The Milk Road Show The 4 Biggest Crypto Trends Investors Are Missing Right Now w/ Mason Nystrom
Mar 17, 2026
Mason Nystrom, junior partner at Pantera Capital known for on-chain research, breaks down four major crypto trends shaping the next cycle. He covers Solana’s strong on-chain activity versus price, stablecoin volume leadership, the rise of verticalized prediction and earnings markets, and the growing convergence of AI with crypto-enabled payments and neofinance.
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Speed And Cost Define Solana's Niche
- Solana differentiates by offering much faster, cheaper transactions that suit payments, trading, and smaller B2B flows.
- Those use cases produce higher payments and retail trading volume while Ethereum retains larger institutional and lending flows.
Follow Capital Into Later Stage Winners
- Investors should follow where capital concentrates: later-stage deals with clear product-market fit are attracting record dollars.
- Pantera focuses series A–B stablecoin and payments companies that show adoption rather than early speculative bets.
Stablecoins Create Cascading Opportunities
- Stablecoin growth spawns secondary markets and new product opportunities beyond simple payments.
- Non-USD stablecoins and programmable yield open FX, structured products, insurance, and other on-chain financial primitives.