AI + Crypto: Building the New Internet of Money ft. Micky Malka
🎯 Summary
AI + Crypto: Building the New Internet of Money ft. Micky Malka - Podcast Summary
1. Crypto Focus Area
The episode explores the convergence of AI and crypto infrastructure, with emphasis on tokenization as a broader concept beyond traditional crypto assets. Discussion centers on how blockchain technology serves as foundational infrastructure for the new digital economy, moving beyond simple payment rails to become a general ledger system for all digital interactions.
2. Key Technical Insights
• Infrastructure Convergence: Malka predicts crypto and FinTech will merge into unified infrastructure, eliminating the distinction between traditional and blockchain-based financial services • Tokenization Evolution: Beyond crypto tokens, the concept extends to “packets of information” that will power the new digital age, representing ownership and value transfer mechanisms • Custody Innovation: Discussion of MPC (Multi-Party Computation) decentralized custody as a solution to single-entity custody risks
3. Market/Investment Angle
• FinTech Maturation: Malka declared “FinTech is dead (2011-2022)” in 2022, suggesting the major opportunities from that era are closed, with 25-30 companies set to dominate • Early-Stage Advantage: Success comes from solving problems you’ve personally experienced rather than following trends • Generational Shift: Millennials represent a permanently financialized generation with different expectations about money ownership and control
4. Notable Crypto Projects/People
• Coinbase: Early investment based on infrastructure needs Malka experienced buying/storing Bitcoin • Wences Casares: Long-time business partner and crypto pioneer mentioned as close collaborator • Vitalik Buterin: Referenced for early work on colored coins and Ethereum development • Ribbit Capital: Malka’s firm known for prescient FinTech/crypto investments
5. Regulatory/Policy Discussion
Limited regulatory discussion, though Malka’s Venezuelan background provides perspective on hyperinflation, capital controls, and banking system failures that inform his crypto thesis.
6. Future Implications
The conversation suggests crypto/Web3 is evolving toward invisible infrastructure that powers all digital interactions. AI and crypto will converge to create new forms of value transfer and ownership representation, with successful companies being those that solve real user pain points rather than following hype cycles.
7. Target Audience
Most valuable for institutional investors and strategic thinkers in crypto who need to understand long-term infrastructure trends rather than short-term trading opportunities.
Comprehensive Analysis
This podcast represents a masterclass in understanding the intersection of traditional finance, crypto, and emerging AI technologies through the lens of one of FinTech’s most successful investors. Micky Malka’s journey from Venezuela to Silicon Valley provides crucial context for his investment philosophy and crypto thesis.
The Venezuelan Foundation: Malka’s formative experience with hyperinflation, currency devaluations, and banking system collapses in 1980s-90s Venezuela created an intuitive understanding of monetary systems’ fragility. This background proved invaluable when evaluating Bitcoin in 2010, as he could immediately grasp its value proposition in ways that investors from stable monetary environments might miss.
Investment Philosophy Evolution: The conversation reveals Malka’s methodology of investing in solutions to problems he’s personally encountered. His early Bitcoin purchases led to custody challenges, spurring investments in companies like Coinbase. This approach of “scratching your own itch” proved remarkably prescient across multiple investment cycles.
The FinTech Maturation Thesis: Perhaps most significantly, Malka’s declaration that “FinTech is dead” represents a crucial inflection point. He argues that the macro conditions that enabled the 2011-2022 FinTech boom—mobile adoption, App Store distribution, post-financial crisis brand distrust, and unstructured data availability—have normalized. The window for new entrants has largely closed, with 25-30 companies positioned to dominate the next decade.
Convergence Prediction: The podcast’s central thesis involves the inevitable merger of crypto and traditional FinTech infrastructure. Malka predicted in 2018-2019 that these would converge into unified systems, eliminating artificial distinctions between “crypto” and “traditional” financial services.
Generational Transformation: The Robinhood investment story illustrates a fundamental shift in how younger generations view money ownership. Unlike previous generations who accepted banks as money custodians, millennials and Gen Z expect direct control over their financial assets—a mindset that naturally aligns with crypto’s self-custody principles.
AI Integration Implications: While the transcript cuts off before deep AI discussion, the setup suggests Malka views AI as the next convergence layer, potentially automating and optimizing the financial infrastructure that crypto and FinTech have been building.
Design and Taste: Malka emphasizes the importance of design thinking and user experience in successful financial products, noting that technical capability alone isn’t sufficient—companies must also demonstrate aesthetic sensibility and user empathy.
This conversation matters because it provides a rare long-term perspective from someone who has successfully navigated multiple technology and financial cycles. Malka’s track record with Coinbase, Robinhood, Revolut, and other major platforms lends credibility to his predictions about infrastructure convergence and the maturation of the crypto/Fin
🏢 Companies Mentioned
đź’¬ Key Insights
"I think it was around 2018 or 2019 when we actually told our LPs for the first time, we think these worlds are going to converge. You're not going to talk about crypto or FinTech separately; they're all going to be just infrastructure powering this."
"Everything I owe to who I became had to do with all that I lived growing up in Venezuela. Even today, when you hear the headlines about inflation at 3% a year, I'm like, a year? I remember being 10% a day."
"FinTech is dead 2011-2022. What we were trying to say is that all the things that were started in the last decade—the ones that are going to win are already out there. It's going to be really hard to win because the opportunity sets, the macro opportunity sets that were open with the App Store, with the financial crisis, and with unstructured data had been completely normalized."
"That superpower of decentralized ownership over what we do in our financial world is not going away; it's only accelerated."
"At the beginning, I thought of Bitcoin as travel checks. They had a hash code, they had a serial number; you had them. If you lost them, it was cash, but it was not there. So it wasn't obvious to me that there was a whole ledger, an open-ended ledger that you could write a lot more stuff than just the token itself."
"We were super early as a fund buying into Bitcoin. The problem was we didn't know where to store them. We had them on our phones. So we thought we should be on a custody business, and that was the beginning of supper. All of these things that started to come were the outputs of what was hard to buy."