Author: Chris Dixon

Translation: PANews

It has become popular to claim that "the non-financial use cases of cryptocurrency are dead." Some also assert that "read-write-own" has failed. These conclusions misunderstand our core argument and misjudge the stage we are in.

We are clearly in the financial era of blockchain. But the core point has never been that all crypto applications will emerge simultaneously, nor that finance will not come first. The core point has been, and still is: blockchain introduces a new primitive — the ability to coordinate people and capital at internet scale, embedding ownership directly into the system. (And increasingly including the coordination of AI agents.)

Finance is the most natural and easiest domain for this primitive to prove its value, which is why we often present it first as an example of the productive use of tokens. Finance is not separate from the broader argument; it is part of it, the foundation and testing ground for everything else.

This belief has guided our work at a16z crypto from the beginning. Many of our investments are explicitly tilted towards finance: Coinbase, Maker, Compound, Uniswap, Morpho, and so on. As I wrote in my book: “Blockchain networks can turn financial infrastructure into a public good, upgrading the internet from merely handling bits to also handling money.” We anticipated that finance would show its importance early on and have always expected other categories to gradually develop alongside it.

What we are playing at a16z and a16z crypto is a long game: our fund structure is designed for cycles of over 10 years because building an entirely new industry takes time.

The Order of Execution Matters

So, why haven’t non-financial use cases taken off yet?

First, the order of execution matters. Infrastructure and distribution channels often precede the emergence of entirely new application categories. The internet did not start with social media, streaming, or online communities; it began with packet switching, TCP/IP, and basic connectivity. Only after hundreds of millions of people were online did entirely new cultural and economic categories truly emerge.

Cryptocurrency is likely to be similar. It is very possible that we need to onboard hundreds of millions of people through financial applications (payments, stablecoins, savings, DeFi, etc.) before we see meaningful adoption in media, gaming, AI, or other more distant fields. Many applications rely on foundational elements like wallets, identity, liquidity, and trust that are already in place.

There are other factors. One of the core advantages of cryptocurrency is that it gives communities ownership through tokens. However, years of scams, extractive behavior, and regulatory crackdowns have severely eroded trust in tokens. This has likely exacerbated the recent market downturn. In an environment filled with cynicism, it is difficult to build a true "owner community."

Policy is the Missing Piece

This is why we have been advocating for a clear regulatory framework around tokens for over five years. Good policy can do two things at once: provide builders with a clear roadmap while establishing risk-based guardrails to protect consumers and rebuild market trust. Market structure legislation like the CLARITY Act would introduce disclosure and transparency standards to prevent rug pulls and self-dealing — standards that are routine in other markets but have long been absent in crypto.

For emerging technologies, policy progress is often slow and incremental… until suddenly it is not. Much of our work over the years (including my book) has contributed to this foundation: explaining the benefits of crypto and blockchain to policymakers and a broader audience, and providing a grounded way to think about how this technology evolves over time. We often hear that this framework has been helpful to policymakers in Washington. Years of education, debate, and refinement can quietly accumulate in the background, only to suddenly erupt when a political or institutional window opens.

The strong reaction to the GENIUS Act strongly validates this theory. Almost overnight, stablecoins went from "suspicious" to a legitimate technology in the eyes of finance, tech, and government. This shift seems sudden, but it is actually the result of years of work by builders, policymakers, and advocates converging at the right moment. I expected positive reactions, but the speed and scale of technology and adoption still surprised me. This makes me optimistic about market structure legislation — from a high level, its effect on other categories of tokens will be similar to what GENIUS has on stablecoins.

What the Long Game Looks Like

Big things take time. The breakthroughs we see today in AI are the result of decades of hard work by countless outstanding individuals. (The first paper on neural networks was published in 1943.) The internet can be traced back to the 1960s, and the realization of the commercial internet relied on visionary builders and thoughtful policy actions in the 1990s. Building an entirely new technological ecosystem is a long game, and the reality is this: a long period of groundwork, followed by a sharp inflection point.

If you want to work in a more mature industry, that’s fine. If you want to build an entirely new industry from scratch, the process can be chaotic and frustrating, but it is important work.

The chaotic years pave the way for the glorious years to come.

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