Dragonfly Partner Haseeb Talks Crypto VC: Sorry, Some Things Will Never Come Back

Podcast: MAD Society

Compiled by: Wu Says Blockchain

In an interview with MAD Society on July 15, 2026, Dragonfly Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi discussed crypto venture capital, founder judgment, and long-term industry trends. He believes that the key to venture capital is to seize a few non-consensus opportunities, and excellent founders should possess outstanding "peak abilities." However, a lack of integrity and inconsistency in words and actions are clear danger signals. Haseeb also stated that certain structured products and single-asset tokenization may struggle to form long-term enterprises, while DeFi, stablecoins, payments, and prediction markets will continue to exist. In the long run, crypto technology will ultimately integrate into various financial and technological products, and the label "crypto company" may gradually disappear.

Audio transcription by GPT, errors may exist, please watch the original video on YT.

Poker and Venture Capital: How to Establish Judgment Discipline in Long Feedback Cycles

Haseeb Qureshi: There isn't much overlap between poker and venture capital. Poker is very similar to trading because both have very fast feedback loops that allow for tight and rapid iterations. You play a hand, and you immediately know whether you won or lost, and whether your decision was correct.

But in venture capital, the feedback loop is very slow. You invest in a founder, and it may take many years to know whether your initial judgment was correct. In the first year, you might see some early signs, like the company is growing and seems to be gaining some market recognition. Even if a company has completed Series A or even Series B funding, it can still suddenly run into problems. It may appear to be progressing smoothly for several years, but there could be a fatal flaw in the founder that ultimately leads them to fumble the ball in the last play of the season.

So the reality is that it's hard to quickly judge whether you, as a venture capitalist, are doing well enough. Many funds raise money based on early paper valuations of their portfolios, only to find out later that there are no real winners in the entire portfolio. Suppose you invested early in Axie Infinity or OpenSea; at the time, you might think, "Wow, I'm a great investor, I'm doing so well."

Several funds also invested early in FTX. At that time, people would say, "My God, this person is the chosen one in the investment world, can you believe he participated in the seed round of FTX?" But just a few years later, the situation changed to, "Well, this fund doesn't seem that special now." Because its most dazzling star project has collapsed.

Venture capital is unique in this regard. This means that, first, you must actively establish a feedback mechanism for yourself and cannot rely on the world to give you feedback directly. As a venture capitalist, you must continuously learn and improve, but whether an investment is successful often takes many years to determine. Therefore, feedback must come more from your judgment of your own performance rather than from external results. This is very difficult for many people.

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 essentially you are facing the entire table alone. Venture capital is not like that. You can only succeed if the founders you invest in succeed; you can only truly win if your fund succeeds and the projects of other partners in the fund also succeed. Therefore, venture capital heavily relies on collaboration and interpersonal relationships.

But if you are a poker player, you basically don't need to care about others in the world. As long as you can sit at the table, play normally, and continue to profit, you can still be a successful poker player even if you have no friends. This is another significant difference between the two. Most truly great venture capitalists are very good at handling interpersonal relationships. I don't think I'm particularly good at this, but I've certainly improved a lot compared to the past and am better at building relationships than most traders I know.

Most traders don't need this. Like poker players, they don't need to be friendly, don't need to be good at handling relationships, and don't need to have a large network. Therefore, the ability that truly helps you do well in venture capital from poker is mainly the ability to think clearly about risks and the ability to control emotions well. I find that many venture capitalists are not particularly good at these. They may be very emotional and have difficulty handling conflicts.

These two aspects happen to be areas where I excel. However, to be frank, compared to other core abilities required in venture capital, I believe the importance of these abilities is not that high.

Who is the "GOAT" of Crypto VC?

Haseeb Qureshi: Who is the best at hitting the ball? I would say it might be the most controversial investor in our industry, Kyle Samani. Of course, he has now passed the stage of personally hitting the ball, just like Babe Ruth retired. But if measured by the internal rate of return and profit and loss generated per dollar invested, he might be better than anyone else 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 person who does not follow consensus. Wherever he goes, he often sparks a lot of controversy. But he is a true 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 that's the most difficult part of venture capital. It is very easy to convince yourself to believe in a project, such as: "a16z Crypto is also investing in this deal" or "Paradigm is also investing in this deal," or "this company is particularly hot right now, exploding on Twitter, and everyone is talking about it." Especially in the crypto industry, many investments are made before a project has achieved product-market fit.

