Projects
![]()
No projects found
Investors
New
DAO Treasuries
DATs
Lend / Borrow APRs
Chains
Categories
Spaces
Bitcoin Beyond a Pet Rock Webinar | Core Ventures
Recorded: April 7, 2025 Duration: 0:54:08Space Recording
Short Summary
Core Ventures is spearheading a movement to redefine Bitcoin's role beyond a mere store of value, launching a manifesto that encourages innovation and investment in the Bitcoin ecosystem. With a focus on early-stage projects, yield generation, and strategic partnerships, the initiative aims to unlock Bitcoin's potential as a foundational layer for a new financial economy.
Full Transcription
there we go we are live we have half of the Dennis Brothers podcast here and then Ryan
I think first time publicly on a cast with with some video which is an exciting time
um yeah how are you guys doing today Ryan you're in the web3 festival right
Ryan, you're in the Web3 Festival, right?
Yeah.
The elevator in the background.
Yeah, we're tuning in live here from Hong Kong.
I think this is my first time on stream here.
Love it.
Representing from Asia.
And then we got Kieran, a great public face of CORE.
He's representing, got the construction in the background.
Yeah, we got some construction work going on next door. So that might kick up.
I'll be on mute some of the time. But yeah,
I'm here holding it down in the crypto capital of the U S Puerto Rico,
baby.
Love that. Yeah. Not a lot of love for the U S the last couple of days,
if you're outside the US,
which will be an interesting point otherwise.
Also an interesting day just for Bitcoin generally,
but we're not here to talk about price.
You know, as much as we'd love to speculate and talk about Bitcoin prices,
at the end of the day, it's really just hodl and put to work,
which is going to be part of what we're talking about today.
This kind of long-term view, long-term bet on bitcoin and its ecosystem so we wanted to get
together um the the three of us here and and a few others put together this core ventures manifesto
really going to give a hat to both kieran and ryan um who contributed heavily to that document. But yeah, we basically released a document
kind of outlining the opportunity
and kind of this rally cry
to get folks to build in Bitcoin
and the opportunity that we see there
and how Core Ventures is playing a big part in that.
So we really wanted to just break that down,
have an informal chat and talk through that
as the folks who put that manifesto together.
So before we dive in, maybe we could just do quick, quick intros.
So I'll start.
Brendan, been an initial contributor at Core for a couple of years now, mainly focused on Core Ventures at this point where we invest in early stage projects, bringing that into core and ideally extending
the utility of Bitcoin.
We're going to talk more about core ventures after, but before that was a founder CEO of
a fast company.
So know a lot about what it takes to scale teams, fundraise, and actually what it takes
to run a startup.
So hope to bring that to a lot of the founders in the portfolio and those building on bitcoin i'll hand it off to ryan for a quick intro absolutely impressive background brennan
oh it's like you may have may have frozen kieran you want to jump in
sure all the encrypt since 2017
I've been in crypto since 2017.
You froze for a bit there.
Right on cue.
Maybe we'll rewind and try again.
Ryan Hogg here.
Ryan Hogg here.
Work with Brendan and Kieran here on the venture side at Core.
Have been in the crypto space since 2017 and um worked across a number
of early stage funds family offices deploying of space as well as um otc desks so i'm excited
to be here and uh work alongside some some amazing founders and um really bringing uh this uh
investment background to to core ventures So excited to be here. And
yeah, I think, Kieran, maybe you want to do an intro. I think a lot of the community knows you,
but I'll hand it off to you. Sure thing. Yeah. Core contributor since like 2022,
working closely with the Core Ventures guys here, also an associate at Amity Ventures,
early stage generalist VC firm.
But yeah, super excited to chat about the future of Bitcoin and specifically building on Bitcoin.
Love that. So now we got the intros out of the way. We can talk Bitcoin. Great to kind of share the stage here.
So we put together this post, the Core Ventures manifesto was Bitcoin beyond Pet Rock.
And I don't know where that originated. It may have been a beyond pet rock and I don't know where that
originated it may have been a rich Ryanism I don't know if it was a Kieranism uh Kieran maybe
you could comment but um you know this was kind of like our our statement it's a bit fun to say
uh to encourage folks to see Bitcoin as more more than just a hodL asset. And I guess the overall thinking here is that, you know, when Bitcoin originally started,
it was meant to be more than just a store of value.
Obviously, some things have changed.
We couldn't even have predicted how big Bitcoin has become over the last 15 years.
But the original intention was to be a new financial system.
We kind of paved the way for a new financial system and not just be this
this hodl asset or this pet rock as we used in the manifesto.
This is really a rallying cry to put Bitcoin to work and we can kind of tee up
some of those opportunities and changes that were outlined in the manifesto.
So, Jared, I want to hand it off to you because I think you've thought a lot about this in terms of what things like merge mining, delegated proof of work,
Bitcoin the asset, Bitcoin the rails, and Bitcoin DeFi and some of these points that have come up
where we're now kind of getting to a point where folks are seeing Bitcoin as more than just a
store of value. There's kind of this renewed excitement to get things done.
