Looking at Crypto’s Next Decade Through the History of the Internet

1

One billion monthly active users is a rarely discussed but critically important technological demarcation line outside the internet industry.

Below this line, a product is merely a tool; crossing this line, it gradually becomes infrastructure.

When a technology becomes infrastructure, it begins to influence the way civilization operates. For example: Facebook changed the methods of social mobilization; Amazon altered the patterns of commodity trade; TikTok transformed the structure of the entertainment industry.

One billion monthly active users signifies that this system has been embedded into the daily operations of human society. It is an invisible dividing line measuring whether a technology has truly changed the structure of civilization.

2

If viewed solely from user scale, today’s Crypto is roughly equivalent to the internet in 2002.

In 1993, there were approximately 5 million global internet users. By 2002, this number grew to about 500 million.

A similar rhythm appears in the Crypto world: in 2017, there were roughly 5 million global Crypto users; by 2026, the global Crypto user base has crossed the 500 million threshold.

From 5 million to 500 million, a 100-fold growth, both eras took about a decade.

History sometimes resembles a slow yet precise metronome.

3

On many levels, Crypto in 2026 is somewhat similar to the internet in 2002.

The internet of 2002 gave birth to many models, but having just experienced the dot-com bubble, people believed the internet might have value, but few believed it could flourish across many fields. At that time, not many believed that sectors like video, advertising, gaming, food delivery, or ride-hailing could ever attract over 100 million users.

Because, back then, smartphones hadn’t even appeared (no GPS or real-time location). The iPhone wasn’t officially born until 2007. A rational mind could not imagine the non-linear future of the internet.

In 2002, there were actually very few products in the global internet with user bases exceeding 100 million, such as Yahoo, ICQ, Hotmail, MSN Messenger, AOL. They shared an obvious common characteristic: almost all were email or instant messaging products.

If we fast-forward to the Crypto world of 2026, there are also not many products with user scales exceeding 100 million, roughly including: Binance, Coinbase, Tether, USDC, OKX, Bitget, etc.

They similarly share a distinct common point: almost all are exchanges or stablecoin networks. Meanwhile, most other narratives and sectors in Crypto are still struggling near the scale-up threshold.

Many people thus begin to doubt: can Crypto truly reach the masses, or will it remain confined to finance and payments?

4

But among everyone, one person has consistently maintained a rare optimism.

He is Marc Andreessen—one of the people who helped develop the NCSA Mosaic browser. It was this browser that transformed the internet from a high-barrier, research-focused network with only 1 million users into a system with 20 million users within two years. Later, he almost bet correctly on the entire two-decade rise of the internet.

Thirty years later, this founder of a16z firmly believes: Crypto will ultimately become the infrastructure for the next generation of the internet.

To this end, over the past nearly ten years, a16z has raised close to $10 billion in dedicated Crypto funds. And in 2026, he made another move—raising approximately $2 billion for a new Crypto fund.

While most people remain skeptical, he chooses to continue placing heavy bets on the “next internet.”

5

The true turning point for technology diffusion comes not only from the technology itself, but more from user experience—that is, the lowering of barriers.

In 1993, the browser NCSA Mosaic was born.

Before this, the internet was primarily a network used by research institutions and universities, requiring operations via command line, FTP, or Telnet. For ordinary people, this was almost an incomprehensible system.

Mosaic was the first to integrate images, text, and hyperlinks into a clickable graphical interface. The internet transformed from a set of technical protocols into a web world that ordinary people could browse. In the following two years, internet users began explosive growth: from about 1 million users in 1992 to jumping to the 20 million level by 1994.

The change in experience opened the floodgates for technology diffusion.

Crypto’s turning point also appeared at a similar moment—around 2017. By then, the 암호화폐 world had completed its geek experimentation phase and was evolving into a functioning financial network. What propelled this leap was also a breakthrough at the experience layer:

• Binance made trading efficient and globally liquid
• Tether’s USDT provided a stable unit of account
• Ethereum made smart contracts programmable financial infrastructure

Crypto gradually evolved from a “digital asset experiment” into a functioning global financial system. Thus, 2017 became the starting point for the first large-scale expansion of the crypto world: user numbers, trading volume, and stablecoin market cap all grew tens or even hundreds of times within a short period.

That year (2017–2018), Crypto infrastructure began to explode.

Binance’s user base grew from 1 million to 10 million, expanding 10-fold in a year.

Meanwhile, Tether’s (USDT) market capitalization jumped from about $10 million at the beginning of the year to $1 billion by year-end, a full 100-fold increase.

The combination of exchanges and stablecoins gave Crypto its first truly usable global liquidity market.

