Navigating Shifting Market Regimes - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

Welcome everyone. Um it's great to see a lot of familiar faces and uh joined by three special panelists, all of which I've worked with or traded with in some capacity or another. Um let's just get right into it. I mean, Bitcoin prices have been moving quite a bit in the last 72 hours. Shell, what do you what do you make of the market at this point?

I mean, Bitcoin's been great. Like, everyone's bowled up. we're in the industry, but like you know, look at the gold bitcoin ratio for the past four years and gold's outperformed bitcoin. So that's true.

Uh but I think like you know overall bullish of the market uh going to the end of the year. The Fed's going to be accommodative. There's still a bunch of DATs that haven't deployed capital yet. The spaxs right those have closed but they haven't uh been funded until the dispack. So all that capital at some point will get funded and you know November, December there should be an onslaught of these vehicles coming online and buying more Bitcoin underneath.

Yeah, that makes sense. And you guys have a Bitcoin yield product. How do you guys think about Bitcoin? You know, in these kind of more volatile times. Is it always just V selling or is it something else?

No, I think there's um I mean there there's so much Bitcoin in the ecosystems, everyone's looking for yield on Bitcoin, right? Because naturally it doesn't really have its own yield. uh 3, four, 5 years ago, it was a lot tougher to generate yield in Ethereum on Bitcoin, but now there's, you know, a very ample robust lending market on Bitcoin. Uh you can use Bitcoin as collateral across numerous exchanges. I was talking to a insurance firm in Bermuda the other day where they're taking Bitcoin as collateral uh for the act.

So you can actually earn yield on Bitcoin uh via like the insurance markets. Uh, so there's a lot more activity, a lot more a lot more things you can do like with Bitcoin to generate yield. So yeah, it's a lot more interesting now than it used to be.

For sure. And Arthur, I guess for you it's been much more of a discretionary environment. Um, altcoins have done really well and then, you know, some of them are underperforming, some of them are overperforming. How are you guys thinking about, you know, altcoin performance in the last couple of weeks?

Yeah, I think it's continues to be a story of dispersion. Uh I think that we are not really getting any crazy inflows like the 2021 days, right?

So anyone that survived I would define them as smart money. So people are like you know really careful going after the strong name with a lot more consensus or some new narrative that is in trend like stable coin chain or stable coin sector related stuff. Uh yeah, I think it will continue to be a big uh dispersion where certain names are do very well, but I think the top 200 name will look very different in two years. It already look very different compared to two years ago and look more and more different as well.

And how are you guys thinking about the positioning between those assets, right? You say that the top 200 on on coin market cap or coin gecko will look different. Are you guys taking an active stance and you know which ones were kind of reached the top or is it more a pretty even dispersion?

No, no, no. I think um I increasingly believe that the power law will dominate crypto as well and in fact I I increasingly believe that one of my most important job is I need to be invested in the max 7 of crypto before they obvious as the max 7 um I think it's getting a little bit more and more obvious but you know I still think there's competitor can emerge but yeah I think that's the most important thing is very power outcome uh our portfolio concentration has got even more over the past few years as well like usually we look we love like five to 10 names at Right.

Most of the time. Yeah.

Right. Really concentrated and really focusing on a lot. That that makes a lot.

I think and in crypto most of the time if you go beyond like 20 names, you're really getting diversification.

Right. That's a that's a good way to put it. Jason, I I noticed you smiled when he said crypto max 7. You know, as someone who has a background in traditional equities and uh you know, and spending a lot of time now in crypto and you guys really look for kind of esoteric ways to to generate alpha. How are you thinking about the market as of late?

Uh well, there's not much alpha from us because we have a private portfolio that just drags the whole thing down. The entire game kind of changed, but uh I I resonate with Arthur's point about the Max 7 because um it's even true in NASDAQ. You know, there are some companies that have open-ended upside that just rent on the world and are on the right side of history that just keeps on making more and more free cash flow with almost infinite growth,

right?

Um in crypto, it's kind of the same. You have the halves and have nots. the have nots, you know, they don't have the open-ended upside. They are not really capturing value. Sometimes they don't even speak really good English.

So, they can't really tap into the liquid investor base that is mostly English speaking. And then you have the halves that are, you know, on stage here probably, you know, uh uh they are, you know, they are bucking the right trend which kind of people are starting to agree on which is stable coin exchanges and uh token launching and token trading spot maybe. And uh you can kind of paint a picture that uh the penetration rate of crypto is going to you know magnificently increase under a Trump and SEC regime,

right?

