Podbit · The a16z Show
Major banks still run on COBOL code bases too intertwined to upgrade independently. Blockchains give the entire financial industry a unified coordination layer to modernize together. Every major institution — Goldman, Fidelity, BlackRock, JPMorgan — has significant live deployments ready to scale with regulatory clarity.
Where this was said
At 38:05 · chapter starts 35:55
Hackett turns to one of the most contentious specific battles within the bill: the treatment of stablecoin interest. JPMorgan Chase has been the most vocal opponent, worried that if consumers can earn interest on stablecoin holdings, they'll move money out of traditional bank accounts, triggering deposit flight. Dixon reports the outcome: in the current bill text, stablecoin issuers cannot pay interest on balances or anything 'functionally or economically similar' to a bank account. What is permitted is reward structures more analogous to credit card points — such as Walmart giving back tokens for twice-monthly stablecoin purchases. The banks, Dixon notes, essentially got what they asked for, and yet appeared to want still more. Going further would start banning things like Starbucks rewards points. Hackett surfaces the fascinating irony: JPMorgan has a major blockchain unit with live tokenized deposit deployments, making their public opposition to the bill's stablecoin provisions more about competitive positioning than principled resistance to the technology.
JPMorgan lobbied hard to prevent consumers from earning interest on stablecoins, fearing deposit flight. They largely got what they asked for in the bill's current language. But the compromise still allows reward structures that work more like credit card points than bank accounts.
Avnish grew his solo business to $25,000 per month in just 15 months without spending a dollar on ads. His entire growth engine was built on community posts in Reddit and Facebook groups.
One well-crafted post in the right community took Avnish from single thousands of users to tens of thousands. This wasn't luck — it was a repeatable part of his 5-step playbook.
Most founders chase paid ads and influencer deals, but Avnish's growth came entirely from knowing where his users already gathered online. Dominating Reddit and Facebook groups — for free — was his entire strategy.
Spend 80% of your landing page design time above the fold. The hero section is the only thing most visitors will ever truly read, so it needs to deliver your full message instantly.
The dominant mobile monetization flow is simple: free download, onboarding, then a hard paywall that blocks all features until the user pays or starts a trial. It's unskippable by design — and that's exactly the point.
Switching PuffCount to a hard paywall and requiring a free trial before any feature access sent conversion rates soaring to 20–25%. One structural change to the payment flow — no new features, no new users — transformed the business.
Vasco is so confident in YouTube that he'll personally PayPal $500 to anyone who posts for 45 days and doesn't make $5,000. This isn't hype — it's a distillation of his own experience growing an AI app to $70K/month using nothing but daily videos.
Vasco's AI app went from zero to $70,000 a month in just two years. The entire growth engine was YouTube — one video a day, nothing fancy, no expensive tools. Most of his users came directly from the channel.
People buy from people they know, like, and trust. YouTube is the only platform that builds all three at scale — and Vasco's $1M business is the proof of concept.
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