VC Perspective: Future of Stablecoin Growth (Panel)

all right guys thank you for being here still at this time and welcome to the VC perspectives panel uh we have very esteemed guests here I think they don't really need an introduction they're among the best VCS in the space um probably we're going to jump straight into it because we have only 40 minutes and a lot of questions um so maybe first I'd love to I hear that VCS are able to predict the future so I'd love to know um how will the macroeconomic environment of 2025 impact the St coin market and its profitability and I wonder if certain types of stable coins are going to be more affected by these conditions could be positively or negatively and I'd love to start with Julia on this one um yeah for sure uh well I think uh the incen of uh the micro economy um landscape worldwide is um adding a lot of pressure on uh on stab coin um D the rates are staying High and um like issue of stable coin might actually profits more and continue to profit like for example last year uh I think it's t made 7.7 billion net profits in Q3 which is quite amazing as a business for a small team uh and if uh inflation stay high so we continue to see more adoption in the stable coin like issue of stable coin if inflation or rates are going down it will probably get more Advantage for defy algorithmic St coin or year Bank St coin um but yeah um no one can really predict what's going to happen um but uh for sure it's going to be an interesting year in the C coin economy what about you yeah so I think that um incumbent stable coins such as you know run by Circle and tether where the balance sheets are really driven by the yield that they absorb um they will be affected given that there's probably still two rate Cuts ahead of us in this year um but they also have stock piles in a way that some of the emerging stable coins that are just passing through this t- bill yield which will also be affected by rate Cuts do not so while they will be affected I don't think as severely um and probably the other Dynamic that plays into account is when rate Cuts happen people tend to go towards risk assets and crypto is one of those risk assets which overall increases activity in crypto overall in stable coins um so what you lose maybe in like some Nim you can still make up for in volume um but I think that there's a category of stable coins that are actually poised to really benefit from this very explicitly which are stable coins that are driven by crypto native yield so examples of this are like Athena and cap because if rate Cuts increase volume and liquidity in crypto and just like a more bullish sentiment these kind of stable coins are going to just have a better offering to Consumers and I think they're going to be some of the winners as we go through rate cuts the other um interesting Dynamic which I've been thinking about a little bit is to to stud's point if if you get demand for Bitcoin which uh widens out the you know the funding rate spreads and and and creates a higher sort of um yield on the basis trade which is obviously what Y what what Athena's running and then obviously there's a kind of correlation between the amount of Leverage in the system and the and the interest rates that you know OTC desks uh can get it's all kind of connected if that does happen um uh you know you'll see an effect where compound and a you know maker Dow Etc will raise interest rates and so you could get supply uh sort of uh deposit rates on Supply on a or compound at you know higher than higher than kind of um the uh suur um you know uh fed rates and so you could see inflows on that basis right where people are sort of driving into def5 because uh the basis trade is pushing up deposit rates on compound and a and that those are six s% you know yields at fed funds is you know 3% there's a spread there and then that drives further demand so it's all sort of a equilibrium Dynamic and you know super connected um I think VC's sitting on a panel trying to predict interest rates is a bit of a Fool's errand to begin with I mean if you look at rate Cuts in the second half of last year there were rate cuts of the fed and the interest rates actual the actual interest rates on the market shot up because the market was saying that it was too uh premature to to to cut rates because there were still inflation risks and so it's um you know anybody's guess what'll happen with rates I think we're in a world where stablecoin you know tvl or or AUM is going to continue to be added because there's demand for stable coins so whether interest rates are at 3% or 5% like these are super wide margins for the issuers at at the moment and so I'm not really worried about the business models uh either way I think the reality is is like stable coins is the one area where whatever happens in macro like it's going to be a lot [ __ ] bigger next year yeah I totally agree so um if we talk about predictions if you remember last year uh in November in Bangkok so everybody was you know very hyped about Donald Trump and that you know he's going to save web 3 bring our wallets to the Moon everything was going to be amazing so I wonder now if you look at the last weeks um was the industry right to get this excited and I think one thing I'd love to touch on there was this thing called the Genius act which is kind of new and I'd love if you maybe Rob if you can explain a bit what it is and what how it's going to impact the the stable coin industry yeah so um two parts of that question I'll start with the genius act part and then I'll I'll maybe take the broader question but genius act very simply just puts a kind of framework around how to think about uh specifically uh payments stable coins so payment stable