So yeah, we'd love for you to just kind of jam on some of the points that we put together, and we can all kind of chime in here and discuss those points we outlined in the manifesto together.
Yeah, I think starting with that Pet Rock comment, that's definitely something that Rich talks about a lot.
I think it goes back much further than that, though.
It's mostly a phrase that's used by a lot of Bitcoin detractors
and people who criticize Bitcoin as saying,
yeah, it's just a pet rock.
You can't do anything with it,
which we all know is not actually true.
But for a lot of ways that people actually interact with Bitcoin,
that is a fair assessment.
Bitcoin was initially framed as digital cash,
as peer-to-peer electronic cash. And it hasn't really reached that vision for a variety of
reasons. It's much more become digital gold, this probably scarce asset that is perfect as a store
of value and a collateral asset, but not so much for daily
transactions. And if you end up using Bitcoin, like peer-to-peer digital cash, you'll just have
a lot of inefficient and expensive coffees. And so realistically, that's what people have sort
of gotten away from. And that is fine. The narrative of Bitcoin as digital gold has enabled
it to be very successful.
And you're seeing like with the ETFs, this wide acceptance, even among a lot of the detractors,
who were calling it a pet rock before, have now sort of Russell conjugated that into digital gold
and are fans of it. And so even Bitcoin's early detractors are now becoming adopters in that
sense. At the same time, we know that Bitcoin can be far more
than just that digital gold ETF asset. Bitcoin is not best used in ETF. Bitcoin is best used when
it's a foundational layer for a permissionless peer-to-peer self-sovereign economy. And so
the goal of Core Ventures in large part, in my understanding, is that we don't want Bitcoin to just be digital gold.
We want it to be not just a pet rock, but the cornerstone of a new financial economy that can both accelerate the existing financial economy and make it better, and also have this parallel Bitcoin-focused DeFi parallel economy.
Yeah, there's a lot there. Ryan, I'll give you an opportunity to jump in maybe if you'd like, and then I can chime in.
Absolutely.
I think Kieran brought up a great point, right, of converting these really OG Bitcoin community members
into people that recognize Bitcoin as a platform for not just digital gold and as a store of value,
but as really a place for innovation. And as someone that was previously an ETHMAXY invested
a lot across different ecosystems, I think maybe a tertiary goal of Core Ventures too is to bring in builders from other ecosystems, right?
And I think we maybe all maybe share this view, which is that why build on other ecosystems with proof-of-sake assets that are less secure, that are less liquid, and yeah, less of a apex asset than than bitcoin and so um like like kieran and uh
brendan were saying really trying to bring in a lot of these um other builders into um an ecosystem
where the the base asset is really sound and and secure just like how we know bitcoin is today so
sound and secure just like how we know Bitcoin is today. So yeah, Brandon, not sure if you have
anything else to add to that. Yeah, no, I think just kind of ripping on what you both said.
And I'm curious, I'm curious, like, you know, Kieran, you mentioned it's kind of taken,
we're kind of swerving back now, whether it just needed to take time and for Bitcoin to mature and kind of
see what the community did over time, but there is some renewed excitement now.
And it's like, did we know that the transaction issue would happen when it was launched?
You know, who knows, right? In a lot of startups and new products, you kind of figured it over
time, but that was the original intent for it to be more than just a store of value and to kind of create this parallel or this
other financial system.
And I guess the thing that we're trying to say in the manifesto is there are these limitations
to Bitcoin, right?
In terms of how many transactions it can have.
Is it a great cash substitute or a way to pay the coffee?
No, but it's extremely secure
and it's a massive pool of capital.
And it's been around mature
and it's extremely decentralized.
So you have this huge opportunity to build on it
and we don't have to wait for Bitcoin itself
to upgrade itself.
And there's been a bunch of these movements like merge mining, delegated proof of work
like what Core has done, and products like Bitcoin staking that have not relied on the
Bitcoin network itself to upgrade itself to open up a bunch of these possibilities.
So kind of the rallying cry was you've got this huge opportunity to put this Bitcoin to work and we don't need to rely on the Bitcoin network itself
to upgrade, to enable those changes.
Yeah, I think the way we put it in the manifesto is don't wait for new opcodes.
And there's so much talk about Opcat and BitVM
and so many different builders in the Bitcoin community
focused on those long-term sort of research projects
and what they're gonna be able to build when that happens.
But realistically, we don't need those to scale Bitcoin today
in the here and now.
And Core is like probably the best example of that
with this delegated proof of work system
and then all of Satoshi Plus as a whole.
It's showing that even though Bitcoin as a base layer is really designed just to uphold the fundamental characteristics of the Bitcoin asset,
you can build additional systems that align with that base layer in order to allow that asset to flourish on more scalable rails.
