How Global VCs Are Deploying Today - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

Thank you everyone for joining us this bright and early morning. My name is Auggie. Uh, as mentioned, I'm an investment partner with CMT Digital. CMT is a 28-year-old trading and investment firm based out of the US. And it is my immense pleasure to be moderating this panel along with our esteemed panelists.

Maybe to start just to give everyone a sense um would be great if each of you could introduce yourselves and your firm. You know, I think one of the things that's very special about this panel here is we have a mix of different models on stage, global, regional, venture, prop. And so it would be great if you could spend a little bit of time talking about what is your specific model and how do you see your edge in today's very competitive landscape. Alan.

Um all right. Um hey guys, my name is Alan. I'm the founder of uh EVG. We founded the firm in 20 beginning of 2019. Before that I was in private goody running TMT strategies.

Um we we really not not a fund by definition. So uh but we do invest a lot in venture from both as a venture builder and also as a venture investor. Uh over this year we have put over 100 million of our bondry capital into the R&B side of thing and we've um two different vehicle and subsidiaries deployed about $400 million into uh minority deals and strategic deals. Yeah. And EVG is a group together currently combined for 260 70 people globally in seven office of operation.

We own one of the biggest media in Asia. We own fintech firm. We own an AI lab, a gaming lab. uh as well as this year we launch a new product called T-Rex. Yeah.

Hi everyone. It's great to be here. I'm a proud Singaporean, so this is always my favorite conference. Um my name is Min and I'm the co-founder and managing partner of Athereo Ventures. Ethereo is a global investment firm that's focused on crypto startups.

So we invest in preede and seed basically day one partners to the best founders globally. Um you know we help them reach their first milestones be it in product and you know first customers their first hires um and you know help them groom into groom them into being successful companies that can scale um the team has been working together since 2018 we were the former investment team of consensus um you know so we've been uh successful in incubating many of the seminal products in web 3 um and I would say our edge you know we're a standalone fund so we have external LPs um that are you know global between sort of uh US and Europe and Asia um is we have the experience in working with founders and helping them reach those first milestones. also work with the best investors, not just us, but also people who do the series A, series B, um the TTE, um and also, you know, eventual sort of liquid funds who can help them on on their token journeys. Um and we're really focused on teams who are, you know, pushing the envelope in terms of innovation. So, some of our portfolio companies include IG Layer, Aztec Protocol, um Spruce Network, uh and many more.

We have about, you know, 80 companies in our portfolio at the moment. Hi everyone, Feso here from Further Ventures. We are VC fund based out of Abu Dhabi and we invest globally. The uh thematic focus of the fund is the future of finance and capital markets. um between so we launched in 2022 and since from the beginning till 25 our focus and edge has been around incubation similar to what what Alan said um however we focus on u a segment of the market which is regulated finance we thought for this period of time what they made sense is to focus on financial institutions that could step into the market and fill gaps whether they're areas in lending or was management or uh building payment trails using stable coins.

So that's where we saw there being edge of the market is how do you build those regulated businesses uh that could scale past and uh that has been a good approach so far. Now looking into the future uh the next kind of uh vintage as we're launching uh our second fund we're looking at areas uh such as tooling for capital markets uh focusing in areas like uh collateral management and mobility uh 24/7 uh 24/7 trading uh we're thinking how can we uh enable traders and institutions to be able to optimize their treasuries and uh the way they trade Awesome. Well, uh, you know, now that we know a little bit about each of you and, uh, how you position your firm, let's talk about what are the specific opportunities and trends that you're seeing in your markets because all of you invest globally, but I think your home bases are are different. And I think for crypto, there are trends obviously that are intrinsically global. uh you know trading platforms uh RWA are are things that we see across the globe but there's also some opportunities or trends that I would argue are specifically local and so I'm very curious to hear from our panelists what's one trend in your respective markets that maybe global peers are missing and that you're excited about.

Oh okay. Um I think obviously I'm based in Asia. Majority firm are based in Asia. Uh I'm not sure if you guys see this clip that Eric Smitch was just on the stage with Shamath like uh probably like a few weeks ago talking comparing about the tech between the AI trend and AGI between China and US and one thing he said is like super interesting what he mentioned is that uh well America's pouring you know hundreds of billions of dollar into tracing making AGI happen in the next three to five years uh China because the lack of capital lack of risk capital in a size. So let me give you a statistic.

