Global Markets and Crypto: Where’s the upside now? - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

This entire week will be about exclusively crypto, but we're zooming out to take a look at global markets and how macro events of this past year have impacted crypto markets. And this is a unique lineup too because many of our speakers have experience across traditional finance and also traditional AI investing which has been impacting a lot of the early stage and also liquid crypto deals that have been getting a lot of interest. And so I'm going to introduce our panelists some new and old friends. Uh Steve Lee began his career at Goldman Sachs has enormous experience uh working across Asia and also the United States. spent five years at Block Tower and recently formed and launched Neocclassic Capital in 2024.

We'll be sharing some big news very soon about the fund. We also have Alan Du who's a partner at PayPal Ventures. They launched PYD in 2023 and more recently have been uh engaging in the P2P payments space and Alan will be sharing more about his interest in in AI infra. We also have Kelvin Co who's the co-founder and CIO at Spartan. I I've been fortunate enough to actually be a co-investor in some of their port codes and also they were one of the first investors in layer zero uh one of the projects that I've been very deeply involved in.

Actually PayPal ventures is also one of the earliest investors. And then we also have Richard Galvin who uh began his career at Goldman Sachs as well many years at JP Morgan and co-founder of DACM which is one of the top performing public and private multistrategy crypto firms. My name is Irene. I after dropping out of school I joined the early team at Layer Zero Labs where I ended up leading strategy. I later joined Bang Capitalist Crypto Fund as one of their venture partners and I am now a solo angel investor across traditional AI and also decentralized finance infrastructure both on liquid and private investments.

So I want to kick off by talking about something that many of you guys maybe were thinking about this past week because it impacted your portfolios which was the Fed interest rate cut. People were expecting that this would lead to a bump in uh prices because crypto is a risk asset. But we ended up seeing the opposite particularly in quality assets like ETH, Bitcoin, soul, but then also altcoins. And you know, the only exception was XPL, which launched on the 25th, and we'll talk about that in a moment. But I'm curious to hear your guys' take on why that may have been.

Was it because it was a sell the news type event? Was it already priced in? Was there too much leverage? Uh perhaps Kelvin and and Richard, curious to hear your guys' take given how close you guys are to the market.

Yeah, I think um the market clearly was already expecting a 25 basis point rate cut, right? And um and so I think that wasn't a surprise, right? There was obviously a small probability we ended up getting 50, but that didn't come. Um, I think the equity markets rose a little bit, but cryp crypto pretty much didn't react and then sold off. I think the selloff had to do with um partly had to do with um Mount Gog sort of moving coins around, you know, I think that was part of the reason.

Um, and then of course we also know that um there's been a bit of changes in the debt DAT market as well and um we clearly haven't had as much DAT flows of late. than before. Um and then the ETF flows were also kind of mixed. So I think the combination of those things kind of affected how crypto and altcoins traded. Yeah, I think the um crypto market although it's probably not enough to call it a trend yet, but it's been relatively good at front running and being the most kind of uh I guess the canary in the coal mine for a lot of moves particularly to macro level and it had outperformed equities a fair way into interest rate cuts.

So it was pretty much giving back a bit of that app performance and then you know I agree with Kelvin the you know we saw a bit of a slowing down in the premiums on the digital asset treasury companies in the US which took a little bit of the sort of buying power out of the market and a lot of people a lot of traders have been sort of front running that demand and as that sort of comes down with the premiums the market got a little weaker.

Also something that was astounding this past week was of course plasma's token launch. I I know some of you guys were watching that closely and and even have engaged uh with the project. Uh there's so much to admire about the way that they have launched and then also the stable coin narrative you could call it. Uh but also the utility and all of the momentum around innovation there has been really exciting to see. I was joking with a friend of mine yesterday.

Uh people were asking well well describe the narrative around stable coins and I said well the narrative is revenue uh and and the actual utility there is is generating revenue. Um and so I I would love to hear more commentary from you guys around the XPL launch. There is is a lot of inflows there. We saw a surge some correction but then also some some more interest after that. And uh from each of your funds how are you guys thinking about stable coins?

