In an interview with MAD Society on July 15, 2026, Dragonfly Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi discussed crypto venture capital, founder judgment, and industry long-term trends. He believes that the key to venture capital is seizing a few non-consensus opportunities. Outstanding founders should have prominent "edge abilities," but lack of integrity and inconsistency are clear warning signs. Haseeb also stated that some structured products and single-asset tokenization directions are unlikely to form long-term enterprises, while DeFi, stablecoins, payments, and prediction markets will continue to exist. In the long run, crypto technology will eventually integrate into various financial and tech products, and the label "crypto company" may gradually disappear.
The audio transcription was completed by GPT and may contain errors. Please watch the original video on YT.
Poker and Venture Capital: Building Judgment Discipline in a Long Feedback Loop
Haseeb Qureshi: In fact, there isn't much overlap between poker and venture capital. Poker and trading are very similar because they both have very fast feedback loops, allowing for tight and rapid iterations. You play a hand, and you immediately know if you've won or lost, and whether your decision was correct.
But in venture capital, the feedback loop is very slow. When you invest in a founder, it may take many years to know if your initial judgment was correct. In the first year, you may see some initial signs, such as the company's growth and initial market recognition. Even if a company has completed Series A or even Series B funding, it may still suddenly encounter problems. It may seem to be progressing smoothly for several years, but a fatal flaw in the founder may ultimately cause them to fumble the ball in the last play of the final game of the season.
So the reality is, it's challenging to quickly assess whether you've done well as a venture capitalist. Many funds raised capital based on early portfolio valuations, only to later discover that there are no real winners in the entire portfolio. Suppose you early invested in Axie Infinity or OpenSea. At that time, you might have thought, "Wow, I'm an amazing investor, I'm doing so well."
Several funds also invested early in FTX. People would say, "Oh my, this person is a prodigy in the investment world, can you believe they were involved in FTX's seed round?" But just a few years later, the situation turned into, "Well, this fund doesn't seem particularly special now." Because its most shining star project has already defaulted.
Venture capital is very unique in this regard. This means, first, you must proactively build a feedback loop for yourself and not expect the world to give you direct feedback. As a venture capitalist, you must constantly learn, make progress, but whether an investment is successful or not is often not known until many years later. Therefore, feedback must mainly come from your own assessment of your performance, rather than external results. For many people, this is very challenging.
Another difference between venture capital and poker is that venture capital is a team sport, while poker is a solo game. You are certainly playing cards with others, but fundamentally, you are facing the entire table alone. Venture capital is not like that. You can only succeed if the founder you invested in succeeds; you can only truly win if your fund is successful, and the projects made by other partners in the fund are also successful. Therefore, venture capital relies heavily on collaboration and relationships.
But if you are a poker player, you basically don't need to care about other people in the world. As long as you can sit at the table, play well, and keep making a profit, even if you have no friends, you can still become a successful poker player. This is also a very different point between the two. Most truly outstanding venture capitalists are very good at handling relationships. I don't consider myself particularly good at this, but I have definitely improved a lot compared to the past, and I am better at building relationships than most traders I know.
Most traders do not need this. Like poker players, they don't need to be friendly, good at handling relationships, or have a large network. Therefore, the ability in poker that can really help you in venture capital is mainly the ability to think clearly about risks and to control emotions well. I have found that many venture capitalists are actually not good at these. They may be very emotional and find it difficult to deal with conflicts.
Both of these happen to be areas where I excel. However, to be frank, compared to other core skills needed for venture capital, I believe the importance of these skills is not that high.
Who Is the Crypto VC “GOAT”?
Haseeb Qureshi: Who is the best at hitting the ball? I would say, perhaps the most controversial investor in our industry, Kyle Samani. Of course, he has now moved past the stage of personally hitting the ball, just like Babe Ruth retired. But if measured by the internal rate of return and P&L generated for every dollar invested, he may be superior to anyone in the industry. Therefore, if there is a “GOAT” in the venture capital field, it can only be Kyle Samani, the founder of Multicoin Capital.
He is a very non-consensus person. Wherever he goes, he often sparks a lot of controversy. But he is a truly contrarian investor, and the best venture capitalists usually possess this contrarian thinking: they do not simply replicate what others are doing.
As for how to hit that ball, I think this is the most challenging aspect of venture capital. It's very easy to convince yourself to believe in a project, such as: "a16z Crypto is also investing in this deal," "Paradigm is also investing in this deal," or "this company is really hot right now, it's trending on Twitter, everyone is talking about it." Especially in the crypto industry, many investments are made before the project has achieved product-market fit.