For example, a new Layer 1 is about to launch; or Bitcoin Layer 2 suddenly becomes very popular, Babylon is hot, and other similar projects are also hot. These concepts may not have proven themselves at that stage, but they have already gained significant attention and are rapidly spreading 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 it." Or conversely, to firmly believe, "I believe in this project. Even though no one is discussing it now, and no one cares, in the future, everyone will care."

Doing this is very difficult. As for how to quiet your mind and focus on hitting the ball, I think the answer lies in the discipline established by the investment committee. This is also why venture capital firms usually operate in teams rather than by individual investors acting alone. When you make judgments alone, it is very easy to be influenced by group pressure. There are too many external voices and too much power that can affect your thinking.

But when you are in an investment firm, and that firm has formed an institutional 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 affected. Your partners might say, "I will never approve this investment just because of these claims.

You must prove to me that if Bitcoin Layer 2 is really that good, then bring out the data, bring out the evidence. What is your argument? Let's really sort out the logic and go through it step by step." If you can't do that, I won't believe it. This discipline has been gradually established by Dragonfly over the years and is part of the culture we have formed as an investment firm. But if a firm lacks this discipline, I think it will be very difficult to become a truly excellent investor.

What is the Biggest Blind Spot for Crypto VCs?

Haseeb Qureshi: I believe that if you are a crypto venture capitalist, then you are essentially a product shaped by the crypto cycle. Anyone who has been in this industry long enough has experienced the ups and downs of the market and has gone through an emotion like, "Well, none of this really matters; everything is meaningless."

Not long ago, "financial nihilism" was the dominant cultural trend on Crypto Twitter. People believed that these things were unimportant, had no real value, and everything was just a meme.

The situation is different now. I wouldn't say that today is still financial nihilism, but more like: "Not everything is unimportant; only a few things are important, and only things that generate income are important. Projects without income are unimportant." If you are a crypto venture capitalist, it is easy to fall into the view that there is some Hegelian dialectical cycle in the market, where things come and go, and there are always endless booms and busts waiting for us in the future.

The longer you stay in the crypto industry, the more cycles you will experience, and in the end, it seems that everything is a cycle, and beneath the cycles are more cycles. But if you are hypnotized by this view, believing that things will inevitably develop in this way, I think you could make very serious mistakes as an investor because you haven't thought deeply enough about what changes might happen in the future.

Another issue that I think people don't think enough about is that crypto venture capital may really come to an end at some point. There may be a final year of worthwhile investment funds, after which there won't be many new opportunities in this field. For example, social media was one of the most important technological trends of the 2010s. You can look at Google, Facebook in the public market, and Microsoft entering this field through the acquisition of LinkedIn. The largest social media networks have continued to grow since then.

However, venture capital for social media companies effectively ended around 2009. After 2009, almost no new social media companies were created. ByteDance, which is behind TikTok, is almost the only company that has successfully built a truly meaningful business since then. Although the products themselves continue to evolve, the platform landscape has hardly changed. It is still basically Meta, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc., which were already in existence in 2009.

So, the crypto industry may also 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, and all these indicators continue to trend upward, if by 2030, almost all important companies have been established, and existing platforms have become very large and continue to grow, then the space for new players to enter the market and disrupt them may be very limited.

I don't know if this situation will definitely happen. Even if it does happen, I don't know exactly when it will happen. But it will almost certainly occur at some point. Almost all industries eventually develop in this way, especially in those industries that have economies of scale and network effects, and the crypto industry happens to possess both characteristics.

But I believe that most crypto venture capitalists have not seriously considered this issue. This could be a potential blind spot: just because we have been doing this in the past, we assume we can continue to do so in the future. In the consumer sector, new consumer companies may always emerge. However, it is uncertain whether new crypto companies will continue to appear indefinitely. They might, or they might not.

Which Hot Tracks in the Crypto Industry Are Difficult to Sustain Long-Term?

Haseeb Qureshi: In fact, many tracks have basically died or are on the verge of extinction. Occasionally, we still receive funding pitches for some of these projects, such as someone saying, "I am working on a Bitcoin Layer 2 with lending features." We still see such projects from time to time, but they are quite rare now. 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 Hyperliquid. The CLO itself is a very large market, so there will definitely be a huge CLO market on Hyperliquid."

We still see many similar complex financial products trying to launch on Hyperliquid or some relatively independent trading venues. I believe that such projects may soon decrease because they are not truly businesses. It is difficult to constitute a company by only doing one type of financial product. Historically, very few companies have been able to build a real business solely by selling a single financial product.