Last year $110 billion was deployed into AI in America. In China combined, that's 14 billion. So it's almost like a 10 times differences, right? So and despite being the second largest market in the world. Um so all the company in China forced to focus more on applications and taking into everyday's usage and live in utility.

And so that's why you're seeing they're winning in robotics. They're winning in actual a lot of daily applications. And like I think the same trend is pretty pretty much happening across web three as well. If you think about every single an entry point application you're using regards is Binance, Binance, MEXE or a lot of product that actually touch people's face on a consumer perspective actual retail owner actual retail trading VS you know I would say Asia is pretty much dominating right uh if you're a project you don't attack Greater China well you don't attack Korean well you're going to lost 70% of trading volume right because Coinbase and Kraken as much as love them and they're my partners for different business I'm not going to give flows as all coin, right? And so and and the second thing most important is remember is the cost call structure.

That's what we that's why we base most like our 200 engineers here in Asia. A 10 year old experienced engineer in America worked in Amazon or Facebook or Meta all these companies will cost you probably about $400,000 to $500,000 a year in base and plus maybe a quarter million in ESOP and then refresher in year two whatever on top of that. And half of my team is from Tesla, Alibaba, Tik Tok and all these firms. And they cost me probably about 120k a year in annual and they work you know they can work Saturday. I just make them work like which is like the big national hall that make them work three day out of seven days and

99 is it?

Yeah they respond. So that's why you explained to you like um for a lot of business model where cost is important you want as investor as a builder we want to make sure the budget the money you raise actually have the highest capital efficiency in our eye on those specific venues I think Asia will have a huge advantage obviously for stable coin for more institutional adoption no one give a about how you know like Hong Kong regulator has to say everyone's eyeballs at DC everyone's eyeball is what Wall Street does so I think for certain business America advantage the western more has advantage and for certain business I think Asia was immense advantage I think even the founder themselves don't even know

yeah so for ethereal ventures we have a global mandate but I would say most of the portfolio is in the US and we also tend to focus more on the US um the regulatory changes and clarity that we've seen in 2025 has been hugely advantageous for the industry I think on the basic level founders aren't afraid to uh go to jail they're not afraid of you know getting sued uh to build uh you know crypto startups. So we have a lot of founders who actually moved away from the US now moving back to the US building teams in the US. I think we see like you know two main um categories emerging. So you know undoubtedly I think the two areas that crypto really has product market fit is DeFi and payments. So, you know, with regards to stable coins, as like Alan mentioned, I think a lot of people are trying to figure out like how do they sort of wedge in by um moving the existing payment stack onto stable coins and crypto reels now that you have more clarity with Genius and also the upcoming Clarity Act.

Um you know, you also have, you know, big players like Robin Hood, Revolute, Stripe, uh really pushing merchant payments. A lot of startups are trying to figure out how do I fit into that value chain because there's a phase shift happening and when that happens there's money to be made. Um I think the second trend is on the DeFi side. Uh there's a lot of liquidity in Asia but a lot of the capital markets frameworks are still in the west. So at the moment there's sort of a bit of a mismatch with like institutional capital coming on chain.

Um but there's a you know huge opportunity as you try to um you know advance these D5 protocols to fit the needs of not only more sophisticated traders but eventually also institutional players. Um so that's like again like you know the product of um more institutional acceptance uh you know more regulatory clarity more founders trying to solve difficult problems here. So we all know that crypto has less uh geographic friction. It's a global kind of business so forth. However, there is a segment of the market where we believe that regional companies can compete.

This is especially with regards to businesses that are uh regulated. So [snorts] for example in stable coin payments or trading venues uh we believe that um there are companies like for example there will be a BVV and K in each region uh which we see that happening uh that's why for us the focus has been on building businesses that are regulated and um what I think global players that want to come to region uh what they often try to uh do and sometimes miss is figure out what's their best way to enter these markets and typically they would often to get licensed uh directly and often they learned that it's better to work with partners for distribution. Um so we see we see this you know time and time again where you have global players who want to enter the Middle East and um they come in with their capital and team and have a very difficult time to be able to integrate with the ecosystem and uh hence um we try to build close relationships with those entities and to see how can we collaborate when it comes to distribution makes sense. So you've heard perspectives uh you know from China, from the US, from from the Middle East. I think it would behoove us given this panel is about about the globe to talk about the rest of the globe which for the sake of this next question I'll broadly classify as emerging markets.

