Price–Innovation Cycle Assessment

a16z crypto’s CTO Eddy Lazzarin and partner Daren Matsuoka return for our annual State of Crypto to map where 2025 really is on the curve: a price–innovation cycle poised to hand the baton back to builders, Bitcoin holding ~50% share, and 70M people now using crypto on-chain out of 716M owners. We dig into why institutions are actually shipping (not just PR), how stablecoins now rival Visa-scale volumes and sit among top U.S. Treasury holders, why DEX spot share near 20% changes price discovery, and how perps, infra throughput, and fee-switch economics are reshaping revenue across chains. Plus: prediction markets’ second act, the AI×crypto handshake (agents, proof-of-humanity, IP), and Bitcoin’s long-dated quantum dilemma.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Price–Innovation Cycle: Where We Are Now
3:46 Bitcoin Dominance & Market Correlations
12:09 User Geography & Adoption: MAUs vs Owners
20:15 Institutions & TradFi: Motives, Stablecoins, Integration
27:40 Stablecoin Scale: Volumes, Treasuries & Dollar Power
39:03 Stablecoin Decoupling & DeFi Growth
42:33 Perps, Protocol Revenue & Prediction Markets
47:55 Infrastructure: TPS, Scalability & Bottlenecks
49:51 Token Valuation & Chain Revenue
59:24 Bitcoin’s Quantum Risk: Paths & Responses
1:02:48 AI × Crypto: Use Cases & Decentralization
1:04:00 Outlook & Closing: Predictions & Cycle Top?

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RESOURCES

Eddy Lazzarin
https://x.com/eddylazzarin

Daren Matsuoka
https://x.com/DarenMatsuoka

a16z’s Quantum Computing Podcast
https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/podcast/quantum-computing-what-when-where-how-fact-vs-fiction/

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