For example, there is a new Layer 1 about to launch; or suddenly Bitcoin Layer 2 becomes very popular, Babylon is trending, and other similar projects are taking off. These concepts may not have proven themselves at that stage, but they have garnered significant attention and started to spread rapidly in everyone's minds and collective discussions. In this situation, it is hard to firmly tell yourself, "No, I am right, I don't believe in it." Or conversely, firmly believe, "I believe in this project. Even though no one is discussing it now, no one cares, but everyone will care in the future."
It is very difficult to do this. As for how to quiet your mind and focus on hitting the ball, I believe the answer lies in the discipline established by the investment committee. This is also why venture capital firms typically operate in a team format rather than having individual investors act alone. When you make judgments alone, you are very susceptible to group pressure. There are too many voices from the outside, too many forces that can influence your thinking.
But when you are part of an investment firm, and this firm has established an institutionalized culture, such as "we will not believe anything without verification," the situation is different. Even if you have been influenced to some extent, your partners may not be influenced. Your partners may say, "I will never approve this investment solely based on these claims.
You have to prove to me. If Bitcoin Layer 2 is really that good, then bring out the data, bring out the evidence. What is your argument? Let's truly lay out the logic, step by step. If you can't do that, I won't believe it. This discipline is what Dragonfly has gradually built over the years and the culture we have formed as an investment firm. But if an institution does not have this discipline, I think it's challenging to become a truly outstanding investor.
What is the biggest blind spot for Crypto VCs?
Haseeb Qureshi: I think if you are a crypto venture capitalist, you are essentially a product of the crypto cycle. Anyone who has been in this industry long enough has experienced the market's ups and downs and has experienced this kind of emotion: "Well, these things don't really matter, everything is meaningless."
Not long ago, "Financial Nihilism" was still the dominant cultural trend on Crypto Twitter. People believed that these things were all unimportant, without any real value, and everything was just a meme.
The situation is different now. I wouldn't say today is still financial nihilism, but more like: "Not everything is unimportant, but only a few things are important, and only things that generate revenue are important. Projects without revenue are unimportant." If you are a crypto venture capitalist, it's easy to fall into this view: the market is in some Hegelian dialectical cycle, with things coming and going, going and coming, with endless prosperity and downturn awaiting us in the future.
The longer you stay in the crypto industry, the more cycles you will experience, until everything seems cyclical, under cycles. But if you are hypnotized by this view, believing that things will inevitably evolve in this way, I think you might make a very serious mistake as an investor because you haven't thought deeply enough about what changes the future might hold.
Another question that I think people don't think about enough is: Crypto venture capital may truly come to an end at some point. There may be a last year when investing in this space is worthwhile, and afterward, there won't be many new opportunities. For example, social media was one of the most significant technology trends of the 2010s. You can look at the likes of Google, Facebook in the public markets, and Microsoft entering this space through the acquisition of LinkedIn. The largest social media networks have continued to grow and expand since then.
But in terms of venture capital for social media companies, it essentially ended around 2009. There were hardly any new social media companies created after 2009. ByteDance behind TikTok is almost the only company that has successfully built a truly meaningful business thereafter. Although the product itself has evolved continuously, the platform landscape has hardly changed. It's still basically Meta, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc., platforms that existed in 2009.
So, the crypto industry may follow a similar development path. Even if the crypto industry continues to grow, stablecoins continue to grow, Bitcoin continues to grow, Ethereum continues to grow, all these metrics trending upward, but assuming that by 2030, almost all major companies have already been established, existing platforms have become very large, and are still growing, the space left for new players to enter the market and disrupt them may be very limited.
I don't know if this scenario is bound to happen. Even if it does, I don't know when precisely it might occur. But it's almost certain to occur at some point. Almost all industries eventually develop in this way, particularly in industries with economies of scale and network effects, both of which the crypto industry happens to possess.
However, I believe that most crypto venture capitalists have not seriously considered this issue. This may be a potential blind spot: because we have always been doing this in the past, we assume that we can continue to do so indefinitely in the future. In the consumer industry, new consumer companies may always emerge. But it is uncertain whether new crypto companies will continue to emerge endlessly. It may happen, or it may not.
Which popular tracks in the crypto industry are difficult to sustain in the long run?
Haseeb Qureshi: In fact, many tracks have already essentially died or are on the path to extinction. Occasionally, we still receive introductions to some of these projects, such as someone saying, "I am working on a Bitcoin Layer 2 with lending functionality." We occasionally still see these kinds of projects, but they are now quite rare. Currently, one type of project I often see is structured products built on Hyperliquid. For example, someone might say, "This is a CLO built on top of Hyperliquid. The CLO market itself is very large, so there will definitely be a huge CLO market on Hyperliquid as well."
