Thread by @mrjasonchoi

Takeaways from 4 months of interviewing crypto investors (a thread):

Full summary episode: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/les…

"Providing exposure" alone is not a defensible strategy for funds.

Fund managers have to take care of events with no public market analogues for traditional investors (e.g. custodianship, airdrops, staking, hard forks) too.

- from ep with @HHorsley of @BitwiseInvest

"Perfect" cryptoassets don't exist.

Investors need to bet on assets with local maxima of value and evaluate trade offs between censorship resistance, expressivity, throughput, latency, scalability, governance, privacy etc.

- from ep with @KyleSamani of @multicoincap

"Fat Protocols" may be inconclusive.

# of "protocol" and "utility" tokens are both high. Value accrual dynamics are unclear. Probability of success for investors may not increase just by betting on supposed foundational layers.

- from ep with @jbrukh of @coinfund_io

Investments with venture risk-reward profiles are usuallly based more on "soft" data points, like team and product. Crypto investors can complement research and time investments by quantifying reflexivity, Sharpe ratios etc.

- from ep with @cburniske of @placeholdervc

Crypto projects rely heavily on communities, much more so than traditional startups.

Investors have to learn to be scrappy and evaluate the quality of said communities - through Subreddits, Rocket Chat, Telegram, Discord etc.

- from ep with @NTmoney of @1confirmation

In pre-seed or seed environments where metrics may be lacking, investors should look for those who can clearly articulate their vision of the future and how they fit in it. (Adam was one of the first investors in @coinbase).

- from ep with @AdamDraper of @BoostVC

Generalist VC funds can look for synergies between blockchain cos and other portfolio companies.

Non-crypto ventures can be a low-hanging fruit in accelerating usage for public blockchains (e.g. NFT usage in gaming products).

- from ep with @bonkat of @500Startups:

ICOs in their current iteration are largely not constructive.

Currently, supply exceeds demand as projects create artificial demand through development funds and paid exchange listings.

- from ep with @Melt_Dem of Athena Capital

Tokenization represents an evolution, not a revolution.

LP interest in real estate has the most clear value add. Medium to long term may see equity in companies being tokenized, with voting mechanisms added in.

- from ep with @APompliano of Morgan Creek

Institutional capital in crypto is minimal, but interest is high in Asia + beyond.

The "foundational" assets will likely receive the most inflow from institutional capital first. Funds can help educate and curate.

- from ep with @collectionist of @KeneticCapital

This wraps up season 1 of the show, which covered macro investment concepts.

Season 2 will focus more on developers and researchers on technical/social ideas. Thank you to all my generous interviewees for sharing your ideas!

/end