Stablecoins are increasingly being spent by card swipe. Crypto payment cards have gone from a novelty to more than $750 million in monthly spend. These cards let people pay with crypto anywhere traditional card networks are accepted. Behind the scenes, the crypto — stablecoins, overwhelmingly — gets converted to local currency at the point of sale, so the payments look like any other card transactions to merchants. Crypto cardholders don’t require a traditional bank account. Depending on the program, users either deposit stablecoins with a card issuer, or hold them directly onchain through self-custody. Crypto cards expand people’s access to U.S. dollar accounts globally, and they offer a convenient way for stablecoin holders to transact.

Crypto is at a pivotal moment. As Congress debates landmark market structure legislation, Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon discuss the decisions that could shape where the next generation of financial infrastructure is built, and whether the United States remains the global leader in crypto innovation: 00:00 Intro 05:31 From crypto subculture to financial infrastructure 08:37 Why crypto needs rules now 12:20 The regulatory war on crypto 15:41 How CLARITY could prevent another FTX 22:42 Why criminals using crypto may be easier to catch 26:20 Privacy, blockchains, and the invention of HTTPS 30:41 Government ethics and crypto 34:52 The banking lobby’s stablecoin fight 37:05 Why every major bank is building on blockchains 41:04 Developer liability as a killshot 45:23 How CLARITY provides oversight 49:30 What happens if CLARITY fails? 50:50 Regulation vs. innovation 54:12 Why America should lead 55:36 What CLARITY could unlock @pmarca @cdixon @rhackett

What happens when intelligence becomes a line item? For the first time, companies can treat AI token spending almost like headcount: allocate more money, deploy more intelligence, and potentially get more work done. That changes the economics of building a company. It could reshape how companies form, how teams are managed, how businesses are financed, and who is best positioned to build them. a16z crypto General Partner @guywuolletjr and Head of Engineering @NoahCitron join @rhackett to explore why engineering leaders may soon manage token budgets like P&Ls, the emergence of software-engineering “pod shops”; and whether the future belongs to smaller, leaner businesses run by people who are unusually good at directing agents. They also ask why AI agents may naturally transact using stablecoins, and confront a larger question: If AI has created so much new intelligence, why hasn’t it produced an obvious jump in economic growth? And in a world where everyone can access powerful models, will intelligence matter less than grit, judgment, and agency? 0:00 Intro 4:01 Why token spending is starting to resemble headcount 4:51 Deciding how much spend is too much spend 9:04 The agentic A/B test: How to quantify "return on tokens" 12:05 The software-engineering "pod shop" 25:13 Paying deference to the Machine God 26:06 The rise (or not) of lean, AI-native microbusinesses 28:05 Everyone's a manager? The new style of thinking for engineers 30:48 Why AI agents may naturally use stablecoins 34:33 When AI productivity will appear in GDP 47:49 Why grit and agency may matter more than IQ 51:38 How AI could create new paths for startups 54:53 Innovation, commoditization, and creative destruction

You can’t demand compliance while refusing to explain what compliance requires. @milesjennings on why the CLARITY Act matters: “For the entire time that the industry has existed, it’s been very unclear whether or not digital assets have been subject to securities laws, how those securities laws apply, and how entrepreneurs can comply.” The bill creates a tailored framework for digital assets, draws jurisdictional lines between the SEC and CFTC, establishes guardrails for exchanges, and protects entrepreneurs from being unfairly targeted. “It’s targeting the key areas of uncertainty that have plagued the space for a long time, and really impeded innovation.” @MTSlive

“Crypto is really kind of like a laboratory for lots of disciplines to experiment in.” @Tim_Roughgarden on what makes blockchains uniquely useful for research: “If you study financial markets and you have an idea to make Wall Street better, that’s going to be pretty hard to even experiment with.” “But if you have an idea for a new kind of decentralized finance and a DeFi protocol, go ahead and deploy it. No one’s stopping you.” “You can try out ideas in the wild that you would never be able to in a more traditional application domain.” @MTSlive @sophiadew

The most blatant lie about CLARITY is that it undermines national security and law enforcement. The truth is that it undeniably strengthens both. That’s good policy and it’s actually what the industry wants—US builders lose when crypto is used for crime.

Aztec Alpha V5 is live. The fastest private transactions we've ever shipped, now on mainnet. Read more on Apps roll out over the coming week, starting with @nyxmoney. Nyx is invite-only, but for the next 24 hours it's open to everyone. Code below 👇

“Virtually every major industry in the United States has federal rules and regulations. We do not have that in the crypto industry.” @Collin_McCune on how regulatory uncertainty pushes technical talent away from crypto: "Are they gonna build in the blockchain space, or are they gonna go and build an AI startup?” “If there’s a 40 or 50% chance that I might get a knock on the door from the SEC, that’s not a very compelling route." @milkroaddaily

