Latest / CRYPTO 101 / Ep. 693 How Coinbase Ventures Invest in Crypto Projects and Their 2026 Outlook

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Ep. 693 How Coinbase Ventures Invest in Crypto Projects and Their 2026 Outlook · CRYPTO 101

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Crypto101 podcast, presented by Gemini.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your bridge to the future of money.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the crypto 101 podcast.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm your co-host, Bryce, super jazzed for today.
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've got a great guest.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Brendan, how are you doing?
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm doing good too, man.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's, we're hanging in there through this last little season of the crypto market.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Little colder than expected, but we're all good.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like a freaking winter, both in the seasons, but also in the market,
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm starting to get, you know, behind this idea that we've been in a bear market this whole year, you know, Bitcoin, you know, Ethereum things are negative on the year.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was looking at some of these small cat crypto indexes that are down 60, 70% on the year and so.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: definitely not a bull market, although there have been pockets of optimism.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's been a lot of good fundamentals that have developed, but prices haven't caught up.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, so a lot of questions in our mind and our audience mind and while we won't be focusing so much on prices in this episode, we're going to be talking about what the builders are excited about and what the long-term venture
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: this whole long-term view of crypto really is give us a little bit of optimism amidst some of the pessimism in the price charts.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: But with that little preamble out of the way, we are so excited to welcome the head of Coinbase ventures, Hulie Tejwani.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for joining us.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: How are you doing?
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Doing great.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, Price Brennan.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry about the price charts.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's all about
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, now it's it's hard, you know, crypto is trading 24 seven and so, you know, you get off work and it's like, oh, well, might as well check the prices.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, bad price.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why did I do that?
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we want to zoom out a little bit get acquainted with who you are, who we talk a little bit about your background.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just so our audience kind of is is caught up to speed on who you are and what you're working on today.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, happy to.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So when I'm slowly, I've been here at Coinbase coming up on seven years.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Before this I've done a whole bunch of different things I was at an early stage VC fund.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was at Bane and Company in their private equity group, but I first got exposed to crypto and Bitcoin.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: it grad schooled MIT.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: The digital asset kind of research group had was spinning up there and they didn't air drop to MIT students with Bitcoin.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was one of the not smart people who didn't claim it and then got very jealous when my classmates were funding expensive.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: vacations, if I'll wait here to the Hampton's.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what kind of started me down the crypto journey.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I've worn a bunch of different hats and Coinbase I've worked closely with the Clio, who you guys had on recently on the Corp Dev and M&A side.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the beginning part of my tenure, but about three years ago, shifted to focus fully on Coinbase ventures in our early staging besting programs.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, it's funny, you know, Coinbase has so many different branches and divisions and so tell us a little bit about what Coinbase ventures does and how it's different from like, you know, we log on to Coinbase.com, we start making trades and stuff like that, you know, give us the lay of the land here.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, totally.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's probably helpful.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just like zoom out and go through the origin story for Quemies Ventures.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that'd be super helpful.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: It really started just as a blog post and credit to Brian and Emily and Bology who's here at the time and the culture they have of just, you know, they've instilled of like just try things, action creates information.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So blog post went out, said Quemies Ventures over for business, we were writing small checks off the balance sheet
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: We wanted to help seed this ecosystem around Coinbase as a broader platform and just back great founders who are advancing the crypto economy forward.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: The really wasn't a plan that wasn't really like a fixed budget or like dedicated team, but things just kind of evolved very organically.
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: We had
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: really strong Coinbase employees who are leaving to start their own things that we wanted to support.
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: We had different projects that we were associated with across the ecosystem, our own investors and Coinbase bring us into rounds.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward to where we are today.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've made over 500 investments, we're one of the most active, definitely not the most active investor in the crypto space.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: We invest off Coinbase's balance sheet, we are a dedicated team within Coinbase, and we're operating very much like a traditional venture capital firm with multiple strategies.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we have pre-seed seed investing, which we call ecosystem investing, so we do things specifically around base.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: But we're completely ecosystem agnostic.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've made many salon investments and other ecosystem investments.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: where we spend a lot of our time and energies at kind of a core seed series a one to five million dollar check range and then we also do larger strategic investments growth stage investments and selectively can do liquid liquid token investing typically where there isn't like a traditional private DC around is where we'll we'll activate there so um
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, highly, a lot of flexibility Continued to deploy capital like part of what hasn't changed is the overall mandate Which is really we're looking for exceptional founders who are going to really move the entire like ecosystem It's space forward working on big ideas and return capital over a long-term horizon
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, all right, you might not be allowed to say this, but it's, uh, because it's kind of like picking a favorite in a sense, but what would you say has been the most successful or the biggest one so far?
