What is Austin?

AT&T found that using a model router for AI coding cut costs by 56% while quality dropped only 2%.

“For AI coding Austin said that the use of a router has decreased cost by as much as 56% while quality only fell 2%.”

Etherfi's credit card volume grew 10x year over year, from $300,000 per day to $3-4 million per day.

“A year ago, they were doing $300,000 of credit card volume a day. Now, they're doing 3 to 4 million a day. So, that's 10x year-over-year.”

Venice's API credit purchase product, launched roughly 8 months ago, is already running at $60 million in annualized revenue.

“A product that didn't exist 8 months ago is now doing 60 million year of revenue.”

Over 65% of Etherfi's revenue now comes from its neo-bank and credit card business, not from liquid staking or restaking, contradicting the market's dominant framing of the protocol.

“Today 65 plus% of Ether's business comes from their Neo Bank product. So it's from credit card usage and it's from borrow revenue of people borrowing against their balances to use the credit card. and only 35% is from yield and staking.”

Saronic's Austin facility can already produce 2,000 Corsair unmanned surface vessels per year, demonstrating high-rate manufacturing for autonomous naval platforms.

“We could build 2,000 Corsair per year right now at our manufacturing facility in Austin.”

Austin declares the infrastructure era of crypto firmly over.

“The hyperinfra age is firmly behind us. Like I think the excitement around new chains be it layer twos or layer ones is mostly a thing of the past.”

Application-layer protocols now account for roughly two-thirds of total crypto revenue, up from less than 5% for most of crypto's history.

“For much of crypto's history execution layer infra revenue gener generated like 95 plus% of total crypto revenue now it's actually applications are generating about 2/3 of revenue and about a third is generated by execution layers I think that continues to move in that direction and we're going to see 90 plus% of revenue generated by the applications.”

Bill Gates personally reviewed individual candidate offers at dinner to reverse-engineer a competitor's recruiting strategy.

“Bill Gates literally flew down to Austin to figure out why we were getting the best graduates. And this is also how intense, you know, he was is we're at dinner and he's literally going through every single person that we had made an offer to, you know, here's Fred here and you're offering him back then, you know, $48,000, you know, and we sort of reverse engineered how you guys hump, you know, and we think he's like a $38,000 guy, you know, why what was his technical capability that you really liked? I mean, it was crazy the level of detail he went through, right? Because he it was it was a fight for talent, and if you're getting talent, you got to get the best people.”

Relayer Capital has moved its portfolio to 95% liquid crypto assets, abandoning a prior 50/50 liquid-to-venture split, reflecting a broader conviction shift toward liquid application tokens.

“Now it's 95% liquid.”

Austin argues application protocols will capture 90% or more of total crypto revenue, making infrastructure investment a structurally declining bet.

“For much of crypto's history execution layer infra revenue gener generated like 95 plus% of total crypto revenue now it's actually applications are generating about 2/3 of revenue and about a third is generated by execution layers I think that continues to move in that direction and we're going to see 90 plus% of revenue generated by the applications.”