Especially when you do not control the distribution channels. If the distribution channel is controlled by Hyperliquid, then you are essentially just a reseller; or conversely, Hyperliquid is merely a resale channel for your product. In either case, it is not a particularly attractive business model.

What other tracks might disappear? Many people are currently tokenizing individual assets, such as "I want to tokenize a gold mine" or "I want to tokenize these cars." But this is also not a business; at most, it can only be considered a product. The existence of such products might be a good thing. However, unless you are tokenizing truly large-scale assets like U.S. Treasury bonds or stocks and can scale them up sufficiently while genuinely solving the distribution issue, I believe that projects merely saying, "I want to tokenize this asset I hold, please invest in me, venture capitalists," will gradually disappear, or may have already begun to disappear.

There is a classic joke in traditional venture capital: there are some "lowland" directions where founders always fall repeatedly. When founders pivot, they often think of the same ideas, going through the same motions over and over again, even though venture capitalists always tell them not to do so.

One typical direction is dating apps. Every time founders consider pivoting, they seem to think about whether to create a dating app. This is usually because most founders are young and single, so they spend a lot of time thinking about dating issues. Another common direction is "co-founder matching." Founders often think of this idea because they are looking for co-founders themselves, so they feel they should develop an app to help others find co-founders.

There are also a lot of productivity tools, such as "I want to create a better to-do list app" or "I want to create a better Asana." These all belong to the "lowland" of bad ideas. People always keep returning to these directions. The crypto industry certainly has similar phenomena.

One of the most common ideas I see is "the Bloomberg of the crypto industry." This is interesting because as early as about ten years ago, when I first started in venture capital, "the Bloomberg of the crypto industry" was already a not-so-good idea. At that time, someone pitched me such a project, and almost every year since, someone has continued to pitch it. But they usually do not really understand what they are talking about. What exactly does "the Bloomberg Terminal of the crypto industry" mean? It is somewhat vague. What specific functions should it provide? What problems does it solve? These questions often do not have clear answers.

Now it is 2026, and you need a more explicit and precise entry point, rather than relying on a slogan like "the Bloomberg of the crypto industry." I do not know if this counts as a trend; it seems more like an interesting little phenomenon: many such ideas always float around the industry and never truly disappear.

How Can Young Investors Maintain Objective and Clear Judgments Amid Market Hype and Noise?

Haseeb Qureshi: Frankly, my advice is to communicate less with some people. I believe that many new venture capitalists make the mistake of talking to too many people, ultimately averaging their views with those of the crowd around them. As a venture capitalist, it is crucial to force yourself to think independently. It is easy for people to tell themselves, "Of course, I am thinking independently; I have my own ideas, I have written blogs, and I organize notes after discussions with others." But the easiest way to lose your ability to think independently is to engage with too many strongly opinionated people.

I am not saying you should not communicate with anyone. However, most venture capitalists I know essentially just collage the views of the seven people they communicate with most frequently. The more time you spend alone, thinking, reading, and learning, the more likely you are to form truly unique views that belong to you. These views may not be correct or accurate, but at least they differ from those of others around you.

The way you are most likely to achieve excess returns is by thinking differently from others. Of course, there is a risk of making incorrect judgments, but it is also possible that you are right about something that everyone else has misjudged.

As a venture capitalist, your returns come from this ability. You will not be heavily punished for making incorrect judgments. Suppose your portfolio has 50 projects, and 15 of them are wrong; who will care? What truly matters is whether you captured that project that everyone else misjudged, and only you got right. And that comes from the ability to think differently from others.

This also requires a certain degree of confidence. Communicating with many people is a very easy and safe approach. You can say, "Well, this is my view on new banks because I talked to five people, and they all have these views on new banks, so I averaged their opinions and will present them in the next podcast."

But not doing so raises the bar much higher for you. You need to re-examine these views, judge from scratch, and truly think independently about what you believe. And as I mentioned earlier, the cost of making incorrect judgments is not that high. I believe that most people are genuinely optimizing how to appear smart or skilled at their job, rather than how to actually do the job well.

This is also why I always say Kyle Samani is the best in the history of venture capital. He is quite crazy, right? He clearly lives in his own world and has very strange views on many things. He has also missed many trends and often confidently states, "I believe something will definitely happen next." And then he is completely wrong. But that does not matter at all. As long as you have one correct judgment, that one is enough to cover all the other mistakes; who will care?

Venture capital is not a business where you need to appear impeccable, nor is it about making a certain audience or focus group think you are smart and respectable. The real way to win in venture capital is to be right about that one thing that everyone else got wrong.

