Ali Yahya

1/ An uncomfortable truth: Even the best crypto product in the world will lose to an inferior product with a better sales team. Too many technical founders refuse to accept this until it's too late.

This was a massive week for @NEARProtocol – here's a recap of the NEARCON launches. - IronClaw.com: secure, encrypted personal agent - agent.near.ai: confidential hosting for the agent of your choice - near.com: one account for 35+ chains, enabling confidential transactions - Nightshade 3.0: Separation of consensus and execution, atomic transactions, & a live private shard

@MichelleVolz Congrats Michelle!! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Excited to officially announce the launch of Pax Fund I, a $50M early stage vehicle dedicated to founders transforming the foundational categories of society. 🇺🇸🚀 Wrote a bit about my journey and the thinking behind Pax below:

Fired up to be partnering @jswihart and team at @zodl_app to help make privacy a first class feature of onchain finance.

1/ Jolt now supports zero-knowledge 🧵 This makes Jolt suitable for privacy applications — no SNARK recursion, no "wrapping", no sacrifice of transparency. Marginal increase in proof size (~3 KB). Prover time is essentially unchanged. a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/…

250 + 250

The male urge to write a 20K word essay about one's Claude Code + Obsidian setup.

Advice on Seeking Advice If you try to get advice from anyone *where they lack full context* you can build support for any position imaginable. Imagine: "the hospital refused to do surgery on this patient to fix this problem? Isn't that outrageous?" without the context of "the patient is 104 years old." Try asking a startup investor: "should I have a co-founder?" vs "Can I get a good co-founder for less than 10% of the company when the company is a few weeks old?" I bet you could get everyone to give you the opposite advice with more or different context. It doesn't mean that getting advice is bad! But you either need to give significant context - or better yet focus on picking the right trusted partner, since it’s virtually impossible to give the FULL story to strangers in 30 minutes. I used to always try to get advice from famous people (it was incredible to me, l was just a nobody kid!) but ultimately context and depth matters.

@ravmike @a16zcrypto @cdixon Great run Mike! It’s been great to work with you. Excited to hear what you decide to do next 🚀

Some news! Today is my last day on the @a16zcrypto comms team. After a fulfilling 4.5 years here, I'm ready for my next challenge, and gonna take some time to figure out what that is. If we haven't talked in a while, hit me up! A huge thank you to @cdixon @alive_eth @eddylazzarin @kimbatronic and all my other colleagues for the incredible opportunity and experience. 🙏 To the founders and marketing leads at our portcos that I was fortunate enough to support: keep on building. You've got a fan for life 👏

1/ Some Simple Economics of AGI—🔥🧵 Right now, there is a low-grade panic running through the economy. Everyone is asking the same anxious question: what exactly is AI going to automate, and what will be left for us?

if @jeff_jordan wasn't in retirement, we'd be 15-for-15 💁‍♀️

@TheTAOofData 🎯

Agreed. I appreciate Dalio’s work and still carry with me some of his insights from Principles for the Changing World Order. However, he speaks about CBDCs, civil or international war, and the rise of China as the world super power as foregone conclusions. While his tone is often conciliatory and sage-like, I also at times detect pessimism, guilt, and surrender. I attribute this behavior to his being 76 and spending a lifetime in NY Finance. I take what he says these days with a hefty grain of salt. The future is not being built by these kinds of folks.

Here is my problem with this piece — It casts human civilization as a helpless victim of a mechanism that is beyond our control. It’s an implicit surrender to a form of determinate pessimism that leaves humanity impotent in the face of new challenges. The truth is that the future will be determined by human choices—how we govern ourselves, what we build, and the cultural values that we choose to fight for. We are only condemned to blindly repeat the patterns of the past, if we believe that we are helpless. The way out is to own our future.

@LubaYudasina 😂

SoHo in NYC is notorious for pop ups. People stand in line for hours to get a freebie. 1-2 hrs!! The other day I walked by Prada’s 25 year store anniversary pop up with no line - it was the middle of the day and 30 degrees. I got the freebie and it was…. a gift wrapped apple 🍎 Uhhh, an apple?? Imagine standing in the line for an hour and getting this “surprise. Net negative impression of Prada

The Dutch: - Invent the modern stock market in 1602 - Build the financial capital of the world - Decline slowly for centuries - Go out with financial suicide in 2026 by taxing unrealized gains at 36%