Restaurants generated more than a trillion dollars in sales last year — but they don’t control the payment rails those dollars flow through.

In this episode, Ben Leventhal (founder of Eater, Resy, and now Blackbird) joins Robert Hackett to explain why that’s a problem, how loyalty and payments have failed independent restaurants, and where crypto fits into fixing it.

Ben breaks down:

• Why most restaurant tech misses the point
• How Blackbird uses crypto without making restaurants think about crypto
• What “restaurant-first” really means in payments and loyalty
• Why decentralization only makes sense at scale
• Lessons from building multiple companies in hospitality
• Why we’re living in the golden age of restaurants
• Plus: favorite NYC spots, founder productivity hacks, and the smallest hill he’ll die on.

This is a grounded conversation about technology, ownership, and the future of restaurants — from someone who’s been building in the space for over a decade.

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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.

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with @zcabrams @rhackett

What happens when money moves 10x — or 100x — faster than it does today?

In this episode, Zach Abrams, cofounder and CEO of Bridge (now part of Stripe), lays out a bold vision for the future of money: a world where stablecoins become the dominant payment rail, most transactions happen between non-human agents, and entirely new financial infrastructure is required to keep up.

Zach explains why stablecoins are the next evolution of fintech, much like credit cards were decades ago — and why we’re still in the very early innings. We dig into agentic payments, AI-to-AI commerce, micro-transactions on the open internet, and what Stripe is building by assembling stablecoin infrastructure across the stack.

Along the way, we cover:

• Why cards succeeded — and what stablecoins must learn from them
• How AI agents could drive the majority of future payments
• What breaks when the velocity of money increases 10x
• Stripe’s long-term strategy behind Bridge, Privy, and Tempo
• The case for open, decentralized payment infrastructure
• Zach’s unconventional views on management, productivity, and product-market fit

If you’re curious about the future of payments, fintech, crypto, AI agents, or the economic foundations of the next internet, this conversation offers a look several steps ahead.

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction
00:36 Stablecoins: The next platform for money
01:38 Credit cards had a moral panic too
03:29 What stablecoin infrastructure still needs to be built
05:22 The use cases no one predicted
11:11 Why Stripe is building with crypto
13:08 Why payments infrastructure must stay open
15:12 Lightning round: Bad advice, great books, and deep work

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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.

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with @alive_eth @rhackett

a16z crypto General Partner Ali Yahya explains why privacy — not performance — will determine the long-term winners in crypto, and how it creates powerful network effects.

In conversation with a16z crypto show host Robert Hackett, Ali lays out how privacy creates lock-in and winner-take-most dynamics — without sacrificing decentralization. They also dive into the technologies making privacy possible today, from zero-knowledge proofs to trusted execution environments, and why financial use cases will drive mainstream adoption first.

They cover:

• Why blockspace is becoming a commodity
• Why users tolerate surveillance in social media—but not in finance
• How anonymity sets work and why secrets are hard to migrate
• The real trade-offs between privacy, composability, and decentralization
• The four privacy technologies shaping the next generation of blockchains

Highlights:

00:00 — Introduction
01:41 — Blockspace is becoming commoditized
03:11 — Privacy as lock-in: why secrets are harder to move than assets
06:01 — Do people actually care about privacy?
08:51 — Beyond finance: social, gaming, and private onchain apps
11:55 — Privacy zones, anonymity sets, and network effects
18:46 — Winner-take-most dynamics, explained
20:22 — What it means for crypto’s decentralization ethos
23:06 — Is privacy lock-in different from web2 lock-in?
28:31 — The privacy tech stack: ZK, MPC, TEEs, and FHE
32:13 — What this means for builders and investors
33:18 — Future considerations: Quantum computing and AI

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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.

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