a16z crypto show
The a16z crypto show explores how decentralized networks are reshaping money, ownership, and the architecture of the internet. We go beyond the hype to look at what’s actually working, what isn’t, and what comes next as crypto continues to go mainstream and blockchains become core infrastructure. Each episode features conversations with founders, engineers, economists, policymakers, and researchers building at the frontier of finance, payments, AI, and distributed systems. We cover stablecoins and global payments, the tokenization of "real-world" assets, decentralized physical infrastructure, network design and governance, and the practical tradeoffs behind decentralization — along with lessons from past technology shifts. Produced and hosted by the a16z crypto team, the show combines reporting, analysis, and first-principles thinking to explain how crypto intersects with the economy and society — and why it matters now. Learn more at a16zcrypto.com. *** Posts should not be considered investment advice or an advertisement for investment services. Reposts of third-party content are not attributable to a16z; see disclosures for more information: https://a16z.com/disclosures/.
Episodes
Following a string of major DeFi exploits, we unpack what’s driving the recent rise in hacks across crypto.
a16z crypto GP Eddy Lazzarin and security engineer Matt Gleason join host Robert Hackett to take a closer look. Their argument: AI is not introducing entirely new vulnerabilities. It is making existing weaknesses easier to identify and exploit. The question is whether defenders can evolve as quickly as attackers.
They also co...
We're announcing a16z crypto's Fund 5: $2.2B in committed capital to back the startups and founders who are building the next era of crypto. All four GPs sat down to talk through where crypto is right now, what's changed, and where it may be headed next. Chris Dixon, Ali Yahya, Guy Wuollet, and Eddy Lazzarin join Robert Hackett to cover...
00:00 Open
01:31 Why raise Crypto Fund 5 now
02:10 The GENIUS Act and wh...
Agents can now do almost anything a human can do with a computer. So what happens when they start spending money on your behalf?
Sam Ragsdale (founder and CEO of Merit Systems, a startup building infrastructure for the agentic economy) joins a16z crypto's Eddy Lazzarin, Noah Levine, and Robert Hackett on the open agentic commerce stack, and why the internet's business model is about to get rewired.
00:00 – Intro
01:33 – Two f...
A few big companies control most of the infrastructure behind AI.
Most people experience AI through a wide range of different apps that actually depend on a deeply centralized stack of data and compute. In this conversation, Ben Fielding and Harry Grieve — cofounders of decentralized machine learning protocol Gensyn — explain why this matters, and what it would take to rebuild AI as open infrastructure instead.
From unused global c...
The internet already has a bot problem — and it's just getting worse.
a16z's Ben Horowitz and Erik Torenberg speak with Alex Blania of Tools for Humanity. World is building the largest real human network, a proof-of-human layer for the AI era. They cover the technical challenge of proving human uniqueness at scale using iris biometrics, the privacy architecture behind World ID, and why platforms from social networks to dating apps ...
What if the future of lending doesn’t need banks at all?
Paul Frambot, cofounder and CEO of Morpho, explains what it means to build lending infrastructure without banks, and why DeFi’s real breakthrough isn’t “risk-free” loans, but open, onchain markets that make lending more transparent, competitive, and efficient.
In this conversation, Paul breaks down the biggest misconception in DeFi lending, how to think about risk onchain, wh...
What if opening a trading account was as easy as downloading an app?
Lucas Bruder, CEO of Jito — a Solana-based liquid staking protocol — breaks down why he thinks all of finance is moving onchain, and what his small team is doing to make that happen.
During the 2022-2023 bear market, Jito was getting pitched constantly to jump ship to other chains. Lucas explains why they turned everything down, doubled down on Solana, and chewe...
Should we push AI forward as fast as possible, or be more careful about how it develops?
Two competing views are emerging:
- e/acc (effective accelerationism): go faster, progress is the only path forward
- d/acc (defensive / decentralized acceleration): accelerate, but carefully, or risk losing control
In this episode of the a16z crypto show, Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum founder) and Guillaume Verdon aka "Beff Jezos" (Extr...
What does the future of the creator economy actually look like? The economics of content creation are changing, what happens to copyright in a world of abundant generated content, and why human taste, curation, and connection may matter even more going forward.
