In 2011, legendary venture capitalist Marc Andreessen wrote, “Software is eating the world.”
The best investments seem obvious in hindsight.
Of course you should’ve bought Apple (AAPL) in 2004. Obviously, you should’ve backed Nvidia (NVDA) when it was just a startup making gaming chips. And of course you wanted to own software stocks a decade ago.
But it didn’t feel obvious in 2011.
Back then, software was still considered something built by hoodie-wearing engineers in Silicon Valley for other engineers in Silicon Valley.
In 2011, Adobe (ADBE) still made most of its money selling Photoshop in shrink-wrapped CDs. Microsoft (MSFT) was trading at just 10X earnings. Wall Street had written it off as a dinosaur.
If you believed in software in 2011, you were early. If you acted on that belief, you made a fortune.
Since 2011, the iShares Software ETF (IGV) has surged 821%:
Today, everyone wants exposure to software. But the real opportunity lies in what still feels weird.
Today, crypto still feels fringe.
Most folks have written it off as a scam. But let me show you how it could eat the world and create untold fortunes.
Stablecoins—digital dollars on the blockchain—are eating their lunch.
Run this experiment for me. Try sending money overseas. I had to make an international wire transfer recently and oh, man, what an ordeal. It cost me $20 and almost an hour of my time.
Then try to send the same payment with stablecoins via blockchain rails. No banks. No waiting. Stablecoins are the only way to send $10,000 to a friend halfway around the world in seconds, from your phone, for less than a penny.
I’ve been saying for years that stablecoins are crypto’s killer use case.
What if I told you stablecoin transactions just surpassed both Visa and Mastercard for the first time? In 2024, stablecoin volumes hit $14 trillion compared to Visa’s $13 trillion:
Source: Binance
And now, Walmart (WMT) and Amazon (AMZN) are developing their own stablecoins.
Why give Visa 2%–3% of every transaction when you can own the payment rails yourself? Paying with WalmartCoin or AmazonCoin will soon become a checkout option.
“What is it good for?”
Crypto needs to hire a few ad execs from Madison Avenue. There’s too much technical jargon that makes peoples’ eyes glaze over. “May I interest you in a distributed ledger that processes 1 million transactions per second?” Zzzzzzz.
Stablecoins are awesome because they’re simple. They’re the fastest and cheapest way to transfer money. Go try it yourself!
Zooming out, it’s clear crypto is starting its second act.
We’re moving from digital gold—bitcoin (BTC)—to digital everything. Decentralized money is only the beginning of the blockchain revolution.
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This reminds me of the leap software made a decade or so ago. It was a niche product mostly used by folks who sat in front of a screen all day.
Then software ate the world.
Tesla (TSLA) cars are basically computers on wheels. Netflix (NFLX) disrupted cable. Microsoft went from a $200 billion company selling Excel in boxes to a $3.6 trillion giant selling cloud computing.
Suddenly, software became the “operating system” of our economy.
Today, the world’s six most valuable companies all make a huge chunk of their money selling, you guessed it, software:
Decentralizing the infrastructure that powers our world. This is where physical cryptos, aka DePINs (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks), shine.
Longtime readers know DePIN is one of the most exciting frontiers in crypto today.
They’re all about solving real-world problems using blockchain.
Take Helium (HNT), for example.
Helium is doing what no one thought possible. It’s building a telecom network without spending a dime on cell towers. Instead, it pays users in crypto to host 5G hotspots at home. Think Uber (UBER) for mobile data.
Helium’s $20/month unlimited plan is now live nationwide. It already has over 200,000 subscribers.
Meanwhile, T-Mobile (TMUS) and AT&T (T) pay Helium millions of dollars each year to use its network to fill coverage gaps. And Helium just signed a new deal with Movistar in Mexico, opening the door to another 2.3 million users.
Or consider Hivemapper (HONEY). It’s taking on one of the most entrenched monopolies today: Google Maps.
Google (GOOG) owns 85% of the mapping market. And it’s pulling in over $11 billion/year from its map services. But its Street View cars are expensive and slow. Each one costs $500,000 to outfit and maps roads every 18–24 months at best.
Hivemapper flips that model on its head. It sells compact dashcams and pays users in crypto to map roads while they drive.
Hivemapper has already mapped over 340 million miles of roads globally—nearly 4X the distance from the Earth to the sun. And it sees roads 25X more often than Google’s Street View.
It’s a continuation of the same trend set in motion by the internet.
Amazon built the world’s largest bookstore without having any physical locations…
Uber created the world’s largest taxi network without owning any taxis…
Then came Airbnb (ABNB). You get the idea.
Now, it’s crypto’s turn to eat the world. Many of the fastest-growing businesses in the future will be built on blockchain rails. The rapid rise of stablecoins shows the promise of this technology.
And by investing early, you have the chance to get in on the ground floor just like the early days of the internet.
If you’re ready to stop watching from the sidelines and start investing in crypto the right way, I’ve put together everything you need to know inside my Crypto Masterclass.
When you sign up, you’ll get a proven framework for investing in crypto, a starter portfolio with five of my top recommendations, and—if you join today—a 75% discount.
It’s the perfect first step if you’re serious about catching crypto’s second act.
Stephen McBride
Chief Analyst, RiskHedge