ACSDemocratized Access
Niche or gated products, opened to many more people
I am drawn to protocols and products that take something niche or gated and make it available to a lot more people. Securities-backed credit used to require a private bank. Perpetual futures used to require a broker, and Hyperliquid is the clearest example of that changing. A dollar stablecoin used to require one issuer. The version of this I care most about is using ledgers and lending protocols to give ordinary people more spendable capital against what they already own.
Connects to
- Berkeley Real Estate Investment Group. The case competition I set up gave about 150 students a real look at residential real estate.
- Chainlink Labs. The prediction market infrastructure served about two million people a day who would not otherwise have had those markets.
- Decentralized Exchange Platform. Anyone with a wallet could trade. No account, no broker.
- Entrepreneurs @ Berkeley. The fellowship is around building companies, and the ones I build are about opening up access to capital.
- Gether. Spending against assets used to be a private bank product. Gether makes it a card anyone can hold.
- Credit & Collateral. Credit against assets used to be gated. Opening it up is the theme.
- Payments. The point of working on payments, for me, is giving more people more ways to spend what they have.
- Stablecoins & Rails. A stablecoin is a dollar anyone can hold without a bank account.
