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Robert Hackett

Sonal Chokshi

a16z crypto

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/.

web3 with a16z crypto

Crypto has been walled off from the real economy for years — that's changing. 

Sonal Chokshi and Robert Hackett sit down with Eddy Lazzarin, a16z crypto's newest General Partner, to break down why crypto is entering a completely different phase and what gets built once the rules finally catch up to the technology. 

The discussion spans: 

- what the CLARITY Act actually does and why it changes the design space for crypto founders 

 - the difference between a network token and a security, and why it needs to be written into law 

 - why stablecoins are crypto's first real killer app and how the rest of the economy is reconfiguring around them 

 - how tokens let builders decouple pricing from growth in a way stocks never could 

 - why 97.8% of the value created in capitalism leaks out, and what that means for anyone trying to capture any of it 

Highlights: 

 00:00 Intro 

 01:25 What it means to be a GP 

 02:00 Consensus vs. non-consensus bets 

 04:27 Network tokens and the CLARITY Act 

 09:35 Revenue, value capture, and network-token business models 

 21:18 Stablecoins as crypto’s first killer app 

 28:52 Engineer-philosopher mindset 39:04 Intellectual influences 

 52:40 Eddy’s path to crypto 1:03:15 The exuberant adoption phase of AI 

 1:14:38 Being "pro–AI psychosis" 

 Follow: Eddy Lazzarin: https://twitter.com/eddylazzarin 

 Sonal Chokshi: https://twitter.com/smc90 

 Robert Hackett: https://twitter.com/rhackett 

 Follow a16z crypto: 

 X: https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto 

 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/ 

 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto 

 Subscribe for more industry reports, trend updates, news analysis, builder guides, and other resources: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/ 

As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

 
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How Stablecoins Are Reconfiguring the Financial System | ft. Eddy Lazzarin and Sonal Chokshi

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 cover:

- why “AI-powered hacking” is difficult to measure

 - how geopolitical tensions may be influencing cyber activity

 - why defenders should be aggressively stress-testing their own systems

 - how AI could eventually outperform humans at resisting social engineering

 - what users can do today to protect themselves online

 

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro

 00:57 - The surge, explained

 01:37 - Did attackers use AI

 04:19 - How AI can help defend against attacks

 09:16 - The doomsday marketing debate

 17:17 - DeFi transparency: opportunities and challenges

 21:00 - Social engineering and how to stay safe

 

Follow along here:

 Eddy Lazzarin: https://twitter.com/eddylazzarin

 Robert Hackett: https://twitter.com/rhackett

 Matt Gleason: https://twitter.com/mg_486662

Follow a16z crypto:

 X: https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto

 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/

 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto

Subscribe for more industry reports, trend updates, news analysis, builder guides, and other resources: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/

 

As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

 
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The Real Reason Behind Most DeFi Hacks

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 what regulatory clarity unlocks for builders 

 04:32 Why stablecoins are crypto's WhatsApp moment 

 08:54 Why the next era of crypto founders will be pragmatic, not ideological 

 11:49 From cypherpunk revolution to crypto's "collared shirt era" 

 15:02 Programmable money meets AI 

 21:15 Onchain capital markets for compute, energy, and credit 

 25:57 Why finance is the foundation, not the ceiling 

 28:48 AI agents as first-class economic actors 

 38:19 Why privacy is the only moat 

 41:26 Jevons paradox and the future of blockspace demand 

 43:20 Jolt and the zero-knowledge breakthrough 

 58:15 Writing the next chapter of Read Write Own

Resources: 

 Chris Dixon: https://x.com/cdixon

 Ali Yahya: https://x.com/alive_eth

 Eddy Lazzarin: https://x.com/eddylazzarin

 Guy Wuollet: https://x.com/guywuolletjr

 Robert Hackett: https://x.com/rhackett

Follow a16z crypto: X: https://x.com/a16zcrypto 

 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/ 

 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto

Subscribe for more industry reports, trend updates, news analysis, builder guides, and other resources: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/

 

*** 

 As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

 
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We Raised $2.2B. Here’s Why.

