Best Of 2025

The year 2025 has been defined by the rapid convergence of disruptive technologies. From the financialization of digital assets to the engineering of human longevity, the boundaries between biology, capitalism, and computation are dissolving. In the final episode of FYI: The For Your Innovation Podcast for the year, Ark Invest’s Chief Futurist Brett Winton sat down with five industry pioneers to dissect the trends shaping our future. These conversations reveal not just where innovation is heading, but how it is fundamentally rewriting the rules of finance, healthcare, and venture capital.

Whether it is Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev redefining the retail investor’s role in democracy or Peter Diamandis charting the path to "longevity escape velocity," the underlying theme is clear: we are moving from a passive understanding of the world to an era of active, engineered manipulation of our environment and ourselves.

Key Takeaways

• The Intersection of AI and Democracy: Robinhood views the distribution of AI-driven gains as essential to preserving capitalism, aiming to turn users into owners to prevent wealth centralization.
• The "Flippening" of Crypto Assets: Digital Asset Treasuries are bridging the gap between Wall Street and crypto, with predictions that Ethereum could surpass Bitcoin by becoming the digital equivalent of the post-1971 synthetic financial system.
• Causality in Brain Science: New neuromodulation techniques combined with AI are allowing researchers to move from observing brain activity to mathematically modeling and repairing neural circuits, treating the brain like a debuggable operating system.
• Longevity Escape Velocity: We are approaching a tipping point—predicted between 2030 and 2035—where for every year you live, science extends your life by more than a year, effectively making death from aging an optional engineering challenge.
• The Political Necessity of IPOs: Despite the availability of private capital, frontier companies (like those in AI and space) may need to go public not for funding, but for the political legitimacy and transparency required to operate at a global scale.

Democratizing Finance in the Age of AI

The conversation regarding financial technology has shifted from simple access to a broader philosophy of ownership. Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, argues that as artificial intelligence drives efficiency and value, there is a significant risk of centralization. If the benefits of AI accrue solely to a small circle of private insiders, wealth inequality could destabilize the very democratic principles that foster innovation.

The Super App as an Economic Equalizer

Robinhood’s strategy creates a "financial super app" that creates a seamless bridge between income, spending, and investing. The goal is to ensure that retail investors participate in the upside of the AI revolution rather than merely being consumers of it. By reducing the friction to move assets and manage family finances, fintech platforms can counteract the inertia that keeps trillions of dollars stagnant in legacy institutions.

"If not managed appropriately, there's an opportunity for AI to actually leave lots of people out... One of the values of capitalism is that it makes people owners, and you know that when you own something you're much more likely to protect it."

This approach views the retail investor not just as a customer, but as a constituent in the capitalist system. Tenev suggests that when individuals have a stake in the companies shaping their future, they become advocates for innovation rather than adversaries.

Bridging Wall Street and the Blockchain

While retail investors gain access through apps, institutional capital requires a different infrastructure. Tom Lee discussed the emergence of Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs), which serve as a wrapper to make cryptocurrency backward-compatible with traditional financial markets. This infrastructure allows legacy financial participants to gain exposure to crypto assets without navigating the complexities of direct token ownership.

Ethereum vs. Bitcoin: The Digital Wall Street Thesis

A compelling macroeconomic argument suggests a potential shift in dominance between Bitcoin and Ethereum. Drawing a parallel to 1971, when the U.S. dollar became fully synthetic and Wall Street created a massive ecosystem of financial products (futures, mortgage-backed securities), the current era sees a similar opportunity for Ethereum.

If Bitcoin is "digital gold"—a store of value—Ethereum represents the "digital Wall Street." It is the layer where assets are tokenized, yield is generated, and contracts are executed. As real-world assets (stocks, real estate) move onto the blockchain, the network facilitating those transactions could theoretically capture more value than the store-of-value asset itself.

Engineering the Human Mind

Moving from silicon to biology, Dr. Jin Hyung Lee of Stanford University highlighted a paradigm shift in how we treat neurological disorders. Historically, neurology has been limited by observation—using fMRI to see "blobs" of activity without understanding the underlying circuitry. The new frontier involves treating the brain with the precision of a systems engineer.

From Observation to Causal Manipulation

The breakthrough lies in understanding causality. Using optogenetics in animal models, researchers can now turn specific neurons on and off like precise switches, allowing them to map the exact algorithmic function of neural circuits. While optogenetics isn't yet used in humans, the models derived from this research allow AI to interpret non-invasive human data (like EEGs) with unprecedented accuracy.

"As a systems engineer, what it means to measure is you measure it to a point that you can decide how to manipulate it... If somebody has a tremor and you restore that to 10, that is removing tremor."

This approach is already showing promise in diagnosing epilepsy and understanding conditions like Parkinson's and depression. By using AI to automate the detection of circuit malfunctions, clinicians can move from guessing based on symptoms to diagnosing based on "broken connections" in the brain's circuit board.

The Physics of Immortality

Peter Diamandis brings a perspective that reframes aging from an inevitability to a solvable problem. The concept of "Longevity Escape Velocity" suggests that we are nearing a moment in history where scientific progress will outpace the aging process. Currently, for every year we live, science extends our lifespan by roughly a quarter of a year. The goal is to reach a 1:1 ratio.

The Moral Obligation of Health

Diamandis argues that the most critical job for anyone living today is simply "not dying of something stupid" before this technology matures. The convergence of AI, gene editing, and epigenetics is accelerating the timeline, with some experts predicting we could reach escape velocity by 2030.

This shift fundamentally alters the concept of retirement. If physical and cognitive decline can be reversed—renewing muscle mass, immune function, and memory—the economic lifecycle of a human being changes from a bell curve to a continuous upward trajectory of contribution and learning.

Venture Capital and the Public Mandate

Structuring the capital that fuels these innovations remains a complex challenge. Peter Walker of Carta provided a data-driven look at the venture capital landscape, noting that while funding has stabilized, the exit environment remains fractured. With over 30% of venture dollars flowing into AI, the market is heavily concentrated.

The Liquidity Paradox

A fascinating tension has emerged regarding IPOs. With ample private capital available, companies like Stripe or SpaceX can theoretically stay private indefinitely, providing liquidity to employees through secondary markets. However, this creates a "political" deficit.

Companies building critical global infrastructure—whether frontier AI models or satellite networks—require public buy-in. A public listing offers not just capital, but transparency and a broad base of shareholders who act as political allies. Without the legitimacy of the public markets, these massive private entities risk alienating the society they aim to serve.

Conclusion

The red thread connecting these diverse fields is the transition from passive observation to active engineering. Whether it is engineering a financial system that includes retail investors, engineering a blockchain that replicates Wall Street, engineering neural circuits to cure disease, or engineering the human genome to reverse aging, the tools of 2025 are tools of creation and control.

As these technologies compound, the distinction between "tech investor" and "traditional investor" vanishes. Understanding the underlying mechanisms of these disruptions—causality in the brain, tokenization in finance, and liquidity in venture markets—is no longer niche knowledge; it is the prerequisite for understanding the global economy of the coming decade.