We still see many similar complex financial products attempting to launch on Hyperliquid or some relatively independent trading venue. I believe that these types of projects may soon decrease as they are not true businesses. Building solely a financial product makes it hard to constitute a company. In history, hardly any company has been able to establish a real business solely by selling a single financial product.
Especially when you do not control the distribution channel. If the distribution channel is controlled by Hyperliquid, then you are essentially just a reseller; or conversely, Hyperliquid is only the reselling channel for your product. In either case, it is not a particularly attractive business model.
What other tracks might disappear? Many people are now tokenizing individual assets, such as "I want to tokenize a gold mine" or "I want to tokenize these cars." However, this is also not a company, at most, it can only be considered a product. This product may be a good thing. But unless you tokenize truly massive assets like US Treasury bonds or stocks, and can scale it large enough while truly addressing the distribution issue, those projects that just say "I want to tokenize this asset I hold, please invest in me, venture capitalists," I think will gradually disappear, and may even be already disappearing.
There is a classic joke in the traditional venture capital field: there are some directions like a "pothole" that founders always fall back into. Founders, when transitioning, often coincidentally think of the same idea, and then repeatedly do it over and over again, even though venture capitalists always tell them not to do so.
One typical direction is dating apps. Founders often consider pivoting to a dating app as they tend to spend a lot of time thinking about dating issues, given that most founders are young and single. Another common direction is "Co-Founder Matchmaking." Founders frequently come up with this idea because they themselves are looking for a co-founder and feel that they should develop an app to help others find co-founders.
There are also numerous productivity tools, such as "I want to build a better to-do list app" or "I want to create a better Asana." These fall into the category of "swamp of bad ideas." People always circle back to these directions. The crypto industry, of course, also exhibits similar phenomena.
One of the most common ones I've seen is the "Bloomberg of the crypto industry." This is quite interesting because about a decade ago when I first started in venture capital, the "Bloomberg of the crypto industry" was already considered a not-so-great idea. I was pitched this concept back then, and almost every year since then, someone else has pitched it. However, they usually don't quite understand what they are talking about. The notion of a "Bloomberg Terminal for the crypto industry" is inherently vague. What specific features should it provide? What problem should it solve? These questions often lack clear answers.
Now we are in 2026, and you need a more explicit, more precise entry point rather than just relying on the slogan of the "Bloomberg of the crypto industry." I'm not sure if this can be considered a trend; it's more like an interesting phenomenon: many such ideas always linger in the industry and never truly disappear.
How Can Young Investors Stay Objective and Make Clear Judgments Amid Market Hype and Noise?
Haseeb Qureshi: Frankly, my advice is to limit your interactions with certain people. I think many new venture capitalists make a mistake of engaging with too many people, and eventually, their views become the average of the opinions around them. As a venture capitalist, forcing yourself to think independently is crucial. It's easy for people to tell themselves, "Of course, I'm thinking independently. I have my own ideas, I've written blogs, and I take notes after discussions with others." But the easiest way to lose your ability to think independently is by engaging with too many strongly opinionated individuals.
I'm not saying you shouldn't interact with anyone. But most venture capitalists I know are essentially a collage of the opinions of the seven people they interact with most frequently. The more time you spend alone, thinking, reading, and learning, the more likely you are to develop truly unique perspectives of your own. These perspectives may not be correct or precise, but at least they are different from the views of those around you.
And the most likely way for you to achieve excess returns is to think differently from others. This approach certainly carries the risk of misjudgment, but it could also mean that you are correct about something that everyone else has overlooked.
As a venture capitalist, this is exactly the skill that earns you returns. You don't actually get heavily penalized for being wrong. If, for example, out of 50 projects in your portfolio, 15 are misjudged, who cares? What truly matters is whether you have identified that one project that everyone else missed and only you got right. And this comes from your ability to think differently.
This also requires a certain level of confidence. It is very easy and very safe to engage with many people. You could say, "Well, this is my view on the new type of bank because I've talked to five people, and they all have these views on the new type of bank, so I average their opinions and then present them in the next podcast."
But not doing this demands much more of you. You need to reexamine these views, make your own judgments from scratch, and truly think independently about what you actually believe. And as I said earlier, the cost of being wrong is not that high. I believe that most people are really optimizing how to appear smart or good at their job, rather than how to actually do their job well.
That's why I always say Kyle Samani is the greatest in the history of venture capital. He's crazy, right? He clearly lives in his own world and has very strange views on many things. He has missed out on many trends, often very confidently saying, "I think something will definitely happen next." And he turns out to be completely wrong. But that doesn't matter at all. As long as you are right once, that one time is enough to cover all other mistakes, so who cares?
Venture capital is not about making yourself look flawless, nor is it about impressing a certain audience or focus group with your intelligence or decency. The real way to win in venture capital is to be right about the thing that everyone else is wrong about.