6

In 2007, the internet encountered an unexpected accelerator: the iPhone.

Mobile phone + internet truly ushered the internet into the mobile era. Everyone had a computer in their pocket that was always connected. The internet was no longer just a “tool used while sitting at a computer,” but became an omnipresent infrastructure. User growth consequently underwent a qualitative change: shifting from relatively linear diffusion to exponential growth.

In the following years, a series of billion-user products emerged one after another: WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, PayPal, Amazon, WeChat, Alipay.

Today, in the Crypto world, a similar ultimate accelerator is emerging: AI Agent.

When AIs autonomously execute tasks across networks, they require a new foundational capability: 24/7 automatic settlement—for purchasing computing power, paying for API services, subscribing to data, and collaborating and transacting with other AIs.

What Crypto provides is precisely a globally available, permissionless, 24/7 native digital currency system. If future AI Agents need to autonomously transact and collaborate, then Crypto will inevitably become their settlement layer.

AI Agents with economic autonomy are the truly independent AI, the true AGI.

7

So, what kind of application will have 1 billion users?

The answer is actually quite simple: it must solve a real, rigid need that genuinely exists for 1 billion people every month. For example—cross-border payments.

The internet allows people to connect across geography, but value remains segmented by national borders. In both the physical and digital worlds, over 1 billion people engage in cross-border interactions every day: travel, business cooperation, online content tipping, digital service transactions.

Information has long been globalized, but money remains confined within borders.

And Crypto is precisely the system born to completely bridge this scenario.

Another potential path to a billion users comes from RWA (Real World Asset tokenization).

In the traditional financial system, the barrier to cross-border asset investment is extremely high. Complex legal structures, geographical restrictions, and high capital requirements exclude the vast majority of ordinary people from global assets.

But in an on-chain world, this structure could be rewritten. An Egyptian, a Chinese person, and an American could perfectly well jointly hold the rights to the future ten-year revenue stream of a specific suite at The Ritz-Carlton in Hong Kong or Chiang Mai.

Assets are split, tokenized, and freely circulated globally. When global assets begin to be held globally, the financial system enters a new phase.

8

The paths for Crypto to reach a billion users likely extend far beyond the two mentioned above. It might not be two, but ten, or even dozens.

Among them, the most potentially disruptive possibility is precisely the AI Agent economic system mentioned earlier.

If 1 billion AI Agents emerge in the future, these programs capable of automatically executing payments and purchases simply cannot function if they rely on a traditional banking system requiring KYC and restricted operating hours. Crypto is currently the only native machine money system.

Therefore, at some future stage, people might 디파이ne it this way: only AI Agents that possess Crypto accounts and have economic autonomy are true AI, and they will be treated as independent economic entities akin to humans.

This path strongly resembles the mobile internet revolution of the past: mobile internet didn’t just make humans go online more; it made countless mobile devices become network nodes.

And in the future, every AI Agent will become a native, active non-human user in the Crypto network.

Every AI Agent is an independent economic node.

9

When the first Crypto product with 1 billion monthly active users appears, a new era might truly begin.

For the first two decades after the internet’s birth, it was in an accumulation phase of infrastructure and user scale. In 1993, there were only about 5 million global internet users. By 2002, internet users surpassed 500 million—this moment is strikingly similar to today’s Crypto world.

Another decade later, in 2012, Facebook became the first platform in internet history to surpass 1 billion monthly active users. From then on, platforms like YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok densely emerged. Over twenty billion-user applications were born in the subsequent decade-plus, ushering in a magnificent era of global interconnection.

So the question arises: around 2036, will Crypto also experience a similar moment?

When the first billion-user Crypto product appears, it might not just signify the success of one application, but mean that Crypto has completed its ultimate transformation from geek technology to global infrastructure.

And before that, we must ask a more fundamental question: what sufficiently large-scale problems does Crypto actually solve?

Only when a technology touches the real needs of 1 billion people will the era of a billion users truly arrive.

10

Technological history has an interesting pattern: technologies that truly change the world are rarely understood at their birth.

The internet was like this. Crypto is likely also like this.

For the twenty years after its birth, the internet was accompanied by massive skepticism, even long-term stigmatization. Online gaming was thought to ruin the younger generation; online video was considered unprofitable; online shopping was seen as synonymous with counterfeit goods; the “free internet” was viewed as a scam…

Just like Crypto, at this very moment.

Truly massive user products are often born in the most ridiculed, marginal places.

Perhaps one day, when yet another application with a billion monthly active users appears, people will realize: this system has actually been quietly running for many years.

이 글은 인터넷에서 퍼왔습니다: Looking at Crypto’s Next Decade Through the History of the Internet

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