Richard Chen

Richard Chen

28,543 Twitter followers

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Founder @VarrockVC. Previously General Partner @1confirmation. DMs open

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Just made my first investment in my career where neither the company nor the founders are on Twitter. A sign the times are changing in crypto.

Most obvious crowded ideas right now (update one year later): - AI agent payments - Tokenized pre-IPO stocks - Compute markets - Physical TCGs What else?

Most obvious crowded ideas right now: - Stablecoin neobank - AI agents launchpad - DeFi super app What else?

Making a list of private crypto equity businesses that have achieved unicorn status. What else am I missing? Tether Kalshi Kraken Polymarket Bitmain OpenSea Alchemy Chainalysis FalconX Fireblocks Blockchain dot com ConsenSys MoonPay Erebor Anchorage Ledger RedotPay Blockdaemon Blockstream Deribit Bitso Rain BVNK CoinList Slash Securitize OpenFX Bridge DolarApp Dune Mesh TRM

What's the best explanation why there's tens of billions of dollars in DeFi earning 4-5% APY when the risks are way higher than treasuries?

Order of importance: 1) TAM 2) Stickiness of revenue 3) Growth rate

Been seeing lots of RWA projects lately, especially around private credit. The biggest question I ask is are internet capital markets (aka crypto investors) getting adversely selected? Are these assets coming onchain because no one in tradfi wants to touch them?

Mobile apps are easy to due diligence because so much data is public. - Downloads (how fast is the product growing) - Rating/reviews (how good is the product) - Category ranking (how competitive is the product) - Update interval (how quickly does the team ship)

Overcrowded stablecoin opportunities: - Consumer neobank - Stablecoin orchestration - Merchant accounts Uncrowded stablecoin opportunities: - Non-USD stablecoins - Onchain FX - Programmable credit (e.g. trade financing)

In each era of crypto there's a different founder archetype of those that succeed. Pre 2020: Purists who came for libertarianism and decentralization. Needed to be ideological enough to not quit early and survive until the 2021 bull market. 2020-2025: Traders who knew how to build financial products that people wanted to speculate on. Understood degens and meme culture. 2025 onwards: Operators who can sell to tradfi institutions and asset managers. Have insights about financial services from working in tradfi or fintech. As the crypto industry changes, some stubbornly dig their heels in and refuse to adapt. Those that learn new skills to reinvent themselves survive.

Prediction: The top will be when OpenAI or Anthropic IPOs. Public markets brutally punish growth multiples, and private investors will realize their comps are completely off.

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