Outlook for VCs in 2026 | EBC11

Transcript

Everybody ready? We do have the microphones here. >> Hello. Hello. >> Yeah, everything's working. All right. Well, first of all, thank you to the audience for making us uh making it to this panel. Um we we will try to make it a a lasting one and a fun one. So, we already agreed that we will be respectfully disagreeing while going over in this panel. So please guys interrupt yourself and uh let's start and kick this off with a little bit of an introduction round who you are and what the fund or your project what you're doing and uh what you're most looking forward to to speaking about in the next let's say 30 minutes.

>> Let's start with you. >> Thank you. >> My name is Jesus Lander. I used to be a director in Barclays and right now uh we have built a project where we tokenize hedge funds. Um over my career I've spent a lot of time with family offices uh hedge funds um VC funds on my career and that's why I'm in the panel and also going to speak from the perspective of a project that is racing right now. So looking forward discussing uh you know the challenges that projects have you know during this uh new cycle. >> Perfect. So that means that you actually have to deal with guys like the one sitting on the left of you, right?

>> With all of them. Yes. How many more? Hundreds of more. >> Hundreds more. Okay. >> Plenty. >> So take it away. >> We're We're all the same. It's very hard to tell us apart. >> Um it's okay. Um we are last, but I feel like that's being first in reverse, you know? So it's uh I I enjoy that. This is going to be a tough crowd because I'm going to keep keep going with the bad jokes. Uh my name is Lex. I'm a co-founder of Generative Ventures. Generative Ventures is a early stage venture fund focused on the intersection of crypto, fintech, and AI. We like to think about it as the machine economy.

Also, we like to think about it as robot money. Robots are people, too, just like corporations. Uh, and they need money as well. That's horrible. It's like three zero out of three jokes have landed so far. I feel like everybody's really If you're tired, raise your hand. Okay, if you raise your hand, you're not that tired because you had the energy to do it. Um, previously I was uh at Consensus for about four years where I ran the DeFi and fintech products and was the CMO and chief economist and I started out as an entrepreneur um back back in the 2010s building out a robo adviser in New York. And so I feel like my entire life is this uh dystopian sequence of building various robots for

money. Uh, and now everything that we see is uh is money for robots and robots for money. So, I'm excited to talk about that if you haven't noticed. >> Well, thanks for that. I um by the way, the we lost Ying Wii on the way. Um he actually got his uh his bag stolen and he's still searching for that in in Barcelona. So, he's not he's not joining us. Uh now, moving over. >> Hello everyone. Uh my name is Sagar Bwalia. I'm a GP and co-founder at Blockchain Founders Capital. Uh we are based in Germany. It's a German fund but we invest globally. We are I mean you can see like it's a blockchain founders capital but we invest in the intersection of web 2 and web 3 is like web 2.5. So we investing in the next

generation of internet companies. We highly focus on migrant. I mean I myself come from India 15 years ago in Germany. So we are really bullish on migrant founders. We invest 300,000 euro ticket size. Um we do like pre said we have 22 investments 70% in valley 30% in Europe so reach out. Um before I hand over to my colleague uh I would like to ask like please raise your hand who are new to the crypto who doesn't own crypto. >> Wow. So it's like a >> don't do it. You you still have time. Leave now.

>> Yeah. And uh please raise your hand if you are uh holding Bitcoin. Okay. One more question. How many of you have actually used the meta mask and interacted with D5 protocols like you use like okay um one more thing I would like to add is also like I think uh um I'm also co-founder of ETH Munich we try to educate so many people but I think we talked too much about education I think you don't need to educate people when WhatsApp and Uber came you know you just need to throw the application and they will start using know and that's that's same will happen in crypto and AI and everything Um, yeah, we have a lot to talk right?

>> Don't buy crypto and learn nothing. >> Uh, hi guys. Uh, my name is Chris. I'm the founding partner of Equilibrium Ventures. Um, Equilibrium Ventures has about 65 blockchain engineers in house. So our background is we actually helped build the first version of Starknet. Helped build the first version of Alio. Um Celestia, ZKYNC, Aptos, Ethereum, Polygon, Salana, Ripple, Polka Dot, Algoran, pretty much anybody that you can name on the L1 L2 side. We actually help write their code. And so we started as an engineering firm, was investing off the balance sheet. Um the balance

sheet accidentally ended up doing very well. And so, uh, we wanted to start the fund, uh, to kind of bring everything back to tech a little bit. Um, so we're probably one of the few funds that can actually do techd like read through your GitHub repo and then also if we invest, you have 65 engineers that can actually help you ship code like build your product, um, scale operations, etc. Um, yeah. So basically what you were saying is that you actually understand in what the hell you're investing in, right?

