01 / 04
Major assets will increasingly all be tokenized.
Starting with stablecoins and stocks.
Then extending to everything from home titles to debt to commodities.
YC Crypto Request for Startups
A few thousand lines of code can replace a national stock exchange.
By Nemil Dalal ↗, YC Visiting Partner. In crypto since 2014. He wrote it in a Google Doc ↗. @vesper792 gave it a site.
01 the shift
This last year was the first time crypto uptake was led by institutions rather than consumers.
Unlike past cycles,
growth was driven by financial needs.
- hedging oil
- moving enterprise money faster across countries
rather than simply speculation.
02 how we see things developing
02 / 04
Net new assets will be issued at the same time.
From startup equity to micro securities (<$10,000) that never could be tokenized in the old world.
This will probably be the more interesting bucket over time.
03 / 04
Financial primitives will spring up.
Centralized and decentralized.
To provide trading, lending, derivatives and more.
Making these assets even more productive.
04 / 04
Agents will become a primary financial actor.
Accessing these new tokens and primitives.
Through the APIs that blockchains provide.
your call
Four predictions. Which comes true first?
Tap one. No votes, no counts. It stays on this device.
03 the stakes
As the debates around the US Clarity Act show, it's a scary time for incumbents.
And a unique opportunity to found a generational crypto company.
So where do you start? 8 ideas04 what we're excited about in the next 6 months
4 themes. 8 ideas. 1 wildcard.
AI capital raising
AI investment is one of the largest capital raising events in human history.
Starting with Ethereum's ICO, crypto's killer use case has always been capital raising.
Leverage the blockchain to make AI capital raising easier.
New USD stablecoins
US dollar stablecoins are still only a fraction of M0 money supply.
Find a new user or merchant segment (e.g. gaming) that benefits from stablecoins.
Figure out a smart distribution strategy.
New currency stablecoins
Stablecoins exist in only a handful of currencies.
Launch a safe stablecoin in a currency that needs it.
Neobanks
Find an underserved customer segment and leverage stablecoins to bank them.
Starting points have ranged from global contractors to international businesses.
You'll need to manage risk effectively.
Tokenization
Pick an asset that benefits from global, 24/7 trading and DeFi integration, and tokenize a trusted version of it.
It can even be an NFT, like a house.
Letting onchain capital fund mortgages.
Exchanges and trading interfaces
New assets and financial instruments bring new trading venues and interfaces.
Focused on new assets, derivatives or geographies.
Trading
Agents are going to be prolific traders from here, even when instructed by a human.
Leverage agents to trade crypto (and all other assets).
Agent infra
Build crypto APIs for agents. Most APIs today were built for human developers.
Some things can be done directly with blockchain APIs.
But many use cases will need various APIs paired together (e.g. on- and off-ramping to and from fiat).
05 what will you build?
What idea will you choose?
Three questions. One of the eight ideas. A card to share.
question 1 of 3
i'd build this from yc's crypto rfs
yc crypto rfs · by @vesper792
06 your move
Some of the best ideas are not on this list.
surprise us.
apply to yc
building on solana? $50K + support from the solana foundation ↗