The next wave of crypto startup opportunities is embedded in this YC-published list.

Written by KarenZ, Foresight News

The term "crypto" is currently navigating a delicate position: some investment firms have removed it from their public branding, while others are actively writing it into new startup recruitment documents.

On October 22, a16z announced the rebranding of a16z Crypto to a16z Frontier. One week later, Y Combinator (YC) shared its Crypto Request for Startups (CRFS) — curated guidance for crypto founders — through visiting partner Nemil Dalal.

One firm is expanding its investment scope, while the other is clarifying its specific startup recruitment priorities. At first glance, the two moves appear to represent divergent takes on the crypto industry from two iconic Silicon Valley investment institutions.

While YC primarily provides acceleration and investment support for early-stage startups, and a16z covers a much broader range of investment stages, the two actions form a thought-provoking contrast: both firms are revisiting a core question — what kinds of businesses can actually be made commercially viable by blockchain technology?

Stablecoins, payments, financing, asset trading, and task-executing AI agents have emerged as the core protagonists of this new playbook.

a16z Drops Its Dedicated Crypto Brand, YC Lays Out Its Priority Startup Needs

Let’s set the record straight first: a16z crypto’s rebranding does not mean it is exiting crypto investment.

Chris Dixon, managing partner of a16z crypto, explicitly stated in the announcement that the new fund will expand its investment scope from crypto startups to a broader set of frontier tech startups, while continuing to invest in crypto and related enterprises, and advocating for balanced, sensible crypto regulation.

Dixon explained that as blockchain technology is increasingly integrated into products built by fintech firms and traditional institutions, its underlying infrastructure is gradually fading into the background. Defining companies by what they do, rather than by what technology they use, is far more meaningful.

In contrast, YC’s latest Crypto Request for Startups (CRFS) list takes a demand-first approach: it directly outlines the financial problems it hopes founders will solve, and lays out a clear set of crypto startup focus areas:

• AI financing: Leverage blockchain technology to streamline the fundraising process for AI projects;
• Stablecoins: New USD-pegged stablecoins, stablecoins pegged to other fiat currencies, and new digital banks serving specific niche user groups;
• Trading: Asset tokenization, as well as trading venues and interfaces built around new asset classes, derivatives, or regional market-specific needs;
• Agent-related tools: Build use cases for agents to trade crypto and other assets, and develop dedicated financial service APIs for agents.

YC also judges that over the past year, the driving force behind crypto adoption has come far more from institutional financial needs than from consumer speculation. It expects industry adoption rates to enter a phase of exponential growth from this point forward.

Nemil Dalal, the partner who shared this list, has relevant deep industry experience. His personal website shows that he currently serves as a YC visiting partner, previously contributed to the growth of USDC, and led business lines including asset strategy, staking, and developer products at Coinbase.

What makes this list worth paying attention to is that YC has broken down its general bullish stance on crypto into concrete, commercially viable business opportunities.

In fact, YC’s focus on these directions did not emerge overnight. Back in September 2025, the joint startup recruitment call released by YC and Coinbase already listed stablecoins, tokenization, and trading as priority focus areas, and used the term "Fintech 3.0" to describe its vision of rebuilding financial systems with code.

The two firms follow different strategic paths: YC is hunting for concrete commercial opportunities in the crypto space, while a16z is expanding its investment scope to cover a wider range of technology sectors. Yet a shared core question can be distilled from both of their published documents: What tangible value do customers actually get from using blockchain?

The Next Hurdle for Stablecoins: Finding Users Who Will Adopt Them Long-Term

YC’s requirements for stablecoin founders are remarkably straightforward.

For USD-pegged stablecoin projects, founders must identify new user or merchant groups and design effective distribution strategies; for non-USD stablecoin projects, founders must select fiat currencies that have real, unmet demand; for digital bank projects, founders must serve underserved customer groups — such as global freelancers and cross-border businesses — while effectively managing risks.

The most notable point across these requirements is distribution: how products reach users, and how they integrate into users’ daily usage scenarios.

Issuing a token only represents one part of building a product. Founders must solve every individual pain point along the way: Who will choose to hold the token? Why will merchants accept it? How do users onboard funds? And how can users withdraw funds back to their local bank accounts?

This line of thinking is already visible across projects backed by YC.

Fire Wallet, part of YC’s 2026 Fall batch, positions itself as a non-custodial stablecoin wallet that also offers payment processing, invoicing, web-based payment collection, and fiat on/off-ramp functionality. The team also plans to build dedicated sub-wallets managed separately for different AI agents.

Product competition in this space has already extended to use cases including bill payment, payment collection, and fund management. Whether a product can integrate seamlessly into customers’ operational workflows has become a more concrete test than standalone wallet feature sets.

