A product discussed on NEW ECONOMIES.

Why Andreessen Horowitz Is Still Betting Big On Crypto
Apr 22, 2026 · 50:25
Ali Yahya, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), explains why AI and crypto are converging faster than predicted, with privacy emerging as a key defensive moat for crypto startups. He defines AGI as the point when an agent can be fully economically independent and outlines five stages of autonomous commerce, from automated payments to agent-to-agent transactions. Yahya is skeptical about AI agents trading for consumers—since everyone using ChatGPT eliminates alpha—but sees potential for professionals with proprietary data. He notes that a16z's 70-person platform team provides legal, research, and go-to-market support, and that the cost of entry has collapsed, letting founders test ideas with smaller teams before raising capital. He also highlights prediction markets, now legal in the US, as a growing category and recommends robotics as the next frontier, calling physical intelligence a 10–15 year arc offering time for newcomers to enter.

OUT NOW: Solana's Founding Story | Anatoly Yakovenko
Nov 10, 2025 · 1:06
Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder and CEO of Solana, tells the story of how his eureka moment—a calculation showing Solana could achieve 1,000 to 10,000 times more throughput than Ethereum or Bitcoin—led to a manic four days and eventually to a blockchain that processes in a single month as many transactions as Ethereum does in its lifetime. He details the brutal fundraising process, requiring 1,000 meetings to secure the first major check, and the near-catastrophic moment during Solana's biggest conference (1,600 developers, sold out) when FTX collapsed on the flight back, threatening the entire ecosystem. The episode explores Anatoly's vision for decentralized finance beyond speculation and the challenges of building a truly open on-chain financial system.

How Solana Survived When Most Other Coins Fell | Anatoly Yakovenko Story
Nov 9, 2025 · 54:31
Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder and CEO of Solana, recounts how a eureka moment after two coffees and a beer led to encoding passage of time as a data structure, enabling 1,000 to 10,000 times more throughput than Ethereum or Bitcoin. He describes the grueling process of taking 1,000 meetings to secure funding, surviving the FTX collapse that wiped 97% of Solana's value, and how ecosystem teams like Backpack turned anger into momentum. Yakovenko explains that Solana now processes in a single month as many transactions as Ethereum’s entire lifetime, at fees under 0.2 cents. His long-term vision is a single on-chain system handling payments, trading, IPOs, and global finance atomically at the speed of light, reducing costs to the physics minimum. He predicts stablecoins will drive a 10x increase in digital dollars and that on-chain IPOs could democratize capital access for founders.
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