coins are things that you know we know or or we Define as things like tether and circle one to one back um have you know uh Tre treasury reserves Etc um it explicitly does not talk about things that use what the ma would call Asset reference tokens so things like Athena uh would be an asset reference token it references some other asset um and it specifically does not talk about uh algorithmic stable coins um there is a competing bill in uh in the house that was was was came out and these two things are going to have to be reconciled that did try to put a moratorium or not allow for new algorithmic stable coins um over the next couple of years uh the lobbyists for the industry are all trying to work to get that language taken out right now and and hopefully it will be but regardless of whether that happens or not um there there will likely not be a you know call it an outline of things that already exist and we'll just try to not allow you know anybody in the US to access a new algorithmic stable coin um and it will but not allow anybody in the US to access a you know call it asset asset reference stable coin um what mostly it looks like though and and I guess kind of from a broader perspective is that now we will have a uh a form of Regulation and a form of in a way to go and get regulated and a form of rules around that for banks and asset managers and anyone in financial services in the US to access US dollar stable coins to potentially issue us stable coins and to engage with you know Circles of the world um I think to your broader Point around and and kind of what this um highlights is that there is now actually a interest and a willingness at the legislature and at the administration to engage with the industry on things like this and that is UND undoubtedly positive I think what is also undoubtedly positive is that there's no longer um the SEC trying to regulate by enforcement at Unis swap or coinbase or at any of these other places um all of those things are true the administration has clearly been good from that perspective for the industry now prices have not been or prices overran um where they should have been in November I think that's pretty clearly true I was saying that back um you know months ago but I the the market expected there to be just kind of like a flip the switch and like holy [ __ ] like everyone is doing crypto like it doesn't matter you know about anything else whether it's you know the the infrastructure or compliance or or whatever else and that was clearly not going to be true it clearly need longer amounts of time to think about a strategic Bitcoin Reserve to think about a market structure bill um they're the you know uh the administration didn't do us any favors by launching a a meme coin that sucked a lot of liquidity uh out of the market and has made the issue more partisan and what has always been true of trump administrations is that um long volatility is probably the main trade because he there is just volatility in the way that he runs you know any of his businesses or the country um but clearly there's an underling or or an idiosyncratic set of things happening that are good for crypto and are great for stable coins yeah I think um the fact that this is even a question like that you know should were we wrong to be excited about Trump is actually like the other side of this is actually just reflecting like a 30-day kind of trailing average of Trader sentiment and not necessarily fundamentals in the industry so I think maybe if you go on Twitter in the last 30 days like you know price action is not great but if you compare to where we were a year ago or even two years ago um we're in a much better place like as a country um I think the administration is doing far more than previous administrations as well you know we've ended operation chokepoint 2.0 um banks are in a better place to work with crypto companies and that has significant uh trickle down effects in terms of behaving as better on-ramps and off-ramps to crypto companies and to individuals you know as Rob mentioned um fintech defi and CI have are going to see Tailwinds from all these suits against Robin Hood coinbase and Unis swap being dropped I think that there's amazing things happening at the moment trumpcoin not great but the sentiment on the other side of this question is Trader sentiment which is always a reflection of recent price action and not fundamentals I mean I actually have a question if anybody on the panel has actually read through the genius act um yeah I figured would have um one of the challenges with Micah on my understanding with respect to stable coins is particularly that it it it regulates um stable coin issuers like Banks uh which are subject to bosel 3 which requires a set of you know sort of equity Capital requirements um which actually makes it hard for stable coins um because it's a huge Dragon Roe for for Circle specifically but if you're considered like basically too big to fail you have to be over a certain threshold and is that consistent in the genius Act is the way they did it under Micah so it's a little unclear what like the type of collateral and where you're going to have to hold it right now it's still um it's going to be defined by The Regulators um what will probably be true is that it will be some sort of sort of you know bosel 3 type of capital requirements the problem with Ma and the issue that you know I think Circle has there is that if you get big enough 60% of your reserves have to go in a non-interest bearing account which mean 60% of the reserves have to earn zero right which um I don't think the US Regulators are going to require because they'll view if you look at if you think if you know bosel at all um treasuries are a good