When you have all the blockchain engineers sitting sitting in your own company right? >> Yeah. I mean hopefully we all do, >> not just me, but yeah. >> Yeah. Let let me stay with you uh Christopher to kick this off with the first question. So what do you think uh how would success look like for a VC in 2026? And are you aiming more for token returns, adoption, exits, something else entirely? what has to happen in 2026 to move this thing actually really forward because we were just discussing we hearing like the when when you're in the game for a little while you hear the same things all over and over and over again. Um but what is the stuff that really matters?

Uh yeah. So I think at this point like we've had probably about like 10 years of a playground within the crypto market where kind of you could raise a bunch of money on like a PowerPoint and a dream and then launch your token and everybody would kind of speculate on like if your tech was actually good or if it actually had any end use case. So as of right now like our investment strategy has pretty much been or our engineering side too like we help research a lot of good technical concepts but a lot of them at the end of the day actually don't have any end use case and so they end up just being like a research project that actually has no real value. And so a lot of our investment investment has

actually shifted towards like if you have a real product and like not only is it good tech does it actually have like a clear path towards revenue. Um and so so far I think the portfolio has done quite well because I think the crypto market and people that are investing in the industry is now realizing you know we actually have to build real businesses and like products that have real users. Um, and that's kind of our forte since we take technical concepts and actually build products out of them.

So um yeah. >> So, that means no investment into meme coins in your funds, right? >> I I don't know how you would do techd on a memecoin. So, that's yeah, out of scope. >> Yeah, I heard something just like that from Sagar. So um can you tell me a little bit more about the recent investments that you guys did and specifically why you chose that? >> So I mean uh this year we did like seven already. Um and so our bet is on blockchain and AI is an emerging tech but uh let me ask the question to audience because I think I don't want to bore you guys. How many of you really understand the tech behind Facebook, Uber and WhatsApp? Raise your hand like

less than 1% right. So our investment thesis is bit different than um like rather than investing in D5 protocols or investing in L1's or couple of different um you know D5 stuff where you are providing liquidity also our recent investment involves like one of the investment is like they might use blockchain in 3 years down the road after hitting the product market fit it called Abstack. the guy was u working for one of the largest advertising company in valley and um so basically probably he doesn't know like when you use the Facebook and you click on some advertisement right and you end up downloading the application Facebook exactly knows that you click that link you went to the app store or Android

store and you download that application right and Apple get to know a couple of years back and they turn on turn off that switch that which was tracking the user behavior. So recent investment is appstack which is the last one last second one where these guys come up with the solution where you don't need to like how mobile app makes more money right rather than going to the Facebook and paying these all advertising mafias by using the AI tech that's one of the investment second investment we did is in UK the guy is just barely 19 year old kid he's coming from YC he built like a auditing agents how it works like so okay you go to like big four companies for auditing right they are like very expensive I come from Germany So I mean you talk about wire card then you can

see like oh eny whether you trust them or not I have nothing against them I'm not biased there. So so basically these big four are like really expensive they take lots of time to do auditing and then you can still can't trust you know from the historical results. This guy goes to like a billion dollar two billion dollar companies and tell him like or telling the CFO of the company like hey I have built the AI agent which gives you 10x faster and cheaper auditing than you using these big four people right so that guy is basically like 20 year old he's like making half a million dollar revenue he convinced like door dash and kind of the businesses which are already valued at five or 7 billion so this kind of founders we are investing there where like they might use blockchain to track the auditing in

next three years but we are investing in companies which makes the revenue even they're making $20 revenue that should not come from token or any kind of like K activities or you know the launching some random token and creating the fake liquidities they should come from like real businesses. So we invest in real businesses which might solve the problem 10x faster and cheaper. Of course we there is a market risk we might lose the investment as well but our focus is like you build the product you use the tag you talk you don't talk about tag let the user use your product and keep coming back to you they would like to pay you the basically to use your product and then after three or five years later they have the huge community they might do the token you know >> yeah all right so got it so it's like

real problem real use case and basically not try to sell me an idea but try to sell me the like complete solution and basically have some revenue in in the best case. Uh I want to go to Jesus now or to Jesus now. Um can you tell me um because you are like right here in the stage now as a as a project dealing with these guys. Um so what what is it that you are specifically differentiating and why are they why do they want to invest in you and do they more look like into an equity investment or is that a token investment if at all?

