Parmar, VP of Platform Engineering

• Article: “Financial Systems Take a Holiday” from Bits About Money.
• Podcast: Acquired’s Hermes episode.
• Modern Treasury moment: Our Behind the Scenes article: How We Built Ledgers for High Throughput.
• Non-fintech read: The Cancer Code by Jason Fung.

Brian McKinney, VP of Payments Engineering

• Article: "It's Time To Require Better Ledgers." I think many companies either don't think they are big enough to warrant a robust ledger or are intimidated at the complexity of instituting one. The Synapse collapse this year unfortunately illustrated the consequences of not having one.
• Podcast: My favorite podcast episode is just about everything I've thrown at NotebookLM. Take a nuanced or detailed subject (heck, even something boring), feed it to the AI, and it produces an entertaining listen for on the go.
• Modern Treasury moment: Presenting our new AI-powered Recon features at Transfer. We collectively worked hard getting it ready for a public debut and felt nervous sitting in the crowd. The enthusiastic fist pump and loud "yes!" from the Lead UX Developer for that project, Paul Razgaitis, properly summed up how we all felt seeing it on stage.
• Non-fintech read: The Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman. My sister gave me the first book for my birthday, and I couldn't put it down. Over four months, I read through the following six books and had to institute a couple-chapters-a-day rule, or I would binge read. Falls into the LitRPG genre and ticks a lot of boxes for me: sci-fi, fantasy, and computer RPGs.

Derek Schwede, VP of Legal

• Article: This article in The Cut about scammer calls.
• Podcast: Honestly, can’t think of anything.
• Modern Treasury moment: Sam's panel with Conservice talking about the importance of real-time reconciliation at Nacha’s Smarter Faster Payments in May.
• Non-fintech read: Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke.

Preet Narissetty, VP of Customer Success

• Article: Payments Dive’s “Private sector merits ‘significant’ payments footprint”
• Podcast: Wharton’s Fintech Podcast did an episode on instant payments on the anniversary of FedNow.
• Modern Treasury moment: “Modernizing Payments for Benefits and Health Plan Administrators” webinar with our Customer Success Manager, Ally Kanning Gross.
• Non-fintech read: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

Conclusion

And there you have it. From AI to instant payments, Transfer to Money 20/20, ledgers to reconciliation, and a whole lot of lengthy Acquired episodes, we consumed and created a lot of content as a team this year.

We hope you’ll check out some of our recommendations, and as always, we wish you all a restful and well-read holiday season. Thanks for reading, and we look forward to putting out more great content for you in 2025!

P.S. You can check out our back catalog of reading lists for more recommendations: 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020.