Uh, okay. Grab Steve. Given that you've just launched, I think a lot of people talk about plasma, but um rather than giving my unique view on plasma because it's still new, I I don't want to take a sort of definite view on things that just launched. But speaking of a stable coin, uh I feel like uh I was in Korea last week. uh I met all the top five conglomerates and top four financial institutions and compared to what I heard hear from institution in United States where I base definitely I think um there are some institutional FOMO uh I call it.

So in this last uh 11 month um I see the market is a little bit bifurcated. So uh retail somehow they got burned after memecoin AI Asian which is up to February and I hear the many people lost a lot of money. So they still think that you know bull market hasn't come. That's something that people always thinking look at where is the upside now. I think we are already upside market if you look at the performance for last 11 months.

uh but at the same time those new uh comer of institutional investors I met a lot of people in Korea US they want to do something with the stable coin but they just don't know what to do uh so like a plasma is backed by some reputable names that easily get a lot of attention uh before their realistic kind of traction that has hasn't been proof. So my point of view is there will be a lot of a stablecoin related token that will launch uh but whether which stable coin has competitive advantage uh is to be to be to be more answered. So for me the most important thing for stable coin business to be uh get the major traction is whether they have a distribution channel. uh I I personally think that the payment business is not about innovating new technology like a ZK solution or Bitcoin layer 2 or etc. It's more about whether you had uh ability to partner with the right distribution whether if they don't have their own stuff.

So we look at uh whenever we invested as a private invest in investors or VC whether the stablecoin related business people whether they have ability to secure the distribution channel or partnership that's a kind of key thing for us to look at stablecoin business when we making investments

to the point of where we are in the cycle cycle narratives are incredibly slippery and this is a tale as old as time since you you know early 2010s in in talking about uh crypto. I have heard varying statements during this week and I'm curious to hear from each of you from your conversations with your portfolio founders and also how you look at the market. Do you think that we are in an accumulation phase, an expansion phase or a distribution phase right now? And what signals are you looking at to inform that perspective? Uh I can go uh as I related to what I just said at the moment uh institution are interested in digital asset treasury called the DAT a public equity investing into crypto and headline is all about regulation stable coin proc crypto regulation etc etc so institution are very interested in those things but to your to Ellen's point all the founders or entrepreneurs are little bit uh kind of exhausted because they don't get the spotlights anymore.

So to your point, I think it's it's a little bit tough market for enterpreneurs building very startup at the business. So I would call it as uh for private market, funny enough, I would say it's a little bit of accumulation phase.

Uh even though public market which is trading token market is sort of a bull market at the moment. So whenever I meet my our portfolio company which I just had a launch with uh I my advice is uh just don't get distracted by this public market news like a digital asset treasuries uh I think there are moments will come because only thing I will mention here is stable coin act will make this onchain economy means that stable coin will come on to more and more stable coin will come onto blockchain that means that people on chain we need to use that stable coin to where are we going to just keep doing ill farming for another five years I I hope it's not means that they might want to use a stable coin into some consumer goods or consumer product on blockchain so that's our recommendation for our portfolio company they are building some product and service that people on chain going to use their stable coin into it could be gaming it could be entertainment it could be payment it could be entertainment or etc. So that's uh my advice to portfolio company keep building what makes the people to use their stable coin on chain into rather than just trading. Trading is a big part but to to make this onchain economy much bigger we needed something just other than trading.

I I think the market's oddly split into kind of two universes at the moment. You've got the traditional crypto market which has kind of been the champion of the entire asset class for the last seven years. And I agree with Steve, there's probably a little bit of exhaustion and you can get it given the volatility and the the life you have to lead to be a crypto founder. And with the stable coin kind of revolution and the ability to have um you know a utility case that's ready readily uh explainable to traditional finance can get through traditional finance investment committees and those sorts of things and is really becoming kind of the spearhead in traditional finance. We're seeing a heap of excitement on the traditional finance side much more than on the cryptonative side which is kind of an odd position because it's kind of flipped from where we are before and I guess we're kind of seeing that particularly with the DAT phenomenon as well where you're basically seeing flows from traditional finance buying from crypto people.