>> Peach moment then. Thank you. Uh no. Um so yeah, just to give you a bit of background, right? So I'm coming from traditional finance and I've seen already a few cycles, right? Especially dealing with uh family offices, VCs across private credit mainly. So something that I've seen right now is as Sier was saying uh we are in a moment where you don't care about what infrastructure you're running on what you care about what can I is what I can do with infrastructure. So I'm seeing more traction on on projects that get invested because they're building applications that abstract complexities.

In our case, for example, we have right now product market feed with 20 plus hedge funds because we abstract from them the complexities of tokenizing their funds and distributing distributing them to channels in web three and web two and for them to raise more money. So I go to Hess and say, "Hey, I can make it easy for you to raise money. They don't care how they do Well, of course they they care certain legals and compliance issues, but abstracting that, they don't care the technology. As long as I can deliver on them raising more AUM therein and same on the side of the users of investors that invest in our tokenized strategies, they at the end of the day they don't care much about these days in what blockchain I'm investing of even long Solana, short Solana. What they care

more about is how much money I can make here versus on equities versus in commodities. So we are now abstracting away the complexities of blockchain and simplifying the message. So we can be attracting not only to crypto VCs but also as institutions are here and retail in crypto is that we are in a new game where we have now a lot of traction with traditional VCs. VC is that before they were not that as active on the blockchain but right now as our clients are institutions are users on traditional finance retail and institutional then then we getting more traction by uh from from those those VCs. So uh this VC is one equity. Um so

right now for the rounds we're doing equity with token warrants and um we are not seeing much actually activity from from token VCs because these VCs I'm not seeing them deploying but I'm seeing the equity VCs from the traditional finance deploying and with a lot of FOMO on investing in blockchain projects. >> Um I would like to add a small uh note here. So I I'm not against the token model. I'm wearing a chain channeling socks so I can be the Dion as much as you are the Dion. Okay. So you have to understand the the the ICO era concept. You know the whole idea of doing the ICO and token was to raise the capital from the retail who cannot get access to this deal flow because financial world is like very closed dooror community. You

know if you are a guy with $5,000 you cannot invest in a valley based project or some of the best projects right there was not a case in Facebook Uber or Google came out but now it's the case. So the whole idea behind ICO is like okay you become part of that you know crowdfunding round where this guy is going to build the next generation of companies. So you can prove your ownership by token that hey I'm also part of that investment round you know and I can also get financial gains on top of that you are also like emotionally involved because you like to use that product but what happened like as a human nature you know we are like a greedy bastards we like to misuse the every concept more than the we like to use it on proper way so this all

founders started raising token money because it looks like more easy exit before building the product and having the product market fit. So the if you look at the token is like a ownership on blockchain it's the same like a stock the people who build like a Microsoft Google they did the IPO after finding the product market fleet to raise more money right and they can scale it more in the different continents and then people can own the stocks but what happened in crypto is like basically the founder who just raised $2 million he's constantly chasing this wbe to raise like 10 or$20 million on token play so he can just retire in two years if you look at the actual founders they are locked in for 10 15 years and there is no guarantee you know that you will become successful but they are very

emotionally and mentally involved into that they are building that will become and change the world I mean when the Uber came out the everyone was like betting like hey taxi market will be done taxi market was like a less than 1% of fraction what Uber has captured the market in current world it just created the new market people are using more Uber than taxi you can say like 99% to 1% market cap so I think the founders who are building uh tokenbased is a play you know I think you should raise the money not saying like okay so what happens like for very short like founders comes to me and like hey saga I'm building token play but I'm happy to give you equity as well like dude you're not you're just selling the same you're just giving me the option to buy the equity there is no value in that one

what you guys should do is like basically raise the money but don't chase the token hype just have the meaningful product and it's your own company if you're selling at $20 million if you make it work it will go to the $500 million or billion dollar and you can sell it later at the higher price. But what founders are chasing like hey I'm going to give you the token which gives me this like easy liquidity play and I can take the secondaries and you can see in crypto I mean like five six project I can name it like in last 6 months. I'll I'll take this moment to interrupt you and and say that we're at the European Blockchain Convention uh where I will make the claim that uh if there's no token then what's the point of a blockchain company?

