1/ a quick thread on NFTs and why JPEGs are worth spending some time and energy understanding
are NFTs a bubble?
no.
wealth is a bubble. 1% of the global adult population are now millionaires.
2/ the global market for luxury goods i.e. conspicuous spending is absolutely massive
NFTs are digital flex / status symbol for a new class of consumers, but unlike the traditional markets of wealth and status, they are open to anyone, anywhere with verifiable scarcity
3/ for those who says spending millions on JPEGs is dumb and we should be solving world hunger, please give the folks on the trad art collector list a call first
people are spending $200M on blobs of paint. how is spending $2M on blobs of pixels any less noble?
4/ as noted by @Rewkang, look at the relative market caps of these companies
the addressable market for artificially scarce status symbols is in the trillions
the addressable market for verifiably scarce digital status symbols is likely just as big, if not bigger
5/ and unlike bags, watches, and shoes, digital status symbols can be fractionalized, enjoy shared ownership, and used as collateral in on-chain financial markets
@MessariCrypto highlighted the massive financialization opportunities for NFTs
6/ so there are three options
1: do nothing 🙃
2: embrace NFTs, dive in, and attempt to learn and understand; and
3: mock NFTs as a bubble and nothing more than elaborate money laundering, just as you mocked bitcoin 5 years ago
i choose 2
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1/ @CrucibleCap Q1 VC report, sharing for those curious about the process of investing. we use @attio.
sourcing - we get a LOT of inbound, mostly on this site and LinkedIn. we only track investable deals in our mandate and valuation range. this is why we write / post!
2/ the number of deals through our pipeline has stayed pretty consistent quarter over quarter - we generally will do 1-2 meetings and then decide quickly if we want to dig in or not
3/ deal momentum is important - a lack of momentum can kill deals. i look at how efficient we are.
notably diligence and execution time was cut down 50% - this is due to better internal alignment and process handoffs between @itsanhonour_ @kellyjgreer and i
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