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 flavors of agentic commerce 

 04:30 – What is an agent, actually? 

 12:57 – The headless merchant thesis 

 17:17 – What happens to existing friction? 

 24:45 – The economic contract of the web is broken 

 27:46 – Will agents get distracted by ads? 

 35:152– Stablecoins vs. credit cards 

 41:54 – Sam's bear case on interchange 

 49:11 – The killer app for agentic commerce

 

Sam Ragsdale on X: /samrags_ 

 Eddy Lazzarin on X: /eddylazzarin 

 Noah Levine on X: /nlevine19 

 Robert Hackett on X: /rhackett 

 

Follow a16z crypto: /a16zcrypto 

 Subscribe for more news and updates: a16zcrypto.substack.com

 
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The end of ads? AI agents are about to change how we buy

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 compute to the philosophical implications of machine intelligence, they argue that the next evolution of AI must be owned, coordinated, and verified in a fundamentally different way.

Highlights 

 00:00 – Intro 

 00:29 – The biggest misconception about AI infrastructure 

 01:20 – Why centralization in AI is a deeper problem than people realize 

 04:19 – Why AI needs crypto 

 05:51 – How AI models are trained 

 08:15 – The rise of autonomous AI agents with onchain identities 

 10:37 – Lightning round

Ben Fielding on X: https://x.com/benfielding 

 Harry Grieve on X: https://x.com/harrygrieve 

 Gensyn on X: https://x.com/gensynai 

 Follow a16z crypto on X: https://x.com/a16zcrypto 

 Subscribe for more news and updates: a16zcrypto.substack.com

 

 
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Why AI is so centralized: How it's built, who controls it, and what comes next

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 to video conferencing will soon require proof of human verification.

Timestamps: 

 • 0:00—Introduction 

 • 4:07—Three Big Ideas People Were Interested In 

 • 9:05—The Orb Verification Piece 

 • 15:20—Social Media Bots: PSYOPs and Propaganda 

 • 29:18—We Had Proof of Personhood for the Longest Time 

 • 36:44—Next Year Go-to-Market Is Focused on the US 

 • 40:09—Different Levels of Verification

Resources: 

Follow Alex Blania on X: / alexblania 

 Follow Ben Horowitz on X: / bhorowitz 

 Follow Erik Torenberg on X: / eriktorenber

Follow a16z crypto for more... 

 X: https://x.com/a16zcrypto 

 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/ 

 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto 

 Substack: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/

 

As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

 
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How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer

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, why institutions are learning faster than expected, and where banks, asset managers, fintechs, and stablecoins fit into the next wave of adoption.

He also shares his long-term vision for finance: a world where open blockchain infrastructure replaces siloed financial systems, access to capital gets broader, and financial products become cheaper, more personalized, and easier to build.

Highlights: 

 • 0:00 Intro 

 • 0:36 What Morpho actually does 

 • 1:22 DeFi’s biggest misconception 

 • 5:26 Why Wall Street is paying attention now 

 • 6:46 Who’s adopting onchain finance first: Banks or asset managers? 

 • 9:57 The race for a Euro stablecoin 

 • 10:49 The future of finance, 5–10 years out 

 • 11:16 Why finance is still broken 

 • 13:30 What open mortgage and credit markets could become on open blockchains 

 • 15:14 The worst advice Paul's received as a founder 

 • 17:17 What's wrong with an $8 croissant (besides the obvious)

Follow a16z crypto for more... 

X: https://x.com/a16zcrypto 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto 

Substack: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/

 

*** As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

 
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How DeFi lending actually works (with Paul Frambot, cofounder and CEO of Morpho Labs)

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 chewed a lot of glass. 

We also cover how Jito acts like a Cloudflare for Solana, why cheap transactions create surprising problems, what convinced Lucas that the Solana engineers were in it for the right reasons, and his vision for a financial system anyone can access with just a phone. 

