TheDinch

In episode 60 of Scenius Studio I sit down with Ben Forman, Founder and Managing Partner of @paraficapital, a $2bn+ AUM crypto dedicated institutional investment firm, pursuing a range of strategies. Since founding the firm in 2018, Ben has repeatedly found creative means of launching strategies and delivering returns for his LP base. Ben’s ability to sniff out opportunities at the edges of liquid and private markets separates ParaFi from the fly by night crypto firm. In this episode we discuss: ➔ Takeaways from @Blockworks DAS conference ➔ Why crypto twitter sentiment is down when the industry’s fundamentals have never been better ➔ How Ben thinks about the investable universe for ParaFi’s fundamental hedge fund ➔ The dynamic around DATs and the influence on the underlying token ➔ How “crypto” does an early-stage company need to be for ParaFi to consider investing ➔ Why Ben is doubling down on crypto while many other crypto VCs are drifting their mandates into other technologies and categories ➔ Investing in protocols and businesses downstream of stablecoins and tokenization ➔ What the Founder of @Polymarket said that gave Ben/ParaFi the conviction to invest in the seed round ➔ The investable opportunities emerging around prediction markets ➔ How ParaFi is embedding AI into its operations and work streams ➔ Ben’s spiciest takes 🌶 Hope you enjoy this episode of Scenius Studio. Links to listen below👇 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/13khFc… Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/par…

@bennypjacobs @openfx_ @USDai_Official @grass Vadim is a beast!

Boom. Scenius Studio is back and better than ever. And with that, we're returning to our bread and butter. The Use-Case mini-series, where we explored practical blockchain applications (@openfx_ , @USDai_Official , @grass to name a few), shined a light on real businesses leveraging blockchain technology to drive tangible consumer or enterprise value. We learned a lot from these founders and received positive feedback from our network. After much consideration and discussion with our audience, however, we’ve decided to get back to what Scenius Studio fans really want: insights into how the top investors are positioning themselves and adapting to this rapidly evolving and dynamic asset class. So let’s get back to it. In this episode, we dig into the crypto market neutral space with one of the largest and most sophisticated players out there. Vadim Khramov @vadimthedream0, the Founder, CEO, and CIO of @EdgeVentureCap, has built a behemoth by understanding DeFi and risk management better than most. His firm operates a range of on-chain strategies while offering investors various crypto-denominated share classes. No one understands the investment challenges and opportunities in DeFi better than Vadim. In this episode we discuss: ➔ Vadim’s macro background which drove him to DeFi ➔ Edge Capital’s various strategies ➔ Trends in the crypto market neutral space (compressed yields, low retail participation, etc) ➔ Vaults: what are they and where is the opportunity ➔ Launching crypto-denominated share-classes ➔ Capacity concerns around certain strategies and how Edge manages them ➔ Fundamentals in crypto and expectations across different regimes ➔ Vadim’s spiciest takes 🌶 Hope you enjoy this episode of Scenius Studio. Links to listen below👇 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3AxNvg… Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/edg…

@hosseeb Congrats guys !

We just closed Dragonfly Fund IV at $650M. It's a big milestone, and yet, it’s a weird time to celebrate. Spirits are low, fear is extreme, and the gloom of a bear market has set in. But here's the thing: we raised almost every single Dragonfly fund into bear markets. Fund I we raised through the 2018 ICO winter, when almost nobody believed in this space anymore. Fund III we raised right before Luna collapsed. Those were brutal times to deploy capital. But they turned out to be our best vintages. Last week I caught a lot of heat for arguing that non-financial crypto has failed. I meant that. But the flip side of that argument is: financial crypto is exploding. Stablecoins are eating the world. DeFi has grown so big it's rivaling CeFi. Financial institutions around the world are racing to build out their crypto strategies. And prediction markets are becoming the most trusted source of truth on the internet. Fund IV is our biggest bet yet that the crypto revolution is still early in its exponential. If you look at our recent bets—Polymarket, Ethena, Rain, Mesh—the growth speaks for itself. Agentic payments, on-chain privacy, the tokenization of everything—crypto's surface area is about to explode, and we want to be backing the founders at the center of it. We've always believed that the most important work gets done when the noise dies down. We believe moment is now. In fact, we’re putting money on it. If you're building what comes next, @ us.