In this episode, host Robert Hackett talks with Justin (CEO, Bond) and Michael Blau(Head of Product, Bond) about the changing relationship between creators, audiences, plat...
Four years ago, artist Emily Yang aka pplpleasr began a creative journey that would help break new ground at the intersection of art, technology, and community.
In this episode, we sit down with Emily — founder of Shibuya — to talk about her evolution from illustrator to Emmy-winning storyteller.
Emily shares how Shibuya is pioneering “permissionless creativity,” using crypto rails to fund, build, and co-create original IP with g...
A hot paper — "Some Simple Economics of AGI" — has been making the rounds, so we sat down with the author, covering:
- Automation vs. verification: the key economic split
- Why AI agents now feel like coworkers - What's happening to junior roles and the “codifier’s curse”
- The “AI sandwich” structure for firms
- The value of "meaning-makers," consensus, and status economies
- Why crypto may become essential infrastructure for...
What does it actually mean to bring assets onchain — and why should investors care?
In this episode, Cynthia Lo Bessette, Head of Digital Asset Management at Fidelity Investments, breaks down Fidelity’s roadmap for digital market adoption — from Bitcoin ETPs to tokenized money market funds — and explains why tokenization is about far more than just putting assets on a blockchain.
We cover:
- The three phases of digital asset...
What happens when AI becomes the primary economic actor?
In this conversation, Sean Neville (cofounder of Circle, architect of USDC, and now cofounder of Catena Labs) shares his vision for the next phase of the internet: an agent-native economy powered by programmable dollars and AI banks.
As stablecoins put dollars on internet rails, a new question emerges: what happens when AI agents start earning, spending, lending, investing ...
Restaurants generated more than a trillion dollars in sales last year — but they don’t control the payment rails those dollars flow through.
In this episode, Ben Leventhal (founder of Eater, Resy, and now Blackbird) joins Robert Hackett to explain why that’s a problem, how loyalty and payments have failed independent restaurants, and where crypto fits into fixing it.
Ben breaks down:
- Why most restaurant tech misses the point
- How Bl...
What happens when money moves 10x — or 100x — faster than it does today?
In this episode, Zach Abrams, cofounder and CEO of Bridge (now part of Stripe), lays out a bold vision for the future of money: a world where stablecoins become the dominant payment rail, most transactions happen between non-human agents, and entirely new financial infrastructure is required to keep up.
Zach explains why stablecoins are t...
with @alive_eth @rhackett
a16z crypto General Partner Ali Yahya explains why privacy — not performance — will determine the long-term winners in crypto, and how it creates powerful network effects.
In conversation with a16z crypto show host Robert Hackett, Ali lays out how privacy creates lock-in and winner-take-most dynamics — without sacrificing decentralization. They also dive into the technologies making privacy possible today, ...
with @PalmerLuckey @cdixon
In this special episode — our 100th on the a16z crypto show! — Chris Dixon interviews Palmer Luckey (founder of Anduril; founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift) to talk about the future of technology, belief, and building.
What does it take to build hardware at scale? Where are many of today’s tech bottlenecks? And what's the case for optimism about the future despite growing geopolitical turm...
with @ccatalini @rhackett
Today we’re talking about who — if anyone — should own the rails of global money.
Our guest is Christian Catalini, cofounder and chief strategy officer of the global payments startup Lightspark, and a former architect of Meta’s shuttered Libra project — one of the most ambitious attempts to create a corporate-backed digital currency.
In this episode, we talk about…
- why Bitcoin is more than “digital gold,”
- ...
with @PrimordialAA @rhackett
In this episode, host Robert Hackett sits down with Bryan Pellegrino, cofounder and CEO of LayerZero, one of the core infrastructure projects that enables blockchains to talk to one another. We talk about why crypto went multichain, what it means for crypto to compete with legacy financial systems, and a lesson Bryan took firsthand from Elon Musk. We also get into Bryan’s background as a professional pok...
with @LairdLife @GabbyReece @AriannaSimpson
Today's episode features two people who’ve spent their careers performing at the highest levels in sport and business: big-wave surfing pioneer Laird Hamilton and former pro volleyball star Gabby Reece.
They join a16z crypto General Partner Arianna Simpson for a conversation that explores what it takes to endure and excel over decades — how to get back up after setbacks, when to push versu...
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