some bear market thoughts on crypto: 1) we're in the peak depth: almost everyone is done selling - we just lack marginal buyers yet either we get capital rotation back from ai soon (q4 maybe?) or we remain flat for some time 2) fundraising is p bad rn, particularly early-stage there's no infra trade left and most crypto vcs have either: - no money - or no idea on how to fund 'products' most got burnt out due to overfunding bs infra in '23-24 which were all down only coins (so no exits) all risky capital is funding ai now as a founder: unless you've some significant traction or big pedigree, it's a waste of time to even think of fundraising 3) teams are shutting down left & right - mostly due to lack of funds or PMF which directly impacts job markets - there's some hiring on institutional side (nyc-based) but apart from that, the hiring has decreased significantly only companies with huge treasuries are able to hire and asian projects are hit the hardest from what i can see capital is a huge moat for startups for 'right to win' - for otherwise capital-starved early-stage 4) there's a huge gap in early-stage funding: best time to angel invest at a low val or even start micro-accelerators due to lack of infra money, hackathon/grants have now reduced by ~95% now earlier l1 grants/funding used to attract a significant number of early-stage teams - further driving away talent if fundraising doesn't return by q1' 27 - innovation will significantly shrink and crypto will become a 'legacy industry' 5) crypto is now just 'financial markets' - there's broadly four markets with PMF: - memecoins & spot (solana/rh) - perps (hl) - yields (eth) - prediction markets (poly) + stablecoin payments and then a long tail markets like pokémon cards etc all non-financial protocols on governance, social, proof of xyz, identity, gaming etc are now dead - they're now just a feature on speculative apps 6) everyone's either: - building an 'everything exchange' coinbase, robinhood, solana, pump, axiom, fomo, polymarket, jupiter, phantom - or packaging yield usdt, usdc, usdg, morpho, aave, kamino 7) there're only 2 types of chains left: - general community-led: eth & solana - distribution-led: base, robinhood, tempo, bsc rest all are dead or will be dead soon 8) the survived teams are incredibly product-focussed now: - better trading execution - ux/mobile focus finally, building good products and nailing distribution is the only way to win the whole game is now like building a fintech app with crypto rails ofc, speculation will always be the holy grail of financial markets and even stocks & gold now trade like crypto - everything is now a narrative trade! 9) there are some teams which are building non-crypto infra (eg. robotics/data collection/depin types) funded by crypto VCs: but we all know they're mostly a scam looking to launch high float, low fdv tokens (and will probably fail) and will abandon the tokens whenever they get some PMF and call it 'credits' (iykyk) 10) there're some incredible liquid opportunities but with teams giving up/shutting down/abondoning - it's incredibly hard to judge or filter out quality but i'd still say holding good quality liquid tokens have the best r/r a simple filter is just buy tokens which has: - good treasury - founder-led who understands distribution - upcoming sector tailwinds (happy to share my list) 11) there's only few traders left in trenches: but they're incredibly smart and they can make money in any market now many are now trading stocks and killing it - as they're the pro narrative traders safe to say: all crème layer genz traders have traded/are trading crypto this core audience is always on lookout to try out new experimentations 12) stablecoin payments: they’re p huge in the shadow economy (eg. an Indian manufacturer buying from china in USDT to escape taxes & regulation hassle) but organising a shadow market is a challenging and unsolved problem agentic payments are a huge opportunity but no PMF yet (typical coldstart problem) - all numbers pushed by base/solana are just wash volumes i'd bet on stripe/tempo (+ trad companies) to gain a lion share in regulated stablecoin payments just because of distribution 13) opportunities now lie on building: - better trading interfaces & modality (via ai, mobile) - more novel markets (eg. compute, emerging market coverage, metadao) - anything around token or memecoins (speculative mechanics) - cool fintech ideas which failed due to banking/regulations (eg. neobanks) and ofc, picks & shovels around this biggest bet: post ai, speculation and trading as a way to show conviction on anything socially will increasingly rise and crypto is the de-facto rails for any new markets 14) and yess, memecoins (internet culture coins) will come back extra-ordinarily as macro moves and capital rotates from ai it'll bring interest back to crypto and once again, sidelined VCs will be salty i still remain cautiously optimistic on broader crypto and p optimistic on crypto as 'anything market' rails 🫡