Bankless Is the Crypto-Native Era Coming to an End? - Lessons from 10 Years in Crypto with Joey Krug, Founders Fund Partner
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Dec 22, 2025 
Joey Krug, a Partner at Founders Fund and co-founder of Augur, explores whether the crypto-native era is fading as mainstream adoption rises. He uncovers insights on the evolution and impact of prediction markets, emphasizing Polymarket's recent success and regulatory challenges ahead. Joey shares his thoughts on the balance between institutional acceptance and cypherpunk ideals, the future of crypto finance, and potential innovations that could reshape prediction markets. He also reflects on the lessons learned from a decade of crypto.
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Mainstream Adoption Without Crypto Culture
- Crypto's mainstream arrival changes who builds but preserves core protocol primitives like smart contracts and AMMs.
- Many users benefit from crypto rails without being crypto-native or aware they're using crypto.
Augur's Design Trade-Offs
- Joey reflects that Augur over-optimized for censorship-resistance and harsh edge cases, making it cumbersome to use.
- Polymarket later found product-market fit by trading usability and timing with regulators.
Prediction Markets Could Rival Exchanges
- Prediction markets will expand beyond sports into elections and specialized economic/geopolitical markets with higher volume and exchange-like fees.
- Long-term winners could be comparable in value to incumbent exchanges like CME or ICE.