So once you underwrite the bull case and you give them some reasonable multiple in a couple years, you can get to a very big upside with significant value capture back in the token and and and those companies that check all those boxes, those are the things that I think a lot of liquid managers including ourselves by. Um, and because there's not yet a linkage between traditional equities and those assets yet, um, you know, they they don't get pushed up the way that Bitcoin does and they kind of come out at a somewhat reasonable valuation, which is why kind of everybody owns them.

Do you find that, you know, I don't remember the last time we shared a stage, it was years ago maybe. Um do you find that there's been a larger trend now where we've gone from uh an industry where there's a lot of different pockets of interest to now one where people are really com like concentrating around like you said stable coins exchanges maybe token launching you know platforms these types of things. Do you find that that causes more of a friction for the TAM of crypto or is it more now that you know people can refine their point of view in terms of making an investment decision across a few of these?

Well, I think people figure out that nothing else worked

like a token they launch tokens they create projects and then they just like never made revenue and it just dumped and then every VC that did those tracks get burned and and then there are certain sectors that just kind of worked and it kept working. So that's where capital aggregates to. I think we're at the stage where people kind of figure out what crypto is good for,

right?

And and because of regulatory blessing, what crypto is good for could be a hell of a lot bigger, taking meaningful share and that upside drive more capital into it.

Arthur, what do you think about this?

Yeah, I I think that's the term I like to use is to be a skeptical optimist on this. Uh I've been saying that finance is the biggest product market fit of blockchain and crypto because you have the digital money. you do need a decentralized financial system to support it. Um so you know look at all the most profitable and the biggest use cases beside layer one is all finance related right speculation, trading, um lending, borrowing, uh stable coins but um something that a lot of people wrote off years ago which is prediction market suddenly come back to life. You know remember you know in the Ethereum white paper prediction market was mentioned as one of the main use case that smart contract blockchain can enable and Augur was one of the earliest ICO and everyone was super excited about it and then boom like three years four years everyone gave out like okay

prediction market is just like a too idolistic of a dream it's not going to happen until a founders that managed to you know solve it you know continuous continuously push through it and yeah right now I think prediction market is one of the most exciting sector that most VCs are looking at right now Um so I think most of the case you should be extremely skeptical. I think that uh blockchain is a very good narrow tech. So finance is the best use cases but yeah pred prediction market kind of proof most of our skeptic like us wrong and I hope that we see more of these application to prove me wrong as well. Yeah.

Would you guys think I guess on average, you know, yes or no, that like there are probably five verticals of crypto? Maybe I don't I'm just coming up with a number here. Uh that matter to you in general. Is that is that a yes? Like can we say that that's probably a ballpark correct answer?

At this point, probably.

Yeah,

sounds about right.

Yeah, agree. Yeah.

And so when you make these, you know, kind of bets in these each one of these categories, right? We named a few of them stable coin exchanges. whatever. Um, how do you think about, you know, if if project A comes out?

Let's before that.

Sure. Sure. Sure. Let's get

Let's get a consensus. What do you guys think about crypto AI? I don't think we have talked about that yet.

I I wanted to get into the more esoteric stuff, but because you asked the question, I would say that from my point of view as also an asset allocator. Um, crypto AI has been one of those things where it's a little bit too elusive in my hands, but I'm also much more of a finance person than I am a, you know, technologist if you want to call it that, right? But Shillang, Jason, I don't know what you guys think.

Yeah, I mean, I think on average, it's it's got the right narratives, right? Um, so I think as a trader, I think there's a lot of money potentially to be made from it. uh fundamentally I haven't really seen the linkage between the actual like use cases between AI and actual crypto other than you know certain narratives that I don't think are necessarily value acrewing. So I'm more of a skeptic but I do think there's a trade there are trades to be structured that can make money.

Um I haven't found anything in the public market yet that I want to size into. Um I think could be really interesting but uh nothing I can buy yet. Um

Arthur, what do you think?

I I'm torn. I I mean I I'm not sure if I you know, as some of some of um as the LM get more powerful, you really want to give them so much data,

right?

Um so I do see the appeal for like a decentralized LM, you know, and you have more embedded privacy on this. But in terms of product experience, they can't really keep up. So as a result I think that you get a very power law where you know people just opt for convenience and use the centralized LM and the decentralized LM with privacy inbuilt they're not really getting enough adoption but actually I would hope that they get more adoption actually.

