DeFi VCs & Funding Rounds

Sam Bankman-Fried, once a crypto wunderkind, now faces a reckoning that could see him behind bars for 115 years. Convicted on seven counts of fraud, his trial showcased a classic tale of deception, with a modern twist: the misuse of cryptocurrency. Continue Reading →

I'm proud to announce a brand new free course, Metacademy: Web3 & The Metaverse, where you'll learn to navigate this new terrain and leverage it for your business. Continue Reading →

The Metacademy: Crypto & NFTs course is a free-to-use, hands-on tutorial where you'll learn about the world of Web3, smart contracts, blockchain, NFTs, and cryptocurrency. Continue Reading →

I have two slides at the end of most of my presentations. One is my investible theses for the upcoming year and the other is stuff that has my attention. As we head into 2023, I thought it might be fun to look at a deck from 2018 and see if I got any of it right five years ago. I'll let you be the judge. Continue Reading →

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), who some have dubbed "Sam Bankrun-Fraud," was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday after the U.S. filed criminal charges that it expects to unseal Tuesday morning. The disgraced founder of crypto exchange FTX (one of the world's largest) will likely be extradited to the U.S. Continue Reading →

In the wake of the FTX implosion, everyone is talking about the pros and cons of cryptocurrency. This week, for clickbait reasons, it’s mostly the cons. Before you offer an opinion about cryptocurrency to your friends or consider formulating a cryptocurrency policy for yourself or your business, you should take a moment to understand that cryptocurrency “crypto” is a catchall phrase, and a lazy one at that. Continue Reading →

When someone says "the metaverse," what do they mean? At the moment, the observable metaverse is a continuum that spans experiences from virtual reality (VR) through mixed reality (MR) to augmented reality (AR). The experiences are different, but some of the most successful metaverse projects share many common creative and technological attributes. What are they? To help figure it out, we've been developing a framework we call the Standard Model of the Metaverse. Continue Reading →

On July 21, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced "insider trading charges against a former Coinbase product manager, his brother, and his friend for perpetrating a scheme to trade ahead of multiple announcements regarding certain crypto assets that would be made available for trading on the Coinbase platform." Continue Reading →

As we enter another crypto winter, it has become de rigueur for tech types to go on record espousing that Web3 is nonsense, that blockchain is a terrible technology, and that cryptocurrencies (all of them) are Ponzi schemes. There is seemingly no end to the tweets and blog posts from highly credentialed people about tulips and "The Emperor's New Clothes" and greater fool theory. It's as if the technocrats want to make sure that they know that you know that they know that all things Web3 are technologically inferior to all things Web2. Are they right? Continue Reading →

Greetings from NYC and happy Summer Solstice (to those who celebrate). NFT.NYC is in town this week, and to say that a "hard dose of reality" has hit the faithful would be to mischaracterize the vibe. People in the business know that the current market conditions are universal. They know that the underlying technology and associated business models are evolving, and they also know that – most importantly – the shakeout, while painful, is a required growing pain. Continue Reading →