Daren Matsuoka

@darenmatsuoka

113 Following

1378 Followers

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Stablecoin payments and AI agents are some of the clearest use cases for crypto since Bitcoin's store of value. Just wait until we supercharge them with DeFi, DAOs, onchain gaming, decentralized social, NFTs, DePIN, privacy, identity tools, prediction markets, and more.

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Here's my contribution to the Big Ideas in 2025 post by @a16z @a16zcrypto. I believe this is the year to re-engage the 617M "passive" crypto holders and bring the world onchain.

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1/ Since Russia invaded Ukraine and sanctions were imposed, wholesale CBDC developments have DOUBLED. This is a national security concern, since the dollar’s status as a reserve currency gives the United States tremendous power.

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Here’s the talk I gave at this year’s a16z crypto Founders Summit 👇

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The Decentralized Social experiment is underway, and vibrant developer ecosystems are emerging around open protocols like Farcaster. What are you building?

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It’s easy to forget about the impact that crypto is having outside the U.S. In countries with rampant inflation, people are using stablecoins to protect their assets. Argentina is a prime example.

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There appears to be a large overlap between crypto and AI users 🤔

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DAOs are an underappreciated source of funding for builders. DAO treasuries hold more in liquid tokens than the entire amount of VC investments into crypto companies last year.

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Blockchains now process 50x as many transactions per second as they did just four years ago 🤫

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Mobile wallet users is one of my favorite metrics to track in the crypto space. Great to see recent all-time highs as the industry becomes more global.

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This morning we released our 2024 State of Crypto report, which I’ve been working on for the past few months. It’s been refreshing to take a step back and look at crypto from a broad, but data-driven, perspective. Check out the full report at: https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/state-of-crypto-report-2024/

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Stablecoin payments could be the answer to how we bring billions of people onchain. Right now, merchants are faced with a tradeoff. Crypto rails can certainly make businesses more efficient (and thus more profitable), but those efficiency gains are offset by the limited number of onboarded crypto users they can reach (compared to, for instance, credit cards). We can approach this problem from both sides. (1) Continue to develop the infrastructure to bring costs down. And (2) continue to steadily onboard more people over time, by whatever means possible, with a crypto wallet. Eventually, I believe we will hit a tipping point where the efficiency vs. reach tradeoff becomes a no brainer. And that's when the really powerful network effects will kick in. Big ideas like decentralized social, a new consumer internet, and the metaverse will start to make sense. Bootstrapping a global payment network isn't easy. But the opportunity is right in front of us.

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zkTLS / zkEmail is an underrated category in crypto. Here are some intriguing real world use cases 👇. What else are people building?

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Enforcing royalties on NFT sales has always been tricky, and it's held the industry back. This post provides an overview of the current design space (and the tradeoffs), and offers some new ideas for creators and developers to think about.

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The number of mobile wallet users in crypto is now at an all time high of 28 million, according to the data from our State of Crypto Index. This is a good indicator that the industry’s UX improvements are bringing more mainstream users into the space.

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Jolt is an insane accomplishment from gigabrains Justin Thaler, @samrags @moodlezoup @ncitron.eth. This is a significant contribution toward the endgame solution for blockchain scalability, and of course the implementation is fully open source ⚡️

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The State of Crypto index, which measures innovation and adoption in the crypto industry based on 14 key non-financial metrics, hit another all time high last month. Several of the underlying metrics also individually hit all time highs. Here are some highlights 👇

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Here’s what I think we still need in order to realize the full vision of blockchain networks. What am I missing?

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The State of Crypto Index is at an all time high. The index measures innovation and adoption in the crypto industry based on 14 key non-financial metrics. This is an interactive tool (you can adjust the weights and parameters) and the data is updated monthly. Check it out: https://a16zcrypto.com/stateofcrypto/

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Reminder: In the crypto market, speculation is a byproduct that is separate from its core value proposition. Just like real estate, art, and many other markets today.

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