Yeah I think I think that makes that makes a lot of sense. I guess going back to the last kind of topic at hand, what do you think about when you're making an investment in a specific vertical called stable coins or exchanges? Um, often times there's it is a winner takes most market and most uh of these companies will have to aggregate into the same kind of uh product feature, right? So, um, if you have, you know, a company that's focused on, let's just say like stable coin yield, then all of a sudden they're going to want to become their own L1. they're going to want to build a DEX.

They want to, you know, how do you guys think about backing, you know, kind of competitors, if that makes sense, or um if you feel that you want to go all in on one project versus, you know, diversifying the portfolio. Start with Jason. Um I think in the case of all of these things um I think they will go through phases where you have competitors coming in throwing dollars at marketing and dangling the airdrop carrot to like drive growth. um in that lane it probably really comes down to the touch points of tapping into liquidity like how how wide of a distribution the the liquidity can get as well as just the user experience and retention of the users that are actually on the platform. So my view is kind of these things come in phases and the time to actually buy the potential winner that that that's something that excels in both facets is when you have competition that drive away market share but the overall marketing dollars actually make this entire space gain share.

Uh and hopefully all of those dollars flow back to the leader once those incentives run out. So so actually it will be a good pretty good place to buy the leader. Uh stable coin I haven't spent enough time yet so I I really don't know. Oh, I know you you like plasma, so curious to hear a few.

Yeah, Shellang, what do you think about this?

Um, I mean, we don't I mean, we don't personally invest in venture, right? And I personally do, but uh not from the fund level. I guess we approach it more from an actual usage perspective, right? Like, as the ecosystem gets built out, as apps come out, there are ways for us to participate as a liquid fund, whether it's market or trading or providing liquidity. uh we're gonna get exposure to these specific projects and overall ecosystem through incentives um airdrops etc.

So that's how historically we've chosen to participate and you know even though we might not necessarily be you know contributing hard dollars we are contributing a lot of resources and time to engage with these projects and build into it. Um so we like to think that at a later stage as we kind of as L1 comes out as we can get a clear picture of the different participants and you know the usage cases uh we can make a bigger bet of our research and time into specific applications within these ecosystems um and also derisk us because we're not necessarily putting dollars right it's more just time and effort

and what do you how do you think about this do you guys you know place a lot of conviction behind in a singular bet or is it more diversified between each one of these sectors?

Um, no. I think we generally really pick the best project inside the sector we like to invest in. Um, because as I mentioned, I believe in the power law outcome,

right?

So, yeah, if you bet on a winner, they're just going to win so much. I mean, let's talk about like for example the stable coin sector. Obviously, you have the two behemoths and which is Tedar and Circle, right? And the only other stable coin that managed to break 10 billion supply is Athena, right?

No one else is close. I mean, even PayPal, which obviously is, you know, they've done a good job so far, but it's like 1 to2 billion in supply. And Athena is getting close to 15 billion right now. And they have

more than doubled their supply year to date.

Yeah, that's kind of the insane growth rate they are exhibiting. And you know, look at everyone is super far behind. And Hyperliquid have what 80 to 90% market share of the perex space. Yeah.

Um what else other sector and even like you know a lending borrowing I think a have like 60 to 70% of the total lending borrowing market share send um I mean obviously sometimes you do see some competitor emerging to tackle it that's why they pay us the fees to pay attention to all this thing if there's a competitor emerged we will be there to ready and reposition accordingly right

but most of the time I think that the power law outcome are just so great that

yeah and I think the founder quality still drive a lot of these outcomes and it's going to matters like that the difference they're going to create is actually not like 2x 5x it's more like 100x or even thousandx difference in outcome so yeah founder qualities matters a lot and I think this is something that's still very hard to replicate

y

right right I I guess you know to your point I look at the venture market a lot lately and think there's a lot of distortion between valuations and then the number one determinant of how high of a valuation something gets is more or less the brief speed and quality of a of a founder. So that makes a lot of sense to me. I guess maybe switching gears a bit. I scroll the timeline these days on Twitter and I see people are just in agony constantly, right? People are constantly complaining about prices being down or losing money or this or that or whatever.

And then you look at asset prices, you know, and returns year-to- date or year-over-year and you're like, these prices have been vertical non-stop, right? What do you think explains the majority of the of the dismay of the market, you know, as of late? Maybe it's just a crypto Twitter thing, but still.