>> I think as I said I'm wearing the chain link token uh socks. >> Wearing socks I love the token same thing as investing in tokens regardless how cool they are my man. You have to let me answer then now. Okay. Have a token, right? But it should be have some meaningful use case. Otherwise, Swan was telling like owning the Fcoin also makes sense, right? What's the what's the intrinsic value you are selling to the crowd, right? Having a token. I'm not against the token. Do a token. But what's the value behind the token? What it can create? You're either >> for the token or you're against the token.

>> I'm just saying like build the product which people like to use it and they should pay it and then it represent the value into token like stocks. And I fully agree with that. That's why at the end of the day, everyone who comes to us and says, "You want a token?" Right now, I'm like, "No, I mean, I'm giving you maybe the possibility of in the future if we have the product market feed that makes sense for us to have a token for whatever reason, then we will have it." That's the whole point of the token warrants. >> These are equity socks. Okay. >> These are Bit Panda token, by the way.

We are not token stocks. >> I think Sen token, right? Bit Panda has a token. No. >> Oh, yeah. Well, Bit Panda has a Bit Panda has a token. Thank you for asking the Bitcoin Maxi that question. Um, so but but but I'm not part of the panel, so I don't have to answer that. That that's uh that's very good. But talking about um and I and I really like the interruption, by the way. Um let's go over >> Do you I said, do you >> do I want >> like the inter I like interruption. I do like interruptions. Um tell me about red flags. um Lex what what what are the red flags in projects token or not token um that you you have encountered in your career and how have you dealt with them?

>> Yeah, so I'd say my number one red flag would be crime. Uh I don't like that at all. Um not a fan of crime. >> You mean in the background of the founders something like >> No, no, no. Like like act of crime. uh in the project. Uh >> but how do you know that it's active crime? Generally, >> usually it's pretty straightforward to see. So I'm I'm going to get there. Okay. You gave an example of Uber uh and Uber and um a whole generation of web two companies um financed largely by SoftBank had uh this strategy called growth hacking and then blit scaling. So growth growth hacking is like our

metrics are kind of Uh, so we're just going to buy a bunch of fake metrics to make them look good and we're going to spend like $2 million on that. Uh, and blitzcaling is our metrics look and we're going to buy some fake metrics but we're we're going to spend $2 billion on it. Right? So, uh, if you take an Uber and they pay you 10 bucks to take an Uber rather than you paying the Uber 10 bucks, uh, that's blit scaling. So kind of web web 2 is started this um web 3 has financialized it and web 3 uh is full of these traps. Uh the traps being that people will say things like we're we're growth hacking or you

know we're we're incentivizing usage but in fact as a VC and I'm sure those of us that do invest in tokens uh whether you know uh you're constantly seeing projects that are bullshitting you. And so, you know, I'll I'll meet a I'll meet like a founder who like started a company 6 months ago and they're like, "Yeah, this is our company. Uh we make tokenized sandwiches or whatever on the blockchain and uh and like here's our Twitter account and it's like 350,000 people, you know, and it's like they're all bots and they all say the same thing." So, that's embarrassing for you uh the the token sandwich entrepreneur because your metrics are fake. They're obviously fake. And it's amazing to me that people think they're not fake, you

know, but then you can take it kind of to the next level. And the next level is, okay, uh the Twitter account now we we need fake users. Like we have fake Twitter bots. Now we need some fake users. So I'm a deepen project. Uh my my thing is tokenized light bulbs. You know, we'll all have a light bulb and uh then we'll have a network of light bulbs and lights how the world goes around. So aren't you in favor of uh sun and the truth? It's called Apollo.io. Uh TG in in a month. Um >> I mean, >> yeah, I know. It's pretty good. Um anyway, so how many light bulbs do you have?