What Are the Experiences in Raising $1 Billion?

Haseeb Qureshi: During the fundraising process, you will realize that there are entirely different ways to raise funds, and each method can be successful. One way is to truly build trust with someone, to understand them on a personal level, so that they recognize you and are willing to invest in you because they believe in who you are and your vision.

I am not good at this method at all; I am not good at it at all. I am quite socially awkward. It may not seem like it, but it is true. I find it difficult to establish deep relationships with many investors and fund allocators. There are many successful strategies for fundraising, and there is no single path. The area where I find it easier to succeed, and where I am relatively more skilled in fundraising, is dealing with institutional investors. What institutional investors value most is whether you can demonstrate a very high level of capability, knowledge, and a comprehensive grasp of your field.

However, if the other party is a family office or individual investor, relationships and trust often become much more important. They usually want to know you for a long time, to truly understand who you are and how you operate. They want to be able to pick up the phone and contact you at any time, or even occasionally have a beer with you. What institutional investors are looking for is something else: they want to confirm that you are the best in the industry. Compared to everyone they have interacted with or heard about, you are the most skilled at doing this.

You need to present the most rigorous and reliable arguments explaining why you will win and others will lose, and provide facts and performance as evidence. This type of fundraising is usually where I excel. But the reality is, if you are raising a large amount of money for a fund, it is still a team effort. You need to have people skilled in different fundraising methods to cover different parts of the fundraising market.

If you are an entrepreneur, you typically raise funds mainly from venture capital firms, and you may also engage with some corporate investors or individual investors, but primarily venture capital firms. And venture capital firms are quite similar to each other. If you are a fund that needs to raise from different pools of capital, the differences between these pools are significant and far from the similarities among venture capital firms. Raising funds from university endowments, hospital foundations, insurance companies, public pensions, and family offices are all completely different experiences.

When facing these different groups, you need to use different skills, different entry points, and different narratives to make fundraising truly effective. Therefore, fundraising itself is an independent skill. Truly excellent venture capitalists are skilled in both investing and fundraising. Over the years, I have made progress in fundraising, but I still do not consider myself a world-class fundraiser.

What Traits Do Successful Founders Generally Have?

Haseeb Qureshi: Based on my observations, a high degree of cognitive flexibility may be the best predictor. 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 job changes every two to three years. Leading a company of three people, fifteen people, one hundred people, and one thousand people actually requires completely different abilities.

It is somewhat like transitioning from being the head of a parent-teacher association to becoming the mayor of a small town, 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 good President of the United States does not mean they would be an excellent head of a parent-teacher association, nor does it mean they would be a good mayor of a small town.

Founders who are truly adaptable usually maintain a strong curiosity for learning, are willing to change their minds, abandon old frameworks, and adopt new ones. Those who are less adept at scaling often say, "When we were only seven people, I always did it this way; why is no one listening to my instructions now? Why has the product development speed slowed down? Why are there suddenly so many political issues in the company?"

They would think that these are problems that must be thoroughly resolved. They might say, "The company has too much waste now, and there are many bureaucratic issues in our management; I must fire them all to bring the company back to its basic state." I'm not saying these problems don't exist; they often do. As a company scales, it inevitably experiences growing pains.

However, the best founders actively explore how their work should change as the company reaches a certain scale. They also adjust their skills to meet new job requirements. Managing a company with 1,000 employees is more like governing a small town. You need political skills and diplomatic abilities to manage an organization of that size.

In contrast, managing a company with only seven people primarily relies on execution capabilities. A seven-person team doesn't require much management because everyone is in the same boat, rowing in the same direction. You don't even need to communicate much; just look at what others are doing and move forward together.

But when a company has 50, 100, or even 1,000 people, everything revolves around communication. In a company with 1,000 employees, it's almost impossible for you to have a substantial impact on the company by personally completing a task. Everything you do is about mobilizing the entire team through directives you issue as a leader, clarifying direction for them, and motivating them to put in extra effort, truly focusing on every detail in the product to create an excellent product. That's why I say that for most founders who have scaled their companies to a certain size, the most challenging thing is adapting to these changes in their work. Not everyone can do this well.

When we assess whether a founder might succeed, we often look for their particularly outstanding "peak abilities." Our philosophy is to invest in a person's strengths rather than in someone without obvious weaknesses. Almost every great founder has weaknesses. For example, Mark Zuckerberg was clearly not an excellent leader in the early days of Facebook, with very noticeable shortcomings in leading a team. But in his area of expertise, he reached a world-class level.

