a16z crypto show

Agents can now do almost anything a human can do with a computer. So what happens when they start spending money on your behalf?

Sam Ragsdale (founder and CEO of Merit Systems, a startup building infrastructure for the agentic economy) joins a16z crypto's Eddy Lazzarin, Noah Levine, and Robert Hackett on the open agentic commerce stack, and why the internet's business model is about to get rewired.

00:00 – Intro 

01:33 – Two flavors of agentic commerce 

04:30 – What is an agent, actually? 

12:57 – The headless merchant thesis 

17:17 – What happens to existing friction? 

24:45 – The economic contract of the web is broken 

27:46 – Will agents get distracted by ads? 

35:152– Stablecoins vs. credit cards 

41:54 – Sam's bear case on interchange 

49:11 – The killer app for agentic commerce

 

Sam Ragsdale on X: /samrags_ 

Eddy Lazzarin on X: /eddylazzarin 

Noah Levine on X: /nlevine19 

Robert Hackett on X: /rhackett 

 

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A few big companies control most of the infrastructure behind AI.

Most people experience AI through a wide range of different apps that actually depend on a deeply centralized stack of data and compute. In this conversation, Ben Fielding and Harry Grieve — cofounders of decentralized machine learning protocol Gensyn — explain why this matters, and what it would take to rebuild AI as open infrastructure instead.

From unused global compute to the philosophical implications of machine intelligence, they argue that the next evolution of AI must be owned, coordinated, and verified in a fundamentally different way.

Highlights 

00:00 – Intro 

00:29 – The biggest misconception about AI infrastructure 

01:20 – Why centralization in AI is a deeper problem than people realize 

04:19 – Why AI needs crypto 

05:51 – How AI models are trained 

08:15 – The rise of autonomous AI agents with onchain identities 

10:37 – Lightning round

Ben Fielding on X: https://x.com/benfielding 

Harry Grieve on X: https://x.com/harrygrieve 

Gensyn on X: https://x.com/gensynai 

Follow a16z crypto on X: https://x.com/a16zcrypto 

Subscribe for more news and updates: a16zcrypto.substack.com

 

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The internet already has a bot problem — and it's just getting worse.

a16z's Ben Horowitz and Erik Torenberg speak with Alex Blania of Tools for Humanity. World is building the largest real human network, a proof-of-human layer for the AI era. They cover the technical challenge of proving human uniqueness at scale using iris biometrics, the privacy architecture behind World ID, and why platforms from social networks to dating apps to video conferencing will soon require proof of human verification.

Timestamps: 

0:00—Introduction 

4:07—Three Big Ideas People Were Interested In 

9:05—The Orb Verification Piece 

15:20—Social Media Bots: PSYOPs and Propaganda 

29:18—We Had Proof of Personhood for the Longest Time 

36:44—Next Year Go-to-Market Is Focused on the US 

40:09—Different Levels of Verification

Resources: 

Follow Alex Blania on X: / alexblania 

Follow Ben Horowitz on X: / bhorowitz 

Follow Erik Torenberg on X: / eriktorenber

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As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

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What if the future of lending doesn’t need banks at all?

Paul Frambot, cofounder and CEO of Morpho, explains what it means to build lending infrastructure without banks, and why DeFi’s real breakthrough isn’t “risk-free” loans, but open, onchain markets that make lending more transparent, competitive, and efficient.

In this conversation, Paul breaks down the biggest misconception in DeFi lending, how to think about risk onchain, why institutions are learning faster than expected, and where banks, asset managers, fintechs, and stablecoins fit into the next wave of adoption.

He also shares his long-term vision for finance: a world where open blockchain infrastructure replaces siloed financial systems, access to capital gets broader, and financial products become cheaper, more personalized, and easier to build.

Highlights: 

0:00 Intro 

0:36 What Morpho actually does 

1:22 DeFi’s biggest misconception 

5:26 Why Wall Street is paying attention now 

6:46 Who’s adopting onchain finance first: Banks or asset managers? 

9:57 The race for a Euro stablecoin 

10:49 The future of finance, 5–10 years out 

11:16 Why finance is still broken 

13:30 What open mortgage and credit markets could become on open blockchains 

15:14 The worst advice Paul's received as a founder 

17:17 What's wrong with an $8 croissant (besides the obvious)

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*** As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

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What if opening a trading account was as easy as downloading an app? 

Lucas Bruder, CEO of Jito — a Solana-based liquid staking protocol — breaks down why he thinks all of finance is moving onchain, and what his small team is doing to make that happen. 

During the 2022-2023 bear market, Jito was getting pitched constantly to jump ship to other chains. Lucas explains why they turned everything down, doubled down on Solana, and chewed a lot of glass. 

We also cover how Jito acts like a Cloudflare for Solana, why cheap transactions create surprising problems, what convinced Lucas that the Solana engineers were in it for the right reasons, and his vision for a financial system anyone can access with just a phone. 

Follow Jito: https://www.jito.network/ 

Follow Lucas: https://x.com/buffalu__ 

Highlights 

0:00 — Intro 

0:49 — What is Jito and why does it exist 

1:11 — Why Solana transactions are less than a penny 

2:00 — What attracted Lucas to Solana from Ethereum 

2:39 — How Jito is like Cloudflare for blockchains 

5:02 — The $1,500 Ethereum transaction fee problem 

7:21 — The vision: all of finance onchain 

7:46 — Onchain vs. opening a Robinhood account 

8:37 — Lucas's journey from robotics to crypto 

9:55 — Solana's rate of improvement and Anatoly's Law 

10:44 — The pitch for people new to crypto 

15:00 — Staying lean at 21 people 

15:17 — Nicotine as a productivity hack 

15:58 — Sleep, alcohol, and the Oura ring 

16:40 — Smallest hill you'll die on: littering and shopping carts 

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As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

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