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, hard.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's, again, talking in the album.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like picking, it's like picking your favorite, your favorite child.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, but I think what's been really cool about our model and I should clarify, like we sit completely separate from the exchange of Muslims process.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a, there's a very, um,
• 6:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: firm, firm kind of like Chinese while our arms like the relationships.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So when we invest, we're not investing with any intention or implication around like getting listed on the Coinbase exchanges, like a complete different process.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if I look back, we've been doing this now coming up on, you know, becoming up on eight years.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: pretty much the major project or categories for our space we've had exposure to.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So before Bas was a Twinkle in A was I's we had gotten invested in all the major L2s.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it was like Marbitron, Scarq, et cetera.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And before NFTs were a big thing, we had invested in OpenC and kind of major NFTs projects.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: We invested in Uniswap before Dex's had kind of proven out.
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I could come up with dozens of examples like that.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think what's important else is that we're finding those projects that are really going to move the space for.
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think we've had a pretty successful track record doing that.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And does it like come down to a split between tokens and equity or how are you, you know, how is coinbase ventures kind of getting compensated for these investments?
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just like a traditional, it's a good question.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just like a traditional venture capital fund.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we'll invest in equity only investments.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll invest in staffs that have equity in the future and kind of optionality for a token.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can also do direct click with token investing.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's really project specific.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: We hold on the same kind of long-term investing.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: lockups in terms as you're kind of tier one financial vc's and and can operate so it's overall we're not a hedge fund we're not an active trading shop we're when we're when we're unwriting investment we're thinking like five to ten year time horizon so we're not in the business of kind of doing quick flips
• 8:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 8:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, that makes a lot of sense.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, that word underwriting is super key.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, and it's a lot different, like then underwriting, like Brendan for instance, has a lot of real estate investments.
• 8:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, you know, there's real estate funds that could, you know, kind of underwrite us, you know, six to eight percent return annualized or whatever, like that, what's the underwriting process really look like at a high level for what you guys are doing?
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Pretty similar to how most early stage venture funds would construct the portfolio.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're looking for the baseline assumption, the vast majority of these, the high risk zero-to-one projects.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of them are going to end up being zeroes, summer, and maybe return.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: if you're lucky's the capital and but it's really that power law where a handful are these ten to hundred X return return outcomes and that's how we're approaching it so we're looking at it very much like there has you have to be able to convince yourself in the what you have to believe that yes you know it's super risky the most likely outcome is that it's going to fail but is there that like ten to hundred X upsides scenario
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: and are these founders that are in it for the long run, they're going to build towards that, and that's how we think about it.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, versus, you know, at a growth, later stage growth, growth stage type investment, it'll be different thinking, right?
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like the business model is proven out, there's revenue, you know, the company, or project may already be cashflow breaking, and then you're thinking, okay, there's a lower expected return threshold, you have to underwrite too, but also kind of downside protection with the outcome for the business should be.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you think more people should look at the crypto market like that because we opened up this episode kind of saying I'll don't look at the price day to day.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: It'll freak out and you know, we don't really care what happens But I saw you and the team going even a step further and saying hey, you don't really care about like Monthly or even Quarterly when it comes to these funding numbers maybe even price action you guys are looking like farther out than months or quarters out of time You know
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you think more investors should kind of look for that when it comes to all crypto investments?
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe just not just early.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, Kevin I'm saying nothing.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm saying financial advisor or anything like that.
• 10:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the mantra I repeat over and over and I've been in the space now for a while and I've been through multiple cycles.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It really it's all about time horizon and we as heroes are so.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're so just wired for a kind of short-term measurement, short-term going.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you zoom out, if someone's been just small dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin for 10 years, they've done quite well, right, if you know.