Well, you know, we've got we've got 5 million nodes. I was like, well, how do you have 5 million nodes? Well, we just have all this organic demand. Um okay, where are they? Well, 80% are in Malaysia and uh 10% are in Vietnam and another 10% in Ukraine. And like you think I'm making a joke, but like I have pitches when I ask people where their users are. And it's the same 5 million people who got really rich off of Axi Infinity uh that are yield farming deepens into oblivion, right? So if you are paying people to to take your stuff for free, uh that's not a user. that's that's QA or marketing, you know. So, that's kind of red flag number two where

the you know the users are clearly fake and like you don't have the self-awareness to adjust your lying to be believable, you know, like your lying is so egregious that you're just like whatever. And then number three is crime. And this is the slippery slope. Um and um and crime is market manipulation. So the same people who do the step number one and do step number two are the people who in step number three say things like we're going to get the best market makers. We're going to paint the chart like this project. We're going to make sure the token price goes up. Only this much of this is float. And so uh because of that we can control price and dribble it out and this and that and that. And you would be I mean I am profoundly sort of like uh affected

with disappointment at how many people who are dressed like the people you see on the stage uh who you think are serious and are sitting in like I'm in London now so in fancy Mayfair offices and a 15 billion private equity firm with a straight face will say to me we are going to paint the chart like I I am just profoundly uh surprised and so um I think as a red flag and I want to say something entertaining and kind of real to people otherwise it's all why are you here like just just just don't do it man like don't do the crime you know just like build the thing um instead of trying to trying to um shortcut your way to um to the outcome.

>> I mean thanks Lex for proving my point. Uh he he said everything what I was trying to tell you. Thank you. Well, uh Christopher >> I would prefer that slab be uh that clab be slower, but you know, it's fine. It's fine. >> I think I think the um I would like to add the red flag thing is like um there's like so many founders are I I think it's playbook is pretty pretty simple. You know, you don't need to rocket science or reinvent the thing. The startup gaming is pretty simple. If you are not able to fund raise, then bootstrap it, right? You should be very emotionally involved with what you're building otherwise you're just looking for some cash you know and if if if people are not investing you investing in you and

early stage that means it's a good sign you can sell your company at later stage at higher price but are you willing to do that you know it's it's not easy you have to put 18 hours of work there and as we are in Europe and I come from Munich I lived there for almost 14 years I speak the language so I tell you like the founder raised precedent sit around million million and a half. He takes the portrait photo from the next door photographer shop and then start putting on LinkedIn post, you know, like, hey, I raised just $1.5 million seed round a long thread on like how to fund raise.

No, shut the up. Sorry to say that. Your job is to not to post the LinkedIn threads. You just heads down and build the you know, because you got the money not to just post and start giving the wisdom, but like build the actual product. These are the like instant red flag for me. Like if sometime like founders are constantly posting on Twitter and LinkedIn, you're not K, you are just founder. And then second thing is like if you are constantly telling the people like hey like what what Lex has said like uh BS I think uh last year was the like a very mainstream thing like hey we have like 300,000 Twitter followers I have like 50 Ks and they all are posting every day. That was actually the thing most of the L1 raised like $500 million based on that one. And as

like said like they're like who are the users like some guys are running like $50 or $100 100 people like what industrialization of airdrop or like creating the fake uh trading volume. So I think I think that's are like couple of major flags but like I think you should try to stay away and like third thing is like don't go to jail that's very important thing >> and may I just add you can clap. May I just add Thank you. Thank you. People like that I speak.

>> It's so awkward up here with this completely nonsensical clapping. I mean, it's really uncomfortable for me. It's fine. It's just I want to share how how disappointing it feels. >> It's fine. We're here for you. >> Um, but what I was going to say is red flags from a fun perspective of the VCs you do want to deal with. >> That's an interesting one. Listen, >> let me turn it around. It's not about you guys, but um I've had many VCs coming to me asking me how many Twitter followers will I have. That's the first question on Telegram.

