Good lord. It turns out that a16z, the same people who told us "Why Decentralized Matters" 8 years ago, now don't think it matters. Sure, they hedge by making a meek "parallel path" argument between actual DeFi and whatever the suits are doing, but the fact that they now take all this "enterprise blockchain" nonsense seriously tells me they've lost faith. Or rather they believe decentralization matters for DePIN that enables DeSci for agentic inference, but not for finance. "Peer to Peer Electronic Cash" breaking up Wall Street is now a bridge too far! Allow me to reframe what is actually happening with TradFi adoption of blockchain: the rent seeking intermediaries for whom friction and delays is a primary source of profits are not into actual crypto (shocking, I know). They prefer fake crypto, because it allows them to hijack the narrative, delay progress, and use lawfare in Washington to kill true innovation. This isn't some conspiracy theory. The very same banks who are lobbying to kill stablecoins as I type are claiming to use fake internal blockchains to offer services they could have rolled out 20 years ago using SQL. Also, the same HFT trading firms who have been lobbying to kill DeFi for years are the biggest holders of dubious coins tied to "permissioned networks" supposedly used by COBOL jockeys to do post trade settlement. Before that, they used fax machines. None of this should come as a surprise. Incumbents fight change. Highly regulated incumbebts who haven't had to innovate for decades fight the hardest. What does come as a surprise is that the smartest VCs out there (and I mean this genuinely) are falling for their slight of hand. No wonder this industry is in such a low place. Our once fearless leaders are full of doubt and bending the knee to archaic orgs like...SWIFT? Like, it took the Society over a decade to try to move cross-border payments that take 3 days to a new messaging standard, but a16z thinks they'll build a viable "blockchain" for real-time payments soon. Sigh. Since they end their article with advice for founders, I am going to do the same: Proof of Authority is not a viable consensus mechanism, inside a bank or on CNBC. Neither is Proof of Press Release. A founder who doesn't think the institutions of tomorrow will be fundamentally different from the dominant ones today proably shouldn't be one.