This is true for almost all founders. Uber founder Travis Kalanick is another very well-known example. He has extremely prominent strengths but also very obvious weaknesses. This is almost a universal rule in the startup field: the best founders are often not well-rounded individuals. Generalists are more suited to executive roles after a company has already scaled. They rarely mess things up, don't easily say the wrong thing, and are less likely to provoke strong dissatisfaction in others. Such individuals can be excellent managers in mature large companies.

However, they typically struggle with going from 0 to 1 and leading a startup through the ongoing transitional phases of growth. Therefore, we can accept founders with significant flaws. To invest in truly great companies, I believe you must accept this. What we cannot accept is a founder who lacks any particularly outstanding abilities.

Host Mia: Let me turn the question around. What signs indicate that a founder might not succeed? Let me set a scenario: the project idea is great, has scaling potential, the team is excellent, everything on paper looks fine, and they have even successfully attracted many top-tier funds, but you still feel something is off. What could be the issue?

Haseeb Qureshi: One of the most obvious problems is integrity. If this founder is not completely honest or transparent, it can be very dangerous. Of course, every company exaggerates to some extent when raising funds, saying things like, "We will dominate the world," "We will reach an incredible scale," "We will do this and that," or "We will partner with a certain company tomorrow." But when you continue to ask, "What specifically is the partnership?" things can become vague.

Confidence is one thing, but confidence sliding into dishonesty is another. This is a very strong danger signal because such behavior only intensifies. I have never seen it improve as the company grows; I have only seen it worsen.

So, this is almost a direct reason to terminate the investment process. If we find that a founder has a pattern of dishonesty, we will say, "Forget it, we won't invest." Another issue is whether their words and actions are consistent. Many investors make a very common mistake: they really like the story, like the founder, like the team, and like the market, but something just doesn't add up.

For example, the founder says they are very eager to complete this round of financing, but their actual actions are very delayed, and the progress is not fast. Or, the founder expresses great confidence in the company, and there is a lot of investment demand in the market, but they are willing to concede on all financing terms, even accepting less-than-ideal valuations. These inconsistencies make the entire story unable to fully cohere.

Inexperienced investors often overlook these issues. They might think, "Maybe I'm just too good, so they are willing to give me such terms," or look for some seemingly harmless explanation for these inconsistencies. But almost every time, when a startup's actual behavior does not align with the story it tells, it means you have missed some information. And when you don't know what you missed, it usually isn't something that will work in your favor. In fact, that's the answer: if you don't know what the problem is, then it likely isn't something that will work in your favor. If you really understood the truth, you might not want to invest anymore.

So, I'm not talking about a specific problem, but rather a type of phenomenon. As you gain more investment experience, you will gradually learn to recognize them. You will develop an intuition: "Wait, my alarm is going off. Let's hit the brakes; something is off here, but we don't know what exactly it is." When you don't know what the problem is, it likely won't be an answer you want to see.

Host Mia: How often do you encounter founders lying? Is this a common situation?

Haseeb Qureshi: Most projects actually never progress to the point where this level of investigation is needed. Whether a founder has lied is not important because we may have already decided not to invest from the start and won't even check further. Once we get into the deep due diligence stage, discovering that a founder has lied is relatively rare, but it’s not so rare that we never encounter it.

What is more common is exaggeration. For example, they might say, "We are about to partner with NVIDIA," or "ByteDance is very eager to participate in this round of financing." But when you actually communicate with ByteDance or NVIDIA, they might say, "We are just still considering." This situation is very common. I usually don't directly view it as lying. The founders are clearly trying hard to persuade us to invest, and they are indeed very excited about their company. They might even not accurately assess the situation themselves, 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 might be young and inexperienced. So, I generally won't conclude that "this person is untrustworthy; they are deceiving me" just because of such exaggeration. However, if someone is indeed lying about an important fact, that is very rare. But it does happen, and once it does, it basically leads to a direct termination of the investment process.

Host Mia: In the past, solo founders were often not well-regarded, but now in the AI era, solo entrepreneurship seems to be gaining respect. Did you have 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 issue is not how difficult it is for one person to start a business, but rather that there tends to be a reverse selection among those who choose to start a business alone. If you are truly exceptional, there will usually be people willing to work with you and co-found a company, and you have the ability to find very strong co-founders. If no one is willing to start a business with you, it might mean that you haven't realized that your abilities are not sufficient to work alongside those you want to collaborate with; or it could mean you think you are better than everyone else, but that is not the case. Perhaps they 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, recruit well, and retain employees, among other things.