form of you know Equity essentially and so I'm guessing that that'll be it'll be more around how you audit it what the transparency looks like um than requiring people to earn zero yield in a bank account I also think there's like un unknown uh unknowns at the moment for the existing crypto crypto native players and stable coin players with respect to Trump which is and now there's more comfortability from Big organizations asset managers Banks to potentially launch stable coins to work with stable coins you do kind of Wonder um does you know I think there was an announcement this morning that city is launching a St coin I'd have to go back and check Bank of America Bank of America they just said they would get involved okay anyway so like if there's um sort of um from players with existing distribution if there's uh inflows or sort of activity there does that you know hurt Circle or uh circle's business model model or tether's business model I think there's some unknowns unknowns there for our industry but I think it's undoubtedly good for the sort of broad growth of uh the ecosystem but specific players could be uh challenged as as we go forward in that world you wanted to add something before we move on to the um all right so we talked a bit about the big picture now I'd like to move on to the actual competitive landscape and the forces within the industry um and maybe my first question is don't we have enough stable coins already are there still ways to innovate and differentiate from the other stable coins uh are there still profitable markets that are not yet served or maybe the game is actually not in stable coin insurance it's in other verticals that are functions within the stable coin ecosystem so basically I'd love to know what are you excited about in 2025 what do we want to see maybe St you you can start sure so you know I'll start with how do I evaluate stable coin projects as a VC you know I don't want to create a lot of portfolio conflict but I have invested in four different stable coins and I firmly believe believe that they are not sucking market share from each other um they're all offering something unique to the market and one person could hold all four of them and get um be benefit from all of these so for this I'll I'll share what my evaluation framework is when I speak with a new project so I evaluate projects kind of through two buckets I have a bucket a where I'm like okay as a VC where do I have asymmetric information on how a project has Edge that maybe the the general public doesn't have because we are still pre-launched some of these sources of edge are the team itself um it can be what is their regulatory strategy and the connections they have do they have any kind of unique strategy or Advantage for cost structure um and how are they thinking about token versus equity acral and then finally what are their distribution strategies so this is what I know before a project launches then I try to predict um how would a smart consumer think about stable coins and this is my bucket b and a couple of criteria that a smart consumer might include I think the two most important would be first how composable is the stable coin since Leverage is quite important especially for defi natives uh secondly what is the incentive engineering around it so you know what are the organic sources of yield but maybe other kind of like onboarding early mover type advantages and then other kind of structural and design questions like you know what are the Redemption mechanisms um what is the risk profile uh very important what is the use case like really what is the utility like if I pull out all of the incentives where can I actually use this um yeah these are just a couple of examples and you know what does the PC stability look like so I look at bucket a and bucket B I say okay this new stable coin project I'm speaking to um does it have a set of unique advantages that other major stable coins are not addressing looking at those unique advantages I then asked myself um how much look liquidity can actually form underneath these strengths because you could have a very unique stable coin that would address a unique Market segment but if there's only like 10 people it's applicable to it's just not interesting as a VC so I'm looking for something where a deep well of liquidity can actually form and then finally with these things in mind I asked myself where is long-term value likely to acrw is it going to go to VCS or just to Farmers since what I'm looking for is a project that you know has the ability to last for more than half a cycle or even just a cycle um with this framework I've been able to identify a number of different stable coins so you know like disclosures some in our portfolio include a Athena cap and usual and I believe that all of them kind of you know fit these um bucket a and bucket B and have a deep well of liquidity that has already formed or will form underneath all of them in unique ways um in terms of all of these the one that hasn't launched yet so the one that I'm excited about um you know that the market has yes yet to validate is Cap uh I think what's interesting that they're doing that I think a lot of stable coins struggle to do is create Moes around the underlying collateral I think a lot of stable coins end up being collateralized by Fiat and Fiat likee instruments because it is scalable and it's also easily accessible but if you can find a way to juice a scalable amount of yield from collateral that others don't really have access to that's hard to find and I think cap is doing this right now that's what they're planning to launch with and I think that's that's what Athena also launched with which is you know what made us so bullish on them