Over 4 years at @a16zcrypto, I've found writing to be the best tool for exploring crypto’s complexity—from advising founders to constructing policy.

It’s a discovery engine that demands clarity, consistency and transparency.

Here are 10 posts I learned the most from writing:

1/ Hash-based SNARK proofs are hundreds of KB, too large for many applications. Researchers hoped to halve their size using unproven conjectures. Our new paper rules out this route for binary-field SNARKs.

With @QuangVDao @skominers @kaizhengcs

eccc.weizmann.ac.il/report/2026/23…

Agentzon is live.

Everyday household essentials from a store that does not disdain your personal agent.

Muse, Instinct, GrokBot and the rest, all welcome.

Democrats wanted a new rule requiring digital commodity exchanges give customers clear consumer protection disclosures.

We added it to the Clarity Act, and Senate Democrats voted no.

Democrats demanded exchanges prove they can actually access and transfer customers’ private keys, a provision not included in the House version. The Clarity Act mandates it.

Democrats voted no on protecting consumers’ funds with real safeguards on private key access.

a16z is officially in Japan, led by Hitoshi Yoshida as Head of Japan, with the opening of our Japan office.

It was an honor welcoming Governor Koike at the opening earlier today. Japan combines world-class industrial capabilities with growing innovation in AI, cybersecurity, By bringing our portfolio companies and the Japanese ecosystem together, we aim to accelerate Japan’s AI-native economy and strengthen the ties between Silicon Valley and Japan.

As the former President of Microsoft Japan and Hewlett-Packard Japan, Hitoshi brings decades of technology leadership and deep relationships across business, industry, and government. We’re thrilled to have him lead our efforts in Japan and look forward to doing great work in partnership with the Japanese technology community.

日本代表として吉田仁志を迎え、日本オフィスを開設できたことを大変心強く光栄に思います。日本は、世界有数の産業基盤と、AI・サイバーセキュリティ・ロボティクス・防衛などの分野における目覚ましいイノベーションを兼ね備えています。
我々はこれまでになかった機会を、日本の若い世代に提供していくことを目指します。日本のテクノロジーコミュニティの皆様と共に、日本の市場やエコシステムの発展に貢献していけることを楽しみにしています。

Crypto succeeds when we stop calling it crypto.

GP @guywuolletjr thinks financial services will run on blockchains, just like other businesses now run on the internet. So what gets us there?

00:00 "Everything is computer — except finance"
00:52 From a16z intern to general o moves into the mainstream
19:28 Why timing matters for crypto adoption
23:31 Token launches, liquidity, and going public
28:20 Backing founders for the long term
36:21 Opportunities in crypto
38:42 New markets for energy and compute
39:49 Stablecoins and finance’s digital transformation
43:29 Why perpetual futures are gaining traction
45:26 What tokenization changes for Wall Street
49:04 On oil painting and the pleasure of making things

Democrats asked for tougher restrictions on affiliate trading than the House version of the Clarity Act included.

We delivered-- then Democrats voted no.

Democrats claim they’re worried about memecoins and negotiated that memecoins and network tokens be explicitly covered so they couldn’t slip through regulatory gaps. We incorporated that into the Clarity Act.
Democrats voted no.

October doesn’t remember who came close. It remembers who triumphs.

1/ Today marks Commissioner @HesterPeirce's final day at the @SECGov.

On behalf of @CryptoCouncil, I want to express our deepest gratitude for her distinguished service, principled leadership, and unwavering commitment to the American public and our capital markets. 🧵

Today, we are all beekeepers.
@HesterPeirce has been an inspiration to the market & the legal bar. She's called out both regulation by enforcement & a wild west approach because she wants markets to innovate & function well.
A legacy measured in decades. Thanks Crypto Mom.

1/ In honor of Commissioner Peirce’s last day at the SEC, the DEF team wanted to take a moment to honor her legacy. Commissioner Peirce’s artfully-named speeches and thoughtfully-crafted dissents provide clear, compelling explanations on why decentralization matters and how innovation makes markets more resilient and accessible.

Some of our favorite Commissioner @HesterPeirce moments 👇

What a great week in Korea for Korea Blockchain Week. Institutions are increasingly coming onchain. At our @a16zcrypto KBW Summit, I moderated an all-star panel with @YuvalRooz (@digitalasset @CantonNetwork), @PaulFrambot (@Morpho), and @jinglejamOP (@Optimism) on the strong tional adoption in Korea, how to think about progressive privacy, and why local stablecoins matter. At the Asia Stablecoin Conference, @alexlimasia (@LayerZero_Labs) and I discussed how crypto rails are being used for "mundane" transactions like payroll, merchant settlement, and treasury management. That's a great sign: stablecoin transaction volume that doesn't move with crypto prices reflects real consumer and institutional adoption. I also managed to eat half my body weight in kBBQ and ramen along the way!

Kevin worked tirelessly with industry and Democrats in shaping CLARITY, always prioritizing pragmatism.

Grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him.

INSIGHT: @SenatorTimScott responds to the CLARITY Act's failure, "Democrats put what they felt was good for politics above what was good public policy, they would rather poke President Trump than do what is right for the American people."

Been seeing a lot of discourse on X about agents triggering a bank run/lowering bank NIM by sweeping non-interest bearing deposits into yield. I think this is possible but going to take a lot longer than people think:

1. Retail banking is one of the highest switching cost products and deeply concentrated. The top 5 banks hold roughly half of US consumer deposits and banks with over $10B in consumer deposits hold close to 85%. These banks are incentivized to not be accessible to agents and are already not developer friendly. We have seen this with the big banks pushing back on open banking by charging for data access and reducing what is available. Muse can read your balances via Plaid but cannot move the money.

2. Well over half of consumer deposits are held by households 55+. This cohort is less likely to be an early adopter of an AI finance tool not being endorsed or directly offered by their bank.

3. The top 10% of households by wealth hold approximately 60% of deposits (top 1% alone is nearly 25%). Most of this money already has an advisor or brokerage attached reducing the incremental value proposition of a standalone consumer agent. The bottom 50% hold 5.5% of deposits, so the mass market agent story is less existential to bank funding.

Net net, I think in the fullness of time agents do become the primary interface for personal finance and cheap deposits shrink over time. But most of that comes from AI democratizing access to services the wealthiest people already get, and it will be relatively slow because these tools are new and people will need to establish trust before having them manage their money.

Underrated aspect of the current SEC: They are on Crypto-Twitter, and actively listening to feedback (good and bad).

Various CT lawyers called out the buy-back guidance as being overly-permissive/unclear. SEC corrected it 1 business day later. That's shipping.

🚨🚨🚨 the SEC released updated guidance on token buybacks 🚨🚨🚨

it seems there is a decentralization premise here after all

here is the redline

sec.gov/files/frequent…

This is great work by the SEC.

The narrowing of Friday’s guidance will bolster its durability, while guarding against attempts to misconstrue it by those that wish to circumvent securities laws.  

Pragmatic and clear rules are all crypto needs to succeed, and the SEC just delivered again.