Follow Jito: https://www.jito.network/ 

Follow Lucas: https://x.com/buffalu__ 

Highlights 

 • 0:00 — Intro 

 • 0:49 — What is Jito and why does it exist 

 • 1:11 — Why Solana transactions are less than a penny 

 • 2:00 — What attracted Lucas to Solana from Ethereum 

 • 2:39 — How Jito is like Cloudflare for blockchains 

 • 5:02 — The $1,500 Ethereum transaction fee problem 

 • 7:21 — The vision: all of finance onchain 

 • 7:46 — Onchain vs. opening a Robinhood account 

 • 8:37 — Lucas's journey from robotics to crypto 

 • 9:55 — Solana's rate of improvement and Anatoly's Law 

 • 10:44 — The pitch for people new to crypto 

 • 15:00 — Staying lean at 21 people 

 • 15:17 — Nicotine as a productivity hack 

 • 15:58 — Sleep, alcohol, and the Oura ring 

 • 16:40 — Smallest hill you'll die on: littering and shopping carts 

Follow a16z crypto for more... 

X: https://x.com/a16zcrypto 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto 

Substack: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/ 

 

As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

 
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Why Solana keeps getting faster — and what's next (ft. Jito Labs CEO Lucas Bruder)

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" (Extropic founder & CEO,) join Eddy Lazzarin (a16z crypto CTO) and Shaw Walters (Eliza Labs founder) for a deep debate about these two perspectives and what they mean for AI, crypto, and the future. 

They discuss: 

 • Whether acceleration is something we can control

 • The biggest risks of AI, from surveillance to concentration of power

 • Why open source and decentralization may shape who benefits

 • Whether slowing down AI is realistic or even desirable

 • How humans stay relevant in a world of increasingly powerful systems

 • What the next 10, 100, and 1,000 years might look like

 • At its core, this episode asks: Can acceleration be steered, or is that beyond our control?

Highlights: 

00:00 Opening 

07:02 Thermodynamics and first principles 

16:04 Acceleration, entropy, and civilization 

28:29 The core disagreement 

32:42 Comparing and contrasting e/acc and d/acc 

36:20 Open source, open hardware, and local intelligence 

54:18 Should AI be slowed down? 

1:02:35 Autonomous agents and artificial life 

1:21:07 Crypto as the trust layer between humans and AI 

1:35:37 Closing arguments 

 

Follow a16z crypto for more... 

X: https://x.com/a16zcrypto 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto 

 

📩 Subscribe for more industry reports, trend updates, news analysis, builder guides, and other resources: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/ 

*** As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

 
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Vitalik Buterin vs Beff Jezos: AI Acceleration Debate (E/acc vs D/acc)

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, platforms, and technology. 

They unpack how today’s platforms shape creator behavior, why audience relationships are often trapped inside algorithms, and what a more direct creator-fan connection could look like. They also explore broader questions around crypto infrastructure, stablecoins, and whether blockchain can enable new kinds of internet-native products without needing to be the focus of the user experience. 

Along the way, Justin reflects on his path from music into crypto, Michael talks about how magic shaped the way he thinks about originality and performance, and both share thoughts on NFTs, digital ownership, productivity tools, books, and creative inspiration. 

Highlights 

 • 0:00 Intro 0:47 The biggest misconceptions about creator monetization

 • 1:04 Why creators still don’t know their audience

 • 1:34 Trading, speculation, and the limits of past creator crypto models

 • 2:31 Why creator-fan relationships could move onchain

 • 4:41 Stablecoins and global internet products

 • 6:55 Justin Michael’s journey from DJ to crypto builder

 • 8:12 What artists still don’t get from platforms

 • 10:09 Subscription models, fan support, and alternative mechanics

 • 17:57 AI, content abundance, and the future of creativity

 • 18:57 Why human curation still matters

 • 19:36 Copyright, IP, and a world shaped by AI

 • 25:00 The difference between AI and crypto products

 • 25:38 What magic teaches about creativity and originality

 • 28:23 Inspirations: John Mayer, Zedd, Brian Chesky, David Blaine

 • 35:06 Why NFTs still matter 

 • 

 
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How DeFi lending actually works (with Paul Frambot, cofounder and CEO of Morpho Labs)

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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