• 11:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: if you bring in the aperture into a quarterly window, if you pick a particular slice, they mean look like total idiots depending on what slice you choose to pick, but that's what I like about our role, our approach, and not being kind of on the short-term trading side is, yeah, it's kind of Brian has his quote of like,
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're an elastic band and you've been stretched and shrunk a whole bunch of times, the elastic just wears out, and then you can just be super zen.
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, like, not it like, super zen, really don't really don't rotate.
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, we're paying attention to market trends and momentum and where things are.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when you've gone through 80% drawdowns and 80% upswings multiple times, and you just kind of focus on kind of, like, where the secular trend is going over,
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I can degree more and kind of speak into that.
• 12:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like where do you see the most excitement?
• 12:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: What segment of the market?
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know there's lots of new, you know, what they call super apps.
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's AI agents, there's fiction markets.
• 12:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, where are you guys?
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, maybe even like quantitatively, like where you, you know, what's your investment break down kind of look like or where you think what's excited about?
• 12:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, totally.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that maybe, maybe best way to do is kind of recap where we, what we did in 2025 and then what we're thinking about for a nice, that's perfect.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a good segue on kind of thinking about price charts because if I set back, I think this year was one of the most significant in terms of fundamental progress.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like if you look at fundamental indicators across everything for crypto and a lot of that was driven by the increasing regulatory clarity and just like constructive tone in D.C.
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, a lot of this year, we were spending in stable coins, stable coin related infrastructure, stable coin powered apps and use cases, and the genius act really was a game changer.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: There, we have clear rules of the road, and we saw a ton of exceptional founding talent come into the space leading it to that, and Arcade team to do that.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, we've done a lot of work and a bunch of investing around stable coins.
• 13:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: DeFi continues to be this perennial kind of area for us.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's always some type of new advancement and we made a bunch of DeFi investments over the past few years that are all bearing out.
• 13:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: the other big thing that's happening on the regulatory front is hopefully we have a market structure bill that lands and passes sometime in this administration and that's opening up all types of assets that come on chain that have been in this fuzzy kind of gray areas.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're spending a lot of time with
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: real world asset type use cases and different forms of exchanges, taxes, different ways to trade, all those things, the other thing I would I'd be remiss out saying is a prediction market's clearly like have hit massive product market fit.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: They've done mainstream depending on when this post added.
• 14:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Shane from Polymark was on 16 minutes last night.
• 14:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't have put that in my big
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like zooming out, crypto has like there's two really kill killer use cases that are proving out and it's showing and showing through from the fundamental adoption perspective.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: One is like, stablecoin, stablecoin related payments.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's just tremendous demand for U.S. dollars, denominated assets globally and the benefits are very clear.
• 14:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think there's like 10 to 100x penetration potential that we're going to go through around stablecoin adoption.
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: and then on the other side is crypto superpowers like you can create markets for anything 24-7 globally and so prediction markets are a good example of that where you're actually harnessing the speculative properties to but creating like useful utility useful information out of that.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of all those other places which is like a hodgepodge of where we were focused and what we're doing in 2025.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can dive into a couple of like specific things that we're thinking about for 2026.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we just put out a blog post.
• 15:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're trying to get in the habit of doing kind of a little more building in public.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: We were all in an internet off site and just kind of whiteboarding different ideas and themes that we're excited about.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: We want to find the right teams to back.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So one broad, one broad topic we're thinking about is like perps and perp medication for everything.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not sure how familiar the audiences are like perpetual futures, but this is really like one of those interesting accidents of cryptos, market formation that has turned out to be that's really killer instrument with killer product market fit, like traders love perps.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: market makers institutions like it's it's a it's a killer instrument and now we're seeing a world where we think everything can be purified so every type of asset they you would normally trade could be brought on to Perfs on chain so we're excited about that a couple a couple investments there one one one top line I can't announce just yet but it'll probably be out when this uh
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Second, continue on that prediction market trend, they've like the next level of this of where the prediction market world is going is advanced trading terminals.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have multiple prediction market interfaces, but it's still really cludgy for like a like a
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I won't say like a advanced trader, but just a little more like beyond the casual speculator to interface across all of them and find different opportunities.
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're excited about kind of sharp tools, if you will, for prediction markets and aggregate liquidity across all these different venues.
• 17:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: In DeFi, one big area we're excited about is under-collateralized credit.
