Fintech 3.0: Blockchain Devours the World
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Fintech 3.0: Blockchain Devours the World
This era will rebuild the financial system with code.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthors: Harj Taggar (YC), Jesse Pollak (Base)
Translation: Tim, PANews
PANews Editor's Note: Y Combinator, a renowned startup accelerator in Silicon Valley, has partnered with crypto giant Coinbase to launch a new cryptocurrency startup accelerator. This article serves as a "call to action," encouraging more entrepreneurs to begin building on-chain. It outlines the current state of the crypto industry—how stablecoins and tokenized assets will permeate daily life—and highlights the investment areas they are most interested in.
We believe the time is ripe to shift toward on-chain development. Over the past decade, tools have steadily evolved. With the emergence of low-GAS blockchains, globally circulating stablecoins, user-friendly wallet ecosystems, and growing user adoption, the infrastructure is finally in place. We’ve observed key trends creating massive opportunities for developers worldwide.
It starts with a fact: we are at the dawn of a new era in fintech—Fintech 3.0.
Fintech 1.0 was the initial digitization phase of the financial industry in the 1990s, driven by companies like PayPal. The key breakthrough then was consumer acceptance of online payments.
Fintech 2.0 unfolded over the past decade, led by companies such as Stripe, Plaid, Brex, and Chime. Its core was building application programming interfaces (APIs) atop the existing financial system. The key breakthrough was the rise of bank-as-a-service providers, enabling startups to innovate on top of traditional finance.
Now, we are entering Fintech 3.0—a future where code rebuilds finance from the ground up. Payments settle instantly, globally, and around the clock. Users store assets in digital wallets under full personal control. Traditional banks are no longer the default custodians of value.
For years, regulatory uncertainty was the main barrier to building Fintech 3.0. But with the passage of the GENIUS Act and the potential upcoming CLARITY Act, the U.S. now has a clear federal crypto regulatory framework. Entrepreneurs can now build epoch-defining businesses on-chain with confidence. This is the biggest opportunity for crypto startups in years, and Y Combinator and Coinbase are here to fund and support you in seizing it.
The following list is not exhaustive, but these are the areas we’re especially excited to invest in.
Stablecoins
Stablecoins are the first major success story of Fintech 3.0.
Stablecoins are on-chain assets pegged to fiat currencies or assets like gold, designed to maintain price stability. As payment instruments, they offer significant advantages over traditional financial transactions—especially in cross-border payments. Users can send stablecoins anywhere in the world, 24/7, for less than one cent, settle in under one second, and avoid foreign exchange fees. This isn’t theoretical—trillions of dollars in stablecoin transactions have already settled in real time.
Entrepreneurs are already building stablecoin applications with millions of users. YC alumni like Kontigo, DolarApp, and Aspora are providing instant, low-cost payments and remittance services to millions across Latin America and South Asia. El Dorado, backed by Coinbase Ventures, a platform for sending and receiving stablecoins in Latin America, processed $200 million in transactions for nearly one million users in the past year—proving growing regional demand for crypto as a hedge against currency devaluation.
This isn’t just startups experimenting: Coinbase recently partnered with Shopify to launch an open-source commerce payments protocol. It enables any traditional e-commerce setup to accept stablecoin payments on-chain, combining all the benefits of crypto (lightning-fast settlement, near-zero fees) with the security and scalability of standard e-commerce features (deferred capture, tax finalization, refunds).
Stablecoins have succeeded despite regulatory headwinds—proof of strong market demand. With the U.S. passage of the GENIUS Act, stablecoin adoption is poised for explosive growth. The Act establishes a comprehensive federal regulatory framework for stablecoins, similar to the banking system. Since its enactment, the total market cap of stablecoins has grown by over $30 billion. Major corporations like Amazon and Walmart have expressed interest in issuing their own stablecoins.
There are many directions in stablecoins, but we’re particularly interested in:
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Universal stablecoin access: Platforms handling payments, lending, and other financial services can achieve massive efficiency gains by integrating stablecoins. Enabling seamless transactions for businesses and consumers will unlock enormous value.
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Local-currency stablecoins: Stablecoins pegged to local currencies allow citizens in high-inflation countries to benefit from crypto without relying solely on the dollar. Governments and consumers wary of dollarization can use these stablecoins as the foundation for local payment, savings, and credit systems.
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Crypto-native businesses: With the emergence of Commerce Payments and other tools, merchants, lenders, and consumers will be able to handle acceptance, credit, and payments in a truly crypto-native way. The global nature of these platforms unlocks entirely new possibilities for customer service.
Tokenization and Trading
The infrastructure that powers stablecoins can be applied to any asset. This is where Fintech 3.0 becomes truly compelling. Through tokenization, we will redefine what assets are, how they look, and who can own them.
Tokenization means representing real-world assets—like government bonds, startup equity, art, or loans—as digital tokens on a blockchain. The core value? Assets that were historically illiquid and locked behind layers of intermediaries can now be owned, traded, and used by anyone, anytime, anywhere.
In practice, this could mean:
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Receiving your share of rental income from a property not via check after a month, but in real-time, every second, directly to your wallet.
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Rather than navigating complex paperwork to exercise stock options in a startup, having a “real-time cap table” that turns your equity into programmable tokens you truly own—and can freely trade on open markets.
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Instead of investing millions into private credit, buying a token that represents a fraction of a diversified loan portfolio.
This is already quietly happening. Mainstream institutions like JPMorgan are bringing deposits onto blockchains, while startups like Courtyard are tokenizing physical collectibles. We’ve also seen waves of new on-chain native assets—creator tokens, content tokens—emerge on platforms like Zora and Pump.fun.
All of this is giving rise to something entirely new: companies like Axiom, a YC alum, have become the fastest-growing company we’ve ever seen in YC history.
The core infrastructure is ready. We’re looking for founders to build products that bring every kind of asset online.
We’re especially interested in:
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New credit markets: Lending protocols using on-chain identity and reputation to offer undercollateralized loans, providing capital to individuals and businesses overlooked by traditional finance.
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On-chain capital formation: Tools for startups to raise directly from users, manage cap tables via programmable tokens, replacing spreadsheets and legal docs with code.
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New trading frontends: As assets proliferate, new opportunities emerge for consumers and enterprises to trade and invest.
Applications and Agents
On-chain technology opens new frontiers for applications and intelligent agents—things impossible in the previous internet era. Think of blockchains as a new kind of operating system: a globally shared platform where building apps is an order of magnitude faster than before, no single company controls it, and any developer can build on it permissionlessly. With “money as software,” AI agents can natively participate in this new economic paradigm.
We believe this will trigger an explosion of new applications—social, financial, collaborative, gaming, and beyond. We’re already seeing this trend on platforms like Base, where you can do nearly anything: get a loan in seconds, play-to-earn games, support creators while earning yourself.
We also believe these applications will appear as agents in chat. AI agents with digital wallets will be supercharged to help people engage with and navigate the rapidly expanding global economy. They’ll streamline and improve user experiences, just as they have in other commercial domains worldwide.
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