And so what Core is, it's an opportunity to scale Bitcoin without changing Bitcoin
at all.
And that should particularly appeal to a lot of OGs and veterans of the block size war
who don't want to change Bitcoin all that much, if at all, but also want all the advantages
that come with something like an Ethereum style DeFi composable environment. And so that's really the opportunity that we have here is now the tools are all there
and now we just need more developers, builders, executors, operators, funders to get on that platform
and start building dApps that are not just multi-chain all over the place,
but really focused on scaling Bitcoin.
Go ahead, Ryan. Go ahead.
No, you bring up a great point there of let's not wait and not kind of change what Bitcoin is and why people love it.
And let's bring a lot of this new innovation to Bitcoin.
And I think that's largely what we've seen, right?
I think a really key idea that really resonates with me
and I think with Brennan and Kieran yourself
is that everything we've seen in other ecosystems
and in the last, let's say, five years
has really happened on Bitcoin DeFi in just this year.
And I think that really is a testament to why we're here and kind of why CoreVentures exist
is to bring all those existing lessons and products onto Bitcoin and look past that to
bring new products and services that people haven't
even yet touched upon.
Absolutely. So I think we've talked about the manifesto, right? And that Bitcoin isn't just
an asset, its infrastructure is meant to be more than just a pet rock. Like the early Internet,
you know, Bitcoin is the foundation and it didn't stop there.
People just kept building on the internet. And now you're seeing crazy inventions like AI,
which no doubt is going to take us much further over the coming decades.
And now it's like the Bitcoin economy is forming. We've seen all these recent developments like
core, et cetera. So now let's just talk about core ventures, right? And this very much aligns
with core. So this is what we're seeing. This is the thesis manifesto and the world we want to see
over the, I don't know, how you want to frame it, next couple of decades, et cetera. We see it as
a massive opportunity. So core ventures is really here to make early bets and accelerate that
future. That's why we released this manifesto.
We've already done 16 plus deals.
I think there's some other diligence that might be plus or minus two of those.
But at this point, we've backed 16 amazing teams
from folks building Bitcoin-backed stablecoins to BitVM bridges
to new multi-sig wallet infrastructure to liquid-staked Bitcoin derivatives, you name it.
And we're typically going to be one of the first checks in.
We don't lead rounds, but we generally participate and bring in other reputable funds to give founders that backing.
funds to give founders that backing.
Yeah, that's generally where we sit in the mix and where we are today.
So we just brought in Kevin from Stats Ventures, who we've actually co-invested on multiple deals with.
We've kind of teed up the manifesto, talked a bit about core ventures, and we'd love to talk now about some of the opportunities
in this new Bitcoin economy.
You know why Kevin's excited about that, we've kind of heard why we are.
And then maybe we could talk about what we're looking for and founders,
you know, what maybe in this macro market, what that looks like for founders
and some of the opportunities that we're most excited about.
But yeah, Kevin, maybe you want to give a quick introduction of yourself.
Great to have you on board.
Absolutely. Thank you for having me here.
What an absolutely crazy day in the markets, first and foremost.
I hope everybody is safe out there.
My name is Kevin.
I am the founder and the general partner at Sats Ventures.
We only invest in Bitcoin companies. We invest typically very, very early. I am the founder and the general partner at Sats Ventures.
We only invest in Bitcoin companies.
We invest typically very, very early.
Many times we actually write the very first check into the companies that we invest into,
which we actually love doing because we bet big on founders.
I think Brendan was talking about what do we look for in founders.
We're looking for people who really have a strong problem statement.
What is the problem that they want to solve?
And we want to be there at the earliest stages to help the founders kind of solve that problem.
So, yeah, I'm absolutely excited to be here.
And I don't know what you guys have teed up, but I'm ready to go.
Let's do it.
Well, we were just talking about, we launched this manifesto two weeks ago,
blog post just about why Bitcoin, why we're excited about it, why Core Ventures is participating in it.
And would be curious to kind of ask you the same question.
Maybe we can then talk about founders and things we'd like to see, but why Bitcoin?
Why is your fund also focused on Bitcoin?
Yeah, so I'll take a little bit of a step back about, seems like forever ago now, but about
three years ago, I joined a fund that was very focused on investing into the Bitcoin space. And
this was a period of time where really nobody else was investing into the Bitcoin space. And this was a period of time where really nobody else was investing into the Bitcoin space.
And that was pre-ETF, that was pre-Trump, pre-potential deregulation or any changes in regulation.
But it was kind of rooted in this understanding that Bitcoin is the most decentralized monetary kind of solution.
And also it is something that has kind of this gold-like similarities.
So very early on, it was really about how do we have this asset which is in the trillions of dollars but then the
infrastructure that's actually there for that asset is so nascent it's so early and that was
kind of the asymmetric opportunity that i always wanted to be involved with so very early on three
years ago i joined a fund which is called the Bitcoin Frontier Fund,
invested in a lot of Bitcoin deals.