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like the DeFi lending model to date has been the over-collateralized model.
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's worked well, it's great, but now we're to place where can we actually bring in and like form some type of like on-chain credit score and open up how credit is done in DeFi, and that can be massive.
• 17:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: A two more all hit is privacy.
• 17:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's a big theme for us.
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: the, we've gotten to its phase where there's institutional adoption, Bitcoin, like it's, it's crazy for me though, I was driving in the office and first thing I'm Bloomberg, they're talking about Bitcoin price and like a few years ago, what, like, how is this in the top of the mainstream kind of press media?
• 17:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: So in a place where it's become mainstream, but now folks are catching on the privacy components and attributes of
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: have this all originally started in kind of the Cypher Punk ethos matters and doing fearing up privacy while also balancing compliance matters and so there's a whole bunch of different approaches and solutions that we're looking at there and then last would be like we're missed without saying like AI and robotics like right like it's AI absorbing everything changing everything we think block change and crypto are going to play like a very complimentary
• 18:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: things like proof of humanity, how do I cryptographically prove that like the three of us are actually real human having this conversation right now versus it being my AI avatar, how can you use crypto and blockchain networks to incentivize like data collection and things like robotic robotic model buildouts and then yeah all the types of like on-chain development security things you can do with AI so it's it's a big category but those are kind of
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: flavors of where we're looking to find the right teams of that man that's uh that's no small task and I imagine you guys are quite busy there um you know kind of I mean I
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: are you guys like I'm just trying to think of the investment process like are you guys going out and hitting all these conferences and collecting business cards and like you know doing a lot of outreach or do people just come to you and say hey here's my eye and you got to have the selection of like okay I'm filing through this and you really get that you know that pin up to con sort of view of the entire market because everybody's sending you their pitch deck.
• 19:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, good question.
• 19:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's definitely a combination of both.
• 19:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're fortunate with kind of the broader Coinbase employee base, our network.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You kind of are investor relationships that we do get a lot of interesting stuff sent to us.
• 19:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there's always a fight for quality and the highest, you know,
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: deals are the highest quality deals are always super competitive.
• 20:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's a lot of outbound hunting that we do as well.
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think we try to be very thesis driven so we will pick a category, really try to drill it down to like first principles and try to understand.
• 20:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: What would we want to see built in this and what would we get excited about in Investing behind and then we go out with prepared minds and then it's all about the interception of you Gonna have a great idea, but if you don't have the right founding team.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a it's off it You can have a killer founding team.
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would always bet on the killer founding team with like a B idea that they'll figure it out and get to the A idea So that's the limiting reagent is finding is finding like long-term mission oriented
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Founders who have the right technical DNA the right team formation DNA and so we're we're it's land See an air where we're we're looking we're we're scouting we're reviewing and try to find those folks wherever they are
• 20:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, clearly a lot going on and I think it's hard to bet against infrastructure that kind of seems to be like what we're getting at is that there's all these areas of growth and there's all these different things that can happen and I mean, there's still so much to do it's well, I think that that is what I hope is one of the main takeaways from this episode is that people are listening in.
• 21:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, and you just gave like,
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: four absolutely honed in ideas that I think people should be writing down and if you missed it, go back, rewatch it and come back to where we're at right now and fast back forward.
• 21:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: But one of the things that we noticed is that small caps have kind of lagged behind the large caps in the crypto market this year and that's been one of the standouts that I think through a lot of people for a spin.
• 21:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Have you seen any correlation between that
• 21:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't, I wouldn't say there's necessarily a correlation with early stage investing.
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're coming in at, you know, really like the idea early, early, early, early formation stage.
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: The observation you, you're making, which I do agree with, is like, look,
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: five years ago, there were what like 200, 300 tradable tokens, now there's literally like a million being generated every day, so there is this like dispersion of liquidity and eyeballs and I think we're in a world where it's just going to be infinite amount of tokens to trade so it just comes back to that power law thing right so within that if you treat small caps is like a broad basket it may be down year and year, but
• 22:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would wait here that if we unpack that down, we could find, you know, handfuls of there's massive returners within that group.
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, 100% because you look at a lot of the projects that have blown up, and there's still been so many of them that have gone from not being a token at all, to being an idea or a platform.