However, if we believe that this person has no issues but simply chooses to start a business alone, we don't mind and can fully accept it. Therefore, solo founders are not necessarily a negative signal; it's just that statistically, the likelihood of solo founders being inadequate founders is somewhat higher.

Another issue is that founders often have some kind of fatal shortcoming. Suppose a founder has strong technical skills but lacks any business acumen, business experience, or sales experience. If they co-found with someone who possesses these abilities, the team can form a complementary relationship, compensating for each other's shortcomings. In this case, we wouldn't be as concerned about the downside risk of this founder-CEO. But if they are a solo founder, we would be more worried: who can stop them from making mistakes?

Even if they later hire a Chief Business Officer or Chief Operating Officer, the reality is that the founder always holds a special position within the company. Whether this founder is aware of their weaknesses or whether they hire a COO does not change this fact. Professional managers like COOs, Chief Business Officers, or sales heads will always hold back to some extent because they do not truly have control over the company. When someone lacks control, it means the founder will create a "power distortion field" within the company, regardless of whether the founder is aware of it.

If there is another co-founder also within this "distortion field," sitting in this bubble with the founder, they can exert a very strong corrective influence, helping the company avoid failure due to the founder's weaknesses. This is why venture capital firms pay attention to the issue of co-founders. But if a founder does not have these obvious shortcomings, then solo entrepreneurship is completely fine.

Industry Downturn: How Should Crypto Entrepreneurs Persevere?

Haseeb Qureshi: I am very reluctant to give advice without understanding a person and their specific circumstances. It's a bit like giving life advice to young people. You know they are in college, and you tell them, "You should do this, choose this major, and then do those things." But in reality, you don't know the person, nor do you understand their environment, specific situation, and personal abilities.

I believe that giving general advice without understanding the specifics is not only difficult but can even be irresponsible. The only advice I think might be generally useful is that often, what truly hinders people from making the right decisions is shame. People feel a very strong sense of shame due to the time, energy, and money they have already invested, the funds they have raised, and their reliance on their employees. These emotions can prevent them from making the ultimately correct decision.

The right decision might be to close the company, accept an acquisition, pivot to something else, or continue to persevere. However, for many founders, the most destructive factor is the shame they feel for making a certain decision or deviating from the current established path. Therefore, the only advice I can give is to do your best to let go of that shame. Try to imagine that the person in this situation is not you, but someone else. What advice would you give them in the face of exactly the same circumstances?

Host Mia: I think it largely depends on whether they have the confidence to believe their judgment is correct. So, this question can also be rephrased: what framework should we use to view the current state of the industry? Perhaps people can glean some insights from that and then make their own decisions.

Haseeb Qureshi: It’s clear that some things in this industry will never come back. If you’re still sitting there holding NFTs, hoping for another NFT cycle to come around, I would say you might want to let that go and move on to find other areas that are more worthy of your time, capital, and talent. On the other hand, there are indeed some areas in the industry that will come back because they are very cyclical. DeFi is a classic example. Many DeFi projects are in a terrible state right now, but I believe DeFi will never disappear. It will become a foundational component of how the world operates in the future and how the crypto industry functions.

That’s why I say it’s hard to generalize these issues. Tolstoy has a famous line in "Anna Karenina": "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I think this line applies very well to startups.

NFTs may not return, but DeFi, stablecoins, and payments will exist long-term?

Haseeb Qureshi: I believe that prediction markets will exist long-term, Layer 1 will exist long-term, and DeFi will also exist long-term. The connection layer between on-chain and off-chain worlds will obviously also exist long-term, including fiat on-ramps and off-ramps as well as various capital flow channels. Cross-border remittances will exist, payments will exist, and stablecoins will clearly exist, including stablecoin issuers and payment orchestration service providers.

In my view, these areas are almost certain to remain important. As for most other areas, it’s hard to judge.

Host Mia: You predicted that a major tech giant would integrate or launch a crypto wallet this year. Which Web2 company is currently closest to actually doing this? And which company completely missed the boat?

Haseeb Qureshi: First of all, I need to clarify that my prediction has already been correct. I made this prediction back in January of this year. Then, around March, news broke that Meta would launch its own stablecoin wallet. So I’ve hit that prediction. Meta has announced that it will provide stablecoin settlements for content creators in emerging markets. I remember this feature was launched on Instagram. Next, they will continue to expand this business and may soon launch the wallet.