What are the experiences of raising $1 billion in funds?
Haseeb Qureshi: During the fundraising process, you will realize that there are drastically different ways to raise funds, and each way can lead to success. One such way is to truly build trust with someone, understand them on a personal level, have them resonate with you, and be willing to invest in you because they believe in who you are and your vision.
I am not good at this approach, not at all. I am quite socially inept. It may not seem like it, but it is indeed true. When faced with many investors and allocators, I find it hard to form deep relationships with them. There are many successful strategies in fundraising, and there is no one right path. The area where I find it easier to succeed, and where I am relatively better at in fundraising, is dealing with institutional investors. What institutional investors value the most is whether you can demonstrate an extremely high level of skill, knowledge, and comprehensive mastery of your field.
But if the other party is a family office or individual investor, relationships and trust are often much more important. They usually want to have known you for a long time, truly understand who you are, and how you operate. They want to be able to pick up the phone and reach you at any time, maybe even occasionally grab a beer with you. Institutional investors, on the other hand, are looking for something else: they want to confirm that you are the best in the industry. Compared to everyone they've met or heard of, you are the best at what you do.
You need to present the most rigorous and reliable argument, explain why you will win and others will lose, and provide facts and performance as evidence. This type of fundraising is usually where I excel. However, the reality is, if you are raising a significant amount of capital for a fund, this is still a team effort. You need people who excel in different fundraising methods, each covering different parts of the fundraising market.
If you are an entrepreneur, you will mainly seek funding from venture capital firms, and may also interact with some corporate or individual investors, but primarily venture capital firms. And venture capital firms are actually quite similar to each other. If you are a fund, you need to raise funds from different pools of capital, and the differences between these pools are significant, nowhere near as similar as venture capital firms are to each other. Fundraising from university endowments, hospital foundations, insurance companies, public pension funds, and family offices are all completely different experiences.
When facing these different groups, you need to use different skills, approaches, and narratives to make fundraising truly effective. Therefore, fundraising itself is a unique capability. Truly outstanding venture capitalists are proficient not only in investing but also in fundraising. Over the years, I have made progress in fundraising, but I am still not considered a world-class fundraiser.
What are the typical traits of successful founders?
Haseeb Qureshi: From my observation, a high degree of mental flexibility is perhaps the best predictive indicator. People often think that being a founder requires certain entrepreneurial skills or CEO skills. But the reality is, if you have founded a successful company, your role changes every two to three years. Leading a company of 3 people, 15 people, 100 people, and 1,000 people actually requires entirely different capabilities.
It's a bit like going from the head of the PTA to a small town mayor, and then to the President of the United States. These are actually three completely different jobs that require entirely different skills. Just because someone can be a successful U.S. President does not mean they will be a great head of the PTA or a great small-town mayor.
A truly adaptable founder is usually deeply curious and open to changing their mind, abandoning old frameworks and embracing new ones. On the other hand, founders who struggle with scaling often say: "When we were just 7 people, I always did it this way, why is no one listening to me now? Why has the product development slowed down? Why are there suddenly so many political issues in the company?"
They may believe that these are all problems that must be completely solved. They might say, "There is too much waste in the company now, there is a lot of bureaucracy in our management team, I need to fire them all and bring the company back to its most basic state." I'm not saying these problems don't exist; they often do. As a company scales, it almost inevitably goes through growing pains.
But the best founders will actively explore how their role should evolve as the company grows. They will also adjust their capabilities to meet the new demands of the job. Managing a company with 1,000 employees is more like governing a small town. You need political skills and diplomatic skills to manage an organization of that size.
In contrast, managing a 7-person company relies mainly on execution. A team of 7 doesn't need much management because everyone is in the same boat, rowing in the same direction. You don't even need much communication; you just see what others are doing and push forward together.
However, when a company has 50 people, 100 people, or even 1,000 people, everything revolves around communication. In a company with 1,000 employees, you personally are almost impossible to have a substantial impact on the company through doing the work yourself. Everything you do is through orders you give as a leader to mobilize the entire team, set the direction for them, and motivate them to go the extra mile, pay real attention to every detail in the product, and build an excellent product. So I say, for most founders who have already scaled their company to a certain size, the most challenging thing is to adapt to these changes in their job scope. Not everyone can do this well.
When we judge whether a founder is likely to succeed, we often look for their outstanding "peak ability." Our philosophy is to invest in a person's strengths, not in a person without obvious weaknesses. Almost every great founder has weaknesses. For example, in the early days of founding Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg was clearly not an excellent leader and had very obvious shortcomings in leading a team. But in his area of expertise, he reached a world-class level.
