Solana’s Anatoly Yakovenko on Crypto's Next Era: Quantum, AI, and the Future of Money

Watch on YouTube ↗  |  September 18, 2025 at 16:10  |  25:07  |  All-In Podcast
Speakers
Anatoly Yakovenko — Co-founder and CEO, Solana Labs
Jason Calacanis — Angel Investor / Founder, LAUNCH

Summary

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko joins the All-In hosts on stage to discuss the post-Gensler regulatory shift, the GENIUS Act and a stablecoin boom he expects to make 'the internet' the largest holder of US Treasuries within five years, and Solana's positioning as a global execution layer versus Ethereum's settlement role. He covers tokenization by regulated exchanges like Nasdaq, real-world assets on-chain, the CLARITY Act, creator tokens, and a 50/50 chance of a quantum breakthrough within five years that should push Bitcoin to quantum-resistant signatures. He argues Bitcoin is resilient to concentrated holders collapsing and to attacks, and closes with a contrarian take that Visa and Mastercard could disintermediate banks by settling with stablecoins.

  • GENIUS Act could unlock $1-10T of stablecoins; stablecoin issuers seen becoming the largest holder of US Treasuries within five years
  • Solana positioned as the world's execution layer with Ethereum as the settlement layer; regulated venues like Nasdaq expected to eventually run on Solana
  • Real-world assets such as real estate, bonds, insurance and commodities are in demand on-chain as uncorrelated collateral; regulation is the bottleneck
  • CLARITY Act aims to cut the legal cost of launching tokens in the US; creator tokens and crypto-native social products discussed as future verticals
  • Yakovenko puts a quantum breakthrough at 50/50 within five years and says Bitcoin should migrate to quantum-resistant signatures, watching Google and Apple as the trigger
  • Bitcoin viewed as resilient to large holders such as MicroStrategy collapsing and to state-sponsored attacks; a shock would be a chance to own more
  • Visa and Mastercard framed as technology companies earning about 10bps that could cut out 2%-margin issuing and acquiring banks with stablecoin settlement
  • Decentralized compute crypto projects have not taken off against co-located, traditionally financed data centers
Ideas
Anatoly Yakovenko Co-founder and CEO, Solana Labs 1:01
Stablecoin boom makes internet biggest Treasury holder
The GENIUS Act unlocks an estimated 1 to 10 trillion dollars of stablecoins on public permissionless chains. Because stablecoin issuers hold US Treasuries as reserves (Tether is already roughly the fifth-largest holder, behind countries like China and Japan), he expects 'the internet' to become the largest holder of US Treasuries within five years - a structural new source of Treasury demand at a scale he says he cannot fully comprehend, which he thinks will transform finance and spread the US financial system around the world.
TLT MED
Anatoly Yakovenko Co-founder and CEO, Solana Labs 4:12
Solana becomes global execution layer for finance
Solana is built to be the world's execution layer: his back-of-the-envelope design was about a thousand times faster than Ethereum, which is focused on settlement, and 'execution is where all the money is made' while a fast execution engine can also do settlement. The end state he targets is a single global synchronized ledger for every market, moving assets between New York, London, Singapore and Nairobi in 120 milliseconds. Crypto-native networks are nimble and available worldwide while regulated venues like Nasdaq stay in a sandbox, and once regulators allow public-key cryptography to move assets he expects institutions such as Nasdaq to run on Solana rather than build rival rails. With continued focus on speed, cost and reliability he thinks Solana has a strong shot at becoming the global execution engine for all of finance despite the growing number of competing L1s and L2s.
SOL MED
Anatoly Yakovenko Co-founder and CEO, Solana Labs 16:14
Quantum risk: Bitcoin must migrate signatures
Bitcoin is resilient to concentrated holders such as MicroStrategy collapsing: such an event would be painful for people who own Bitcoin, but the network and every property people value in it would survive the transition, so anyone who truly values Bitcoin should treat that kind of shock as an opportunity to own more. As long as acquiring Bitcoin stays an open global competition without a regulatory clampdown like the 1970s gold rules, it survives these shocks. Its simplicity as a pure settlement layer and proof-of-work make it extremely robust to attacks, including state-sponsored ones - an unexpected rollback is very unlikely and the hyper-connected network can respond - and he calls the Nakamoto implementation the coolest piece of software written in the last 20 years.
BTC MED
Anatoly Yakovenko Co-founder and CEO, Solana Labs 23:43
Visa/Mastercard win by cutting banks out
His contrarian view is that Visa and Mastercard are not the part of the payments stack at risk from crypto: they are technology companies that own the customer end to end and earn only about 10 basis points on gross payment volume - 'vapor' - whereas the issuing and receiving banks take roughly 2% and are the most disruptible pieces. If the networks remove the banks from the loop and settle with stablecoin transfers behind the scenes, they become far more successful and can do much more for much less. When a host summarized it as 'long stablecoins, short banks', he answered that he is not an investor, but maybe.
V MA MED
Anatoly Yakovenko Co-founder and CEO, Solana Labs 23:43
Visa/Mastercard win by cutting banks out
His contrarian view is that Visa and Mastercard are not the part of the payments stack at risk from crypto: they are technology companies that own the customer end to end and earn only about 10 basis points on gross payment volume - 'vapor' - whereas the issuing and receiving banks take roughly 2% and are the most disruptible pieces. If the networks remove the banks from the loop and settle with stablecoin transfers behind the scenes, they become far more successful and can do much more for much less. When a host summarized it as 'long stablecoins, short banks', he answered that he is not an investor, but maybe.
KBE MED
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This All-In Podcast video, published September 18, 2025, features Anatoly Yakovenko discussing TLT, SOL, BTC, V, MA, KBE. 5 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.

Speakers: Anatoly Yakovenko  · Tickers: TLT, SOL, BTC, V, MA, KBE