Yeah, I mean, I think like Oh, go ahead. Well, I think like one is um a couple of things. One is most liquid directional funds have been been able to outperform Bitcoin, right? Like we've had a couple of cycles now. It's been very difficult uh for like directional funds to outperform Bitcoin.

That that's that's a fact, right? I mean, most coins in general have underperformed Bitcoin over multiple cycles. Um, and a lot of the funds originally were raised to not have exposure to Bitcoin because anyone just buy Bitcoin. Uh, and so over multiple cycles, they've they've underperformed and and that's been difficult. The second piece I think is this cycle specifically there's been less just you can't just like blindly buy everything and like have the beta of the overall market like carry you higher like previous cycles.

there's just been so many tokens uh and there's not enough capital to support all of it, right? And you know, a ton of like new projects uh coming to market like the vesting is hitting the cliff and and you know, there's constant supply. So, it's been more difficult to cycle versus previous cycos in terms of just getting overall, you know, beta lift, right? Um, and at the end of the day, like you look back at the past couple like year to two years, there's been a few narratives where if you missed it, uh, you completely missed the returns in the market, right? Like if you didn't invest in like meme coins as a directional fund, you you kind of miss miss like a huge chunk of returns like last year, right?

Um, and if you miss specific projects, you know, in this year, uh, that contribute to like like the whole like return of of, you know, the directional market. So, I think it's been a much more difficult market. It's it's the signs of a maturing market. Uh, and that's why you're seeing a lot of, you know, more of the traders um, uh, be remissed like on on Twitter, right? So,

yeah. Jason, what do you think?

I largely agree with Shillian. I thought, you know, the incremental capital that came in are either the DATs that are just buying your Bitcoin. Actually, if you held Bitcoin, you like did very well. If you're not like lever law and getting liquidated,

right? you if either either you hold the core of the core asset that just get liquid flow or the other side of incremental asset that comes in are like really more trafficy you know they are really kind of doing the work and they're like oh and and a lot of them are quite sharp that they they like really seize those opportunities at the get-go and doesn't leave all that much for you know typical retail to capture like Hyperlid when it launched you know airdrops get dumped but like a lot of really smart funds I know are just bidding in eyes and it it took like 24 hours for it to go from five to like 15 and and when you have sharks like that in the market and if if you're a retail that's like lever long stuff with no superior information or if you buy your favorite alt you know kind of hoping that it's going to be a season in the last cycle chances are you know it's not going to outperform uh what's what's out there. Well, who would you think?

I think it's really the story of dispersion because even if you look at the year-to- date returns, Bitcoin, Eve, the majors done quite okay and a lot of the assets are still down more than 20% year to date, right?

20 to 40% like some of the 11 OG coins that you know like Tesos and stuff.

Yeah. Um and but yet there's also a pocket of I would say irrationality that still exists like world liberty you know like was a massive outcome that most people did not expect as well like I mean the ICO was like not filled for a very long time yeah months right I mean until the election and everything

um and also I think that the

I'm not trying to put any judgment on it but the proliferation of memecoin launchpad definitely you know make the whole site of this you know the crypto Twitter all this thing a lot more short-term like I think the terminology matters and people are just so used to the terminology oh rugpool exit liquidity right

I would suggest all of us to stop using this term

let's let's use something more positive so that you know people don't get too all the newcomers come in and they don't see all this kind of like terms being thrown I don't I think we all make fun of it and we kind of self it's a self-deprecating joke but when all the newcomer come in oh what what is happening here.

Yeah, it's um it's negative.

So I I think that the com the memecoin um like you know all this you know extreme outcome you know the launch like like probably less than 20 coin of graduated from pump fund is like above like 10 million market cap something around that number. Um so I think this dispersion is really creating that level of uh cognitive dissonance. Um and most people just do not own enough Bitcoin. I think that if you have a core Bitcoin portfolio, you will at least feel quite at peace. Yeah.