You know I think each of you have a unique vantage point into emerging markets either because of your heritage where you're based or your investment footprint. And I want to start this question with a quote from Jeffrey Pichet. He's the former group CIO of GIC, which is the sovereign wealth front of the of of Singapore. And he noted that emerging markets have delivered 5 to 7% economic growth for decades, but quote, terrible capital markets performance since 2007. And and every cycle we hear about the promise of emerging markets in places like Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America.

Yet returns often lag the narrative. And I would argue we've seen a little bit of that also in crypto venture where you know we were promised parallel financial rails to bank the unbanked and we received memecoins instead. And so I guess the specific question for you is when it comes to emerging markets, what do you believe is holding these regions back and what specific catalysts will finally help returns catch up to the narrative?

Wow, that that's a good question. uh was holding this region back. I I I kind of try to think like capital market is uh I think when you think about capital market participants I think uh this come from one of my mentor who has done like 200 plus IPOs and he said this famous quote is like when you think about capital market participants think 90% of them are monkeys and idiots and I think it's like a there's certain level of truth to it. Um people often tie capital market performance or price performance to direct fundamentals or you know like like what actually how use that to exactly measure a country's growth and I think what Jeff is trying to segregate is if you look at the fundamental growth and the crypto market they could be derailed right and I think similarly thing has happened obviously in crypto over a longest period of time and the reason I think a certain market perform better a lot of time has nothing to do with is f quality being better project ID being more brilliant or the product become uh being more competitive or wider distribution is only because it marked up more because maybe a certain country's advantage in the more developed the system across the value chain in terms of the u the capital market machine us being an amazing great example of that right like if you're a great talent today in Silicon Valley with AI PhD from Samberg you probably able to raise money pretty easily at a pretty high valuation a lot of people throwing money at you and then if a friend is serious A to mark it up at Serious B And the whole value chain is really well established all the way through the public market and that's why you saw all these DATs happening in America in the financial engineering largely because two things the dep of liquidity there and also the rule the listing rule are really relaxed right like I used to own public company in Hong Kong the rule there is really strict right and if you apply the same thing in c in terms of crypto company you're seeing the same thing uh as a founder myself who put money in R&D who build who also have investor from other people and also invest in other people. If you look at fundamentally I think APAC um we one of the biggest problem is we don't have any sizable fund here really anything I think in America or Europe I can probably anyway name job probably about 15 1 billion AUM fund in Asia good luck naming maybe two uh it's very very difficult and al also I think as a founder you saw the series A and B are now very very broken right now in our industry we got a lot of capital they're willing to angel you or raise the preede at 5 million 6 million valuation and try to get in there cheap with their portfolio management strategy.

We got some people that would buy your liquids and do OTC with you in the much to later stage and then if you're trying to raise like $20 million right now I think even for more proven founder like me and my peers is not something like super easy today because nobody want to underwrite their so call in their mid curve check right so so I think going back to the Jeff concept I think a lot of time is it really to do with the the project fundamental or is it really to do with a lot of other reasons that really affected that and obviously you kind of try to see this as a swing where the equilibrium hopefully is some someday will swing back to a more measured outcome.

But I think that's the phenomenon that's happening not just in web 3 but also web two.

Yeah, I think this is such an interesting point because it really it underscores the importance of crypto. I mean ultimately it's a matter of investor trust, right? And the problem that emerging markets has is that you know they just don't have investor trust in general to have functioning capital market systems. I think you know their independent sort of local and regional financial regimes have been unstable for a variety of factors either inept governments like you know rampant inflation what have you. Um and as such like I think a lot of people just haven't had access to um proper financial products that really underpin the foundation of a stable financial risk regime where if your own citizens don't want to you know keep their savings in your own local currency like how do you expect overseas people to do the same.