• 22:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: to then launching and becoming these multi-hundred million if not billion dollar projects.
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, look at pump.fun, hyper-liquid, the list goes on, right?
• 23:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And all these projects do this.
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I asked that because the early stage in what you guys do is like,
• 23:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: two steps before a small cap, because you have large caps, you have mid caps, you have small caps, you have micro caps, and then you have the early stage, which is before something can even really be a micro cap or a small cap.
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: It has to go through you.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I didn't know if there's any kind of correlation over there, but I mean, it seems to be that you all are not discouraged, but quite the opposite.
• 23:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm quite excited going into this coming year.
• 23:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're more bullish than we've ever been.
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, from a fundamental perspective, like regulatory climate is 180 degrees better than it was a few years ago.
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Number of wallets are growing.
• 23:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Number of active users are growing.
• 23:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: The fundamentals for the core L1 chains all look really positive.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: The number of developers are growing, like it's a stable-coin adoption, like the volumes is just going through the roof, so it's, yeah, the fundamental usage and adoption of the technology and assets is like progressing forward, and
• 24:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've got a constructive regulatory climate, we've got the developer tooling and the infrastructure is at a place where you can create applications that get to internet scale.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: That wasn't true for four years again.
• 24:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So again, if you zoom out, I'd tell you a five tenure horizon.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: This definitely were super excited.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And
• 24:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like we've always consistently deployed with like I'm very very high conviction on our deployment for the next couple years.
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love that.
• 24:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was thinking kind of back to like the Clarity Act and you had mentioned that and also kind of, you know, gave us some color on, you know, the regulatory climate and increasingly, you know, getting better.
• 24:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the Clarity Act is something that I think a lot of people aren't super clear on, you know, ironically.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: just like a lot of like you know our listeners or that sort of thing.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I was wondering if you could kind of like let us know a little bit about what the Clarity Act should be doing for the market and why it's good.
• 25:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then also if you could color it a little bit with just
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: like this idea that like is the clarity act, you know, if it allows these big institutions to start playing in the market, is it then going to edge out a lot of the current market participants, small caps or these other people that are trying to build, you know, real defy projects is like, well, if the clarity act pass and, you know, JP Morgan could have a decks or whatever, like if that's what it means, does that mean, you know, uniswap dies or whatever.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Great.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Great question.
• 25:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'll previous was saying, you know, we've got except for folks like Paul Grill and Coinbase who's way more wired into like where where things actually stand and it's still the bills still being, you know, worked in workshop between.
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: both houses of Congress.
• 26:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what ideally for me is a venture investor, the outcomes for clarity would be is one, we have clear rules of the road of which agency in the US is one how are we defining all these different tokens and crypto assets, what security, what's the commodity, what's something in between, what's a net new definition, and
• 26:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who's actually the responsible regulatory agency right because we had this just completely confusing set up for so many years really we don't even know who the cop right cop is in the cops can't even agree with themselves the question or what.
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: What will a second piece that will be very powerful in we're seeing, I'm seeing very positive trends around some of the kind of no action letters that we're coming out of the SEC is that for years we had this like very ambiguous set up around tokens and how value can actually go back to token holders and if you trip a certain definition from.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the 1930s, then you're out of bounds if you don't, then you're in bounds.
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so having just a very clear framework in place of like, okay, how, how can you actually register something when you need to register something to be compliant?
• 27:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Think that brings, um,
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: It just opens the design space for these smart contracts token instruments to just be not artificially constrained in what they do and how they can bring network revenue back to a token holder or buybacks and burns as financial instruments and becomes a lot clearer and something you can wrap your head around under right.
• 27:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then the last point, we're investing a lot in this at Coinbase is the whole idea of like OmChain Capital Formation.
• 27:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: So probably so I recently acquired Echo, recently did first retail pre-sell on Firmone add on Coinbase.
• 27:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that actually flips my world completely upside down.
• 27:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: where the normal venture model is, hey, I'm going to raise a bunch of cash, burn a bunch of cash, and hopefully find the product market fit.
• 28:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, projects may be able to, you know, just be able to go and raise capital on chain for their project and tie, you know, tie the actual fundraising activity to like activity on their network or platform and it kind of inverts my world totally upside down.