And from that point on, it was really seeing a lot of these deals were infrastructure focused
and DeFi focused.
So the opportunity to get in at the ground floor and be able to support these founders
who really wanted to make Bitcoin the asset that you can not just buy and huddle, but an asset that you could also potentially use in DeFi, an asset that you could
borrow against, an asset that you can swap with other assets. So over the course of those three
years, it just got super exciting. I mean, we have awesome scaling solutions on Bitcoin,
super exciting. I mean, we have awesome scaling solutions on Bitcoin, fantastic wallets, the
beginning of this kind of burgeoning DeFi on the number one most decentralized, more censorship
resistant chain. And yet it seems like we're still super early in kind of the whole infrastructure
of everything. And that's what kind of gets me waking up every morning, honestly, is, you know,
we do a lot of deals together, obviously, and we just see some of the ideas and the innovations that are coming up from the founders. And they're kind of wild and crazy, innovative ideas. But that's kind of what we need to make Bitcoin more usable.
Gotcha. Very much aligns with I think what we were talking about earlier and kind of our stance on things.
It's great that there's a couple players really backing founders here because I think it's still a pretty novel idea even in the builder space.
Like I think there's been some renewed energy in Bitcoin. Obviously you've been here for a couple of years, but it's somewhat new that folks are thinking about building in this space.
So I guess the big thing that I'd love to chat with the group about, our manifesto was really like this call to action to build on Bitcoin.
It was outlining this massive opportunity, this future vision of,
we see Bitcoin a lot as more than just a pet rock.
You need to build here.
And these are the types of founders that we're looking for um so yeah what what are the types of builders that you think are best suited to tackle these
problems and maybe we could talk about some of these high-level uh opportunities that folks can
go after because they seem absolutely massive so open floor for anyone who wants to kind of share a couple of thoughts. We
almost see this up as inspiration or, you know, just getting people excited about what
can be done here.
Anyone can take the floor.
I guess I can go first.
I think we have gotten to the point where a lot of people globally view Bitcoin as digital gold.
Whether you agree with that or you don't agree with that, that seems to be kind of a growing consensus amongst many people.
a growing consensus amongst many people. And therefore, I think one of the biggest opportunities
is just the ability to be in that camp to buy Bitcoin, to hold Bitcoin, and if you absolutely
need a liquidity at any moment in time, to be able to utilize your Bitcoin as collateral.
So I'm a very strong believer and a big bull in Bitcoin lending.
And those products can be built whether you want to build on utilizing DLCs
or you want to go the lava route, which is a little bit more interesting,
or you can build on core, right, as an example.
And we're starting to see some of these things actually come to fruition,
We're starting to see some of these things actually come to fruition, which is really exciting.
which is really exciting.
I think as time goes on, as more people accumulate Bitcoin,
as more people decide that Bitcoin is ultimately the digital gold,
I think we're going to see lending solutions on Bitcoin be kind of the biggest asymmetric opportunity right now.
Yeah, I think we can definitely second that.
I think that's a, you know, we've seen any type of pitch.
I think we've backed a couple of those as well,
including FEMA, which is a CDP.
But yeah, you're seeing the CDPs,
lend borrow protocols, institutional focused,
minting and opportunities to collateralize.
And I think the thinking here,
and Kieran would love to hear your thoughts on this as well,
and Ryan, is that you're kind of seeing these ETFs take over
and it's pretty obvious that that'll be a collateral asset soon.
You'll be able to borrow margin as you would with any stock.
Who knows what value they'll give you for that, but I'm sure they will.
I don't think they do yet.
It'd be great to see a world where, where, you know, it's not all done through
TradPriorails, right?
And obviously this can be done in a decentralized fashion, you know, using
your own keys without gatekeepers, really, really using what we see as one of the best
collateral assets to go use and do things with such as buying real estate or even just doing
P2P payments. This is something Rich has talked a lot about. Kieran, Ryan, would love to hear your
thoughts on this general space of collateralization and just any other big opportunities that you see in the new Bitcoin economy?
Yeah, I think the lack of yield generally in Bitcoin has been a huge problem because there is no base layer yield historically. And so that's why something like Bitcoin lending has
been so attractive. At the same time, it's been one of the biggest pitfalls of crypto broadly is
bad lending products and untrustfully counterparties.
So figuring out a way to provide yield on Bitcoin in a way that does not require those abundant
risks that have been taken in the past is really critical. And that's why I think Core is such a
unique place to get started with Bitcoin lending protocols and products of all sorts, because you
have that base layer of yield built in with the staking mechanism.
And so that gives you sort of that base trustless Bitcoin yield at the start that you can build on
top of. And it's sort of like the TradFi parallel is you have the bond market. And if you have
dollars, you can either hold onto the dollars and use those dollars within the dollar economy or purchase bonds, which are effectively perpetuating the dollar economy that you would otherwise participate in.
