What Crypto VCs Want Now | Aryan Sheikhalian
•October 10, 2025
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Why It Matters
That shift reframes where venture capital and builders should focus: on infrastructure and token designs that unlock new financial primitives and efficiencies, not on speculative token launches. Projects that fail to prove clear advantages over centralized alternatives risk wasted capital and limited adoption.
Summary
Ariansi Sheikhalian of CMT Digital argues crypto is shifting from a speculative asset class to foundational financial infrastructure, enabling 24/7 trading, instant settlement, new product structures and tokenized equity. Her research emphasis is on incentive design—stablecoins, prediction markets and tokenomics—that produce real user value rather than novelty. She cautions that blockchain isn’t a universal solution: projects must demonstrably outperform incumbent systems and validate real-world use cases, especially in real-world-asset tokenization. The era of indiscriminate ICOs has given way to more sophisticated scrutiny of utility, governance and market fit.
Original Description
Crypto’s next chapter isn’t a shinier coin—it’s invisible rails. In this episode, we sit down with Aryan Sheikhalian, Research Lead at CMT Digital, to unpack the shift from “crypto as an asset” to crypto as infrastructure: 24/7 markets, instant clearing and settlement, and new structured products that couldn’t exist before.
We talk about tokenized equities (wrappers vs. native tokenization and why dividends/governance matter), how identity layers and ZK proofs unlock mainstream distribution through banks and fintechs, and where regulation is pushing builders toward partnerships and licensed rails.
Chapters
00:00 Hook: crypto as infrastructure, not asset
01:15 Guest intro and research focus
02:06 Incentives, psychology, and mechanism design
04:03 ICO lessons, maturity, and red flags
07:09 CMT Digital’s thesis and “strictly better”
10:27 Tokenized equities drivers and demand
13:40 Wrappers vs native: dividends, governance
16:06 Fintech rails, velocity, cost efficiency
18:26 Banks, distribution, and competitive incentives
20:29 New assets: GPUs, data, energy tokens
23:23 Identity layers and ZK proofs for scale
25:55 State of crypto VC and fund trends
27:51 Overlooked sectors: DePIN and decentralized data
31:26 Prediction markets and resolution design
34:18 Regulation, licenses, and partnerships
39:45 Market outlook: TVL, stables, volatility
42:45 Founder advice: conviction and user focus
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