Original Author: Joe Zhou, Foresight News
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One billion monthly active users is a rarely discussed but extremely important technological dividing 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 way social mobilization works; Amazon changed the model of commodity trading; TikTok changed the structure of the entertainment industry.
One billion monthly active users means: this system has been embedded into the daily operation of human society. It is an invisible dividing line measuring whether a technology has truly changed the structure of civilization.
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If we look solely at user scale, today's Crypto is roughly equivalent to the internet in 2002.
In 1993, there were about 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 about 5 million global Crypto users; by 2026, the number of global Crypto users has crossed the threshold of 500 million.
From 5 million to 500 million, a 100-fold growth, both eras took about a decade.
History sometimes resembles a slow yet precise metronome.
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In many aspects, Crypto in 2026 is somewhat similar to the internet in 2002.
The internet of 2002 had spawned many models, but having just experienced the dot-com bubble, people believed the internet's potential value but generally did not believe it could bear fruit in many fields. At that time, not many believed that sectors like video, advertising, gaming, food delivery, or ride-hailing could possibly attract over 100 million users.
Because, back then, smartphones didn't even exist (no GPS or real-time location). The iPhone was only officially born in 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 a user base exceeding 100 million, such as Yahoo, ICQ, Hotmail, MSN Messenger, AOL. They had a clear common characteristic: almost all were email or instant messaging products.
If we fast forward to the Crypto world of 2026, there also aren't many products with a user base exceeding 100 million, roughly including: Binance, Coinbase, Tether, USDC, OKX, Bitget, etc.
They similarly have a distinct common characteristic: almost all are exchanges or stablecoin networks. Most other narratives and sectors within Crypto are still struggling near the scale-to-kill line.
Many people therefore begin to doubt: Can Crypto truly reach the general public, or is it only limited to finance and payments?
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But among all people, one person has always maintained a rare optimism.
He is Marc Andreessen—one of the people who participated in developing the NCSA Mosaic browser. It was this browser that allowed the internet to rapidly grow from a high-threshold research network with only 1 million users to a scale of 20 million users within two years. Later, he almost bet correctly on the entire rise of the internet over two decades.
Thirty years later, the founder of a16z firmly believes: Crypto will ultimately become the infrastructure of the next generation internet.
For this reason, 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 about $2 billion for a new Crypto fund.
While most people still doubt, he chooses to double down on the "next internet".
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The true turning point for technology diffusion comes not only from the technology itself, but more from the user experience—that is, the lowering of the barrier to entry.
In 1993, the browser NCSA Mosaic was born.
Before this, the internet was primarily a network used by research institutions and universities, requiring operations through command lines, 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 to grow explosively: from about 1 million users in 1992 to a scale of 20 million 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 this time, the encryption world had completed its geek experimentation phase and was evolving into a functional 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 a programmable financial infrastructure
Crypto evolved from "digital asset experiments" 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 size all grew dozens or even hundreds of times in a short period.
That year (2017-2018), Crypto infrastructure began to explode.
Binance's user base grew from 1 million to 10 million, a tenfold increase in one year.
And Tether (USDT)'s market capitalization jumped from about $10 million at the beginning of the year to $1 billion by the end of the year, a full 100-fold growth.
The combination of exchanges and stablecoins gave Crypto its first truly usable global liquidity market.
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In 2007, the internet encountered an unexpected accelerator: the iPhone.
Phone + internet brought the internet truly 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 infrastructure that existed around the clock. User growth thus underwent a qualitative change: from relatively linear diffusion to exponential growth.
In the following years, a series of billion-user products were born 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 in the network, they need a new foundational capability: 7×24 automatic settlement—for purchasing computing power, paying for services, subscribing to data, collaborating and transacting with other AIs.
What Crypto provides is precisely a globally available, permissionless, 24/7 operating native digital currency system. If future AI Agents need autonomous transactions and collaboration, then Crypto will inevitably become their settlement layer.
AI Agents with economic autonomy are the truly independent AIs, the true AGI.
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So, what kind of application will have 1 billion users?
The answer is actually very simple: it must solve a real, rigid demand that 1 billion people face every month. For example—cross-border payments.
The internet allows people to connect across geographies, but value is still divided by national borders. In both the real world and the digital world, 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 within national borders.
And Crypto is precisely the system born to thoroughly打通 (thoroughly connect/open up) such scenarios.
Another possible path to a billion users comes from RWA (Real World Asset tokenization).
In the traditional financial system, the barrier to跨国 (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, and an American could completely jointly hold the收益权 (right to收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益收益极有可能被重新改写。一名埃及人、一名中国人和一名美国人,完全可以共同持有 The Ritz-Carlton 在香港或清迈某个套房未来十年的收益权。
Assets are split, tokenized, and freely circulated globally. When global assets begin to be held globally, the financial system will enter a new stage.
8
The path for Crypto to reach a billion users may far exceed the two mentioned above. It might not be two, but ten, or even dozens.
Among them, the most 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 operate if they rely on traditional banking systems that require KYC and have restricted operating hours. Crypto is currently the only native machine money system.
Therefore, at some future stage, people might define it this way: Only AI Agents that possess Crypto accounts and have economic autonomy are true AIs; they will be treated as independent economic entities, just like people.
This path is very similar to the mobile internet revolution back then: mobile internet not only allowed humans to go online more, but also allowed countless mobile devices to 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.
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When the first Crypto product with 1 billion monthly active users appears, a new era might truly begin.
In the first twenty years after the birth of the internet, it was always in the accumulation stage of infrastructure and user scale. In 1993, there were only about 5 million global internet users. By 2002, internet users broke through 500 million—this moment is very much like today's Crypto world.
Another ten years later, in 2012, Facebook became the first platform in internet history to surpass 1 billion monthly active users. Since then, platforms like YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, etc., emerged intensively. Over twenty billion-user applications were born in the following decade, unfolding a magnificent era of global interconnection.
So the question arises: Around 2036, will Crypto also usher in a similar moment?
When the first billion-user Crypto product appears, it might not just be the success of one application, but意味着 (signify) 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 upon the real needs of 1 billion people will the era of a billion users truly arrive.
10
Technological history has an interesting规律 (rule/pattern): Technologies that truly change the world are rarely understood at birth.
The internet was like this. Crypto is likely also like this.
For twenty years after its birth, the internet was accompanied by大量 (a great deal of) skepticism, even长期 (long-term) stigmatization. Online games were thought to ruin the younger generation; online video was thought unable to make money; online shopping was considered synonymous with counterfeits; the "free internet" was更是被视为 (was even more seen as) a scam......
Just like Crypto's here and now.
Truly large-scale user products are often born in the most ridiculed marginal places.
Perhaps one day, when another application with a billion monthly active users appears, people will realize: This system has actually been running quietly for many years.
