With growing activity and innovation around token-based network models, builders are wondering how to distinguish different types of tokens — and which might be the best choice for their business. At the same time, both consumers and policy makers
Pricing is a common conundrum for marketplace builders. Many marketplaces heavily subsidize user activity to bootstrap initial growth and liquidity — giving their product or service away for free (or at a steep discount). But that’s not sustainab
Every traditional financial institution faces the same dilemma: evolve or fall behind, build or buy. But when safety, predictability, and trust are paramount, how do traditional finance companies innovate? How do they place their innovation bets, and decide what to explore and not to explore?
Fidelity Chairman and CEO Abigail P. Johnson shares an inside look at Fidelity’s decade of crypto experimentation — from early Bitcoin mining to building foundational custody infrastructure to stablecoins and much more. Johnson explains how Fidelity explored dozens of crypto use cases; why only one initially mattered, and how a single foothold shaped a long-term institutional strategy.
This episode is for anyone interested in exploring how innovation happens inside companies, how startups can partner with big institutions, how TradFi is approaching crypto in this “Year of Institutional Adoption”… and what the next decade of financial infrastructure might look like.
We originally recorded this episode at our Founders Summit event in October 2025, in conversation with a16z crypto COO Anthony Albanese, who was the Chief Regulatory Officer of the New York Stock Exchange before joining a16z; and was previously acting superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), where he signed and issued New York’s first-ever BitLicense.
Key moments: 00:47 – “Is this real?”: Early Experiments in Crypto 02:30 – The One Use Case That Changed Everything 04:18 – The Surprising ROI of Early Bitcoin Mining 05:44 – The First Customer-Facing Business & Becoming a “Bridge” Player 08:50 – Embedding Crypto Throughout Fidelity 10:00 – Responding to the Regulatory Freeze 13:19 – Stablecoins: From First Reactions to The Future of Payments 16:59 – The TradFi Dilemma: Build vs. Buy 20:20 – How to Operationalize New Perspectives 24:12 – Replacing vs. Rebuilding the Financial System 28:26 – The Role of Bitcoin: “It’s Solid, It’s Persisted, And It’s a Gold Standard” 30:17 – Handling Pushback, Skepticism & “Religious Wars 32:30 – Innovation vs. Inertia in TradFi: The Role of Risk in R&D 34:07 – The Next Decade of Innovation: The Future of Crypto x TradFi
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