And Bitcoin hasn't had that same thing because it's been a system predicated on proof of work, which is a fantastic thing.
But now we're seeing the emergence of delegated proof of work and Satoshi Plus as a whole with Bitcoin staking, where you can either participate in the Bitcoin economy by using your Bitcoin or lending your Bitcoin, or you can stake your Bitcoin to perpetuate and secure that Bitcoin economy.
given the native tokenization features that blockchains have, it's not only going to be
the sort of option between bonds and using your dollars like it is in TradFi. It's going to be
both staking and liquid staking so that you can lend out your staked tokens. So any products that
are going to be able to build on top of liquid staking and sort of double the yield opportunity
for an asset that previously has had
zero or negative yield in the case of if you're an institution holding it with negative carry.
That's a pretty appealing space. It's much more appealing than something like adding a little bit,
a few bips on top of the rates that Jerome gives you over in the TradFi world.
of the rates that Jerome gives you over in the TradFi world.
Absolutely. Such a key point that you just touched on, Bitcoin yield, right? And a kind of core,
no pun intended, mission statement here at CORE, which is how can we make Bitcoin more useful?
Right. And as a core kind of idea, right?
Bitcoin yield, what does that really mean?
And to me, it's really, how do we make Bitcoin more useful?
And maybe just to dive into just a few examples of maybe where we're looking, where Kevin's looking in terms of making Bitcoin more useful.
I think as a useful mental model,
there's really four categories, right? Core as a leading proof of cycler, using Bitcoin as this
core proof of safe asset to secure core chain, other kind of independent blockchains as one category. The second being as a kind of king collateral
asset, right? Whether you hold a lot of Bitcoin and you don't want to create this taxable event
of selling your Bitcoin and really getting liquidity to pay your rent or to buy gifts or to buy anything you would like without selling your Bitcoin.
As a second kind of piece of how you can use Bitcoin, I think we're all very interested
in exploring. Kevin mentioned lava and you see the massive traction there just as a testament
to how much demand there is to unlock this liquidity, right? And so
maybe as a third piece, using Bitcoin to swap with other assets, right? I think a lot of us
here are DGens, maybe some less so than others, but how can we connect Bitcoin to the broader crypto DeFi space for other kind of desirable assets as a third kind of pillar?
And then fourth, from a markets perspective, like Kieran, like Brendan was mentioning,
there's a bunch of these LSTs, whether it's on core with our partnership with Maple and BitGo
or Babylon or Lombard, all these other Bitcoin assets. How do we make these markets more
efficient? And so whether it's trading strategies, delta neutral strategies and taking advantage of kind of the open interest and the kind of
speculative nature of Bitcoin and kind of deriving yield from those trading strategies, I think is
also a very interesting kind of investable category. And so to bring it together, I would
love to hear everyone's thoughts. Proof of sake, Bitcoin is a collateral asset,
Bitcoin as a tradable asset, and then making Bitcoin derivative assets more efficient,
right? As four key pillars there. A lot of good stuff mentioned. It's funny because
there's almost even seeing this trend of almost a bridge between these opportunities too, where like Kevin mentioned the collateral asset and then Kieran mentioned
yield.
And obviously there's low risk yield options like staking or like multi-Bitcoin asset LPs
where there isn't impermanent loss and just low risk.
And then what we're seeing, we've definitely seen some teams looking at
alternative investments or RWAs where you're depositing Bitcoin, but it's actually collateralizing
it in the background and not hurting your Bitcoin exposure, but using the stable, whether it's a
native stable like Tether or something else, and they're using that for the alternative investment. So I thought it was kind of interesting.
So you're kind of seeing a blend of people wanting to put their Bitcoin to work,
and find these alternative assets potentially, or find yield opportunities,
but they don't want to lose the underlying exposure of their Bitcoin as well.
So the two are kind of like really coming together
which is interesting um yeah a lot a lot of great opportunities mentioned there kevin not sure if
you wanted to add anything else i know you kicked this off here already but any anything else stick
out from from kieran or ryan or other things you'd suggest folks to focus on i think ryan covered quite a bit so yeah
i think that's pretty much a significant portion of i think right now we're still
missing kind of a derivative a derivatives market like a perps on bitcoin i know we have
uh one company valar um but of that, there's not many competitors
in the purse market.
So I think that would be maybe another one.
Are you seeing that as
putting your Bitcoin up as collateral,
which is sometimes used on these exchanges,
it being the collateral asset to trade against
on an up-down Herbstex?
Yes. Whether it a big Bitcoin derivative, like solve, you know, whatever else Bitcoin and you deposit
that as collateral and start trading.
Yeah.
I guess I would consider it more for Bitcoin, like an on-chain perps for Bitcoin.
For Bitcoin futures and longs or shorts.
Yeah.
Which is the majority of decentralized exchange value.
Yes.
Yeah.
It's a significant part.
