Why now is the best time to build crypto products

Executive overview

The infrastructure for crypto has matured: chains are fast and cheap, stablecoins are scaled, regulation is clarifying, and wallets are easy to use. Builders no longer need to spend more on lawyers than engineers.

The opportunity is to take every legacy financial system — some 50-100 years old, millions of lines of code — and rewrite it as smart contracts. The platform is ready; what's missing is founders who understand the technology and go after real problems.

The golden age of on-chain building has arrived — the tools exist, the moment is now.

The FinTech evolution

• FinTech 1.0 (1990s): consumers got comfortable paying online (PayPal era).
• FinTech 2.0 (2010s): startups built friendlier experiences on top of legacy financial infrastructure.
• FinTech 3.0: rebuild the financial system from scratch on a programmable platform with money built in.

Why the stack is finally ready

• Chains have scaled: transaction costs dropped from ~$5 to fractions of a cent — the broadband moment for crypto.
• Layer 2s (e.g. Base) compress millions of transactions and publish them to Ethereum, gaining scale while preserving decentralisation.
• Regulatory clarity is arriving: the Genius Act (stablecoins) and Clarity Act reduce legal overhead for builders.
• Wallets have simplified and can now be embedded invisibly into user experiences.
• Stablecoins have grown from near-zero to ~$200 billion in circulation.

Stablecoins as the killer use case

• Primary unlock: anyone in the world can now access and build with programmable dollars.
• Enables instant, near-free cross-border transfers — the use case driving neo-banks like Dollar App and Aspora.
• Best builders make the crypto layer invisible; users just experience a faster, cheaper product.
• Opportunity beyond dollar stablecoins: local-currency stablecoins (Brazilian real, Nigerian naira, etc.) are emerging for every country.
• Builders can support multiple stablecoins — composability means switching or adding support is low-cost.

Tokenisation of real-world assets

• Every major asset class — stocks, bonds, real estate, debt structures — can move from legacy books and records onto programmable smart contracts.
• On-chain: assets move instantly, for free, accessible globally.
• Trillions of dollars of assets sit in systems that are ripe for migration.
• New asset classes are also emerging that have no equivalent in traditional finance.

The creator economy as a new asset class

• Creators generate hundreds of billions in value annually, but that value is captured by platform intermediaries, not creators.
• On-chain social products (e.g. the Base app) treat every post and every creator as a tradeable coin — content is valued in real time by the market.
• Creators can borrow against their content portfolio, earn from every trade, and own the network effects.
• This is the internet-native asset class that couldn't exist before programmable money.

Rewriting legacy systems: the Shopify example

• Shopify and Coinbase spent 9 months translating Shopify's commerce payments system into a smart contract.
• Result: millions of lines of code distilled into ~1,000 lines of smart contract code.
• Any Shopify store can now accept USDC on Base from anywhere in the world.
• Decentralisation matters most at the base layer (Ethereum/Base); product layers can and should use what's best for the customer.
• The mental model: find a legacy system with massive fees and friction, rewrite it on-chain, deliver a 10x cheaper and faster product.

Disrupting financial intermediaries

• The internet was built without native money, so a small number of intermediaries captured the network effects (payments networks, social platforms).
• Crypto turns those network effects inside out: open platforms where anyone can participate without a proprietary gatekeeper.
• Target: any scaled intermediary mediating commerce, lending, trading, or social transactions — and undercut them with an open, 10x cheaper alternative.
• Global availability is the multiplier: anyone, anywhere can participate from day one.

AI and crypto

• Crypto provides verifiability for AI-generated content — authentication on an open, tamper-resistant rail.
• AI agents need a native money layer; smart contracts are that layer — agents call contracts directly rather than navigating legacy browser-based payment flows.
• Agents need wallets; crypto wallets are the natural fit.

What Coinbase looks for in builders

• Builders who write the code, build the community, or create the content — not idea-havers looking to outsource.
• Deep understanding of the technology; writing a first smart contract or building a DEX interface builds the intuitions needed to spot opportunities.
• "Being based": work hard, do the right thing, take creative risks, put team over individual.
• Geography doesn't matter — Base is an open global platform.

Advice for founders entering crypto

• Come in with a thesis about what is broken.
• Show up every day to prove or disprove that thesis through customer conversations.
• Technical founders with domain focus are what the space needs — not speculators.
• Start with stablecoins: the most regulated, most clearly understood entry point.
• Build so the user doesn't need to know they're using crypto — solve the real problem first.