Clearly, since Libra, Zuckerberg has been very optimistic about the crypto industry. He firmly believes in this field. So I think Meta may be the first company to take action in this race. However, if you look at Open USD, or OUSD, which was announced a few days ago, you’ll see another possibility. OUSD is launched by a stablecoin alliance that includes many different companies. Google also appears on the list as a member of the Open Standard alliance.

Thus, we may see gUSD, or "Google USD," launched as a wrapped version built on OUSD. OUSD is expected to go live later this year. However, I have some doubts about OUSD. I’ve been discussing this on Twitter recently. I should have mentioned in this week’s "Chopping Block" show that I think the chances of OUSD succeeding may not be high.

The reason is that this alliance includes about 140 companies. It’s somewhat like a United Nations-style organizational model: there are too many participants, everyone wants to be involved in decision-making, and responsibility is dispersed among different members. This kind of model usually doesn’t yield good results. Just this morning, we’ve already seen some signs. I was tweeting about this. Some of the Korean companies listed, like Samsung and Dunamu, publicly stated, "We don’t know why we appeared in this announcement. We are not aware of it, and we haven’t signed any formal agreements, so we don’t understand why we were included."

There may be more companies responding similarly, saying, "I thought I was only signing a letter of intent and didn’t agree to you announcing to the world that I would participate in issuing a stablecoin." By the way, a similar situation occurred about five years ago when Libra was launched. So, the old story is playing out again.

Host Mia: I’m not sure. Meta often says it will do something, and after the product launches, it lasts for a while but ultimately doesn’t achieve real success. So when I hear that Meta is going to launch a wallet, my first thought is: how long can this product last? Three months?

Haseeb Qureshi: I certainly don’t know how long it will ultimately last, but how can that not count? Meta is one of the top ten companies in the world by market capitalization. When it comes to coverage in emerging markets, no company can compare to Meta. Look at regions like India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America; many people’s daily lives are almost inseparable from WhatsApp. Instagram is also clearly ubiquitous worldwide.

These are extremely large platforms with very broad coverage. Therefore, I wouldn’t underestimate the significance of Meta launching a stablecoin wallet. Among the companies that can reach a large number of users’ wallets, there are few that have better coverage than Meta, except for companies like Binance.

Why the best technology may not necessarily win?

Haseeb Qureshi: I used to believe that the best technology would ultimately win. I was once convinced of this, but I gradually abandoned that view and no longer believe it. Instead, it’s a combination of various factors, including market entry strategies, distribution channels, partnerships, product quality, and user experience—essentially all those obvious factors. I think the idea that "the best technology may not win" shouldn’t surprise anyone.

But I may have held a somewhat idealistic view in the past: the crypto industry was initially created by technologists, and those who truly delved into the underlying code and algorithms were also the taste-makers of the industry. They would ultimately vet for others, determining which technologies were good enough, which systems were robust and trustworthy, and could be used with confidence. But we now live in a world where many people no longer care about these issues as much. Perhaps that’s normal, perhaps it’s inevitable. However, it’s still somewhat regrettable to see the industry potentially converge on some solutions that are not the best technologies we can offer.

Host Mia: Have you ever believed in other ideas in the past that you no longer agree with?

Haseeb Qureshi: I once believed that cryptocurrencies were fundamentally opposed to state power and that as they grew larger, they would ultimately be banned almost everywhere. Cryptocurrencies would have to continue to develop in this underground, anti-authoritarian asset state and prove their value.

But the world we are in now is nothing like that. Bitcoin has become the underlying asset for ETFs in the U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, and Europe, and stablecoins have now been legalized. You can instantly send $100 million to someone in North Korea, and before the transfer occurs, no one will stop you, and the stablecoin system itself can operate completely legally. Of course, sending money to North Korea would clearly violate sanctions and be illegal. But technically, preventing stablecoins from reaching the recipient’s address is not how the current stablecoin system operates. This system is entirely within the legal framework.

The world that has emerged today surprises me greatly. Ten years ago, I would never have predicted this. It fundamentally changed my understanding of the nature of cryptocurrencies and the role they will play in the entire financial system. In the past, cryptocurrencies were a rebellion. The current situation is somewhat like the United States. The U.S. itself was established in a rebellion. A group of people thought taxes were too high, so they took up arms, overthrew the original government, and built a nation from scratch.

But now, the U.S. has become the institution itself. It is now one of the longest-running independent constitutional governments in the world. If you live long enough, you will eventually see yourself become like your forebears. 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 exactly what’s happening around the CLARITY Act. So, things do change.

What is the biggest mistake the crypto industry has made?