So, you know, markets are good at balancing where liquidity is at that point in time. And it's, you know, chalk and cheese between the, you know, the sentiment of the cryptonative people, which I think need to make sure they don't lose sight of the bigger goal versus um traditional finance. I mean, you've got the Treasury Secretary of the US saying that within the next 5 years they want to 10x the supply of stable coins. I mean, you do not get growth like that in any other industry. So you can see why traditional finance hears that from someone in a position that's senior and you know it becomes the tech they want to invest in.

So I I think a lot of what's happening or happened in the last uh six months has a lot to do with the success of Circle, right? And Athena, right? So

absolutely.

Um Circle obviously showed I mean the IPO itself, you know, was not priced very richly. You got it at $31, but it went all the way up to 300, right, in a matter of weeks. So I think um traditional investors you know hadn't seen that kind of explosive growth literally since what Microsoft maybe right so I think that really sort of captured a lot of attention and on the cryptonative side obviously Athena's growth has also been you know really one of the more exciting stories of of this cycle um and as a result of that what we've seen over the last few months is we've seen a lot of yield bear new yield bearing stable coin projects and I must have seen like 50 deals in the last 3 months, right? So, we're seeing a lot of that.

Um, we're not touching too many of them because I don't think it is as easy as it looks. Um, we did invest in Circle um two years ago and so, you know, we had our exposure there through one of our venture funds. Uh, we did invest in um, Plasma in the public round and um, I think that trade was quite easy. That call was quite easy for us to make because we knew it was going to do well. The market at that point was thinking, look, this is invested by Tether.

Tether is going to support them. Now, most of Tether's volume is going onto Tron. Tron is a $30 billion, you know, player.

Mhm.

We're investing in this thing at 500 million, right? So, it's a no-brainer. Um, we thought this would be a 3 to 5x investment over a couple of months. It ended up being a 20x investment, which is fantastic, right? Um, so a lot of these themes are kind of interconnected.

I want to hear more about things that are more difficult than entrepreneurs think they are to build but where there is actually a poll. So Alan, we were speaking backstage around AI infra. You actually come from more of a traditional tech background, but you are personally passionate about crypto and so you find yourself in this uh in between area where you're drawn to entrepreneurs who see novelty in blockchain rails to build something. One of your investments is is Kite AI. Could you speak a little bit about that and what makes what they're building actually quite challenging uh but also a unique solution to maybe problems not just within the crypto industry?

Yeah, sure. Uh so I think it's an interesting point you brought up earlier the issue of cycle right and we tend to think of ourselves whether you know rightfully or wrongfully as sort of a non-yclical or counteryclical investor. uh generally we try not to follow the momentum. We try to go where people are not paying attention particularly within AI infra it takes a long time to build something right and uh so so generally we like to be ahead of the curve and on the topic of uh what kiteai is building that and why it appealed to me so much is that as we look at payment overall right we're not talk talking about just stable coinbased payment we're talking about traditional payments we're really talking about identity what does that mean uh 20 30 years ago when needed to buy something, you know, the labu doll then whatever that was um from Singapore, from China and you're in the US, you didn't know that person. That person didn't know you and your banks don't know each other.

