Crypto VC Slowdown Reflects Limited Founder and Idea Pool
controversial take: crypto VC take on fewer funds deploying is downstream of there being ENOUGH good founders and ideas to back. the quality of early stage founders and ideas in crypto, taken in aggregate, is simply not as large of a surface area as other high growth industries. the gap is noticeable to me over the last 4 years, hence Crucible's focus beyond crypto (although we have backed incredible crypto founders and will continue to). on founders, there used to be an acceptable risk / reward over a shorter timeframe where founder risk wasn't as material to success. invest in project w token, founder has orange flags, but you fully vest in 24-36 months so downside is hedged. founder having a CT presence and audience to shill to was enough. on ideas, crypto was still nascent so less data to pattern match, less market intelligence, easier to underwrite raise follow on at high valuations since it was harder to underwrite risk with data and experience - no one really had any. we're now a decade into formal crypto venture, the things that have worked and generated venture scale outcomes are stablecoins / payments, exchanges, and financial products. crypto today is on HARD mode. there are fewer breakout outcomes and they take longer to build and require more domain competence and long term thinking. founders must have a HIGH pain tolerance, much more so than any previous cycle. the gap to go from seed to Series A is much larger. there are still many incredible founders on generational runs building category defining companies in crypto. a GPs job is to find them and win the right to invest in their companies. deployment is downstream of ability to underwrite and every dollar deployed has a very real opportunity cost for GPs. there's a massive gap between what founders are pitching and what GPs can reasonably underwrite. founders should focus on closing this gap.
Celebrating Milestones: Early‑Stage Investing’s Thrilling Journey
early stage investing is a rollercoaster important to celebrate milestones with founders and teams, it’s such an incredible feeling when things fall into place crucible portfolio is growing up 🥹 https://t.co/38zqyk2vCa
Matium Seeds Efficiency in Trillion‑dollar US Plastics Market
the U.S. plastics market moves a trillion dollars a year on phone calls and spreadsheets. excited to lead Matium's seed round to bring structure, financing, managed logistics, and quality guarantees to this market. ~10% of the industry is already using...
Crucible Backs Three College Trading Teams to Launch Startups
random fact - Crucible has backed 3 co-founding teams that bonded over trading in college - @kaledora + @contrarianmarco, Harvard -> @OstiumLabs - @bavaria_kush + @wayne_nelmz, MIT -> @OrnnExchange - @harshavramesh + @cdeshpande17, Vanderbilt -> @PillarHQ LOVE OF THE GAME
Backing PillarHQ to Embed Hedging Across All Organizations
ANOTHER ONE proud to back @PillarHQ as they embed hedging into orgs of all size @harshavramesh @cdeshpande17 are the third team of founders who bonded trading together that we've backed from our Fund I (which is also how @kellyjgreer and i met) financial...
Industrials Overlook Email‑Traded Plastics, Paper, Chemicals Markets
the current wave of industrials has largely overlooked plastics, paper, chemicals and other heterogeneous markets that are still largely traded over email excited to back @matiummarket led @tomorrowtweetin 🇺🇸 capital markets maximalism 🇺🇸
Founders Unite to Build Defense Tech for All Domains
great conversation between three maniacally obsessed founders building the hardware and software to help us defend the seas, skies, and earth. thanks to @usv for hosting us and @curt_lary @AdamWarmoth @Nelson_Mills_ for building badass machines tons of great insights 👇
Beyond Transistors: Exploring Tomorrow’s Exotic Computing Paradigms
thinking about the evolution of computing beyond the current transistor paradigm - we've seen photonics, quantum, adiabatic, entropic, chemical, and neuron based computing paradigms. what are the weirder, more frontier mediums for computation?
Industrial Maintenance Costs Outpace Asset Deployment Expenses
1/ next big market: industrial operations & maintenance deploying an asset in a one time event. managing and maintaining it is an ongoing process and often consumes more capital than its deployment over the life cycle of the asset. @itsanhonour_ breaks it...
Largest USDAI Borrower Leverages Crypto Expertise for Yield Farming
proud that my firm @CrucibleCap is the largest borrower on USDAI to date 🫡 we have deep crypto roots - i helped build early @DCGco 2015-2018, @CoinSharesCo $cshr 2018-2024. @kellyjgreer helped build and run @galaxyhq $GLXY US trading desk 2021-2025 come farm...
AI Compute Profits Flow Upstream,
economics of compute: - OEM sells chip + components at 80% margin - neocloud 2-4x multiple expansion running chip - inference co 5-10x multiple expansion selling tokens - consumer gets subsidized inference so net loss for AI co (or shift cost to consumers) compression...
Crucible Secures On‑Chain Loan to Power Compute
1/ excited to share Crucible now slings compute - financed onchain with a loan from @usdai_official ofc Crucible Compute is our first step into owning the means of production while investing in the modernization of underlying systems and tools optimizing their...
Blockspace: A New Commodity Demanding Transparent Market Structure
blockspace markets are under appreciated and unfairly maligned imo instead of focusing of toxic MEV there’s a whole story here around creating more expressive market structure that establishes transparent pricing for priority v the opaque and $$$ infra owned in...
Capex Drives Decade-Long Opex; Verification Adds Value
1/ new drop from @itsanhonour_ on the industrial resilience stack every dollar of capex incurs a multiple in opex over the next decade. the value is NOT in execution alone. it’s in the ability to verify what’s happening in a...
Rio Tinto Backs Supra, Validating Sustainable Mineral Tech
congrats to @CriticalKatie, @CriticalJordan, and the Supra team - Rio Tinto investing in Supra is great validation of their ability to efficiently and sustainably produce critical minerals with novel materials technology proud investor 🫡 https://t.co/LXDzQLCnQn