Right. I I guess it's a really good point, right, which is um between pump fun, right, where you have, you know, there's a headline that comes out and there's 16 coins of the same ticker for whatever, you know, something horrific happens, someone just makes a pump fun memecoin on one end, which is still liquidity in the ecosystem, and then on the other end, you have like, you know, hyperinstitutions bidding Bitcoin. um that like don't even think about anything outside of Bitcoin within the crypto

within they're buying I mean you can see in plasma like they're clearly bidding things that are just working and have but they're not buying your shitcoin

right for sure

and and also I kind of think it's interesting that if you take a extremely long-term view it works very well

yes

or you take a extremely short-term view

like I'm I'm always surprised by all the onchain how what kind of time frame they're trading at trading at a minutes

time frame you Oh, I'm out 2 hours later. Like we always, you know, we are in a kind of middle time frame. I kind of think that we are in the middle of nowhere right now,

right? No, I think I think that that that makes a lot of sense. It's also kind of funny because it's like when we when we think about um as you're saying Jason, right, like these new launches that come out, right? We're now getting to this point where every day I check like coin listing or one of these like Telegram chats or whatever and there's like three new token launches that happen. I typically view this as one of those end of cycle, late cycle kind of phenomenons where like exchange listings just ramp up an insane amount and it draws liquidity away.

Do you guys have any view on on these types of things?

Chilling.

Yeah, I mean I think that and also just the proliferation of like multiple DATs, right? Like it's kind of the same phenomenon like it's there's only so much capital in the world that can support these assets. Um, I think DATs have brought in a lot new capital, but we have like the 20th Ethereum DAT or like the 10th Salana DAT or like you know multiple like altcoin DATs. Um, there's like not enough capital to support all of that, right? And

what happens next year?

Yeah.

Yeah. And so the same what happens next year?

Um,

do you think they will still still trade at a premium and do they still

No, I mean a lot of them are actually trading at a discount now, right? And so I think most of them will continue to trade at a discount. I think there'll be a lot of consolidation within the DAT space and there's already DATs as I mentioned earlier that are being raised to do rollups of DATs now right so like

writing on the wall

for context DATs are the digital asset treasuries or these public vehicles that people use to accumulate Bitcoin altcoins whatever sorry

yeah so I think people understand it like they see the writing in the wall like these this is not a new phenomenon like this existed in other forms in previously and so we all know what the endgame looks like there's going to be consolid But there is going to be winner take all uh like a power law right I think like certain dads have done very very well there's going to be a winner in each category um but most of the you know deities probably will not um like survive ultimately right

there's something funny about and ironic about us being on the stage here when like Tom Lee I think was on stage here yesterday talking about Bit Miner so um interesting juosition but I think that's also what it takes right Tom Lee did more for bit for Ethereum in 3 months than like almost anyone else could have right so uh you do need that kind of evangelist or someone to understand the space. I I feel like in in in in the case of Ethereum in particular, you had this really long lull of like, oh, what is Ethereum, right? Like people understand Bitcoin that aren't in crypto. Um, nobody understood Ethereum before this like digital oil this and that. It's like none of it stuck until Tom Lee kind of came around and and and and bridge that gap.

I guess Arthur, how do you think about this? How do you think about you know this uh you know listing ramp up period? uh that's kind of happened in the last couple of weeks.

I think it's just really due to the fact that um the there's a few one that did quite well. So the exchanges, the founders all think, oh yeah, market is receptive to new launches. Let's launch it right now because I mean I think that you can't have a very choppy condition the past few week but that did not prevent some of the new launches from doing well. So people think oh if market going down are still not affecting the new launches. what are you waiting for and the backlog has been building up in a massive way for the TG and the new launch.

So I think it's perfectly normal and I don't know probably like you know Sri Lankan you're more active on the market making side. Do you think that

you know the liquidity can be supported or like you think it's just just tough at this place? I mean I I think that there's still some interesting project still going to do well. So I'm a bit more ambivalent on on that part. But I think one part actually we should talk about I think it's quite a good contrast is a I think probably two of us are the more crypton native side since like we you know since uh we're a bit youngerish and with like Sulang and Jason have a lot more traditional finance experience and this is year you know I I what I see is that people who make the most money this year are people who actually spend fair amount of time in a traditional finance space and then done crypto for a while

right

do you think that will continue and you know the trapi takeover will will start or do you think crypton native will still retain their ages Yeah,

I think it I think it's both, right? I think there's going to be two ways to make money. Um, personally, I think, you know, if you have like the way of mainstream normative crypto will be that of Tradfy. Like, Bitcoin is a is is a Tradfy asset now. It's an institutional asset, right?

It's no longer a crypto asset. It trades on binance.com, OKX, whatever, but it's not, you know, it is much more of a Tradfi bid than it is a a cryptonative bid. Um, and then you'll see pockets of whales moving capital, this and that, but few and far in between. And then on the other end of it, it's like, you know, we have like people that are building like the most novel tech in crypto that will need, you know, native eyes on it, if that makes sense.

