Colosseum receives thousands of startup submissions ranging from “fintech 3.0” to non-sovereign permissionless crypto protocols, and everything in-between. Our VC fund invests heavily in products utilizing fiat stablecoins, tokenized RWAs, etc. as we believe blockchains will dramatically lower costs, improve efficiency, and disrupt current financial infra. But we also believe this fintech 3.0 wave is familiarizing TradFi with blockchain-based asset issuance, trade/payment execution, and settlement. Essentially laying the same rails for which non-sovereign, truly decentralized financial products will leverage to eventually revolutionize global markets. My strongly held view is that the latter is where the largest returns will be when we look back on this time 10-15 years from now.

Crypto doesn’t need to perfectly predict its breakout moment, it just needs to survive long enough for the world to hand it one. There is a clear pattern of real-world stressors creating openings, and crypto products naturally slotting into them. Political polling/trust breaks down => prediction markets like @Polymarket suddenly go mainstream . Geopolitical conflict disrupts commodities => @HyperliquidX finds PMF with 24/7 commodity perpetual markets. AI pushes nation state surveillance towards panopticon-level => privacy-preserving money like @Zcash become not just niche, but necessary. Crypto has always been a bet on the future. Each “unlock” isn’t driven by crypto itself, but by the world needing what crypto uniquely enables. As our industry keeps building and simply endures the volatility, these moments compound. What looks like a fragmented set of experiments today gradually coheres into something much larger.