"Trading can be a way station, not the last stop, for crypto businesses" What's the next station? Hundreds of millions are on-chain and in profit. The next step? Real-world utility. Crypto needs to be directly spendable in the real world.

A controversial viewpoint: The value capture of lending protocols as the orchestration layer is greater than that of the issuance and distribution layers. Downstream vaults are only part of the distribution layer; the protocols themselves also engage in distribution, as exemplified by the launch of the Aave App. These distribution models, in my view, are only temporary. Currently, top DeFi protocols have only a few hundred thousand daily active users. My humble opinion: the ultimate distribution layer for DeFi will be on the payment side, much like Alipay is to Tianhong Fund.

Want to know what the world looks like in 2030? Forget the noise. The signal that matters may be what the 2025 hackathon builders are actually coding. Just analyzed 1,110 projects from @ETHGlobal Buenos Aires. Here’s what builders are actually shipping👇 DeFi & Payments = 506 projects (45.6%) Not yield farms — but real transactional UX: payroll, checkouts, stablecoin rails, intent routers. AI x Crypto = 96 projects Fastest-growing theme. x402 unlocked autonomous agents, autopayments & agentic finance. Infra & Data = 103 projects Builders are tired of multichain pain → routing, messaging, SDKs, indexing. ZK, Privacy, Security = 85 projects Shift from “fancy proofs” → identity, confidential payments, TX explainers, PQ wallets. Takeaway: Stablecoins + intents + agents are shaping the next meta. Payments isn’t a side quest, it’s the center of gravity.