How do you st establish that trust so you can actually transact with that person on the other side of the globe? Well, there's a little company that popped up in Silicon Valley called PayPal that built this sort of global identity network. And as we look forward to this sort of new age where agents are becoming more of a empowered actor in the overall economic equation and we're not just talking about agents that are say on Plexi on a open AI where you say oh go buy me a pair of Nike Air Jordans right and find the cheapest price and go make that transaction which I don't know how many folks have tried is the very much clunky experience right agentic payment agent commerce right now is largely experimental and the fundamental issue fundamental issue with that is right now AI agents lack their own AI native identity infrastructure right and um what do I mean by that right now AI agents are borrowing identity from you from the human user right they're called delegated credentials either through a virtual card solution or network tokenization all of which are based on real world KYC human identities that's fine to the extent that you're dealing with sort of a onetoone type of relationship when you're telling you're a PayPal agent or Plexity to go buy something from Walmart. Those are two systems of records that can talk to each other and know each other. But what happens when you go buy 10 different things from 10 different vendors and what happens when your vendors are buying something else from their vendors, right?

Particularly if I'm buying compute from, you know, in the middle of Montana and paying for model access in Sweden. and paying for data access in the Philippines and the you know the data vendor in the Philippines are buying access from Hong Kong. All of a sudden you deal you get into this multi-party but needs to be real time needs to be KYC situation where traditional identity that cannot it does not function across jurisdiction jurisdictional borders or institutional borders right and this is what made Kite AI unique in that they're giving AI agents their AI native identity and allows the agents to actually accumulate what's equivalent of a FICO score right for those not familiar

and how are they using blockchain So well the credit score or the equivalent of the FICO score is essentially written on chain right? So not not everything needs to be on chain particularly as you think about

perform balancing performance versus accuracy versus safety versus everything else that trade-off has always been a big block right

so kite what really attracted me was that they were the first purpose-built L1 to enable agents to have not only their identity but also maintain sort of the track record so that you actually can uh pick and trust what agents you're interacting with. Thank you so much for that walkthrough. I and I as as Kelvin said, I do think that in the AI and crypto space, for me as an angel investor, I'm often looking for entrepreneurs who actually have a keen understanding of where blockchain has utility and where not to inject that. And uh one of the common misgivings is certainly prematurely launching a token. Um and I I think Steve actually when you were speaking about uh like getting distracted with where we are in the cycle, some of my port codes ask me uh well we're in a a bull cycle or the bull portion of our cycle and that must mean that I have to launch my token right now.

I mean, I'm sure Kelvin, you hear this quite a lot because you guys have uh or you see port codes across a launch cycle given how Spartan is structured. And what I have been saying to them is actually you should be launching your token when you've earned the right to launch your token. And that often means when you're launching your token, you're essentially IPOing your company. It takes time. It really takes time and you should have uh the maturity of your company at scale which means uh quite literally uh the employees of your company being uh comfortable with having the price of your company oscillating every single day.

It's often very disorienting to be able to see that. These are the small things that I I think often entrepreneurs aren't thinking about. So considerations of cycle narratives certainly

just just to add one thing I think uh I view slightly differently uh the for last seven months uh my observation in this crypto uh token launch is most of them are unsuccessful

uh so again some out outlier but generally on TGE token generation date uh event uh even one of the most successful project called the pump to that fund has all this kind of uh the the token holders they got uh airdrop uh they got free token about their uses before token 70% of them are selling very hard so my my point here is uh when you token launch the understanding market is important but that means that who's going to buy your token so you also have to understand this demand side is intact or not so I think that's something that many entrepreneurs do not think about it okay bull cycle bull buy I should launch but who's going to buy your token uh DAT is the same if you launch it who's going to buy that sort of a one of unknown art coin DAT who's who's going to buyer so people don't really much think about the buyer of the token so that's another factor that I recommend our portfolio companies consider when do launch the tokens

and to your point founders have to be aware of the fact that their token isn't itself a product and for some uh you know companies or projects it becomes their main product which is a a brutal reality but uh it it's you then if you have a product need to think about who the buyers are

right

um well I want to then oh go ahead Calvin

yeah I wanted to just add one point to Steve's comment I think um he makes a very good point about thinking about who your buyers are right because once upon a time um I guess Prior um as a crypto startup, you didn't need to have revenues, right? You just needed to launch your mainet or launch your product and then you launch a token basically, right? And hope that you get on enough exchanges and you're able to sell the story or sell the dream and people would buy it, right? I think the market's

