The Exchanges

Q Jordy? Where, what are you expecting to see out of the kind of real world asset category over the next couple of years?

A Yeah, I mean, I think of stable coins as sort of the initial real world asset, right? And so you have dollars, bank account, and then the next, and then, and then the great thing about that, the kind of adoption there, and hopefully all the regulatory clarity we're getting is that will be a natural stepping stone to You know, you have Robin Hood talking about stocks. You have BlackRock talking about, you know, treasury bills. Um, wouldn't, I think it would be nice if anyone in the world, I think it'd be good for the US and I think it'd be good for the world if anyone in the world could buy, you know, four and a half percent, uh, treasury, you know, uh, interest treasury bill, right? And have it secure and easy and permissionless and low fee. Uh, I think it's, you know, it's good for our, you know, the US, the popularity of the dollar. And I think it's, you know, it'd be nice for somebody who has a volatile currency to have access to those, um, Um, so, you know, stocks, stocks, bonds, and then you can imagine, you know, um, all of these sorts of so-called dark pools. So, you know, still a large part of finance is people using Bloomberg and calling each other. And a lot of that, you know, like trading bonds and muni bonds and corporate bonds and things like that. There's a lot of interest from the banks to think about ways to use blockchains, uh, to create essentially marketplace…

AI assessment note: “natural stepping stone to You know, you have Robin Hood talking about stocks.”

Q Where, what are you expecting to see out of the kind of real world asset category over the next couple of years? It feels like it's, this year, at least to me, it's felt like we're days or weeks away from some pretty high profile assets coming on chain. Uh, I'm curious how you think about the category broadly.

A Yeah. Um, I mean, I think of stablecoins as sort of the initial real world asset, right? So you have dollars in the bank account, and then the next, and then, and then the great thing about that, the kind of adoption there, and hopefully all the regulatory clarity we're getting is that will be a natural stepping stone to You know, you have Robin hood talking about stocks, you have black rock talking about, you know, treasury bills. Um, wouldn't, I think it would be nice if anyone in the world, uh, I think it'd be good for the U S and I think it'd be good for the world. If anyone in the world could buy, you know, four and a half percent, uh, treasury, you know, uh, interest treasury bill, right. And have it secure and easy and permissionless and low fee. Uh, I think it's, you know, it's good for our, you know, the U S the popularity of the dollar. And I think it's, you know, it'd be nice for somebody who has a volatile currency to have access to those, um, Um, so, you know, stocks, stocks, bonds, and then you can imagine, you know, um, all of these sorts of so-called dark pools. So, you know, still a large part of finance is people using Bloomberg and calling each other. And a lot of that, you know, like trading bonds and muni bonds and corporate bonds and things like that. There's a lot of interest from the banks to think about ways to use blockchains, uh, to create essentially…

AI assessment note: “I think of stablecoins as sort of the initial real world asset”

Q aligned people and crypto funds, and it was split almost exactly 50 50. Like the entire crypto community really did go super bipartisan with the spend. How do you bucket? How do you think about the adoption across government B to B or just direct to consumer? What are the key drivers for the different, uh, the different constituencies and then the different applications and how do they fit together?

A No, that's a great question. And I, like, I have a broader kind of framework I like to talk about, which is sort of, I, I sort of like to distinguish technologies between what I call inside out and outside in. And some inside out of things that sort of start with established institutions, like AI to some extent is like that, you know, the iPhone was like this. It came out of Apple, a very established institution. AI came out of, you know, Stanford and so forth. Um, whereas crypto very much, you know, Bitcoin started at the fringes, right? And sort of like open source software and there's, you know, other kind of tech movements that started at the fringes and it sort of worked its way in, right? So stablecoin started for, The main use case was settling, you know, crypto trades, you know, seven years ago or something. And then over time, you started to see more and more like, you know, payment providers in Argentina, for example, and that, you know, sort of more, more kind of moving to the center. Now Stripe, you know, I think of Stripe is, is very much probably the, I think the smartest, a lot of people think the smartest, one of the, if not the smartest fintech company is all in on it. You know, they did a billion dollar acquisition, a bridge, you know, to ramp up their efforts. Um, I think the main, the gaining factor, like I We speak to a lot of like, like what I would love t…

AI assessment note: “I sort of like to distinguish technologies between what I call inside out and outside in.”

Q And then you now have big institutional players that are coming in. Maybe they brought ETFs to market to start and then Now they're thinking about, you know, stable coin applications as well. How do you look at the market and, and what kind of advice do you give to portfolio companies that are trying to figure out who they are, whether that's fully decentralized or some type of hybrid?

