a16z合伙人：站进资金流，才是真正的护城河

Original title: The Money Flow Is the Moat

Original author: Jason Rosenthal, a16z crypto partner

Original translation: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor's note: The core thesis of this article is straightforward: the flow of money itself is the moat. Looking back at business history, many of the most powerful companies didn't just win by selling products; they positioned themselves in the middle of a "value flow," continuously taking a cut from every transportation, payment, transaction, ad conversion, computing power call, or order flow. Railways made money from the flow of goods, Visa charges fees from payment networks, Google and Meta parked themselves at the entry point where attention converts into commerce, and AWS sits at the center of computing power flows. As long as value continues to flow through the network, the network itself gets stronger.

Crypto has natively handed this model to startups for the first time. Blockchains provide open ledgers and programmable settlement, stablecoins allow money to flow globally at internet speed, and token mechanisms tie users, developers, and network growth together. For crypto entrepreneurs, the real opportunity isn't just building a new app; it's finding the value channels in the old system with the highest costs, lowest efficiency, and heaviest profit extraction, compressing them, restructuring them, and positioning themselves within the new money flow.

The article emphasizes that the sectors within traditional financial services with the heaviest profit extraction and lowest efficiency—payments, custody, lending, foreign exchange, clearing, market making, etc.—will all become entry points for crypto entrepreneurs to restructure: compressing costs, increasing speed, and redistributing value. This "money flow business" (taking a cut based on traffic within a value flow channel) won't stop at finance; it may also extend in the future to emerging markets like GPU computing, AI training data, energy, robotics, space, and rare earths.

For founders, the key question is: Is your product already standing in the value flow? When the scale of network activity grows tenfold, can your revenue grow synchronously? Opportunities are often hidden where old infrastructure is the least efficient but extracts the highest profits. Whoever can compress old costs and step into the new flow has the chance to turn the money flow into their own moat.

Below is the original text:

Historically, many of the best businesses have been built by placing themselves in the flow of money—facilitating the creation and transfer of value within a network and extracting a portion of it. The more value that flows through the network, the larger these businesses tend to grow.

Crypto is the first modern technology natively built for this. If your startup isn't designing its product and business model around these principles, you're missing an opportunity. Especially with the advent of stablecoins, money and value can now flow at internet speed: settling globally, operating 24/7, and with end-to-end programmability. The underlying rails are open, the unit economics are public, and the addressable market for money flows encompasses virtually every dollar of global movement.

This Model

Blockchains are inherently network businesses. Every transaction settles on a shared ledger; every new participant strengthens the same underlying infrastructure that later users will continue to use. As more people use and build on it, the network becomes more valuable for all users.

Most companies spend years trying to artificially create network effects on top of traditional infrastructure. Crypto entrepreneurs inherit these network effects from day one.

Network tokens amplify this further. A well-designed token can align users, developers, providers, validators, and the protocol itself toward a single goal: growing the network, and distributing rewards based on each participant's contribution. Protocol revenue belongs to those who actually use it. No rebates, no backroom deals—just a positive feedback loop: value flows through the system, and value flows back to those who build and drive its growth.

This isn't a new model. Crypto is just making it easier and more scalable for startups to adopt.

Railway companies didn't make money selling locomotives; they made money from every ton of grain, coal, and steel that traveled across their tracks. Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, and AT&T were all companies built on money flows. Google and Meta didn't replace print and television because their ads were inherently better; they parked themselves at the critical juncture where attention converts into commerce, taking a cut from trillions of dollars of commercial intent. AWS sits at the center of computing power flows.

The model is consistent: find where value flows, and position yourself in the middle of it.

Financial markets make this model even clearer. Visa processed $15.7 trillion in payments in fiscal 2024 and recorded $35.9 billion in net revenue. Jane Street generated $20.5 billion in net trading revenue last year, surpassing Citigroup and Bank of America. The top five U.S. market makers handled 87% of payment for order flow: they aren't predicting markets, they are standing in the middle of every order flow, earning more as trading volume grows.

These companies also share another commonality: network effects. Visa becomes more useful to merchants as more cards are issued, and more useful to cardholders as more merchants accept it. The same applies to order flow: each additional broker tightens spreads, attracting more brokers, which in turn attracts more order flow.

Money flow combined with network effects is one of the most enduring structures in business history.

Your Margin Is My Opportunity

Bezos once said, "Your margin is my opportunity." He was talking about retail, but the statement is even more applicable to traditional financial services—the largest pool of profit extraction globally. Payments, custody, lending, foreign exchange, securitization, clearing, market making—they all fit. Visa and Mastercard charge 2% to 3% interchange fees on a network designed in the 1960s; cross-border remittance corridors charge 6% to 9%; prime brokers and custodians take a cut from every securities trade. Even though the US moved to T+1 settlement in 2024, capital still sits idle overnight, a structural cost borne by all participants.

These profit margins are targets. Compress costs, increase velocity, and possibly expand the entire market. Stripe and Square have already proven this in payments.

Crypto entrepreneurs have the opportunity to build the next version: programmable, instant, global, and natively standing within the money flow.

And this frontier extends far beyond financial services. Computing power and GPU markets, memory chips, AI training data, energy, robotics, space, rare earth metals—every one of these areas could see massive global flows of value that existing infrastructure wasn't designed to handle.

Every one of these areas is an open market ready for building money flow businesses on programmable infrastructure from day one. No existing rails, no entrenched intermediaries, no legacy interests to defend.

As a founder, you should ask yourself:

1. Are you already positioned in the flow of money today?

2. If the value of activity on your product grows tenfold, will your revenue grow accordingly?

3. If you're building a new product, where in your target market is the highest profit extraction relative to the value being created?

The opportunity is there. Compress it, step into the new value flow, and let the network start compounding from there.

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