So um I also think if you're a really smart founder in emerging markets like you know Southeast Asia has a lot of promise but the challenges for example are your average transaction value is about 10% of what you see in Europe and the US and secondly each individual economy is relatively small compared to like the addressable markets elsewhere and you have to localize you know your uh user experience to each one and you know you kind of see like um it's very difficult to create a strong regional flare um and you know really roll that out quickly whereas if you do something in the US you have a captive audience of like 300 million people really quickly so crypto is really important because I think it gives a lot of people in these emerging markets economies a way to actually uh protect their savings protect against inflation but it also gives founders who are like really bright people um and that's really what Ethere looks for you know bright founders in India and Bang in like LATAM in Africa or what have you who want to build global products because the beauty of crypto is that it's software that just transcends borders. It's permissionless. You don't need to rely on any sort of um specific government. uh you can actually just sell to the entire world from day one and that's really interesting and I think where you have founders who have that global ambition um you know crypto is the perfect like launchpad for a lot of uh their their visions to create like really great financial products for everyone

in terms of the Middle East uh broadly yes it is a big market um however I think where we see growth is in specific pockets of the Middle East and those tend to be the smaller countries. Uh hence a lot of founders find it difficult to scale their businesses. Um and I also think there's element of um there's also the element of political unrest in some of the large markets uh which kind of uh limits the amount of security and interest from global players to participate in those markets. um bringing it to crypto uh I think that in uh segments uh like you know payments and stable coins and large markets like Turkey uh and Egypt we've seen a lot of uh traction there um and I think that crypto has fulfilled this promise to a certain extent when it comes to uh holding stable coins uh to hedge for currency risk for example uh we've seen this play out quite well in these markets What probably slowed it down a bit is the regulations. So in those big markets, regulations haven't progressed as fast as uh we'd like them to.

But I think as regulations catch up in those markets, we will see more adoption and interest and liquidity. Makes sense.

Great. Um you know, the paradox in emerging markets that our that our panelists just just walked us through, strong growth but weak returns, uh I think is just one example of the broader challenges facing venture as an asset class which I'd love to spend a bit of time talking with with you guys about right so uh it may not be apparent to everyone in the audience but I'm sure this is something that our panelists feel viscerally um venture has a lot of challenges today uh you know a stalled IPO market capital generally being commoditized and you know competition you know intense competition from the mega platforms all of which I think brings about the question how does the venture model itself need to adapt in the face of these changes. We are for what it's worth already seeing some adaptations today. For example, funds that were traditionally venture moving into liquid strategies and selling secondaries in order to meet LP uh liquidity needs. But moving ahead, the question, how do you see venture evolving and what changes are you making to your funds specifically?

Do you want to go first since you guys have help? [snorts] Yeah, I think it's um you know the the core piece that I think Auggie also alluded to is that we strongly believe that liquidity in crypto is a feature not a bug and so you know because of this you know traditionally in venture you just have hybrid uh private investments you don't really have to think about tokens or liquid um securities very much in crypto you have to think about it from day one um to the extent a lot of your companies companies are hoping to monetize or build communities utilizing tokens. Um, you know, a token kind of has to fit in the protocol from day one. You can't just attach it on later. I think these days retailers and investors are very sophisticated.

Um, they really want to see um token utility and you know a really good velocity syncs for the token across like you know D5 for example. Um that's definitely one of it. I think the the other thing with venture is um in some ways like you know crypto because of a lot of the principles of decentralization I think I continue to think that one of the more interesting value propositions of crypto is the ability for permissionless capital formation to some extent they don't really need me right like if you can IO and I think a lot of those are coming back like you know we're seeing many of the big players start launching um reg like regulated ICO platform platforms. You also have uh sort of you know investment club type platforms like Echo and Legion that anyone can participate in and oftent time even like more favorable terms than like you know a venture capitalist. So I think it's really on us to develop playbooks um for founders to really help them um as they build their business so that you know there is value from taking money from a venture fund as opposed to just launching an ICO and I think it just helps the entire space level up.

Um because now like you know crypto VC has been an asset class for I think like properly for around like 8 years now. Um and you know as the space keeps changing we also need to adapt. But I think there are a few things that sort of persist through the various cycles that we know to be true that we can observe with like you know the projects that have have succeeded versus the ones that don't. Um and you know hopefully the industry becomes stronger from all those insights too.