• 28:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm excited for that, because I think it's just more
• 28:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: more experimentation, more projects getting funded, more interesting things happen, but a lot of VCs are going to have to rethink how to operate if you're wearing like a better version of ICO to not a world in the coming years.
• 28:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I'm super hopeful that there's just more opportunity for for the everyday person and speak in a mode that, you know, did you guys view the launch as a success?
• 28:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, how did it go?
• 28:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And can you give our listeners a little bit of color on, you know, how they might participate in the next one that is on echo or so and are.
• 29:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I'm not super close to wasn't super close to that launching kind of have the same kind of perspective is there's any listeners probably I'm sure there were like lessons learning the things that would Optimize you do differently but overall things definitely a success this the impetus and spirit there was
• 29:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: to allow a more equitable and democratic distribution of the kind of token and I think that was achieved right by making it available to Coinbase retail participants with specific real sets and kind of
• 29:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: discouraging the like the farm and foot behavior that has killed so many projects and really kindly distribute theholder base.
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, all about time horizon.
• 29:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think I think it's viewed very much success the amount of capitals raised for the project, the distribution of theholder base and just be able to get out of the game do this completely legally in the United States was it was a big first.
• 30:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure there's a bunch of like
• 30:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: lessons that the team will be incorporating for future raises.
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: To participate, sign up for Coinbase Coinbase.com account, and I'm sure there will be more in the future.
• 30:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do your own research, have your own perspective, all the information is out there and public.
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, just find there will be more, there will definitely be more opportunities.
• 30:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like a big, our core mission
• 30:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: increasing economic freedom and kind of democratizing how cap like these early-stage capital formation events happen as a big part of that, right?
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: If so many people have been locked out of wealth creation in the United States because of what I think are like very outdated and growing investor laws and constantly have private longer and and all of that stuff that
• 31:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, one of the interesting things that we've observed this year is we just had a the bit-wise guys on Ryder's Mucin and Matt Hogan and one of the things they said is that this has been the year of the crypto IPOs and it got me thinking.
• 31:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: If there's the number or the quantity of how many crypto IPOs that have come out this year, has that in any way affected the way that you look at venture capital?
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or does that change your perspective when it's like a really crazy or like an all-time high year like this one?
• 31:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or maybe if it was the opposite, would that be something that affects the way that you look at venture?
• 31:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a great question.
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Markets are cyclical IPO windows open and closed.
• 31:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Definitely are coming out of a or still in a very healthy IPO window.
• 31:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think overall it's just been really healthy for the space for a long time.
• 32:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had to
• 32:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: respond to folks like what's the what's the public market equity outcome story in crypto outside of Coinbase and there's like uh well we're waiting Now there's a whole bunch of examples right so from a venture investor perspective
• 32:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just more, it's more feel on the fire of saying, okay, if you build a robust equity business, there is an IPO window for exit outcome, you could also be doing a token, token business and have liquidity through a different format, but it just kind of de-risks long-term, like how you think about long-term outcomes to have that healthy IPO activity for the crypto sector.
• 32:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, it's a really interesting sort of contrast that I see is like, you know, obviously, like a lot of these guys, you know, not to put circle on the spot, but that was certainly in my opinion the biggest one, where these guys have been early builders, they, you know, create a really valuable.
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: idea of like, let's have stable coins, let's make them super regulated in the US.
• 33:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: We got, you know, USDC, let's get good liquidity, all that kind of stuff.
• 33:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, they played their cards right, they made a bunch of money, right?
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so now, all of these, you know, investors out there that are looking at their options of like, hey, are we going to buy, you know,
• 33:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Bitcoin and Ethereum, or any of these other coins out there, or are we just going to go buy circle stock?
• 33:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or are we just going to go buy coin-based stock?
• 33:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or any of these other equities?
• 33:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, how do you kind of pair the two in your mind of the investable universe?
• 33:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Does it kind of shrink?
• 33:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because now that there's all these equities that are crypto-related and crypto-backed,
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Does that kind of obviate or get rid of the need for all these tokens?
• 33:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or do you think they're still going to co-exist?
• 33:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think they totally co-exist.
• 33:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: If anything, it just expands the investable universe.
• 33:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 33:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like a Coinbase or Circle, those are traditional enterprise value creation businesses.