kind of a little bit tired of that narrative and they're basically asking, okay, show me the revenues, right? And so over the last couple of months, if you look at the things that have done reasonably well or able to maintain that kind of billion dollar plus valuation, it's really been about, you know, projects that have e either significant adoption and are generating fees from day one

or they're about projects like, you know, pumpf fun or hyperlquid where they're making so much money and the majority of that cash flow is going to buying back tokens, right? And so that's the kind of story or narrative that markets you know focused on these days right so the the revenue angle has become a lot more important than before.

Can I add one more point actually please go ahead point I think related to Kevin's uh I think the DAT also as is very important so to be dra assets treasury to be further uh they have to find this sustainable revenue models. uh so I think that's will be the challenge or distinguish the great DAT versus not so which means that to the title of this panel where's the upside now one thing I'll pick for the DAT space will be uh if the DAT is legitimate and then they are considering about how to making a revenue how to make you a sustainable some profit out of the the cash they raise through the pipe uh the contract will be where they going to deploy this cash into so for example E minor successful E treasury some people say some people not but my thinking is always like this so they raise up a lot of cash where do they going to deploy their cash into Ethereum ecosystem then which projects so that is I think one way to I considering where's the next upsidle so all the cash sitting on DAT where would that cash going into if they going into deploy into onchain which they are supposed to to make some revenue the D5 yield or etc so that's something that uh the adding on to Kelvin's point uh the making revenue sustainable some real numbers is important.

Please go ahead.

Yeah. Yeah. So what's really interesting is uh I think when it comes to upside there's the upside coming from stable coin replacing existing ways to pay for things or manage finances. Uh but I think there's a potentially much much larger um pot of gold if you will um when it comes to eugenic commerce. Uh what I mean by that is we pay for data the same way we pay for software 30 years ago.

perpetual license. You buy it once, you get to use it, you probably use 5% of it and the data gets stale very quickly, right? And then something called SAS happened 10, 15 years ago and all of a sudden unlock all this liquidity, right? Liquidity from a product access, billing and and economic model standpoint. And I think there will be a point at which and it it's already beginning to happen given that few months ago JP Morgan announced that you can no longer access our customers data freely.

You have to pay for it now, right? So all of a sudden everybody's waking up to this fact that you know it's cliche to say data is new oil. It absolutely is right. So the day of getting free oil from somebody's over and there's an interesting thought experiment around will software be free in the future as cost of compute comes down cost inferences come down and with you know the lovables the the the the vibe code codings of the round world. So to build a software to launch a feature you can do it very cheaply and be able to scale it very cheaply right.

So if software were to become free then what do you have to charge for right it's probably domain expertise probably domain specific data proprietary data of some sort right but how do you manage that data access and be able to actually meter the usage of that unlocking that through some kind of a streaming payment microp payment model is something that traditional rails that are half a century old over half a century old simply cannot handle which is why I think some kind of a wallet based plus you know blockchain based solution for these microp payments the is the only viable solution and that could potentially unlock tens of trillions of economic value.

I completely agree and I'm thrilled to hear this uh from the perspective of PayPal ventures. Uh and and you guys have been looking at different complimentary technologies for a really long time. Uh so it's a it's a strong point of view. I appreciate that. in this volatile macro environment.

Do you guys believe that there's more upside in liquid bets right now or or venture bets? And I I I know for uh Richard, Kelvin, and yourself, Steve, you guys are the founders or co-founders of your own funds. So, it's often at your own discretion if you want to allocate more on the liquid side or on the private side. At this stage right now, where do you think there's more upside? I mean we work across um both with liquid fund and venture funds since 2018.

I think the trend um and it partly goes to the discussion around launching tokens around VCs. I think the riskreward for VC has come back substantially given you know the time to list a token the token performance and I guess the underperformance in crypto of small cap. So you know the returns

meaning it's higher risk.