Haseeb Qureshi: The biggest mistake we made was idolizing Sam Bankman-Fried. I believe this is the biggest mistake this industry has made.

Host Mia: Is this the most serious thing 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, but the next crisis usually won’t appear in exactly the same form because people will establish many defense mechanisms and rules to detect similar problems earlier.

Now we have proof of reserves, and there are many detectives and analysts continuously monitoring on-chain data, marking the flow of funds in and out of different exchanges, and checking the solvency of platforms. The various regulatory measures now being implemented, including the rules Binance needs to comply with in the EU, are essentially designed to prevent the next FTX from happening.

This means we may not see another FTX in exactly the same form. But other problems will still occur. This will certainly not be the last failure of the industry, nor the last public scandal. However, it is likely the last crisis to occur in this form.

Host Mia: This industry has gone through some significant turning points, and FTX should be one of them. Of course, these turning points don’t always make the industry worse; there are also moments that lead to huge positive changes for the entire industry.

Do you think there will continue to be such significant moments in the future? As the industry matures, the likelihood of such events seems to be decreasing. For example, Trump issuing tokens is a very significant event. I feel like there are major events happening almost every year, but I wonder if we will gradually lose these significant turning points as the industry continues to mature. Do you think such moments will still occur in the future?

Haseeb Qureshi: I believe that there will certainly be more significant moments in the future. Just look at Open Standard. Open Standard was announced two days ago and is an alliance formed by some of the largest companies in the world. Companies like BNY Mellon, major banks, Google, and Samsung are involved and have stated, "We want to jointly launch a stablecoin to compete with Circle and Tether." This is quite crazy.

If the stablecoin market can grow to $3 trillion by the end of this century, the path to achieving that goal will likely take a similar shape. I don't know if Open USD will ultimately succeed. Clearly, I have my doubts. But this at least shows that history is not over yet. We are still in the early stages of this industry's development.

Although I previously talked about things that won't come back and mentioned that people shouldn't complacently think everything will automatically rewind and replay in the same way as before, the cryptocurrency industry is clearly still very early, and the story is far from over. In terms of the overall financial asset market, the total market capitalization of stablecoins is currently about $315 billion. If you are BlackRock or a large financial institution, this number is actually not that big.

Compared to the flow of dollar funds in reality, the scale of U.S. Treasury issuance, and so on, the stablecoin market is still small. It is growing rapidly and is gradually becoming systemically important, but it has not yet truly reached that level of systemic importance. Its share of the total dollar supply is still only a few basis points. However, this situation will change. When it truly changes, we will see more crazy things happening in this industry.

These manifestations will differ and will not completely replicate past events. But this story is definitely not over. I expect many things to happen in the next decade.

Will Crypto VCs Be Replaced by General Funds?

Haseeb Qureshi: That's a great question. It is clear that when cryptocurrency truly succeeds and crosses the chasm, its success will come from becoming ubiquitous, integrating into everything like entering a water supply system.

Social networks were once an independent investment category. In the era of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Snap, people viewed "social" as a separate track. But ultimately, social will just become a feature. Now, when you develop an app, you might add social features to it, but that doesn't mean you are starting a social networking company. Social features have gradually become part of all products.

Cryptocurrency will develop in the same way. In the future, "crypto" will no longer be the identity of the entire company, but just a feature within the company's products. A company might say, "We have a stablecoin settlement layer," "We use on-chain analytics," "We also offer some related features," but cryptocurrency itself will no longer be the sole reason for the company's existence.

I believe this is the direction we are heading towards. In fact, this shift may have already begun. In such a world, if a company is not centered around crypto business but just has some crypto features, then investors will no longer need to possess extremely unique crypto expertise. This is similar to investing in a company with social features but not a social media company. You don't need a unique set of social media expertise to determine whether that company is worth investing in.

So, I think this is the future direction. In this case, the answer is: to be a good venture capitalist, you must truly excel in venture capital itself, possessing all the skills that a great venture capitalist needs. At that point, general investment firms will enter your space, and fintech investors will also enter your space. If this is a project combining crypto and AI, AI investors will similarly enter your space.

You must become a better partner, a better venture capitalist, providing better support and advice to founders, and you must also be more capable of supporting the founders you work with. If you can't do that, you have no right to continue managing funds. It's that simple. This answer may seem blunt, but the answer is actually very clear: if cryptocurrency ultimately wins, its way of winning will be to become ubiquitous. And those companies using crypto technology will no longer be called crypto companies. They will just be companies.

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