Then I'm like, you know, I don't obviously want to deal with you because what you're obsessed is a token. You want them to dump on everyone aging me to do a TG if I ever offer a token. So I think that's the main one. >> Okay, got it. Um maybe uh Christopher, do you believe that and specifically when we're talking about like fraudulent activity and stuff like that, do you believe that stuff like the Mika regulation that now is in place in Europe will do any good, any bad? What is your take on the US like moving? Um can you can you shed some light on on your opinion regarding regulation maybe safeguarding

um misbehavior or crime? Um, I guess it's kind of like a delicate balance that you need to strike with regulation. So, obviously, like I said, we had like a playground until now. And so, it's nice to have some guidelines to kind of keep the scammers out and stuff like that, but at the same time, this whole industry was built on the kind of idea of decentralization. And if you kind of crack down the web too hard, then it kind of defeats the whole purpose. Um, unfortunately I feel like so I'm not saying anything bad about Mika because we actually incubated one of the first regulated Eurovvac stable

coins called Euroe uh that just got acquired by Paxos. So we're very familiar with like Miko regulation. Unfortunately, the people that are actually writing those laws like aren't very cryptonative. Um, so a lot of the stuff actually from the DeFi side and stuff goes under the radar anyway. So, it's kind of I don't know if you if to answer the question, if you had to compare like the US to Europe, I think the US is a bit more sophisticated because they actually cracked on on a lot of like protocols and stuff like that, but Mika there's still a lot of holes in my opinion. Um, and yeah, I don't I don't know. I don't know what the right answer is here, but like you have to kind of strike a delicate

balance between the two. Maybe good first step into the good first step but still not there any >> I mean Sen you are from Germany as well right? >> Yeah. So how many of you know about Ethereum as a test net called goalie network? There is a test net on if you use the metam mask you can see that like Ethereum is a test net gold network. Does anyone know? Yeah. 1 2 3 4 5. Yeah. So you know the name comes from golder park. It's a park in Berlin. Very famous park. The reason why I'm telling is like you need a sort of like regulatory framework because I think if you go 10 years back Germany was front leading the blockchain innovation and startups like so Ethereum the guys was first block was

mined in Germany nosis gelato lifi 1 in polka dot they're like dozens of startups were born in Germany but not to having the like clear regulatory framework these all founders has to go to either Dubai or they move to zoo. So I think um of course I I fully agree with you Chris that there are lots of loopholes but I think there's like a constantly back and forth feedback and you can always make the regulation much more sophisticated and that's not the crypto thing now like with the mika I think back in days when e-commerce was getting built the people who write the policy they had no idea about internet they had no idea about e-commerce so I think that same thing is happening now I think they are just bureaucrats they are

doing their own thing of course they don't want to kill the innovation but they are working in some certain boundary countries you know so I think Mika is now there is like a clear framework for 27 28 countries so you can at least build on that framework but of course you can always see like okay you have not that freedom and that freedom to do that thing but I think you can go back and forth with the regulators and you can at least temper it but it's not like uh debanking all the crypto guys like what was happening in last four five years in US you know so I think I would put that as in a positive way that Mika has coming out and Europe has now one single body regulatory where you can at least foresee the future like how to build the the cryptobased companies you

know like blockchain based companies on the like by using like in that framework. So I think I see it as a positive thing. >> Yeah. Um would agree um coming already to kind of like the close of this panel already uh because we need to make up some time so you can catch your flight. Um so my question would be is there any like specific sector still in the blockchain ecosystem where you guys say this is this is specifically overhyped underhyped we had a lot of talks about and uh I mean I'm in the space for a decade I'm hearing realworld tokenization for a long time um what are these things that you constantly hear

that have not worked will never work and we should just go over with and what is the stuff that you find especially interesting like sector-wise? Is that something that where you could differentiate? Is that something? >> Sure. Things I hate. Uh let's do it. >> Yeah, I love it. >> No, I I think um it's actually really humbling um to to think about like as as a as an investor like the patterns where you're like, "Okay, these things will never work and then you have Poly Market at 9 billion, you know, like no way."