Almost all founders are like this. Uber founder Travis Kalanick is also a very famous example. He has extremely prominent strengths, but also very apparent weaknesses. This is almost a universal rule in the entrepreneurial field: the most outstanding founders are usually not jack-of-all-trades. Well-rounded talents are more suitable to serve as executives in a company that has already scaled. They are unlikely to truly mess things up, speak thoughtlessly, or make others deeply dissatisfied with them. Such people would be excellent managers in mature large companies.
However, they are usually not good at going from 0 to 1, nor adept at leading a startup through the continuously emerging phase transitions in its growth process. So, we can accept founders with serious flaws. If you want to invest in truly great companies, I believe you must accept this. What we cannot accept is a founder who does not have particularly outstanding capabilities in any aspect.
Host Mia: Then let me ask the question the other way around. What signs indicate that a founder may not succeed? Let me set a scenario: the project idea is great, with scalability potential, the team is excellent, everything on paper seems fine, they have even successfully attracted a lot of great fund investments, but you always feel that something is off. What is usually the issue?
Haseeb Qureshi: One of the most obvious issues is integrity. If the founder is not entirely honest or transparent, it can be very dangerous. Of course, every company tends to exaggerate to some extent during fundraising, saying things like, "We will dominate the world," "We will reach an incredible scale," "We will achieve this, and that," "We will partner with a certain company tomorrow." But when you continue to inquire, "Specifically, what collaboration?" things might start to become vague.
Confidence is one thing, but confidence sliding into dishonesty is another. This is a very strong red flag because such behavior only escalates. I have never seen it improve as the company grows; I have only seen it worsen.
So, this is almost an issue that can directly terminate the investment process. If we find a founder engaging in repeated dishonest behavior, we would say, "Forget it, we're not investing." Another issue is the consistency of words and actions. Many investors make a very common mistake: they love the story, the founder, the team, and the market, but some things just don't line up.
For example, the founder says they are very eager to close this funding round, but their actual actions are very delayed, and the progress is not fast. Or, the founder indicates a strong belief in the company and a high demand for investment in the market, but they are willing to make concessions on all funding terms, even accepting a less than ideal valuation. These behaviors are inconsistent, and the entire story is not fully coherent.
Less experienced investors often overlook these issues. They may think, "Maybe it's just because I'm so outstanding that the other party is willing to offer me these terms," or they may seek some seemingly harmless explanation for these inconsistencies. But almost every time, when a startup's actual actions are inconsistent with the story it tells, it means you're missing some information. And when you don't know what you're missing, that's usually not to your advantage. In fact, that's the answer: if you don't know what the problem really is, then it's likely not something in your favor. If you truly understood the truth, you might not want to invest anymore.
So, what I'm talking about is not a specific issue, but a type of phenomenon. As your investment experience grows, you will gradually learn to recognize them. You will develop an intuition: "Wait a minute, my alarm has already gone off. Let's hit the brakes first; something doesn't add up here, but we don't know what it is yet." When you don't know what the problem is, it's likely not an answer you want to see.
Host Mia: How often do you encounter founders lying? Is this a common situation?
Haseeb Qureshi: Most projects never even progress to the stage that requires such investigation. Whether founders lie is not important because we may have decided not to invest from the start, or not even proceed with further verification. In-depth due diligence reveals that instances of founders lying are relatively rare, but not so rare that they never happen.
What's actually more common is exaggeration. For example, the other party might say, "We are about to partner with NVIDIA," or "ByteDance really wants to participate in this funding round." But when you actually communicate with ByteDance or NVIDIA, they might say, "We are still considering it." This situation is very common. I usually don't directly consider it a lie. The founders are obviously trying to convince us to invest, and they are indeed very excited about their company. They may not even accurately assess the situation, genuinely believing that the other party will definitely participate, they just don't know the final outcome yet.
After all, this is their own startup, and these founders may still be very young and inexperienced. So, I generally wouldn't conclude just because of this exaggeration: "This person is not trustworthy; he is deceiving me." But if someone is really lying about an important fact, that is very rare. However, this situation does happen, and once it does, the investment process is basically terminated immediately.
Host Mia: In the past, solo founders were often not well received, but now in the AI era, solo entrepreneurship seems to be gaining respect. Have you had a framework for evaluating solo founders before? Why do you think there was this bias in the past? Can one person really run an entire company alone now?
Haseeb Qureshi: Yes, and solo entrepreneurship has always been possible. The problem is not how difficult it is to start a business alone, but rather the fact that among those who choose to start a business alone, there is often a kind of reverse selection. If you are truly outstanding, there are usually people willing to work with you, to co-found the company with you, and you have the ability to find very strong co-founders. If no one is willing to start a business with you, it may mean that you have not realized that your abilities are not sufficient to work side by side with those you want to collaborate with; or it may be that you think you are better than everyone else, but that is not the case. Perhaps you just cannot get along with others. And this is not a good sign for starting a company because you need to win allies and customers, do good recruitment, and retain employees, and so on.