thank you maybe yeah Julia um well I think by order magnitude we've seen more U attempts to build stab coin filling that actually succeeding so that's the reason why we need more initiative around St coin if they all filling um or the success rate uh of adoption in stable coin is very low and we're talking about market cap of 200 billion but um of course like centralized and stable coin solution have been the one being used also USD uh us Donal uh version of stable coin but um the world uh the world is not running around U us doar or actually it is but could be uh way different so we have Argentina uh or Nigeria and more and more countries are going away from the Swift payment system I mean looks like so I think that will be a lot more initiative around local St coin uh that can can be backed by uh different type of asset could be like gold or because the technology is evolving pretty fast with uh ZK FH AI computational power so new form of stable coin that could be backed by for example computational U like AI type of things I think people are starting to build those type of ideas so we are seeing more and more C coin uh and different form of St coin that could be used and adopted different form in different regions of the world because um yeah we need a Euro stable coin that is not back by USD uh denary monetary policy type of things and Japan also is trying to create a stable coin I think Society General crol all the major B banks in Europe they also advancing on the subject and you also have the same in Asia I think money is one of the biggest that you can control way bigger than War so I don't think countries in the world will let uh us doar be the dominant C and we will have to fight for it so we'll see more and more initiative in this uh sector I want to I want to disagree with that um I think that countries in the world are allowing the US dollar to be the dominant Reserve currency so I don't see why they would um stop that and in its tracks for stable coins I think it makes a ton of sense because I think there will be a new form of money I think uh the concept of money being USD US doar money I think with the the evolution of of uh technology like um um like AI Quantum Computing like all different type of things I think that people are creating new form of money but then why would that create demand for a Euro back or Euro Peg stable coin versus a US dollar St coin no I think the uh well it's um it's kind of like a long-term Future Vision but I I feel like the the form of uh money monetary um um um will be like for example a form of intelligence form of of AI type of things I know you don't necessarily are into the AI type of things but I think that will be a new new form of money and I don't think Why Us for example why Bitcoin couldn't be the one that take over for example like in what the attempt of die and was actually uh pretty pretty good and failed because of liquidity and and adoptions but I think that should be the the type of uh initiative that Defi and theorization should be pushing for but if we remove the AI and so on from the discussion is there a space why are all these stable coins USD de denominated is there a market that could be profitable sustainable for non USD de denominated stable coins yeah so it's interesting I was just having this discussion with somebody else before I came up here um the reality is right now what we're seeing is people want dollars right this is true whether it's in stable coins or whether it's in just Fiat uh globally people want dollars I think your point is that the countries don't necessarily want their constituents to have dollars right and of course right you control populations by monetary policy it's one of the biggest forms of control right um but what we've seen is today a lot of the stable coin rise like tether specifically in Emerging Markets where um you know in more centralized entities has been regulatory Arbitrage it has been I want access to something that is maybe outside of the tax system that gives me access to the US dollar that will protect me against an inflation hedge that maybe I can buy a US dollar Goods Etc right but those people are primarily trying to flee a local currency or getting into something that they have demand for which is the US dollar and they believe is better than their local currency for some reason whether it's it's usually spend in usually at savings and savings against some sort of you know currency that they don't like um I think in terms of okay well like people talk about bringing FX on chain if we're going to have X FX on chain well yeah you do need you know to be able to swap in and out of a Euro or a gppp or whatever else but what we've seen so far is we're actually seeing companies one of my portfolio companies is now doing completely onchain you know bank-to-bank transactions where they're going okay Brazilian real in a bank uh there issuing a Brazilian real stable coin they're swapping it on chain they're issuing a European uh Euro stable coin they're swapping into that they're then swapping through sep instant directly into a European uh bank account that transaction is happening 10 minutes because there's a little bit of operational um work that needs to be done there it could happen less and they can do that for 10 bips they could charge 75 bips still half of what wise for business is doing right but what's what's the name of that company uh it's called conduit um but what's what happening there is that they're using these non-us dollar stable coins but nobody actually wants to stay in them they're just being used as a form of transaction and when people want to save they still want to go back into US dollars now okay well I mean that that is what what is actually