But I think the the problem is if you're jack of all trades and this two camps, you're just going to lose in both. That's my view. Jason, I don't know what you think.

Uh, I think Yeah, probably. Uh I I I thought um what's the best way to put it? Um I think the incremental capital will come from folks who allocated capital in traffic before

large pockets of cash

large large pockets and it will come through either public vehicles or it will come through allocation to funds who size into the space and those guys know there there's a framework at which they allocate in which case in this asset class right now there are maybe like 10 to 15 assets that they can reasonably buy and even then they have to make some playel about oh these are actually kind of equity because they're doing buybacks. Um, I think as long as a project falls into that category that appeals to that traditional finance framework, those tokens will probably do well, assuming the growth actually accelerates. But for everything else, you probably have to either do crime or you're so good at memeing,

not actual crime,

you know, you know, and and those would be what cryptonative kind of really do well on. But but the traffic guys will not catch those.

Yeah. R31. But but I think one thing just because I want to talk about this is like last time when the trap fire came in they really invested in all the wrong stuff. Right.

Right. Right.

And you know it got so bad that you know certain sovereign wealth fund decided to not do any direct investment in crypto anymore. Right.

And certain you know endowment fund of certain countries also decided to fully exit any crypto investment because they did all the latest stage stuff that just the heat rate just wasn't great at all. Um but this time I feel it's a little bit different. I feel that some of these tre they are investing in the right names and actually they did make money in a real way like uh I'm seeing more and more obviously bit mine is the best example but even you look at some of these um late stage stuff I think it's getting better and better so um I I think this is pretty interesting contrast but do you think they will still make the same mistake again or like they gotten a lot smarter they're like only going to touch the good stuff but yet there's two example recently the the most recent two IPO which I honestly think is not that great but it's still fully over subscribed and then it pop on the IPO. So,

you know,

I think like this um like one big question like this regime like what do you want to call it? You know, deregulation, regulatory clarity. One big question is it

this regime does open the floodgates for immense competition, right? Like now everyone is able to do everything, right? Like Robin Hood is lifting like listing all assets. They're coming on chain. Um the worlds are really converging, right?

Uh, and so the big question is like who ultimately wins in that experience, right? Is it going to be Coinbase backing into Trafy assets? Is it going to be Robin Hood, you know, backing into crypto, right? Like the case could be made for Robin Hood because they already list like all these assets. They already have the distribution, all the retail that aren't in crypto that are trading these assets and now they can easily list crypto and you have this overall arching like portfolio, right?

And so I think that's a big, you know, question. Yeah,

I think to that point, right, like you know, uh, Poly Market and Kashir are probably two examples of this where it's like people like these are way way way higher valves than I would have expected. I'm personally pretty bearish on on prediction markets relative um at their current valuations only because I think like it's much easier for an exchange to roll out this product and have the liquidity centralized in one venue than it is for Couchier or or Poly Market to go into per trading or whatever else. Um, but I I I guess that's also one of those things where it's like everyone is fighting for everything all at once, right? Uh, we see this on the the protocol side, right? Hyperlid launching their own stable coin, you know, having the DEX, having the L1, doing all all of the most value accreative kind of businesses in one go.

You know, before we wrap up, I want to ask a few questions on some more spicy things. Uh, one in particular is just, you know, we have two big launches coming up pretty soon, which is Mega Ethan Monad. What is your sentiment as you know asset allocators to these two right these have been very hyped projects for a long period of time uh monad in particular has raised a lot of venture funding you know are you guys optimistic as liquid market participants because end of day you know we talk about venture and venture is you know good as uh in so far as they can you know provide value but you guys are the ones that are bidding these tokens you know if no one else right so Jason we'll start with you what do you think about mega ethan monad and their tgee

well uh We we privately uh invested in uh Mega Eve. So I I'm very bullish Mega. Okay. Like I have to say

disclaimer. He's an investor.

Very bullish. Um

I don't know the layer 1, layer two premium in the market has just degraded over time. Like you got no usage, you're a ghost town. You're just you're just slowly going to zero. Um and then the the application that you know loop in layer one, layer twos. And if they can tell a really good fee and growth story, they've done pretty well,

right? So I think I can't comment on Monet. We will likely not bid that. But for Mega Eve, I think it really comes down to them, you know, showing traction with protocol-based uh fees coming from real applications.

