Sep 18, 2025 · 25m · allin
Solana’s Anatoly Yakovenko on Crypto's Next Era: Quantum, AI, and the Future of Money
Anatoly Yakovenko · 15m spoken Jason Calacanis · 2m spoken Chamath Palihapitiya · 2m spoken David Friedberg · 1m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
At the All-In Summit, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko discusses the future of blockchain technology, real-world asset tokenization, and emerging regulatory shifts with hosts Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg. He explores Solana's high-speed architecture, the impact of stablecoins on global banking, and crypto's intersection with quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 31.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 4.5 Guest teaching 4.3 Guest disagreement 2.0 The hosts pushing back 2.8
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 21:40 Defending privacy against mandatory transparency
When Chamath advocates for hyper-transparency of Bitcoin ownership to prevent state attacks, Anatoly directly rejects the premise and asserts that privacy is a fundamental right.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 9:15 Challenging L1 and L2 chain proliferationChamath interrupts Anatoly to forcefully question why dozens of L1 and L2 blockchains keep launching and what actual market need they fill.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 23:51 Correcting profit margin assumptions in paymentsAnatoly educates Chamath on payment network economics, explaining that Visa operates at tiny 10 basis point margins while banks retain 2% margins, making banks the true target of stablecoin disruption.
The host holds their own ▶ 16:14 Friedberg demonstrating technical knowledge on quantum computingFriedberg shows deep technical context by bringing up Shor's algorithm and Google's Willow project when probing the vulnerability of current cryptographic schemes.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anatoly Yakovenko Welcomed to the Summit Stage | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | The hosts welcome Anatoly and ask friendly questions about policy changes under David Sacks and regulatory shifts. Anatoly explains how stablecoins are on track to become major holders of US treasuries. | |
| Solana's Core Architecture: Global Execution Layer vs Settlement | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Chamath asks about Solana's founding vision versus trade-offs relative to Ethereum. Anatoly differentiates Solana as a high-speed global execution layer rather than just a settlement layer. | |
| Memecoins, Real-World Asset Tokenization, and Regulated Exchanges | 5 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Jason and Friedberg cite specific examples like memecoins and NASDAQ's tokenization efforts. Anatoly explains how regulatory lag inadvertently favored memecoin adoption over real-world asset tokenization. | |
| User Complexity, Mental Models, and L1/L2 Competition | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | Chamath challenges the complexity of crypto for average users and questions the constant proliferation of new L1/L2 networks. Anatoly reframes user friction by comparing crypto adoption to internet mental models in 1992. | |
| Non-Financial Verticals, NFTs, and Creator Economy Tokenization | 5 | 4 | 1 | 3 | The hosts and guest brainstorm non-financial crypto applications, including creator economy tokens and social networks. Anatoly highlights regulatory friction by revealing he spent $2 million on legal fees out of a $14 million funding round. | |
| Real-World Assets and Non-Correlated Risk in DeFi | 6 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Chamath asks about real-world asset tokenization, and Friedberg shifts to quantum computing threat timelines. Friedberg displays domain knowledge mentioning Shor's algorithm, while Anatoly estimates a 50/50 chance of a quantum breakthrough within five years. | |
| Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain Technology | 6 | 4 | 4 | 5 | Jason and Chamath press on risks like MicroStrategy's Bitcoin concentration and state-sponsored attacks. When Chamath argues that coin holders should be hyper-transparent, Anatoly directly counters that privacy is a fundamental human right. | |
| Ethereum Outlook and Disruption of Traditional Banking Systems | 5 | 6 | 3 | 3 | Chamath asks if payment networks like Visa and MasterCard are threatened by blockchain rails. Anatoly corrects the premise by pointing out Visa operates on slim 10 basis point margins, whereas traditional issuing banks with 2% margins are the real target for disruption. |
Statements from this episode (22)
Yakovenko: Crypto industry might not have survived four more years under Gensler
“I don't know if the industry would have survived another four years of the Gensler regime.”
Yakovenko: The internet will hold the most US Treasuries within five years
“I think within five years, the internet is going to be the largest holder of US treasuries.”