• 34:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: you get quarterly financials and cash flows and revenue and the businesses are geared around the broader crypto markets and underlying assets and technology.
• 34:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: But each one has its own kind of different strategies performances, margin profiles, et cetera.
• 34:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't change the case for Bitcoin as a store of wealth, hedge on inflation.
• 34:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't change the case for,
• 34:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: hyperliquid is an on-chain perp stecks or more foe is your kind of barlund defy protocol.
• 34:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they're all they're all they're all somewhat correlated in interwound but it actually just grows the investment universe and you know different tax treatments for different types of assets different institutional players can participate in certain types of things.
• 34:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Capital can match
• 34:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: What it needs to match, but, yeah, it definitely does not come at the cost of the token side of things.
• 35:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 35:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, the more options, the more well-capitalized folks like, you know, circle and coin based are the more opportunity they're able to, you know, reinvest in the industry, build out new infrastructure like Brennan mentioned.
• 35:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's incredible what's going on, and you know, I'm hopeful that
• 35:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: we continue to see more crypto IPOs and more ICOs as well.
• 35:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, because that's what's interesting is like now that we have, you know, echo or so.
• 35:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Actually, I also, I might ask you to help us delineate between echo and sonar because I've said both of those words, but you know, more capital formation across the board, both inequities and in token.
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's just going to, you know, keep expanding.
• 35:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yet, tell us a little
• 35:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
• 35:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: So related products Echo is big of it for private sales, pre-token, genesis launch.
• 36:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: We actually, we stood up a basic ecosystem group on Echo last year and we were kind of
• 36:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: They give it almost like an on-chain angelist where our dispense are accredited, have gone through really a KYC process, and then think of so-and-r as an actual token sale and distribution platform.
• 36:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's a short-hand way, but both kind of related and trying to solve for the same thing.
• 36:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, that makes it ton of sense.
• 36:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, one of the things kind of as we wrap up, you know, I've heard about the PayPal mafia, but now there's a new mafia in town, the Coinbase Mafia.
• 36:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is this, have you heard of this term?
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Have heard of this term.
• 36:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm still trying to figure out if like Mafia is the right branding or if there's like another sin in them out there.
• 37:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the Coinbase.
• 37:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The various overtones, yeah.
• 37:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: A long time.
• 37:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, be alone.
• 37:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's a super powerful network and set of folks.
• 37:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, fun fact, we've, there's over 100 startups now that have been founded by Coinbase alums.
• 37:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
• 37:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've invested in almost half of them.
• 37:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think Coinbase has been this just talent density hub for folks for many years.
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: convicted on the space, high technical bar or business document bar to be here and the founders of the company really instilled a very heavy entrepreneurial startup DNA culture.
• 37:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's how we operate now and even as like a more scale platform and it seeps down into them play base and so I could list dozens of examples of, you know, far caster, danner, marrow, jake of horns or
• 37:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's really cool for filling for me to see that kind of full story where we have great folks here go out and start their own thing and then have impact in the broader industry.
• 38:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, if you are, my plug would be, if you're thinking about founding or starting something in crypto,
• 38:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: not exactly sure and want to have like your MBA in crypto like Coinbase a great place to spend a couple years with great folks and then the the data shows that it's it's it's a great kind of set of cohort of founders and now comes coming out of here.
• 38:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah I mean you you just named off you know a list of some some great Coinbase alum
• 38:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know and you've got such a unique vantage point to speaking with a lot of these founders and other founders as well and a lot of people who watch our show are trying to start up on their own right they're trying to you know break into the industry or you know get a new job or whatever but I guess the question is like what do you see as some of the common threads of these.
• 39:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, ultra-successful founders and, you know, what do you look for in founders when you are making these investments?
• 39:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
• 39:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I kind of hit on earlier, but first and foremost is like intrinsic motivation.
• 39:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, um, you can't replace that and replace that and it's like,
• 39:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's at home missionaries versus mercenary thing.
• 39:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like you can make a fast book and pretty much any kind of space.
• 39:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can also lose a lot of money in any space.
• 39:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you, or are the founders oriented towards like building something substantive and have like a long term horizon?
• 39:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is like kind of baseline.
• 39:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: typically find a good co-founder that you get through the derisking of co-founder break-ups and stuff early on.