But do you think like like a Monad TGE would be an optimistic, you know, future for for the protocol or do you think it's kind of DOA?

I have no idea, but I won't buy it.

Chillain.

Uh well, I've made an investment in Monad personally, so um

another disclaimer. Um I think it depends on the time frame right like I think people are launching because of the times right it's a good time to TGE like it's the right timing in terms of the market there's a lot of attention it's a it is at the end of the day attention economy and so um I I think it's the right time and in terms of like will it immediately perform well um I mean probably not as much right I think like most of these launches for the most other than a few have like struggled like but I think over the long term they have the opportunity they have immense amount of capital the right teams uh the right like road map and vision that um if you think of it over like a longer time horizon I think they have like a lot of potential to do well

yeah so I mean I'm also a personal investor in mega monet so um yeah disclaimer but um I think they'll just do okay I mean the fair value range you know the market maker will price it based on the last round they'll coordinate with the exchanges the project. So unless there's too much selling pressure, you know, it's not going to come down that much, right? I mean, even, you know, some of the project that, you know, have kind of forgotten, they still trade, you know, one to two billion FDV. So, how bad can this get, right? Yeah.

So,

we we never want to ask that question in crypto, but I I get what you're saying.

So, I I think they'll do fine and but the comp the competition just started right after UTG, right?

And that's where you are ready to set yourself up for massive uh expectation and also for disappointment. So I think that the key uh point is how well can they execute within the next one year post TG that was the golden period because if you don't do well people move on very very fast I think people underestimate

how um how fast how short-term is when it come to evaluating it like if you don't deliver anything substantial in one year people really forget you and move on so I think that TG is just a beginning I don't think it matters I mean you can launch low or you can launch high but your subsequent execution are what that matters Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you know, just for clarity, I'm also an investor in both in some capacity or another, but

no, no, but but I I want to caveat one thing, which is like this is a lot a long time ago, both of these fundraising rounds that happened for me monad in a sense. And um I I'm no longer a believer in general general purpose blockchains um winning for new ones that are coming out only because the incumbency is so difficult for existing ones that have a lot of uh network effects that already exists and or they already have a lot of liquidity, right? Like getting billions of dollars of liquidity on the chain and usable and people actually need to use it for something is a very difficult thing. Salana has cracked this, Ethereum's cracked this and Tron has cracked this pretty well. I think almost every other blockchain, you know, has not been able to get to that point.

So, um, how do you guys view the kind of race for these general purpose blockchains? And, you know, does it still seem like an interesting meta in 3 years time or is this kind of the end of this cycle for general purpose blockchains?

Can we just say quickly, I think that they will start as general purpose blockchain, but in the end, uh, those successful one will found a few core product market fit like Solana is really speculation. Um yeah, pump fun meme coins and some decent D5 activities, right? You take away these two the other activities a little bit big. Yeah,

Chain

I agree with Far.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

So you guys are like ambivalent on on

No, I think that they will need to become a specialized chain not by the initial design but they will converge there to become successful.

But I think the problem is for a lot of these and and we're over time here, but and this this is going to be the last thing. I think a lot of the problem that I see for these uh projects is they don't really they've built the infrastructure, right? They've set the foundation for these for these chains u and for what they want to build, but they're not the ones building out their own ecosystem in a sense, right? Which you start running into friction cuz the you know GTE is a very good example of this on on on mega, right? Where it's like you you had this ecosystem that you wanted to develop, but because you didn't build it yourself, there's no loyalty, right?

any EVM chain will will will sorry any EVM protocol can port over to any other chain and we've seen this happen time and time and time again right where you know people did this with Salana to Sue and Apttos right so how do you guys think about that I guess as as as a closing thought

they choose what's best for them I think the the ecosystem has to have the infra to support the projects and if they don't then you know they figure they can do something else they go they go do it I think it's very mercenary

yeah I mean it's we're a liquid fund where our capital is extremely mercenary right? We're only going to engage with the projects we believe in. Uh I mean I'm not even going to pretend anymore. So like um yeah I mean you see it in terms of like users and yield farmers and and traders like Yeah.

Yeah. I mean which is why most of our investment is in on the application layer. I think that you know the layer 1 layer two premium will come down and yeah you know you should be invest in the apps. Yeah.

Arthur Chalang Jason thank you so much for your time. Thank you all for listening in.