a16z names AI, stablecoins, and tokenization as the main trends for 2025

What’s new? Leading venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has named key industry sectors for the coming year in its report. Among other things, the fund’s analysts expect artificial intelligence and blockchain-based applications to drive at least three new trends in the industry: AI-enabled agent wallets, decentralized autonomous chatbots, and solutions for confirming that a user is human and not an AI bot or deepfake (Proof-of-Personhood).

a16z report

What else is known? a16z explained that decentralized chatbots can be used to manage assets and content on social networks. Powered by publicly available transparent nodes and coordinated by a consensus protocol, such a bot could even become the first truly autonomous enterprise with billions of dollars in capitalization.

Another trend for 2025 has to do with stablecoins. Analysts write that over the past few months, a market suitable for global money transfers has emerged in this sector, and several companies and protocols have launched new stablecoins pegged to the US dollar.

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As a result, stablecoins will gradually replace daily credit card transactions from next year, according to 16z:

“Small-/medium-sized businesses with strong brands, captive audiences, and painful payment costs — like restaurants, coffee shops, corner stores — will be the first to switch from credit cards.”

It is also expected that in 2025, as the infrastructure develops, more “unconventional assets” that can be tokenized will come on the network. For example, an asset such as biometric data will be able to generate new revenue streams.

Thus, users will be able to tokenize their own biometric data and rent it to companies through smart contracts. Analysts specified that the collection of medical data using decentralized scientific (DeSci) protocols is already possible, allowing users to capitalize on previously untapped resources.

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Also, on-chain trading of tokenized government bonds will continue to gain popularity in 2025. The market for tokenized government securities started to grow strongly in 2024, fueled by the institutional adoption of digital assets, and governments will themselves explore the benefits of issuing debt on blockchain in the future.

For example, the UK began exploring digital securities in April as part of a regulatory sandbox overseen by the central bank and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and the Central Bank of Singapore last month launched a three-year program to subsidize the issuance of tokenized bonds.