1/ investing in bitcoin has historically been limited to passive exposure (long BTC)
yesterday, @viridifunds launched $RIGZ, the first publicly listed crypto mining ETF
as the bitcoin industry grows, so do opportunities to invest along the bitcoin value chain 👇
let's dive in!
2/ before bitcoin, i worked in the oil & gas industry.
investors who want exposure to oil & gas in their portfolio don't just buy contracts for WTI crude or nat gas.
they buy a diversified portfolio of companies and commodities across the oil and gas value chain
3/ an E&P company can produce oil at a lower cost than they sell it, and investors can realize significantly more upside than holding just the underlying commodity, oil
a refining company that converts crude into product and retails it can extract higher margins
4/ similarly, companies are starting to emerge along different parts of the bitcoin value chain
for example, my company @CoinSharesCo ($CS.ST) creates bitcoin-based financial products and services. so does @coinbase ($COIN).
miners are like E&P companies - they "produce" $BTC
5/ now, to "produce" bitcoin, you need
🖥️ a specialized semiconductor (ASIC)
⚡️ electricity
per the the economics of bitcoin 👇the real competitive edge is lowering the cost of "producing" bitcoin by (a) reducing the capex drag of hardware and (b) securing the lowest cost power
6/ $RIGZ is an actively managed ETF, with a mandate is to invest in semiconductor and ASIC companies and crypto mining operators who are getting the majority of their power from "clean energy" or renewable power sources
you may be confused 😕 isn't bitcoin boiling the ocean?
7/ interestingly, over 50% of north american bitcoin mining is done with renewable energy 🌿
note the current US energy grid only utilizes 19% renewables 😢
that makes bitcoin mining one of the greenest industries in north america, and a great sector for this type of product!
8/ as one of the world's largest digital asset managers, @CoinSharesCo is proud to be Viridi's lead investor, and to continue to expand the universe of crypto investment products with innovative partners like @ViridiFunds, @3iq_corp, and @InvescoEMEA
9/ for more detail on $RIGZ, see the link below!
disclosure: this is not financial advice, DYOR. CoinShares is an investor in Viridi, and an advisor to the management company. i personally own $RIGZ.
the sell off was driven by short term holders selling at a loss. let's see what comes out in the Q1 13F filings - our mercenaries may have been top buyers after all. love that for us!
2/ we're in a rough spot
stocks below 200 dmas, indeces selling off, Bessent and Trump both fixated on forcing rates lower even if it costs the market
this is a relief bounce driven by retail buyers (they're a contrarian indicator) and algorithmic CTAs
1/ quick slide rip from my @Blockworks_ DAS talk - Believe in Something
this is where it all began. everything we talked about ten years ago when we started building the world's first bitcoin investment firm has come to pass.
so why isn't bitcoin a million dollars?
2/ if we take out bitcoin and ethereum, this is the last five years of crypto markets
the names may have changed but the numbers haven't
this is a big problem. there's no growth.
3/ 2024 was propped up by two persistent bids - Microstrategy and Blackrock
but the buyers aren't missionaries, they're mercenaries
MSTR buyers are farming the convert arb
IBIT buyers are farming basis
1/ just wrapped my quarterly report for @CrucibleVC
our playbook is simple
as a GP, every quarter i quantify and qualify our ability to run this playbook. we double down on what works, experiment / re-visit with what isn't working.
let's dig into the data and tools👇
2/ we use @attio to manage our pipeline
step one is analyzing the funnel - both raw #s and relative %s
with a small team, quality > quantity. low conversion % signals top of funnel is too broad. high conversion may signal you're not seeing enough deal flow.
@attio 3/ "customer experience" in the context of venture is largely based on responsiveness, so tracking time spent processing deal flow is an important metric
i'm pretty happy with our pacing. good to spend more time in later stages ensuring everything is ticked and tied.
1/ gave a talk last week on "energy, compute, crypto" - the three pillars of the modern economy and the converge of three trillion dollar investment themes
sharing the slides and full deck - let's rip 👇
2/ compute rules capital markets
Nvidia was the big story in 2024, but Broadcom cracked the top 10 too and TSMC cemented its place alongside the rest of the Mag 7
expect 2025 to continue this trend as energy and compute carry capital markets
3/ while everyone was loading up on semiconductor names, energy had its own quiet rally
Vistra, an independent power producer, outperformed Nvidia and Bitcoin
this year, we'll see more focus on the US grid which is by far the greater bottleneck than GPUs
1/ ok i think i have finally sort of gotten to the root of my issue with DePIN as a category
data gathering / observability is step one but it is in and of itself not a valuable exercise. generating tons of new data doesn't unlock billions of $ from buyers for this data.
2/ the bottleneck isn't data but rather actionable insight
the real value in data is *understanding whats going on* and then *doing something* with all of that data that generates economic value, either through unlocking revenue (top line) or lowering cost (bottom line)
3/ DePIN feels like people strapping sensors to things and then trying to sell data (of questionable value) and then saying later there's something else that they can do through that aggregation
some projects enabling optimization w data w various degrees of automation
1/ quick rip on why @Polymarket matters and why the future of information is markets
markets are efficient at pricing information. if you have information or insight that others don't, there's a huge opportunity to generate alpha. alpha generation requires information edge.
2/ the last few months show distrust of main stream media (MSM) and formal, credentialed sources of information is at an all time high.
so where is information coming from?
- citizen reporters on X
- indie media / podcasts
and markets will price the signals generated
3/ not all markets are equal - liquidity is key. more liquid equals more better.
see the divergence in odds btw Polymarket and Kalshi. Polymarket had 10x the liquidity -> higher signal.
market microstructure also drives differences but the effect is more subtle imho