This entire week, we’re running our observations on what’s ahead this year… stay tuned here, and be sure to also subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more trend updates, industry reports, builder guides, news analysis, and other res
How do you achieve peak performance while avoiding burnout? Big-wave surfing pioneer Laird Hamilton and former pro volleyball star Gabby Reece join a16z crypto General Partner Arianna Simpson to talk about what it takes.
with @LairdLife @GabbyRee
Every traditional financial institution faces the same dilemma: evolve or fall behind, build or buy. But when safety, predictability, and trust is 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 into Fidelity’s decade of crypto experimentation — from early Bitcoin mining to building foundational custody infrastructure to stablecoins and much more. Johnson shares 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 it 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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As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.
