Duc V. Le

.@circle set out to put dollars on the internet and make them work everywhere. Now @jerallaire thinks the main users of that infrastructure could be machines. He joins @cdixon to talk about what comes after digital dollars, and what the agent economy needs when software can earn, spend, and hire. Highlights: 1:58 Circle’s original vision for programmable money 7:19 Why institutions started taking stablecoins seriously 12:04 Learnings from building a global financial network 15:03 What gives a stablecoin its moat? 26:28 Crypto’s growing adoption in the shadow of AI 28:11 From making existing things better to creating entirely new markets 32:59 The weirdest experiments being built on Arc 37:02 What happens when AI hires AI 38:04 Why the next big thing starts out looking like a toy 39:05 Can blockchains counter AI’s centralizing tendencies? 44:01 What the machine economy could look like in five years

AI is getting better at solving hard math problems, especially given recent drops. But what does that mean for the cryptography that protects everything from private messages to healthcare to banking and crypto wallets? Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh, with @eddylazzarin, @SuccinctJT, @liz_harkavy, and @smc90, makes sense of the warnings sounded recently. They cover: - what’s fact vs. assumption - what’s new and what risks cryptographers have long prepared for - where quantum computing doesn't (and does) fit - opportunities for builders Highlights: 00:37 – What sparked the most recent debate about AI and cryptography 01:35 – Signal vs. noise: What the math does and doesn’t tell us 05:29 – Why cryptography depends on open problems 09:25 – Why the stakes go beyond blockchains 10:43 – How AI could strengthen confidence in cryptography 13:50 – Considerations for users and institutions 20:10 – Where AI and quantum threats overlap 22:32 – Building systems that can change cryptographic methods 23:59 – Hash-based versus lattice-based cryptography 33:07 – Opportunities for builders, and better security tools 38:14 – What comes next if there were a cryptographic break?