The slow development of consumer-facing crypto applications isn't a sign of failure, but a constraint of "block space"—the capacity for on-chain computation and storage. Just as low bandwidth throttled the early web to text-only sites, limited block space gates crypto apps to simpler financial transactions for now.
The physical distance of space-based data centers creates significant latency. This delay renders them impractical for real-time applications like crypto mining, where a block found in space could be orphaned by the time the data reaches Earth. Their best use is for asynchronous, large-scale computations like AI training.
A complete shift of financial assets to blockchain is imminent. This won't happen on transparent chains like Ethereum, but on purpose-built networks like Canton. The key enabler is configurable privacy, a feature that allows financial institutions to transact without broadcasting their proprietary positions to the entire world.
As AI agents become sophisticated, they'll need to pay for services. Traditional banking is too slow and fragmented for them. Crypto, as the internet's native money, provides the instant, global, low-fee rails for AI agents to transact with each other and with web services, creating a major new use case.
The recent explosion of stablecoins wasn't due to a new financial innovation, but the maturation of underlying blockchain infrastructure. Cheaper and faster transactions on Layer 2 solutions and improved Layer 1s finally made large-scale, low-cost payments practical for real-world use.
The last decade of crypto focused on moving assets like Bitcoin on-chain. The next, more significant mega-trend will be the migration of entire companies and their real-world revenue streams onto blockchains, involving both crypto-native firms and traditional giants like BlackRock and Stripe.
Crypto ETFs serve as an off-chain layer for investment transactions, separating speculative trading from on-chain utility. This reduces network congestion and allows the base layer protocol to focus on real-world applications, which is a net positive for its long-term health.
The biggest barrier to crypto adoption is the cognitive effort required to build new mental models for concepts like cryptographic security and decentralized ledgers. This process is slow and generational, much like the early internet, advancing "one funeral at a time."
Blockchains have evolved like computer architecture. Bitcoin was a single-purpose, incentivized P2P network. Ethereum introduced programmability, akin to the shift to general-purpose computers (von Neumann architecture). The current era of L2s focuses on scalability and specialization.
Multicoin's central thesis is that crypto's ultimate purpose is creating "Internet Capital Markets"—the ability to trade any asset, from anywhere, 24/7, via any software. This broad vision of permissionless, programmable finance is seen as the most significant long-term impact of blockchain, destined to supersede more niche consumer applications or "Web3" concepts.
After years of exploring various use cases, crypto's clearest product-market fit is as a new version of the financial system. The success of stablecoins, prediction markets, and decentralized trading platforms demonstrates that financial applications are where crypto currently has the strongest, most undeniable traction.