YC itself is also experimenting with these payment tools. This February, it announced that portfolio companies can choose to receive their $500,000 investment in stablecoins. Stablecoins have thus evolved from an investment theme to an actual method of disbursing investment funds.

This leads to a clear observation: The value of stablecoin startups may increasingly be measured by sustained user adoption, rather than one-off usage events.

The Core Problem Tokenization Must Solve: What Happens After Assets Are Put On-Chain?

YC’s vision for the future of financial markets can be broadly split into two layers.

The first layer involves migrating existing assets on-chain, including equities, debt instruments, commodities, and real estate ownership rights. The second layer involves issuing new asset classes that were previously too economically unviable to organize — such as startup equity, and small securities with issue sizes below $10,000.

YC believes the second layer may become far more interesting over time, and expects a full ecosystem of supporting services to emerge around these assets — including trading, lending, and derivative products.

The core of this logic lies in the question: What can be done with an asset after it is issued? Does it have a dedicated trading channel? Can it be used as collateral? Can it be integrated as a component of other financial products?

Across YC’s portfolio, trading entry points have already emerged in diverse forms.

Mochatrade, part of YC’s 2026 Spring batch, allows Indian users to trade perpetual contracts pegged to the prices of assets including U.S. equities, pre-IPO holdings, and commodities, with the ability to deposit Indian rupees via UPI. The platform’s official website clearly states that users trade price contracts, do not hold underlying stocks, and do not receive shareholder voting rights through the platform.

Arbital, part of YC’s 2026 Summer batch, is attempting to consolidate perpetual contracts, meme tokens, equities, and market-making strategies into a single entry point, with plans to launch a mobile-based social trading product. Per its own description on its YC profile, the platform attracted roughly 2,700 traders in its first seven months of operation, with cumulative trading volume reaching $1.35 billion. The Arbital team also has deep experience building crypto trading platforms: co-founders Karon Pangestu and Steven Mulyawan previously served as head of growth and head of Asia business development and partnerships at Aevo, respectively, while fellow co-founder Vincent Owen Toniwa previously built and operated Aevo’s backend infrastructure.

These cases indicate that startup opportunities around on-chain assets will further extend to how users discover and trade assets. As the range of on-chain asset classes grows, trading entry points, liquidity, and user experience will become increasingly critical success factors.

AI’s Role in This List: It Needs Capital, and It May Also Serve as a User of Financial Services

YC placed AI financing at the top of its list: leveraging blockchain to make capital fundraising for the AI sector easier.

This direction addresses the funding needs of AI projects, but the list does not outline specific product structures, nor does it clearly specify whether the model should involve issuing equity tokens, computing power-linked securities, or other financing instruments. It is therefore wrong to conclude that YC is encouraging any specific token issuance model.

The far more clearly defined direction is building dedicated financial interfaces for AI agents.

YC believes AI agents will become major financial participants. Beyond directly calling blockchain APIs, agents also need to combine multiple services — for example, fiat on/off-ramps. This means founders need to package complex financial workflows into reliable, machine-callable operations.

Nemil Dalal already discussed this shift in his July article titled *Make Something Agents Want*: Agents need structured information, clear interface feedback, and execution infrastructure such as wallets and identity solutions. He also emphasized that fund movement requires corresponding policy guardrails and approval workflows.

From a product perspective, this means control capabilities are needed beyond basic interfaces: How much money can an agent spend? Which operations require pre-approval? How can operations be paused if they fail? How can transactions be audited?

Verdict Machine, a YC-backed startup, is leveraging AI to assess and address security risks associated with financial institutions’ on-chain operations. Per its product description, the platform evaluates proposed transactions before execution, by integrating the institution’s on-chain environment and existing compliance policies.

This points to a high-potential opportunity worth noting: as more transactions are initiated by automated programs, authorization controls, spending limits, compliance checks, and record-keeping may become just as important as trading entry points. The more convenient automated execution becomes, the more clearly defined boundaries for fund usage need to be.

Key Takeaways

Every direction outlined by YC ultimately boils down to answering concrete, practical questions: Can payments be made more convenient? Can financing processes be made more efficient? Can trading flows be made smoother? Can agents reliably complete financial operations?

For founders, both the opportunities and the challenges lie in these unmet needs. Technology has unlocked new possibilities, but products must prove that these possibilities are valuable enough for customers to use consistently, and even pay for.

Of course, YC’s endorsement or support is no guarantee of success — not every crypto project it has backed has gone on to achieve long-term viability. This list provides directions for identifying high-potential opportunities, but whether a venture can build a sustainable, profitable business will ultimately be tested by the market.