• 39:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And typically, you know, when we're looking at co-founding teams, we're looking for at least one to be technical.
• 39:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like you need to have the ability to kind of code and ship and like prototype your idea rapidly and that just accelerates velocity.
• 40:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then the last attribute, I
• 40:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: it's a big part of Coinbase culture.
• 40:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's actually like clear communication because clear communication is a direct indicator of like clear thinking.
• 40:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so can you articulate something very complex in a very short amount of time in a way that, you know, that?
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: explain like I'm five, that's a super power, I think, especially in our space and it's how it translates to how you're going to attract talent and higher folks and make your for sales and communicate and market your project.
• 40:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's another kind of key attribute we're looking for.
• 40:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, holy, I mean, you've made five over 500 investments now with Coinbase ventures.
• 40:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So an impressive amount, I think it's a 500 more than most people can say.
• 40:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: What are some of the biggest lessons that you've learned?
• 40:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Going through all this.
• 40:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, great question.
• 40:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: But you're on the spot.
• 40:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 41:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some lessons.
• 41:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's easy to be contrarian.
• 41:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to be contrarian and right.
• 41:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a bias in early-stage VC folks that just like always have the contrarian view but contrarian and right is different.
• 41:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Two lessons don't index on social proof, like it doesn't matter who else is leading the round or what this person says about you.
• 41:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: We, you can have big outcomes or, you know, bad outcomes either way, um, and yeah, I'm trying to try to figure out a few more.
• 41:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um,
• 41:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Global, like, the talent in this space comes everywhere.
• 41:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't kind of look any way, anywhere it can have no pedigree, some pedigree, like a ton of pedigree, but, you know, look at what people built and shipped and kind of that's the proof in the pudding.
• 42:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, and last is just like,
• 42:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: space moves fast, don't like always check your priors, it maximalism isn't throughout, you've got always, it's like the market reason line of strong opinions weekly held and constantly be re updating your assumptions or your posture based on the new information that's always coming at you.
• 42:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
• 42:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those are some great, great learnings for our audience and for ourselves, for our own personal portfolios and
• 42:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Man, it's it's been a tough year, but I think 2026 has a lot of a lot of bright shining stars ahead, you know, any any last words before we let you go, what we should be looking forward to in 2026 anything that we should be looking out for from your guys's camp.
• 42:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, again, I'll just, I'll recap with like, it may feel like a tough year 2025, but from the fundamentals perspective, it's as bright as ever.
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're actively, we're excited and we're as bullish as ever, deploying, it really is all about time horizon.
• 43:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Don't get caught up in the,
• 43:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: weekly's the hourly's the five minute chart and just I encourage everyone just like to zoom out.
• 43:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you zoom out it puts a lot of things in perspective.
• 43:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: There will certainly be things that
• 43:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Be greedy when others are fearful, be fearful and others are greedy.
• 43:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: If we do go through some market turbulence, there will certainly be things that have like 10 to 100x future outcomes, and it's just all about having conviction and having kind of a first principle to be on how you approach this stuff.
• 43:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, and if you are interested in working in any of those areas that we share in the blog post, we'd love to hear from you, we're actively looking for the right teams to back.
• 43:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those ideas and we'll keep sharing ideas.
• 43:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: man, that sounds great.
• 43:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess last question, where could people follow along on your journey?
• 44:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have an exit count or are you posting personal writings anywhere?
• 44:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I need to get better about the personal writings.
• 44:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm at Hoology, H-O-L-I-E-G, on X, and you can always look for my miss blog, and that's where I've got his venture's blog, and we'll be more active sharing some stuff out there next year.
• 44:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful.
• 44:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right.
• 44:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Juli, we greatly appreciate you spending the hour with us.
• 44:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody at home watching.
• 44:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: We also greatly appreciate you tuning in on your way to work or doing whatever you're doing.
• 44:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So come back same time, same place next week, because I promise we're going to have some more incredible guests for you.
• 44:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Enjoy this holiday season.
• 44:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: However, you're celebrating.
• 44:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: We wish you the best.
• 44:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And same goes for you, Juli.
• 44:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: We hope you have a good one with your family.
• 44:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Appreciate you, Joe.
• 44:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.