However, if we believe that the person himself is not the issue, but simply chose to start a business alone, then we don't mind, we can totally accept it. So, a solo founder is not necessarily a negative signal, it's just that statistically, the likelihood of a solo founder becoming an unqualified founder is slightly higher.
Another issue is that founders often have some kind of fatal flaw. Suppose a founder has very strong technical skills but lacks any business sense, business experience, or sales experience. If he co-founds the business with someone who has these skills, then this team can complement each other, offsetting each other's shortcomings. In this way, we are not so worried about the downside risk of this founding CEO. But if he is a solo founder, we would be more worried: who can stop him from making mistakes?
Even if he later hires a Chief Business Officer or Chief Operating Officer, the reality is that the founder always has a special status within the company. Regardless of whether the founder is aware of his weaknesses or whether he has hired a COO for them, this does not change. Professional managers such as COOs, CBOs, or sales leaders always have some reservations because they do not truly hold the reins of the company. When a person does not have control, it means that the founder will create a kind of "power distortion field" within the company, whether the founder himself is aware of this or not.
If another co-founder is also in this "distortion field," sitting in this bubble with the founder, they can play a very powerful correction role to help the company avoid failure due to some of the founder's weaknesses. This is why venture capital firms focus on the issue of co-founders. But if a founder does not have these obvious flaws, then solo entrepreneurship is completely fine.
Navigating the Industry Downturn: How Crypto Entrepreneurs Can Persevere
Haseeb Qureshi: Without knowing a person and their specific situation, I am very reluctant to give advice. It's a bit like giving life advice to a young person. You know they are in college, so you tell them, "You should do this, you should choose this major, and then go do those things." But in reality, you do not know this person, nor do you know their environment, specific circumstances, and personal abilities.
I believe that giving vague advice without understanding the specific situation is not just difficult, but even likely irresponsible. The only advice I think might be universally helpful is that, many times, what truly hinders people from making the right decision is shame. People feel a strong sense of shame because of the time, effort, and money they have already invested, the funds they have raised, and the reliance on their team. These emotions prevent them from making the ultimately correct decision.
And the right decision might be to close the company, it might be to accept an acquisition, it might be to pivot to something else, or it might be to persevere. But for many founders, the most destructive factor is that they feel ashamed to make a certain decision or deviate from the current established path. So, the only advice I can offer is: make every effort to let go of this shame. Try to imagine that the person in this situation is not you, but someone else. Faced with the exact same situation, what advice would you give to them?
Host Mia: I think this largely depends on whether they have the confidence to believe that their judgment is correct. So, this question can also be asked in a different way: How should we frame the current state of the industry? Perhaps people can gather some insights from it and then make their own decisions.
Haseeb Qureshi: It's clear to me that some things in this industry will never come back. If you're still sitting there holding an NFT, expecting another NFT hype cycle to come back one day, I would say, you might want to let go of that and move forward to find other directions that are more worthy of your time, capital, and talent. On the other hand, there are areas in the industry that will indeed come back because they have very strong cyclicality. DeFi is a very typical example. Many DeFi projects are in a very bad state right now, but I believe DeFi will never disappear. It will become a fundamental part of how the future world operates and how the crypto industry operates.
So that's why I say it's difficult to discuss these issues in broad strokes. Tolstoy has a very famous line in "Anna Karenina": "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I think this statement is also highly applicable to startups.
NFT Won't Come Back, but DeFi, Stablecoins, and Payments Will Persevere?
Haseeb Qureshi: I believe the prediction market will endure, Layer 1 will endure, DeFi will also endure. The evident connection layer between on-chain and off-chain worlds will obviously persist, including fiat on/off ramps and various fund transfer channels. Cross-border remittances will exist, payments will exist, stablecoins will obviously exist, including stablecoin issuers, payment orchestration services, and so on.
In my view, these areas are almost certain to continue to be significant. As for most other fields, it is much harder to judge.
Host Mia: You previously predicted that a major tech giant would either integrate or launch a crypto wallet this year. Which Web2 company is currently closest to actually doing this? And which company has completely missed the boat?
Haseeb Qureshi: First, I need to clarify that my prediction has already come true. I made this prediction back in January this year. Subsequently, around March, there were reports that Meta would be launching its own stablecoin wallet. So, I have been accurate in this prediction. Meta has announced that it will provide stablecoin settlements for content creators in emerging markets. I remember this feature was rolled out on Instagram. Next, they will continue to expand this business and may soon launch a wallet.
