Noah Levine

Three barriers have kept institutions from adopting blockchain infrastructure: performance, regulatory clarity, and privacy. Performance and regulatory frameworks have advanced, and Canton was built to address privacy from the start. @Alive_ and @Nlevine19 on why that matters.

@robbiepetersen_ @a16zcrypto LFG!

Excited to announce that I'm joining @a16zcrypto as an Investment Partner My thesis on crypto has always been the same: if you believe the arc of technological adoption bends toward efficiency, market forces will inevitably reveal that blockchains are the most efficient technology for global coordination This is already evident across stablecoins, perps, prediction markets and tokenized assets. The only bottleneck to blockchains eating the rest of global markets – and creating net new markets – is time The delta between sentiment and fundamentals has never been wider in crypto, and therefore I've never been more bullish Couldn't be more fired up to work alongside @cdixon, @alive_, @guywuolletjr, @eddylazzarin and the entire @a16zcrypto team, backing the most ambitious founders pulling this future forward!

Stablecoins lower the barrier to entry building new checking products Vaults lower the barrier entry to offer new savings products DeFi lowers the barrier to new capital market products CAC becomes essential with greater product parity

Aztec Labs has acquired Obsidion, the team behind @ZKPassport. The Obsidion team will continue to develop ZKPassport while also leading new consumer product developments. The ZKPassport protocol will remain open source.

We’re at that point in the cycle where we’re forgetting what the whole point was to begin with. The pendulum has now swung too far.

Visa is for vibe coders. Anyone can spin up an app and any API can become a merchant. Starting today we’re onboarding x402 and MPP merchant endpoints into Visa CLI so APIs, LLMs, data products, and dev tools can be discovered and purchased by verified agents with cards on file. If you’re building an x402 or MPP endpoint, or want Visa to help you stand one up, sign up below. We’re also opening Visa CLI to initial users in the US. DM me for an invite.

Stablecoin payouts are table stakes. IMO, the bigger opportunity is combining onchain credit for global earned wage access + embedded wallets and cards to monetize downstream of the payout.

@gaby_goldberg Welcome!!!!

I’m excited to share that I’m joining Andreessen Horowitz as a Partner on the New Media team, focusing on the intersection of comms, networks, and investing. I’ve been working on these three things throughout my career, first in early-stage investing and most recently in comms at Rostra, writing about my perspectives and experiences along the way. For a long time, I thought these were three different paths I’d have to choose between. I’ve done comms, but I’m not just a comms leader. I write and build community, but I’m not just a writer or community builder. And I’ve invested, but I’m not just an investor. When @eriktorenberg approached me about the opportunity, he told me I could come do all of it under one roof, at a scale that wouldn’t be possible anywhere else, and crafted the right role to make it work. @a16z is the perfect place for me to manifest the full range of my interests, skills, and ambitions. Erik has been one of my earliest believers (since college!), so this feels like a long arc finally closing. I look forward to working alongside him and the rest of a16z’s brilliant team, and also hire even more great people into the firm. I’ll be taking some time between roles to touch grass and exist in the context. In the meantime, my DMs are always open.

This is a fantastic time period in which to bring the magic of the American financial system to the entire world Lots of EM banks still require IRL transfers and effect them on paper Much of the world still can't access equities investing There is so much to build

Privacy in crypto will win in two forms: 1. Private money — encrypted assets 2. Private computation — encrypted smart contracts The second category is especially important for institutions because each one of them has its own idiosyncratic requirements—bespoke business logic, compliance rules, etc. For them, providing privacy to their users isn’t as simple as just encrypting everything. They need to be able to encode who can see what and under which conditions. That means privacy cannot just be binary. It must be programmable.

🚨 Ep. 83 of @TokenizedPod: The Headless Merchant Economy @cuysheffield is joined by: 👉 @nlevine19, Partner, @a16zcrypto 👉 @gmoneyNFT 👉 @blauyourmind, CTO, @join_royal To discuss: ✅ AWS, Google, Coinbase enabling AI agent payments 👤 Headless Merchants 🪙 Pay per token model replacing subscriptions for content 🤖 Traders and investors as early agentic payment users 💳 Card on front, stablecoin settlement in hybrid model 💸 Using AI agents to make money trading 📊 AI agents trading stocks with self fulfilling predictions ⛓️ Circle’s Arc blockchain for institutional stablecoin use 📈 Local currency stablecoins for treasury yield in emerging markets *** Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 2:13 AWS, Google, Coinbase enabling AI agent payments 3:51 Headless Merchants 5:59 Pay per token model replacing subscriptions for content 10:04 Traders and investors as early agentic payment users 13:42 Card on front, stablecoin settlement in hybrid model 15:50 Using AI agents to make money trading 21:27 AI agents trading stocks with self fulfilling predictions 35:12 Circle’s Arc blockchain for institutional stablecoin use 41:19 Local currency stablecoins for treasury yield in emerging markets *** 👉𝘚𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩 '𝘛𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘗𝘰𝘥𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘵' 𝘖𝘯 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘛𝘶𝘣𝘦. 𝘈𝘱𝘱𝘭𝘦, 𝘚𝘱𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘺 𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘗𝘰𝘥𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘳! 👈

The CLARITY Act has now passed out of the Senate Banking Committee with bipartisan backing and moves to a full Senate vote - a historic moment for crypto entrepreneurs and American consumers. Crypto is not a red or blue issue. It is about whether the next generation of financial and internet infrastructure gets built in the United States. Thank you to @SenatorTimScott and @SenLummis for your leadership on the committee, to @BankingGOP, @Sen_Alsobrooks, and @RubenGallego for their support, and to all of the staff who have worked tirelessly to get to this point. It’s time to pass CLARITY.

Had a great time on Tokenized!

A sign that the crypto industry is maturing: Onchain revenue is now much more distributed.

Fintech digitized the front end Crypto is digitizing the assets themselves

Couldn’t agree more. Cards and settlement are two of the biggest growth levers for stablecoins. Visa just added Base for stablecoin settlement, card acceptance has been critical for exchange on/off-ramps, and Coinbase already has multiple card programs in market. Too much energy is going toward displacing incumbent payment networks instead of leveraging them to scale stablecoin utility globally.

Guys can we be serious and not post embarrassing stupid nonsense like this. It only hurts the business cause you’re actually pushing for.

The Senate Banking Committee released the latest draft of the CLARITY Act last night. The draft has significantly improved since January and reflects years of bipartisan negotiations. It’s time to get this passed. This bill safeguards consumers, includes important developer protections, and gives crypto entrepreneurs the regulatory clarity they need to build here in the U.S. We’re thankful for the hard work of the Senate Banking Committee and their staff. We urge Senators on both sides to move quickly to advance it out of Committee, to the Senate floor, and ultimately be signed into law by the President.