happening on chain so they're just using them like for settlement in their own infrastructure people are not actually holding they're not actually holding them alternative and you can see this when you look at the the issuance in the tvl and the a of of these stable coins by by the different uh currencies so they're the Minimus in non US Dollars uh but actually yeah you're talking about this if I can something like if we believe that the world is moving into those AI agents in form of like complete um asent markets whatever my question what I've been saying is like what's the incentive economical viability for AI agent to transact in US dollar it could be like transacting into a new form of of money like as I mentioned before reputational power or new type of crypto like Bitcoin or whatsoever are you are you imagining these agents are like completely just like let loose and that they're not within like very defined Frameworks I mean this is what people are starting to uh like starting building like a Asian talking to each other uh making arbitrary uh decisions based on certain uh features and criteria so I'm asking myself I'm not saying of course like it's uh countries worldwide they don't necessarily want people to use uh us do because this is actually against the um monetary power uh but this is currently what's happening because maybe you don't have other form of Alternatives uh but if we moving into this type of vision where everything is kind of AI Control based and I'm asking question like what's the incentive of economical value for an AI to start using such like this USD type of things I'm definitely openminded the idea that you can have an alternate form of money in the world of AI and AI agents I think like the all evidence points to you know you know um Global Reserve currencies recycling you know over over you know centuries or decade or well really centuries so I'm open-minded to it I think Bitcoin is a great candidate I think practically speaking like money is in some ways in the future um just to speak to some something we've been thinking about like it's really what's most liquid at the point of exchange and I think that's the reason tether in particular is has been so widely adopted because it is liquid and available in Emerging Markets and other places but if you think about what a blockchain does and what stable coins do is they convert cash in a bank account into a um a a a blockchainbased receipt of uh of that cash in the bank account that could be traded to to other you know to other people sent around the world and then they recoup that that cash in the bank account I think this is going to happen over time to all assets and you know historically uh cash you know dollars move faster than say giving somebody a US Treasury you're giving somebody a stock or giving somebody a bond I think the way that blockchains work uh on a go forward basis is that pretty much any asset that can be represented on chain can move as fast as dollars or can move as fast as cash I do think that changes what money means um because people went to dollars because it was the easiest thing to get in and out of and now I think money in the future looks more like whatever is the most liquid at the point of exchange and you can hold whatever you're saving like e yeah it could be E I mean be e actually sure sure eth whatever Bitcoin like I'm not here to speculate on I think we failed here but that's true maybe maybe I would suggest to you know um now we took a step back again we're again talking about the big picture um but you two haven't answered yet what are you excited about in 2025 like the opportunities not in 10 years but some what is exciting now what you looking to invest in will or Rob go ahead yeah I mean I I I've been saying when I get this question like FX on chain um in previous cases uh we have a portfolio company that's working on that I think I mean look if you just look at the numbers 70% of global trade is priced in US Dollars 99.9% of global tra of stable coins are in US Dollars and so you either bet that that's going to hold true and US dollars are the dominant form of onchain currency or you bet that that's going to retrace a little bit and other forms of stable coins will come on chain um and I think then there you'll have kind of robust FX markets that allow you to trade between stable coins I think that's an opportunity uh go ahead do you think it's 7030 uh I don't have a bet on it's somewhere I think it's somewhere in between 7030 and 99.9 and 0.

1 yeah yeah but I don't have to bet one way or the other at the moment I don't think um uh what else in the stable coin space um I I really am enjoying some of the stuff that um is happening in defi around stable coins I like I really like what Morpho is doing with some of the vaults uh that allow you to lend against yielding collateral um I'm hugely bullish generally on the work that Athena's done over the last year I think um Athena well you know they have an they have a duty to protect um you know C consumers at the end of the day and and and create robust Financial products I think gu's done a really excellent job in what could be an otherwise uh challenging or sketchy product but leaving that aside the idea the core idea that you can put a trading strategy behind a dollar right and the the outputs of the trading strategy you know the yield that's produced by the trading strategy is actually something which can be represented as a um you know a as a rebasing token or a yield that's behind it all I think is a really promising and interesting idea like if you look at Ren Renaissance Technologies one of the most successful and famous hedge funds in the world um you know they produce a repeatable kind of cash flow