I know we have things on other chains,
but I think something on Bitcoin I have not really seen yet.
But honestly, out of all of the kind of deal flow that we have been getting
maybe in like the last month to two months,
a significant portion of it has been around Bitcoin lending.
Whether it's RWA stuff on Bitcoin.
100%. I think that's actually probably going to be
one of the next big key narratives is kind of RWA on Bitcoin.
I know we're seeing RWA chains do quite well this cycle,
but I think on Bitcoin per se, not so much is happening.
I know a couple of founders that we've spoken to previously are kind of looking to do it.
So I think it's going to be quite an interesting kind of narrative for the next few quarters here.
I think so too.
I think so too.
I think that's probably one of the most exciting things I see in kind of the deal flow that we're seeing,
right? And Brandon, maybe you can chime in too, but I think 80% and maybe upwards of a lot of
the deals we've seen have been in products trying to bring yield and usability outside of crypto and bringing that kind of
market back on chain or back to crypto right and back to bitcoin and i think the the key idea
there is and how kind of i view it is there's really two opportunities, right? There's how can we use Bitcoin within existing crypto and
DeFi rails and kind of bringing yield from inside of crypto to Bitcoin. But what's more interesting,
I think, is imagine all the markets, whether TradFi, real estate, these markets that are trillions and trillions of
dollars with trillions of dollars of turnover, maybe even on a daily basis.
How do we bring that into crypto and on chain, I think is such an interesting and outsized
opportunity that I see.
And yeah, maybe Kieran, Kevin,
curious to hear your thoughts on kind of the opportunities
outside of crypto and outside of Bitcoin
that can be brought into the space.
I think stable coins is probably the most obvious RWA that's not even considered an RWA a lot of the time. But bringing dollars and Bitcoin together I think is going to be critical because those are probably the two most obvious and tangible use cases of blockchain technology today is moving digital gold and moving digital dollars. And the emergence of Bitcoin backed stable coins is really powerful because it allows
you to save in Bitcoin, digital gold and spend in the stables, which is actually digital
cash.
And that unlock is not fully optimized today, but we're getting pretty close in terms of
uniting those two worlds, which is going to be
pretty powerful, especially when considering what that allows for emerging markets who really need
access to dollars and access to currencies that sustain value over time. So if they're able to
have a larger Bitcoin position because they can borrow against that to use dollars or whatever
currency they need to use in their local markets. That would be pretty amazing and real critical use case for blockchain technology, particularly for Core.
Yeah, I agree, Kieran.
I'll take a different approach to this question.
I think one thing that we've seen pretty recently is this kind of emergence of
kind of abstracting away all the
complexities of DeFi and of Web3 and kind of putting forward a Web2 skin on things per se
and I think what that does is it kind of opens the doors to non-Web3 native people,
non-crypto native people to potentially utilize these fantastic applications
where you can do these things with stablecoins, payments, etc. And I think that's the one thing
which is like kind of real world, maybe it's a little bit different than like everything that's
on-chain. I mean, I know a lot of us are just all day, every day looking at everything on-chain.
are just all day, every day, looking at everything on chain.
But even the other day, I was trying to transfer some money
from my US bank account to my Indonesian bank account.
And going through that process, I used TransferWise.
And TransferWise sometimes tells you that this might take three or four days.
And almost immediately, I'm like, no, no, no no no no no uh we do things on chain and
it's like it's like this right you want to transfer somebody money we're making an investment
we send stables across it'll happen like this in a couple of minutes and yet if i want to transfer
money from a u.s account to an indonesian account or any account overseas it might take several days, which to me, I find that a little bit crazy.
So I know a lot of people have tried and attempted to kind of build this cross-border
infrastructure to be able to transfer money from people that are living in the US to
their families back home in whatever country that is. I think it is a massive market that has yet to be solved utilizing crypto per se,
but wrapping it in kind of a Web2 skin so that normal everyday people can kind of understand
what the heck is going on with the product.
I still find that to be a pretty big problem,
considering I'm always transferring money here and there to my family and my friends or whatever. And not all of them know how to use a wallet, unfortunately yet.
No doubt. I think we see that trend as well. And it kind of, Kieran, obviously with Amity and more
Web2 style investing, although you've got
some crypto exposure there too.
I mean, a blend of some of those learnings to deliver some products and UI flows that
we're more familiar with, you know, it seems like a no brainer.
But it is funny, Kevin, there have been a lot of companies trying to do it.
I'm just unsure.
Maybe it's a user acquisition problem at this point.
It does take a long time to kind of reach a critical mass.
I'm unsure.
They're also hyper-competitive when you've got like revolutes,
you know, in the world who are paying up the bid.
So I'm curious and we're watching that really closely too.
I think it's a super exciting space
to see who's going to ultimately win that.
And maybe you'll just have like hyper local winners.
I'm not sure exactly how that's all going to unfold.