No the returns have been coming down and particularly the risk of getting to liquidity has been lengthening as well. So I mean as an aside we launched our fund as the as an ICO fund and you know there was a period there where you'd make an investment and we'd have liquidity within two weeks and you know those days are long gone right and crypto is trending much more to what I'd say is a much more traditional venture market where to your point you got to earn your stripes before you can launch and take on the new stakeholders that come with being a token. On the liquid side, we've probably seen, you know, substantial underperformance outside of kind of the mega caps. Um, where there is a bunch of tokens that have pretty good prospects in our view that are trading at sort of, you know, sub50 million type venture type type uh valuations and you know, they've been in the wild for a long time. They've got teams that are used to managing the stakeholders.

They've got users. they've got revenues but they're struggling to get that attraction in a market that's very much focused on that high-end liquidity. Um so we have seen I would say a compression between where you know at a lot of points in time our venture fund over the last 12 months has invested in liquid tokens because they've looked like better value than most of the venture deals we've seen. Hm.

Uh f first of all I I I don't think it's right to compare uh the liquid fund and VC because it's very different risk return profile and very different investment period. So I think it's very hard to compare. However, in terms of opportunity, uh I'm not going to say BC has more upside, liquid has more upside because if the macro goes turns so badly tomorrow, that means liquid has more risk downside because BC just go to zero about cost. But uh so my point is uh I think for for now uh considering this institutional a little bit of FOMOish uh that into DAT if that sustains uh then I think for next six months more opportunity in liquid fund yes I would I would say so uh however the macro liquid fund the other way is more sensitive to macro risk and then this uh macro uncertainty even compared to that VC is to be honest less sensitive to macro environment. It depends on when there your project's going to be listed.

So I would say uh liquid uh I think if you if you can if your investment period is 6 months or 3 months kind of that short period of time I would say liquid maybe has more little more obvious opportunity return profile. uh however if you are more long-term uh invest investors I think a private market is also very very attractive because the price gets lower valuation gets lower because as I mentioned people care less about this private investing because all the FOMO and eyes and returns going into double digit performance year to date for most of our top 20 assets. So I would say still as a VC investors we see a lot of attractive opportunities because we can negotiate with the deals better because there are much less competition about investing to our early stage investing. So I still very bullish on private market opportunities and we are not here to take a return six months from now. Uh but we are more long-term investors.

So that's why I see the private market is still very promising.

Yeah. So we have a couple of funds right? We have a um discretionary long short hedge fund that invests only in tokens and we have two early stage venture fund. Um I would say that um in terms of directional strategies, I'm probably not as bullish going out the next 12 18 months

um just because I think we're closer to the top of the cycle than the bottom. Um and so if you are investor in a directional fund I would say you then have to rely on the skill of the manager right to be able to go short and make money in a bare market which is generally not so easy right um about on liquid side um we are planning to very shortly launch a market neutral fund

interesting

um that doesn't take a directional bet um and we can run the book in such a way where we can generate 20% returns on average um with very very little volatility. So I think that's a pretty good you know riskreward um over the coming 12 18 months. And then on the venture side, um we haven't been particularly active in the venture space just because I think the things that look interesting are all overpriced and and then there are other areas that look more interesting like you know AI Asians and whatever um prediction markets but some of those spaces deep included you know are a little bit early. M

um and um I think the venture industry is also going through a bit of a shakeout if you will um and I think the amount of funds that you see getting raised in this cycle will be dramatically less than the 2020 21 cycle. So what that means is that a lot of projects will not be able to get funding and that is generally a good environment for VCs right over the next couple of years VCs will be able to get in at valuations that are much more attractive than what we saw in the 2020 to 22 cycle and so I think on a you know two to threeyear time frame I think we will start to get more active in in VC investments again but probably more into the latter half of 2026

as we near the end of this panel. I have two more questions for this entire group. Uh the first one is this conference often brings together a lot of early stage founders or people who are thinking eventually about building something and as we said that often takes multiple years until you've earned the right to be at the place where perhaps your funds are ready to engage. I as an angel investor, I sometimes go out actually looking for founders that fit the profile of what I'm looking for and then give them capital and like tell them almost my wish list of what I really want to see built. Is there a wishlist idea or like you have a problem that you really want founders to be solving a space maybe get even more specific and like you said maybe it's not this year but thinking two three years out that's really our job to be thinking many years out to share with the group here.