on an annual basis that for two or three decades totaled at north of 30% irr and you could think about representing that is a stable coin right um and it's just your interest in Renaissance Technologies fund Now consumer uh SEC you know um onboarding of of retail to hedge funds does not allow for that at all secur it's definitely security there's no there's no um you know there's there there's no uh confusing yourself about that but it does open I think the Overton window about what's possible um and so I'm I'm excited about continuing to look at that kind of intersection of onchain and the stable coin world I think what's what's interesting we're using the word stable coin to Define like a lot of things I don't mean yeah yeah well no I mean it's the whole industry does it it's not a specific point right um but like you know what you're talking about are you know tokenized hedge fund products you know we're talking about you know token tokenized yield um I think a bunch of us are investors in Athena up here and so um that is the stable coin makes that product usable in defi right and what you're talking about is like you know taking a rentech position and you make taking a and turning it into a stable coin to make it usable Within defund but at the end of the day that is a very different product than usdt usdc Agora stuff like that right and so like differentiating between those two I think is really important when you think about okay what's interesting because if you're doing a centralized stable coin today that you want to be regulated under ma or regulated under the genius act and you want to be used in regulated financial institutions for movement of money and money flow then if you're going to issue a token today like you can't just be an issuer you are too far behind and this is my opinion of course but you need to make it usable you need to dog food it you need to build something that is more full stack and you need to figure out if there's a way that you're going to have it on you're going to have your own orchestration layer you're going to have your own direct to Consumer application you're going to have you know potentially your own chain that has specific properties that are really good for these uh um you know these different PSPs Etc who who want to operate there like that sort of like integrating the stack is a way to be an interesting or or to really kind of dog food your own issuance today if you're talking about savings products and defi products there's a lot of white space to do really cool things there and and within within defi so earlier rob you talked about conduit and it triggered you know a lot of uh a lot of passion in the audience um earlier uh there was strip on stage who talked about Bridge uh you also have a portfolio company called rail maybe will can you explain a little bit these actors who are they what do they do what is kind of this new opportunity in the space yeah I think maybe one area of the market which we haven't covered too much uh which you know is worth sharing in with the audience is it seems to be working uh which is the use case of stable coins for non-crypto businesses uh in payments so if you want to move if you're a if you're a business in Brazil or in Argentina for example and you're you need to pay a supplier of uh resources in China it's actually uh at this point faster to do it using stable coins uh on a blockchain uh on ramp you know take take Argentinian Pesos convert into US send usct across the world somebody factors that out um and ultimately I guess China's uh maybe but let's say Thailand Hong Kong yeah Hong Kong exactly and then somebody factors it up it back out into the local currency that that's happening like way faster than you know the three to four business days on Swift um and and it's really a market that's growing I mean I I the the market size numbers are a little bit rough I think at the end of last year it was somewhere between 100 billion to 200 billion of payment flow uh for these these kind of orchestration companies as they're called that are doing this I think that Market's growing at least you know 60 to 100% year-over-year from what I can see so huge secular growth Trend um um and we find that um you know super exciting and what these orchestration companies really do is they connect the local Fiat bank accounts to the blockchain world and then provide a suite of apis that allow people if you're a business to move your Argentinian Pesos uh and then out to uh you know as Rob pointed out Hong Kong dollars or he mentioned uh you know Euros on sepa uh really easily you don't deal with the complexity of the blockchain so it's this integration between the local Fiat banking rails and it's kind of messy and you need Bank relationships and licenses and then you're kind of abstracting away the blockchain uh behind the scenes that's a whole class of businesses that seem to be you know doing quite well and I think it's part of the growth story of stable coins uh and and payments so we continue to be excited about that I don't know if others on the stage have um you know thoughts on those I think maybe just to pose one of the open questions that we have is what's the long-term Moe around those businesses what's long-term business model uh can they really get to scale um but yeah it's a it's a fascinating category and I think it's worth it's part of the stable coin story at this point so the person who yelled in the audience still lies or no okay no more lies we're good um okay so uh we don't have much time but I'd love to talk about uh go to market strategies and stti I know you have a great GTM framework that you share with your Founders maybe we have a lot of Founders or or new you know upcoming