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Crypto

Solana Founder: Crypto Is About to Change Finance Like the Internet Changed Everything Else

1h 47m Moonshots with Peter Diamandis Oct 30, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Bitcoin is store of value, Ethereum is settlement, Solana is execution — Yakovenko built Solana to solve the engineering problem of moving bits as fast as possible around the world.
  • Solana is ~1,000x faster than Ethereum — fast enough to keep up with AI agents that can't wait 20-30 seconds for a transaction.
  • $1-10 trillion in stablecoins expected over the next 5 years will massively accelerate crypto adoption globally.
  • The cost of finance will drop to its actual value — financial services currently take ~40% of corporate American profits. Crypto can reduce this friction dramatically.
  • AI + crypto convergence — as intelligence gets cheaper, more markets become viable. Solana enables permissionless market creation for any asset.
  • Proof of History was inspired by TDMA from Qualcomm's cellular protocols — a way to measure passage of time that's hard to fake.
  • The future is a single global layer for all markets — concurrent block producers in Singapore, New York, London ingesting data simultaneously.

The Vision: Execution at Global Scale

In this episode of Moonshots, Peter Diamandis sits down with Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder and CEO of Solana Labs. With Solana now worth over $100 billion and generating $2.2 billion in annual revenues, Yakovenko shares his vision for a future where blockchain becomes the execution layer for all global finance.

The key distinction Yakovenko makes is simple but profound: "Bitcoin is store of value. Ethereum is settlement. Solana is execution." While others focused on theoretical computer science problems, Yakovenko—an engineer at heart who spent years at Qualcomm—was drawn to the practical challenge of moving data as fast as physically possible.

"There's no computer science academic reason why a single machine layer for all markets everywhere can't exist. It's purely an engineering problem and we're on our way to solve it as fast as we can."
— Anatoly Yakovenko

The Stablecoin Catalyst

Yakovenko sees stablecoin legislation as the key catalyst for mainstream crypto adoption. With projections of $1-10 trillion worth of digital dollars being minted over the next five years, the infrastructure is finally ready for mass adoption.

The numbers tell the story: moving dollars from Ethereum to Solana is already a million times cheaper than moving money between any two banks. When Solana sold their Seeker phone, half of all purchases came via stablecoin—not because of incentives, but because it was simply easier for international buyers than using credit cards.

AI Meets Crypto

One of the most fascinating parts of the discussion centers on the convergence of AI and crypto. As the cost of intelligence drops, markets require intelligence to function—and suddenly you can have markets for everything.

Yakovenko points to futarchy and decision markets as examples: imagine every major corporate decision being made through markets where people literally bet money on outcomes. The forcing function of losing money creates better decisions than traditional governance.

"The ants are not aware of the intelligence of the anthill. I can't fit all these markets in my head, but my gut is that this is probably the most optimal direction for society to move forward and make decisions."
— Anatoly Yakovenko

The Engineering Breakthrough

The origin story of Solana traces back to Yakovenko's time at Qualcomm, where he worked on cellular protocols. The eureka moment came at 4am after two coffees and a beer: what if you could apply TDMA (Time-Division Multiple Access) principles to blockchain?

The result was Proof of History—a way to cryptographically measure the passage of time that can't be easily faked. This solved the "channel efficiency" problem that limits other blockchains and enabled Solana's legendary speed.

What's Next

Looking ahead, Yakovenko envisions concurrent block producers around the world—one in Singapore, one in New York, one in London—all ingesting transactions simultaneously. The latency to the blockchain becomes as short as your distance to the nearest block producer.

The ultimate goal? Making finance as frictionless as the internet made information. When a startup can direct-list using a smart contract instead of paying billions in IPO fees, when bankruptcy can be resolved in minutes instead of years through programmatic liquidation, when anyone with talent anywhere in the world can access capital from anywhere else—that's when crypto has truly changed finance like the internet changed everything else.

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