I that's my first question. Uh yeah uh state of obvious I think a AI using the AI Asian well into blockchain. So it means that as Arling mentioned there are so many we are the AI projects deals that I've seen for last six months but none of them really understand why they have to do with the blockchain or why they have to do with the AI. So uh however one of the investment we decided to lead uh is uh using AI into the blockchain. So means that it's their product is like chat GPT kind of interface.

I assume that many of you interested in DeFi but I assume many of you also don't know how to move the asset from Ethereum to Solana and going into some ill projects that Kelvin mentioned but in this chpt you using CHGPT kind of interface I I prompt like this hey I have 100 USDC on ETH wallet can you find the best e strategy on Solana ecosystem can you just use the half of the money into park in that and then they already beta product out five 10 seconds all done. So I think it's a real use cases. I think a lot of uh entrepreneur especially young entrepreneur with a strong confidence they always want to making a complicated product. Uh but always I prefer something easy to understand as investor perspective but again a little bit ego on on the entrepreneur. I'm not here to making some easy product but at the end of the day especially in AI space I think CHP is already already advanced this AI space well beyond enough for us to utilize it.

So rather than creating some new AI infrastructure, I want enterprise uh enter entrepreneurs who use that AI that the models AI kind of a service already out there to make the crypto the more usable adoptable uh for actually bring the mainstream adoption. So that's where I like of the AI integration of a blockchain.

So an elegant consumer AI product that integrates blockchain intelligently.

Yeah. But because that's also in line with a lot of web two congruates in Japan and Korea I met last week they they investing so much on data center and AI stuff but if they don't have application uh that's something that actually very higher chairman of congru worry about they invest so much in infra but if there's no application I I think it's just little bit of burst of that investment

I see okay rapid fire let's go down

I think sequoia called it the $600 billion problem you may add a zero behind this 600 billion now. Uh but I think you know Steve's point is really well aligned with uh mine in that when I look for entrepreneurs I look for sort of purpose-driven purpose-built type of solutions right don't talk to me about being onchain for the sake of being on chain don't talk to me about AI just for the sake of AI

talking about specific use cases right similar to how people come and pitch PayPal they get super excited talking about the solutions but they don't spend a minute asking me what my problems are and how they can make my life easier right so focus on the problem set then the technology should come right? Figure out the optimal technology. Uh and then I think the other thing is if we're also looking for the pick and shovels, right? So if you're building things within trust, within uh security, within guard rails, come talk to us.

Fantastic, Kelvin.

I'll keep it short. You know, I'm still waiting for an awesome web 3 game to hit the market.

I agree. Any of them yet. So

thank you for that.

I think um I think there's enough products in crypto that we know work. And I think the interesting part of where we are in the sort of the growth phase of crypto is we're sort of leaving that sandbox and approaching that mass market. So I don't think entrepreneurs need to be strictly focused on just finding the new new thing that no one's ever thought of before. I actually think some of the biggest gains will be made over the next 5 years of doing existing products but just executing way better and taking a product that's kind of done okay in the crypto sandbox but executing it at scale into the hundreds of millions of users as opposed to the hundreds of thousands of users. So I don't think entrepreneurs should be just looking around saying I have to do something completely new no one's tried before.

I think there's a great smorggas board of options to do stuff that's already been proven has product market fit but just execute and do it way better than it's been done before.

Wonderful. I thank you all so much for listening into this panel and it's an honor speaking with you guys.