First Principles Ep. 6 with Ron Rivest Long before the internet became a place to bank, transact, or build blockchains, Turing Award winner Ron Rivest helped solve a foundational problem: how can strangers communicate securely without first meeting to exchange a secret? Rivest tells the story of inventing RSA with Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, why digital signatures fascinated him even more than encryption, and how cryptographic hashes, government pressure, patents, and standards shaped the security infrastructure we rely on today. Rivest shares his unusually candid views on quantum computing, post-quantum security, and more. Hosted by @Tim_Roughgarden with @danboneh. 00:00 Intro: the two problems that could break modern cryptography 01:10 Why Ron Rivest’s work underpins the internet and blockchains 08:10 Before public-key cryptography, there was no theory of security 11:05 The open problem that led to RSA 13:55 The night Ron Rivest discovered the core idea behind RSA 17:55 Why digital signatures were the real breakthrough 19:14 The RSA challenge — and a prediction that was off by quadrillions of years 28:33 How government pressure shaped cryptographic standards 30:36 Designing the hash functions that made digital signatures practical 33:26 The Fiat–Shamir transformation, explained 38:04 Building a cryptography company before the web existed 42:31 Will quantum computers ever become powerful enough to break RSA? 48:02 The cryptography securing the internet, elections, and everyday life 50:11 What surprised Dan: Quantum giveth and quantum taketh away

“Social networks created a big-bang moment in sociology.” @Tim_Roughgarden on why blockchains could do the same for political science: “You could study these age-old questions in sociology at a completely different scale and in a completely more automated way than you could previously.” “I think blockchains, on the political science side, are doing that same kind of unlock — where you can study different voting systems and get data about them at a scale and with an ease that was never before possible.” @MTSlive

“The United States is unique because we have this wonderful test bed of entrepreneurial talent. Everyone wants to come here. They want to build.” But regulatory uncertainty is putting that advantage at risk. @Collin_McCune on why America needs durable crypto legislation: “We all know people that are going and building in other places because they can’t deal with the wishy-washy or the gray area of the United States.” “Regulators can step in and use their existing authorities to write some rules. But nothing can replace long-term legislation.” @milkroaddaily

Transfer activity of tokenized stocks is on the rise. Monthly transfer volume for tokenized stocks reached $9.22 billion in June, up from $53 million last June — a more than 170x increase. This metric measures any onchain movements, such as trading, transfers between wallets, or collateral deposits into DeFi protocols. The market for tokenized stocks is still a small one compared to traditional equities, which trade in the double-digit trillions per month. But the trend is clear: More issuers and platforms are bringing tokenized stocks online, and the category is growing.

While the market for tokenized stocks is new, its composition has already changed greatly in the past year. Crypto-linked products once dominated the market, but their share by market cap has dropped to 21% (as of June) from 79% a year earlier. They have lost the top spot to the "other" category — a long tail of hundreds of smaller listings — that now makes up 35% of the market, up from 15% a year earlier. The rest of the market is climbing too. Megacap tech — tech companies with a market cap around $100 billion or more — now make up 10.6% of the market by market cap as of June, up from 0.6% a year ago. ETFs and indices grew to 17.3% of the market in that same period, up from 4.5% a year earlier. The fastest riser has been, unsurprisingly, the AI and chips category. The category vaulted from less than $1 million in June 2025 — 0.3% of the market by market cap at the time — to 15.5% of the market as of a year later.

The market cap of tokenized stocks reached about $1.7 billion at the end of June, up from $329 million a year earlier — more than 5x growth. This makes tokenized stocks one of the fastest-growing categories of tokenized assets (which some refer to as real world assets). Unlike stablecoins, whose circulating supply is a direct proxy for demand — one token, one dollar — tokenized stocks move with their underlying equities, so “market cap” does not cleanly separate the effects of new tokens minted and existing tokens repricing.  The evidence points to issuance though. More than half of today's market cap sits in assets that weren't onchain a year ago. And most of the remaining balances arrived mid-year — after much of the period's price movement in the underlying stocks had already occurred.

What happens when the CLARITY Act passes? @Collin_McCune points to the “absolute explosion of activity” following stablecoin legislation: “The most important thing that people miss about why clarity is so important is: It is a signal.” “It’s a signal that America is here, and they’ve made a long-term decision.” @milkroaddaily

First Principles Ep. 5 with Paul Milgrom One of the most important auction designs in modern history was sold to the FCC on a 3.5-inch disk. Nobel Prize winner Paul Milgrom on auctions, price discovery, and how mechanism design became real-world infrastructure — from spectrum auctions to DeFi. Hosted by @Tim_Roughgarden with @skominers. 00:00 Intro: economics assumptions that are “just wrong” 02:19 Scott Kominers and Tim Roughgarden on the genius of Paul Milgrom 05:35 An intro to the  Glosten-Milgrom model: The paper that created entire fields of economics 07:48 The auction theory breakthroughs of the 1980s 17:15 Why market microstructure matters for DeFi 24:17 When math teaches economics something new 32:38 How theory became spectrum auction design 36:22 The floppy disk that helped convince the FCC 41:05 What changed when auctions moved online 45:28 The auction that reorganized television 1:07:30 What economics and computer science can learn from each other 1:13:22 Futures markets for compute 1:15:12 Paul Milgrom’s advice for builders