Yakovenko: The US has the best, most trusted financial system globally
“I think we actually have the best financial system in the world. It's the most trusted, the most robust, the best regulatory environment for what it's worth as well.”
Yakovenko: Initial Solana calculations showed 1,000x speed vs Ethereum
“When I had my kind of eureka moment and I did the back of the envelope calculation for design, I'm like, oh, this is a thousand times faster than ETH.”
Yakovenko: Solana is world's execution layer, Ethereum is settlement layer
“Ethereum being world settlement layer, Solana is the world's execution layer.”
Yakovenko: Execution is where money is made in blockchain
“Execution is where all the money's made, so I think we're on the right track, and a fast execution engine can also do settlement.”
Yakovenko: Tokenizing real-world assets is a regulatory, not engineering, problem
“It turns out that is a much harder legal and regulation problem than it is an engineering problem.”
Yakovenko: Nasdaq would make more money running a Solana node
“If we succeed, if the protocol is awesome and globally synchronous and super fast, Nasdaq would make more money by just running a Solana node and integrating with it more directly.”
Yakovenko: Solana will never build an exchange onboarding US institutional clients
“We're never going to build an exchange that is onboarding U.S. Institutionals and serving U.S. Customers. We want NASDAQ to do that and to run it on Solana, and that would be great.”
Yakovenko: Back-office stablecoin adoption will force users to understand cryptography
“So I think as stable coins proliferate to the back office, In a lot of companies, people will figure out, oh, the secret key is actually really important. I need hardware, I need PKI, I need trusted displays, all, all of the security stuff, and they will build…”
Yakovenko: NFT-driven community IP creation will succeed in 5 to 10 years
“So I think even the weird experiments with NFTs being a way to create a community of artists to build a movie or story and create true new IP, all that will happen just five years from now or 10 years once We had critical maps.”
Yakovenko: Crypto monetization could enable a viable competitor to TikTok
“I personally think that you could build a competitive product to TikTok with crypto if the magic, you caught that kind of lightning in a bottle, because the monetization mechanism with crypto is so different than the ad-based one.”
Yakovenko: Solana spent $2M of $14M raised on US legal fees
“We raised a seed in A-Round. It was about fourteen million bucks, which is amazing. It was, you know, like, outright crazy success for a new, a first-time founder. I had to spend two million of that on lawyer fees. Which is a more than 10% of my runway to figu…”
Yakovenko: DeFi risk management is useless if all assets are correlated
“If everything that is in crypto, all this innovation around risk management in real time between, you know, borrowers and lenders, it's useless because if everything's a meme coin, everything's correlated, it'll all crash at the same time.”
Yakovenko: 50% chance of quantum computing breakthrough within five years
“Honest answer, I feel like fifty-fifty within five years there is a quantum breakthrough, and part of that is because of how fast they are.”
Yakovenko: Bitcoin should migrate to a quantum-resistant signature scheme
“We should migrate Bitcoin to a quantum resistance signature scheme.”
Yakovenko: Quantum computing will match AI in wealth creation if realized
“For the general public, quantum computing is such a massive unlock in terms of how much we can process that it's going to be as big of a wealth creator if we pull it off as AI.”
Yakovenko: Decentralized compute struggles against co-located, TradFi data centers
“Because they're competing with a data center that is all co-located, that is funded with traditional finance and those things, like, and yeah, you can put those assets on chain, and that, that's a lot of ways how I think things are going to integrate.”
Yakovenko: Bitcoin will survive the collapse of major institutional holders
“I think Bitcoin is resilient to these entities collapsing. Now, it's not going to be without painful risk that in terms of like people that own Bitcoin, but the thing is, it'll survive that, and all the properties of Bitcoin that people value will remain throu…”
Yakovenko: Bitcoin's original code is the coolest software in 20 years
“The coolest piece of software written in the last 20 years is, I would say, the Bitcoin, like, Nakamoto implementation.”
Yakovenko: Banks are more disruptible than Visa and MasterCard
“My, like contrary opinion is that I think Visa and MasterCard are more technology companies, and if you look at their, like, profit margin on the gross payment volume, it's like 10 basis points. It's like vapor. I think the issuer and receiver bank, those are …”