Yeah, I think, I don't remember
whether it was a Twitter space or a podcast.
I was talking about,
it kind of seems like we're getting to this point where I know we're kind of a very hyper global mindset in crypto, right?
We build a product for the general masses.
But with regulations being so different, I think ultimately like in the next year or so, I think every country is going to have very different regulations.
Every country, every region is going to have very different regulations.
Every country, every region is going to have different licensure requirements.
And that's going to basically make it a little bit more difficult for like the generalized application to be available in that country.
Whether that's like you build an app and it has to go past the app store.
You need licensing, you know, whether that's in Europe or let's say in Southeast Asia in a particular country.
You need the rails to be able to onboard bank account capital into Web3.
I kind of feel like we're starting to see some winners in the market, whether that's Fold or other general kind of companies that are going to IPO.
But they might be very specifically focused on a particular market.
Whereas I think that we have a little bit of space here where we're going to see some hyper-local, hyper-regional winners that are going to start to do well and then ultimately
kind of be put up there for a potential mna at some point and this is kind of like a very
classic bringing me back to the uber and like all the food delivery app and a fiasco when uber
started out in the us and then every country basically just copied right like the rocket
internet model they just like copied everything that uber and whoever else in the us did
brought it to an international market it did well and then at some point it's kind of an opportunity for an mna um so i think that this is also going to be a theme
of like the next two to three years and that's in my opinion yeah i think that's a that's a really
interesting play you did see that with neobanks and even the the like smb neobanks and even the like SMB neobanks, right? You know, you've got like RANF and BREX in the US, you've got other players in
Loud AM, other players in Europe, other players in Canada, even just because regs
are different, markets are different.
So, and language culture.
So yeah, very, very interested to see where that market goes over time.
So I think, I think we have like 10 minutes here, five, 10 minutes.
So kind of like the last bit is we outlined some pretty big opportunities,
including a global financial payments out by Bitcoin, go build it.
You know, we talked about the sheer size of the opportunity.
There's no need to wait for Bitcoin to upgrade.
There's already tools and workarounds
and folks investing heavily in this space.
So what would your guys advice be to founders
who want to build here?
And what kind of founders are we looking for?
So yeah, curious to hear your guys thoughts.
You can take that however you'd like, that question.
Yeah, maybe I can kick it off.
And this just being one aspect that I think is critical for many builders in Bitcoin,
and that is the ability to educate. I think there's a lot of these ideas that we just discussed where
they may be relatively simple and maybe not the biggest technical challenge and rather the
challenge lies in getting people with Bitcoin to realize that the, and Kieran touched on this earlier about kind of
intermediaries, exchanges that maybe didn't have the best interests of their users and
as a result encountered some hacks or some malpractice and as a result lost a lot of users' funds, right?
And so the ability to educate users that, you know, there are ways to leverage Bitcoin
in a trust-minimized or safe way, I think is a really critical skill to have, especially building in a space where
there's so much latent capital looking to be activated. I think education is a huge
kind of area that we look for in founders and I think is critical in making their product successful.
For me, the one piece of advice that I have for founders is it's really difficult to get traction.
It's really difficult to get traction in this space, right? There's a ton of competition.
And if you are looking at, let's say for example, which execution environment on Bitcoin that you want to build on, you have to look at the founders.
You have to look at the founders.
What are they doing to support other founders that are building in their ecosystem?
Really understand that ecosystem well,
because that's going to be the biggest decision
that you have to make very early on.
I know a lot of founders that we've invested into
have chosen to build on Core, to work with the Core Ventures team.
Why? Because they're extremely responsive.
They're amazing in terms of introducing other VCs,
potentially bringing TVL, partnerships, et cetera.
These things are all super critical as a founder,
especially in the very early stages, right?
And that's the one thing that I find
a lot of founders don't do a great job of
is they kind of just pick a chain
where they don't have
their relationships. They know that they can't get the kind of buy-in from a particular founder
or the founding teams, and they're kind of fighting an uphill battle. So if you are looking
to build on Bitcoin, I know for a fact that the core team, arms wide open, always willing to talk,
always willing to support you. So this is one of your first tops.
The second thing is those founders, I'm always looking for more technical founders than I am
business-minded founders. Because from my experience, technical founders have a particular
skill set that's very difficult to find, especially in this space. If you're going to be up there
speaking on stages, you're going to be pitching to investors.
You need to have a really good kind of understanding of what is happening under the hood of whatever
it is that you're building.
And you need to be able to present it eloquently.
So if you have a technical background and you are very well spoken in terms of being
able to present your product, present your vision.
You're a founder that I'm definitely interested in speaking with.
Love that. Thanks for the shout out too, Kevin.
You've obviously got an archetype and float here.
Kieran, I'd be curious to hear from you too.
I mean, obviously you've been working in
ventures for years. So maybe you have some tips to share as well. Yeah, I feel like we should end
on Kevin's inspirational speech there. Yeah, I mean, that was pretty good. Pretty incredible.