Founders in the room can you maybe share some takeaways that could be interesting for them in a market that's increasingly saturated yeah absolutely so I'm sure that you as Founders you're thinking very deeply around the design of your stable coin I think one premise of you know kind of this go to market guide that I have is that uh great design cannot outrun a bad go to market but at the same time a great go to market can't outrun bad design and I think when it comes to stable coins and defi go to market is a part of the design so that's kind of the first premise I think the second premise is one way to measure the success of your Goen Market is your TBL growth so the amount of value that people are depositing into your protocol um and so I have sort of you know this assumption or this flywheel that I believe drives TBL growth uh as your go to market is progressing through its different steps and the idea here is that positive attention towards a protocol drives increased liquidity and increased liquidity in your protocol drives positive attention which then begets more liquidity which then begets more attention so this is the flywheel that increases TBL growth and you know bad attention can decrease liquidity and the whole thing can work backwards as well like in the case of Tera Luna but let's let's focus on the positive side of this so I was trying to think like you know with a framework like this how can I make this useful for Founders to consider as they're kind of creating a go to market strategy so ideally you have something that's a bit of a chain reaction so the earlier steps that you take in your goto Market sort of create a chain reaction that compounds As you move forward so the suggestion I have is I call it the signal waterfall I can um you know maybe share it later or uh share it with the organizers and they can share it with you but the idea is that there's six categories and this is Art not science you can pick your own um that you can walk through so first you start with the philosopher Builders so this is kind of like the high priests or the public intellectuals of crypto this is like a vitalic or let's say rune for maker da or Arthur Hayes and you get there Buy in and this is getting one person's Buy in as opposed to starting with the general consumers where you have to boil the ocean and get millions of people's Buy in so you get this one person's buyin and this then gives you leverage to go to your next category which could be the VCS so the VCS they are supposed to underwrite their own conviction right but we can be influenced by the conviction of these public intellectuals as well so they're the next people that can give you a sort of stamp of approval in your process as you're going to Market and also liquidity and um validation then from there you move on to defi Builders since when you're building a stable coin for defi one of the most important things you need to do is have composability and enable Leverage so this is a way to also kind of pitch and get Buy in whether your idea and design is interesting for the community and get those people on as angels and partners this then enables an easier conversation to be had with institutions so these are the centralized exchanges and maybe even traditional institution such as your Franklin templetons or your fidelities um they are going to be powerful distribution partners for you and now you're getting wider and wider you know as you go down the funnel of your go to market um following this I suggest you go to the defin native uh many would call them mercenary I like to just call it paid advertising every industry has paid advertising every industry has subsidized incentives in you know early go to market and I think it's okay in crypto that we have it too we do it in the form of kol's lately I see it more in Echo rounds and these Generations or these strategies tend to be generational um yeah but we're kind of subsidizing like the onboarding of your early adopters and then finally from there we move to the general consumers these General consumers are onboarding your protocol organically they are going to stay without subsidized incentives and they are going to be the ones that give your protocol monetary premium they are there for the utility and eventually what every protocol should be aiming for is monetary premium that comes from this final category but I do know it's hard as I said earlier to go to that final category and try to boil the ocean so I think thinking about go to market in a way that um gives it a bit of structure and as I said creates a chain reaction across all the segments you want to go to can be a powerful way to consider this thank you um maybe one last question since we're talking about goto Market we have to talk about points right and I want to ask you do you believe in life after points is there a way to you know build a sustainable business after a points campaign and maybe Rob you want to start there or juli yeah I mean there's definitely a way I'll let him go um but if if that is your go to market they're you're going to die right and we've seen that happen time and time again uh um I some some of the ones we talked about up here um you know you're seeing that happen right now with the tvl bleeding out PUSD for instance I hope no one pay's in the room right now like they did the points thing with salana foundation and Camino second that went away the TV dropped by 50% um there has to be some other product yield there that people want and that allows for a use case in the future all right we're running out of time do you guys want to add something guys and girls do you want to add anything all right thank you very much very interesting guys let's appla them very nice thank you