A lot of ink has been spilled on the idea that crypto, as we know it, is over. This industry-wide malaise largely stems from crypto Twitter apathy. The active OGs are reticent about institutional adoption interfering with crypto’s cypherpunk roots and the CT algo amplifies those that are most active on the platform (i.e. opinionated wishy-washy traders). The latter cohort are currently negative on the industry, largely because money has been made elsewhere over the last 3–6 months. It’s become cool (i.e. a status symbol) to scoff at crypto and instead signal broader knowledge, investment access, and performance in other arenas (AI, gold/silver, robotics, private equity, etc.).

@lex_node @grok can you break down the 4 most salient points here please?

probably the most interesting analogy I've seen for the token/equity relationship

introducing alien. verifying humanity in the age of ai. mainnet alpha is live at alien[dot]org

Insanely legendary 🐧

A new, faster internet is here. DoubleZero’s high-performance global network is now live on mainnet-beta powered by 2Z. Welcome to the world of high-performance networking.

@xai Amazing

Introducing Grok 4, the world's most powerful AI model. Watch the livestream now: x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

@jerallaire @circle Congrats Jeremy and team !

I am incredibly proud and thrilled to share that @circle is now a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under $CRCL! 12 years ago we set out to build a company that could help remake the global economic system by re-imagining and re-building it from the ground up natively on the internet.  Our mission – to raise global economic prosperity through the frictionless exchange of value – has animated our work ever since. When we founded the company, I told every employee and every investor that this was a multi-decade opportunity, and that I sought to build a deeply lasting internet technology platform.  Now, just over a decade in, we are just starting to realize our early vision. Our transformation into being a public company is a significant and powerful milestone – the world is ready to start upgrading and moving to the internet financial system. From inception, we have been deeply focused on being trusted, transparent, compliant, ethical and well governed. Holding ourselves to the high standards of the NYSE and SEC rules and regulations further deepens those attributes.    To every single person, project and firm who’s been part of this journey, thank you.  I am humbled and deeply grateful.  This is not only a moment for each of us personally, I believe it's a significant moment in the future development of our global economic system as it inexorably synthesizes with the internet.

@bennypjacobs Scary stuff. Can’t be careful enough and never understate the importance of good OpSec

Important PSA 🚨 There is a very sophisticated social engineering scam/hack that I nearly fell victim to yesterday. 5 other industry friends suffered the same hack attempt recently. This is clearly the current weapon of choice by malicious actors. Sharing details so you know what to look for. 1. A trusted source, someone who is a good and sophisticated actor and investor in the space, DM'd me on Telegram using our existing conversation (i.e. his old real handle). He said "Hey Ben. It's been a while! Let's catch up sometime soon." and then sent a normal calendly link. I booked a slot for yesterday afternoon. 2. Right before the call was scheduled to start, he messaged me saying "hey can you join this partners call with a bunch of industry friends instead". My antenna went up but I clicked the zoom link as it looked like an authentic zoom link (something like FIRM.zoom.us and a long meeting number). Once I entered, I saw people I knew on the Zoom with seemingly live video feeds and audio. My video was on but audio was not working. A pop up came up saying I needed to update my Zoom and to download this update. I then dm'd my contact on TG asking if this was safe and authentic and he said "sure, enterprise zoom for company". At this point my alarm bells went off. Fortunately I don't believe I fell victim to the hack but several others were not so lucky and had assets stolen quickly, in particular from accessible hot wallets. These hacks are increasingly sophisticated and everybody in the space should be hyper vigilant in joining Zooms and downloading software. Sounds obvious but in the moment you can be easily confused and act too quickly. Even the most sophisticated investors and crypto users can be tricked. You never think you will fall victim to a phishing attempt until you do. I don't know the best solution to prevent these types of social engineering acts in the future but I do know that you should never have substantial capital in a hot wallet. Similarly, if anyone is switching Zoom or meeting links quickly, then be suspicious. If you're a fund manager in the space, tightening up your OpSec should be high priority. Losing personal capital is devastating, losing fund capital is even worse.