But I will sort of echo what Kevin said in that I think that one thing that crypto has lacked compared to maybe
traditional web two venture capital or startup ecosystem is long-term mindedness. In crypto,
there's been too many examples of focusing on two-year cycles and optimizing for short term liquidity and hype. And I think what we're seeing now is
really the first real emergence of market demand for product market fit. If you're going to build
something purely off of hype, build a meme coin. If you're going to build a product with actual
use cases and utility, you're going to have to actually build something really valuable now on
a chain that is aligned with your long-term interests.
And so I'd say everyone in crypto has to be very careful with who they partner with and who they get in bed with because not everyone is as long-term minded as you might be.
So choose wisely and listen to Kevin's advice.
Yeah, a lot of that resonated.
Just a couple points. I think all of that very much resonated.
I think putting a lot of what we spoke together, I don't know if we've talked to you about this directly, Kevin, but Ryan and I have talked about it, where we are looking for these longer term bets,
folks that are really thinking like,
can I work on this for 10 years?
And in crypto, that's a very bizarre thing.
And then I think putting that together,
I love the tech founder thing.
I really love that.
And I'd also like to see folks
that are being a bit more thoughtful with their go-to-market
as opposed to just degen strategies from ETH or Solana
that really may not scale over the long term.
Maybe it's a great hack initially,
but it doesn't seem like it's a long-term way to build a business.
And also just looking for folks that can build a big business.
These lending opportunities,
you look at the folks like in Ave and Morpho that have reached critical mass,
they're just printing incredibly great businesses with incredible margin that are only going to scale
and that are still pretty early in their journey.
So yeah, definitely looking for folks that want to build real businesses, long-term focus, and have the grit to stick through it and not quit after two years because most startups don't
win in two-year cycles necessarily, right? It takes a long time to build real value and hit
an inflection point. So looking for folks that are just going to ruthlessly focus on that for long periods of time.
Absolutely. I agree. I agree. Get in touch with sats and core metrics.
Brennan, I think you're quite modest in your intro, but I think you sit in a seat where none of us have sat before that being,
having gone through the sweat and the tears of building a successful company,
let alone selling it.
I'm curious if there's any hard,
hard stories you're able to share that maybe founders that we're looking for can,
can resonate with from, from your web to experience.
Yeah. Oh, we should have ended it
with Kevin's uplifting note here.
But no, I think the grit thing is a thing, you know?
And I mean, sometimes what I found in Web2,
sometimes the VCs want that, right?
Like they want, they don't want founders
to take a high salary and they want it to be,
that's your life.
I don't like it necessarily if you have family and want it to be that's your life i don't like
it necessarily if you have family and kids not saying all of these things are like that but like
they want you to be all in and and and uh to the point where you're just you have to make it work
and you know forget about the token forget about this like you need to find a way to make it work
the best teams that do go through what i call this you know just
this circle you know they get to the hundred turns faster than the team you know they do that
multiple times a week as opposed to a team that takes a month you know and they get to the outcome
faster that's that's to me like early stage startup is you're just talking to people and
trying to get cycles around to get to the right product that works as fast as you possibly can. And yeah, we had a lot of tough times. We didn't monetize
early in our business enough. I had to lay off 80 people at one point, which was more than half of
our staff and changed an entire business model. And I couldn't get out of bed for a couple of
days because it was heartbreaking, but then you just keep going right and uh you know you gotta you gotta also know if something's
not working but generally i think most most folks you know it takes longer than they thought to to
get to really hit the inflection point and history normally rewards the folks that are patient and
just that can just like execute for long periods of time.
And I think we all think Bitcoin is going to be around for a long time.
I think it's going to be the core stuff of something massive.
So what other opportunity would you...
I mean, many opportunities, but one of the bigger opportunities I would bet on right now.
many options, but it's one of the bigger opportunities I would bet on right now.
Yeah. And I think if you look across other chains, I can make the argument that there are still
more developers building on non-Bitcoin and Bitcoin scaling solutions than there are on Bitcoin.
Yeah.
Still today, even in this world where we all kind of see very closely eye to eye on kind of
Bitcoin standing amongst all assets globally. And that's very shocking to me.
Yeah. Well, we'll see if we can turn the tide. We're starting. You've been doing this for a
while, Kevin. So kudos for being an early innovator here we're really excited to join the party at core ventures um you know it started
i mean not even a year ago but you know it's getting pretty active and we're super excited
to keep working together so i think we got to cap this it's a really great inaugural session i think
like the first uh first ventures chat or Fusion chat we've had.
So pleasure to have you on board, Kevin and Kieran, Ryan.
Thank you very much. I think that's it.
We'll call out a day.
Yeah. Thank you for having me on the very first one.
Yeah, it was fun. All right. See everyone.
First of many.
See you guys.
First of many. We will just shoot the shit. It's going to be fun. All right.