like zero chance prediction markets would work because Nosis and Augur with all of the funding they've received accomplished absolutely nothing to build prediction markets. Um, and that was a strong bias I had. And here we are, you know, with ICE, a company that generally knows uh things about exchanges, putting two billion to work into a betting market on on Polygon. I mean, it's it's really quite wild. So I think these sort of biases of things that you hate are actually really informative um as your blind spots. So so my blind spots would be number one I think identity is a dead end. Uh I have not seen there's been every single version of decentralized verifiable this and

that identity. Uh nobody cares. Consumers won't pay for it. A completely dead category unless it's a KYC platform right? So a company will pay infinite amount of money to make sure that its clients are real. Client users will never pay for identity. And so I think that's one hole that we keep falling into crypto. Um social fy and gamefi is another place where I think we keep tripping over. Um because uh crypto people are like we like that and we're going to do that but better because we're going to put tokens in it. Uh, and in fact it's just you're taking something nice and turning it into a pyramid scheme, you know, and then like people like this is a pyramid scheme. I lost all my money and and it's

like why didn't Frenche work? >> Are you talking about the pension scheme now or is that still that's not tokenized yet? >> All about schemes. Um, so in terms of things I like, I'm still quite um I guess religious about the idea of the AI economy using crypto as the financial system underneath. I really hope that happens. I hope that it's not just Stripe, but that um some of us get a chance at doing it. I'm also still bullish on Deepen. I think the tokconomics of the projects in in the sort of last generation have not been very good, but we're an investor in a protocol called Peak and like the fundamentals of what they're doing is

super cool. 5 million devices, like robots on chain, buying secondary equity from like Figure and Appronic and Unitry. So, I I do hope that crypto has a place um in supporting the growth of those industries. >> Perfect. Yeah, >> the VC world one sentence 2026 what will be happening 2026 to the VC world and crypto in one sentence. >> So and I'm talking in the same panel since last three years like VCB on 2023 24 25 this is my fourth panel on 26.

Nothing will change guys. I mean the things takes time you know it will be the same. Well, I mean >> but but I would like to add on Lex's point like what will be like what are the like highly inflated points are like digital asset treasuries the debts are like super highly highly speculative now you know like I mean it's it can do net good for the long term for our industry but I think the way there every random coins are doing the DATs I think that will that will be like for me like a next 3AC or FTX kind of thing and second thing I think stable coins are bit of uh I mean stable coin will be like trillions of dollar net worth for sure in 10 years but I I think the amount of stable coin we have now is like it

reminds me of the ICO around 2017 you know like crazy. >> Um so two things number one on the VC side from a project perspective as I said before I'm seeing more competition uh from traditional VCs which is quite exciting for a project like us. So I feel like from next year and actually from now cryptonetics we still will need to compete with better uh with actually uh with investors that have been around for longer and they have more money um than than them. So they'll need to reinvent themselves some of them. And the second one is in terms of the uh tokenization u I heard on the previous panel that they were saying that maybe in 10 years time is it we're going to tokenize everything. I'm not in into

tokenization of everything, but I do strongly believe that tokenization, especially of certain financial products, is something that is now going very slowly because you need to reinvent certain ways of how to tokenize and it's just going to explode at the moment when you least expect. >> Perfect. Christopher, if you don't have anything to add and yeah, we'll close this panel right on time so that we can all make it to the airport. Any good last words that you want to add to that? 20 2026 VC market. >> Um, this might be a bit controversial, especially with the >> Oh, no. Not for the last question, man.

That that was a question like 20 minutes ago. >> We still have time like three and a half minute like >> Oh, yeah. There there we go. Yeah, we got bumped up. >> I I'll be short. I >> love to hear us. I think it's getting more crazy. Yeah. >> In 2026, I actually hope that there VC funds don't exist anymore. Like I'm a bit more on the opposite angle. Like I think if you actually want to raise funds, do like an echo round or a legion round or something like that. Um cuz I don't think like unless the VC has some sort of like actual real value ad. I guess like we do engineering resources. So if you want us on your cap table, we can help with that. Uh but half of our portfolio has actually been like liquid investments. So like companies that have

already listed a token and we help in the exact same way as like a private round um like investment does. Uh so I'm on the opposite side of the camp. Like I actually think every crypto project should do a token and I don't really believe in utility tokens because I think it's a way to actually just get around the SEC um of being a security. But yeah, that's kind of >> okay. So like what a way to what a way to end a panel you know asking one panelist so what will be in 2026 saying everything will stay the same and then then you have the next guy saying VC dead so uh >> but he said specifically like crypto VCs will be dead.

>> Absolutely. Absolutely. So thank you everybody for listening. Uh wish you a very nice evening. Um next up is the startup battles. Thank you all for participating. I do have bit panda socks for you as well. Uh and I wish you all a very nice event. >> Thank you. Thank you.