Yeah. So there are two ways u that we're thinking about how can the firm evolve over time. Um so from our side one is touching on the element of liquidity. Um we as a VC fund want to focus on what we do best which is venture investing. Uh but in crypto obviously liquidity is important to LPS and team and so forth.

Um and also we think that bitcoin is often the first entry point for people in crypto. So a lot of a lot of DLPs uh from our side they want access to bitcoin bitcoin yield. Uh hence that's why we created a a a side pocket for investors who you know want to own a bitcoin position and get get yield on it. That's one way that we we have um adopted. Uh we don't claim to be traders.

We're not going to launch a liquid fund and trade. Um but we did think it makes sense to create a side pocket for Bitcoin yield for example. Um again because that's how people generally enter the space and that's how they do more crypto. Second thing is rumor side our edge has been focusing on B2B uh being you know the partners for distribution and [snorts] there I mean we haven't done this yet but a thought that comes to mind often is how can we build an edge and one way is if we are able to uh selective um selectively uh play a role in uh like larger size deals whether it's growth or PE uh because that way we're able to align our interest with large partners for distribution whether those are uh stable companies or exchanges or trading venues. Um having that alignment and connectivity towards uh those companies is important for our model.

Hence we thought about how do we participate selectively in uh those bigger transactions u to allow for distribution.

Yeah. I think I think actually they already talk about a lot of the um the market. I think if what two thing I want to just like add on top of that is um I think we need to separate like what what need to remain the same for venture for the years to come and what will probably inevitably change right and I think if you think about the venture nature um like the way I kind of think about venture is venture is a product that is that require a lot of emotional belief and conviction right it was like the queens dragon the days t some pirates and say I will give you a ship I'll give you 10 ship I give 200 people I give you some money and go find me America or go find me India end up finding America right and probably most of this ship die in the ocean and it's the same thing that when when soft bank or Japanese came to China and say you know I I don't I don't know what this jacket guy is talking about but he might be right and let me buy 20% of his company give him $25 million is something when a media company in Africa is from South America. Nasper went to China and become the biggest shareholder of 10 cent and think about the nature of venture it is irrational right like fundamentally because it is very almost impossible to replicate and grow the size of venture in a way that is exponential right like everybody knows AUM is the biggest enemy of return to a certain degree simply because you're relying on a small group of outliers to create outlier and impossible outcomes and it is hard and most of them are going to buy in the harbor with by the time the weather of the storm and I think that need to change. We shouldn't try to turn venture both as a founder and investor myself like we shouldn't try to turn it into a ETF.

We shouldn't try to tune it into asset management product or fixed income product. Go buy that with Goldman Sachs. Go buy that with Aries product. Get your 8% open bank account. But I think venture need to stay true to their color so that it has a special place in this society and for industry so imminent and nent like crypto because we need those pirates and we need this backers the pirates and I think what need to change is that uh I think most of the GPS I would say traditionally web two when I was a web two GP and I was a web two founder I I think like 70% of GP has zero value or negative value I think in crypto that ratio goes to 90%.

And what we have is I think a lot of GP don't understand a lot of this 26 years old kid who have never built a product in their life who has probably just got lucky by you know being a DJ buying some meme quite early on all of a sudden telling you how you should operate your business you should do this you should do that there's a narrative you should be going afterwards maybe you should add this tag and buzzwords and that's funny because I think a lot of GP in our industry are not really qualified and I'm not saying the founders are most of the founders are not too right so I think we need to see a lot for founders in GB really like one of my favorite saying from clean underwood is the men must know his limits right stick to what you're good at what's your core excuse what's your core DNA like vis about enterprise because that's largely what they have an advantage for my group we we do almost like 90% 95% things in consumer because that's what we're good at so I think regard investor founder stick to what you're good at and I think we're going to see a lot more specialty founder specialty manager coming out of it instead a lot more generic one they're undifferiated so I think that is probably going to inevitably happen I think the LPS will probably adapt towards that way as well LP's going to ask like why should I choose you to invest in this sector instead of like yeah you're a great guy makes sense we are unfortunately out of time but I think we covered a lot of ground your firms global trends emerging markets how venture is changing so with that let's wrap up this panel and please join me with a big round of applause for our panelists thank Thank you. Bye, Joe.