A The point is not for like decentralization and kind of this new architecture of blockchains for its own sake. The point is they have specific benefits. So like, why, why would one build on a blockchain like Ethereum or Solana as opposed to a traditional, You know, um, on AWS, like a traditional architecture. And the answer is by built, you know, when you build, the way I like to describe it, uh, most simply is blockchains allow you to build digital services that remove the intermediaries. So you remove, so for example, stable coins, you have no intermediaries that are taking fees. You don't have the banks and the payment providers and the payment networks, right, that take the, all the different layers of fees. So that's an important benefit is you're building these, you know, you could build social networks without fees. You can build games without fees. You can build AI systems without fees, right? I, I, without fees, it's like very low, like sub, like a couple basis points. I actually have, if for those interested, I wrote a book, read, write, own, and I have a chapter on take rates where I go through this in detail, but it's essentially you're going from like 30% in the app store, you know, a hundred percent in Facebook and 50% on YouTube to like five basis points or something, right? So, um, or, you know, two and a half percent for payments and so forth. So, um, so, so the…

AI assessment note: “The point is not for like decentralization... for its own sake. The point is they have specific benefits.”

Q What kind of, um, general guidance are you giving to, uh, somebody that, uh, maybe was an active trader and wants to get more into the actual, you know, kind of venture side of the game?

A I've been investing in, in venture funds and crypto funds for a long time, just sort of after I sold my first company. In fact, Mark, Mark Andreessen and I had done it together for a long time. Um, and I think it's just, it's just traditional finance in the sense of you have to, you know, non-consensus right, right? Like, As much as we hear about crypto, it's still very non-consensus. A lot of, a lot, a lot of venture funds just simply, maybe they'll have a little bit of Bitcoin, but they'll, otherwise they'll rule it out if there's tokens and things. Um, you talk to fund funds, um, they, a lot of them will say we have the no crypto rule, you know, sovereign wealth funds, so all the kind of giant pools of capital that fund the venture world. And so it's still kind of this, considered this kind of weird sideshow. Um, like obviously the past doesn't predict the future and so forth, and we don't know how things will play out, but it's still very non-consensus. I think from a, from a financial investing point of view, the broader crypto world. So I, I, like, I believe that's where the opportunities are in, in, in, in venture investing. Um, obviously you have to also be right. And so, and time will tell, but it's, I think it's still much more not, it's surprisingly non-consensus in the investing world.

AI assessment note: “it's just traditional finance in the sense of you have to, you know, non-consensus right”

Q with the AI thing, if you get Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft using stable coins in an agentic application, the user might never know that I'm paying a fraction of a cent to access a Wall Street Journal article. It just happens, and I'm not even aware. So, what are the key drivers for the different, ah, the different constituencies, and then the different applications, and how do they fit together?

A No, that's a great question. And I, like, I have a broader kind of framework I like to talk about, which is sort of, I, I sort of like to distinguish technologies between what I call inside out and outside in. And so inside out of things that sort of start with established institutions, like AI to some extent is like that, you know, the iPhone was like this. It came out of Apple, a very established institution. AI came out of, you know, Stanford and so forth. Um, whereas crypto very much, you know, Bitcoin started at the fringes, right? And sort of like open source software and there's, you know, other kind of tech movements have started at the fringes and it sort of worked its way in, right? So stablecoin started for, The main use case was settling, you know, crypto trades, you know, seven years ago or something. And then over time, you started to see more and more like, you know, payment providers in Argentina, for example, and that, you know, sort of more, more kind of moving to the center. Now Stripe, you know, I think of Stripe is, is very much probably the, I think the smartest, a lot of people think the smartest, one of the, if not the smartest fintech company is all in on it. You know, they did a billion dollar acquisition bridge to, you know, to ramp up their efforts. Um, I think the main, the gaining factor, like I said, Speak to a lot of like, like what I would love …

AI assessment note: “I sort of like to distinguish technologies between what I call inside out and outside in.”

Q Do you think that the narrative around stable coins is still going to morph into micropayments?

A Briefly, the way I think about stable coins is today, we don't really have a global payment system or global financial system. We have, you know, a 195 countries. Each one has many different banking systems. When you send money, uh, to another country, like I said, you wire money, like actually we've had this experience at the firm where we wire, uh, investment and it ends up going through like a bunch of humans and paperwork. It's really just a mishmash of systems. And so the way to think about Stablecoins is similar to how, for those who are old enough to remember, text messaging was like this at one, like in the 2000. You would send a text message, you would say you don't have a plan to send to Canada, you got to sign up, and it was all these different systems, and then WhatsApp and FaceTime came along, and they built this sort of, what they call, over-the-top global network, right? So think of sort of stablecoins and blockchains as an over-the-top network. It's, it's from day one, global, um, low fee, credibly neutral, programmable, Uh, payment system that just sort of works everywhere. That, that's kind of the simple way to think of it. Um, and so, as you mentioned, um, you know, one of the obvious benefits is just cross-border, and that's where a lot of the uses are right now. And so, for example, like SpaceX has a program where they move, you know, they'll sell a Starlin…

AI assessment note: “Briefly, the way I think about stable coins is today”