Evidently, ever since Libra, Mark Zuckerberg has been very bullish on the crypto industry. He has a clear belief in this space. So, I think Meta might be the company that is most proactive in this race. However, if you look at the recently announced Open USD, or OUSD, a different possibility emerges. OUSD is launched by a stablecoin consortium that includes many different companies. Google is also on the list and is part of the Open Standard Alliance.
Therefore, in the future, we might see gUSD, the so-called "Google USD." It could be introduced as a wrapped version built on top of OUSD. OUSD is expected to go live later this year. However, I have some doubts about OUSD. I have been discussing this on Twitter recently. I should have also mentioned in the "Chopping Block" show this week that I believe OUSD may not have a high chance of success.
The reason is that this consortium consists of around 140 companies. It's a bit like a United Nations-style organizational model: too many participants, everyone wants to be involved in decision-making, and responsibilities are fragmented among different members. Such models usually do not lead to good outcomes. Just this morning, we have seen some signs. I was tweeting about this at the time. Some Korean companies listed on the announcement, such as Samsung, Dunamu, and other enterprises, later publicly stated, "We don't know why we appeared in this announcement. We are not aware of this and have not signed any formal agreements. We do not understand why they included us."
More companies may respond similarly soon, saying, "We thought we were only signing a letter of intent and did not agree to you announcing to the world that we will be involved in issuing a stablecoin." By the way, about five years ago, similar incidents occurred when Libra was launched. So, the old story is playing out again.
Host Mia: I'm not sure. Meta often talks about doing something, maintains the product for a while after it goes live, and ultimately doesn't really succeed. So, when I hear that Meta is launching a wallet, my first thought is: How long can this product last? Three months?
Haseeb Qureshi: Of course, I don't know how long it will ultimately last, but how can we not count this? Meta is a top-ten global market cap company. When it comes to reach in emerging markets, no other company can compare to Meta. Just look at regions like India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, where many people's daily lives are almost inseparable from WhatsApp. Instagram is obviously ubiquitous globally as well.
These are extremely large-scale platforms with very broad coverage. Therefore, I would not underestimate Meta's launch of a stablecoin wallet. Among the companies that can reach a large number of user wallets, the only company that may have greater coverage capabilities than Meta is Binance.
Why Might the Best Technology Not Necessarily Win Out?
Haseeb Qureshi: I used to believe that the best technology would eventually prevail. I was a firm believer in this early on, but I gradually gave up on that view, and now I no longer believe it. Instead, it's a combination of various factors, including market entry strategies, distribution channels, partnerships, product quality, and user experience, all of which are obvious factors. I think it's no surprise to anyone that "the best technology may not necessarily win out."
But I may have had a slightly idealistic view in the past: the crypto industry was originally created by technologists, and those technical experts who truly delve into the underlying code and algorithms are also the tastemakers of the industry. They would ultimately be the gatekeepers for others, judging which technologies are excellent enough, which systems are robust enough and trustworthy, and can be used with confidence. But now we have entered a world where many people are no longer so concerned about these issues. Perhaps this is a normal phenomenon, perhaps it is also inevitable. However, seeing the industry eventually converge on some solutions that are not necessarily the best we can offer is still somewhat regrettable.
Host Mia: Have you believed in other ideas in the past that you no longer identify with today?
Haseeb Qureshi: I used to believe that cryptocurrency was fundamentally opposed to state power and that as it grew in scale, it would eventually be banned almost everywhere. Cryptocurrency would have to continue to develop in this underground, anti-authoritarian asset state and prove its value.
But the world we find ourselves in today is far from that. Bitcoin has become the underlying asset for ETFs in the United States, Japan, Hong Kong (China), and Europe, and stablecoins are now also legalized. You can now instantly send $100 million to someone in North Korea, and no one will stop you before the transaction takes place, with the stablecoin system itself fully able to operate legally. Of course, sending funds to North Korea would clearly violate sanctions and be illegal. However, technically preventing stablecoins from reaching the recipient's address beforehand is not how the current stablecoin system operates. The system itself is fully within the legal framework.
The world we see today is truly surprising to me. A decade ago, I would never have predicted this. It has fundamentally changed my understanding of the essence of cryptocurrency and the role it will play in the entire financial system. In the past, cryptocurrency was a rebellion. The current situation is somewhat akin to the United States. The U.S. itself was founded in a rebellion. A group of people felt taxes were too high, so they took up arms, ousted the existing government, and built a new nation from scratch.
But today, the U.S. has become the system itself. It now stands as one of the world's longest-running independent constitutional governments. If you live long enough, you eventually see yourself becoming like the older generation. That's probably the moral of this story. Bitcoin was born out of a rebellion against the banking system, but now, we are starting to negotiate with banks. In fact, that's precisely what's happening around the proposed CLARITY Act. So, things are indeed changing.