@bennypjacobs @0xdrej @getgrass_io Great Use Case !

In the second episode of Scenius Studio's mini-series "The Use-Case", I sit down with @0xdrej Co-Founder of @getgrass_io. Grass gives users the ability to earn ownership in the Grass network by supplying the protocol with their unused internet bandwidth for data scraping purposes (something that is already happening to most of us and we don’t get paid!). The grass protocol packages this scraped web data and sells it to AI companies who have insufficient data to further develop their models. With over 3 millions users and millions of annualized revenue, Grass is a real commercial business with a roadmap that makes it one of the most exciting projects at the intersection of crypto x AI and data. In this episode we discuss: ➔ Andrej’s background in physics, finance, and sports betting ➔ Big companies using your IP address without your knowledge or permission ➔ How the Grass protocol puts a toll booth on your internet bandwidth highway ➔ Packaging web scraped data and selling it to AI companies building Multi-Modal models ➔ Dynamics between the Grass Protocol and the labs entity developing Grass’ IP ➔ Protocol design decisions to ensure that all tokenholders (VCs, team, and community) are aligned ➔ Why Grass needed to be built on crypto rails to maximize its potential ➔ The future of LLMs and how they will search for context and information Hope you enjoy this episode of Scenius Studio's "The Use-Case". Links to listen in bio or below👇

In the second episode of Scenius Studio's mini-series "The Use-Case", I sit down with Ray Lee and Ian Ettinger, Co-Founders of @daisypayapp . With deep experience in digital marketing and paid media, Ray and Ian have built a product that helps marketers drive results in an online environment that’s increasingly opaque and competitive. By discreetly using crypto tooling: zkTLS, stablecoins, and token incentives, Daisy is carving the path for the future of online advertising. In this episode we discuss: ➔ What drives social media algorithms and how Daisy’s product pours jet fuel on content ➔ The downstream impact of micro transactions and efficient payment for creators ➔ How brands work with Daisy to accomplish marketing campaign objectives ➔ Current challenges with online marketing and the decay in efficacy of traditional digital ad campaigns ➔ zkTLS and how the technology empowers brands and users with ownership of data and monetization opportunities ➔ Broadening the Daisy creator base from influencers to your average community member ➔ Fundraise announcement! Hope you enjoy this episode of Scenius Studio's "The Use-Case". Links to listen in bio or below👇

@bennypjacobs Awesome use case ! Into this mini series. Well done

I'm proud to introduce “The Use-Case” a mini-series brought to you by Scenius Studio. Through Scenius Studio, I've interviewed 50 of the crypto industry’s top GPs and CIOs across liquid and private markets. One thing is clear, crypto has some savvy investors. Yet, both inside and outside the industry, the same question lingers: where are the real-world use-cases? We’ve built the infrastructure, but where are the apps? What commercial opportunities can blockchain and crypto uniquely unlock? Is speculation really the only game in town? With The Use-Case, we’re spotlighting underrepresented companies and protocols that are building real, commercially viable businesses—ventures that couldn’t exist without crypto’s underlying technology. We’ll sit down with Founders and CEOs who are reshaping industries with blockchain at their core. Crypto isn’t just an asset class. it’s an enabling technology rewiring entire sectors. In this first episode, I sit down with Bill Lakeland, Founder and CEO of @SpexiNetwork. Bill has worked in aerial imagery for 20 years and understands the world of drones better than anyone. He has built a robust business that sells aerial imagery to businesses and municipalities while incorporating various elements of crypto technology (DePIN, stablecoins, and NFTs). I hope you enjoy this conversation with Bill and this new mini-series concept. If you have any feedback on the show please reply below or send DM 💪