What has been the biggest mistake the crypto industry has made?
Haseeb Qureshi: The biggest mistake we've made is idolizing Sam Bankman-Fried. I believe that's the biggest mistake the industry has made.
Host Mia: Is that the most severe out of everything that has happened in this industry?
Haseeb Qureshi: Yes, I would say so.
Host Mia: Do you think we will encounter similar events in the future?
Haseeb Qureshi: Probably not. It's a bit like the global financial crisis. It was a crisis triggered by real estate at the time, but the next crisis usually doesn't come in exactly the same form because people build numerous defense mechanisms and rules to spot similar issues earlier.
Now, we have proof of reserves, as well as a plethora of investigators and analysts continuously monitoring on-chain data, flagging fund flows in and out of different exchanges, and examining platforms' solvency. Various regulatory measures now in place, including the rules Binance needs to follow in the EU, are essentially aimed at preventing another FTX from emerging.
This means that we may not see another FTX exactly like it. However, other issues will still arise. This is certainly not the industry's last failure, nor will it be the final public scandal. However, it is likely to be the last crisis of this kind.
Host Mia: This industry has experienced some significant turning points, with FTX being one of them. Of course, these turning points have not always made the industry worse; some moments have brought about tremendous positive changes for the entire industry.
Do you think there will continue to be such major moments in the future? As the industry matures, the likelihood of such events seems to be decreasing. For example, the Trump Token issuance was a very significant event. I feel like almost every year there is some major event, but I wonder if as the industry continues to mature, we will gradually lose these major turning points. Do you think we will still see such moments in the future?
Haseeb Qureshi: I believe that there will definitely be more major moments in the future. Just look at the Open Standard. The Open Standard was announced just two days ago, which is an alliance of some of the world's largest companies. Companies like BNY Mellon, major banks, Google, Samsung, and others are involved, stating, "We are going to launch a stablecoin together to compete with Circle and Tether." This is absolutely crazy.
If the stablecoin market can grow to $30 trillion by the end of the century, then the path to achieving this goal is likely to take a similar form. I don't know if Open USD will ultimately succeed. Clearly, I have doubts about it. But at least this shows that history has not ended. We are still in the early stages of development in this industry.
Although I have mentioned before what will not come back and that people should not complacently assume that everything will automatically rewind and replay in the same way as in the past, the crypto industry is evidently still very early, and the story is far from over. In terms of the overall size of the financial asset market, the total market value of stablecoins is currently about $315 billion. If you are BlackRock or a large financial institution, this number is not that big actually.
Compared to real-world US dollar flows, the size of US Treasury issuances, etc., the stablecoin market is still small. It is growing rapidly and gradually acquiring systemic importance, but it has not yet truly reached systemic importance. Its proportion of the total US dollar supply is still only a few basis points. However, this will change. When it truly changes, we will see more crazy things happening in this industry.
The manifestation of these things will be different and will not completely replicate past events. But this story is certainly far from over. I anticipate that many more things will happen in the next decade.
Will Crypto VCs Eventually Be Replaced by Generalist Funds?
Haseeb Qureshi: This is a great question. What is clear is that when cryptocurrency truly succeeds, when it crosses the chasm, the way it succeeds is by becoming ubiquitous, integrating into everything like plumbing.
Social networks used to be a separate investment category as well. In the age of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Snap, people would think of “social” as a standalone track. But eventually, social becomes just a feature. Now, when you build an app, you might include some social features, but that doesn’t mean you are founding a social networking company. Social features just become a part of everything.
Cryptocurrency will evolve in the same way. In the future, 'crypto' won’t be the identity of a whole company; it will just be a feature of a company’s product. A company might say, “We have a stablecoin settlement layer,” “We use on-chain analytics,” “We also offer some related feature,” but cryptocurrency itself is no longer the sole reason for the company’s existence.
I think this is the direction we are heading. In fact, this transition may already be underway. In such a world, if a company is not crypto-native but merely has some crypto functions, investors no longer need highly specialized crypto expertise. This is similar to investing in a company with social features that is not a social media company. You don't need to have a unique set of social media expertise to judge if the company is worth investing in.
So, I think that's the direction of the future. In that context, the answer is: To be a great investor, you must be great at investing and have all the skills that a great investor needs. Generalist VC firms will enter your space, fintech investors will enter your space. If it’s a project combining crypto and AI, AI investors will also enter your space.
You have to become a better partner, a better investor, provide better help and advice to founders, and be better able to support the founders you work with. If you can’t do that, you’re not qualified to manage the funds. It's as simple as that. This answer may sound blunt, but the answer is actually quite straightforward: If crypto ultimately prevails, its path to success is ubiquity. And companies that use crypto tech will no longer be called crypto companies. They will just be companies.
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