Col3drop

Crypto VC has an existential problem The old model of invest early, and wait for TGE is DEAD So where might this money go next? Here's the notes from my Keynote @blockworksDAS 👇

@mert @pear_protocol - team responsive, accountable, listens to requests, keeps shipping - runs on HL and Symmio - manage your pair trades via trigger based limit orders (price, price ratio, weighted ratio), or related events such as BTC.D, even Kalshi prediction event outcomes

what's the best perps UI you've ever seen? what's the best trading UI in general you've seen and why? desktop only

@mert @pear_protocol

@DCBcrypto gPear

Giveaway: 2 monthly memberships for the Discord premium section starting April 1st 1st entry: Someone who has more than $1 trading volume on Pear protocol with my affiliate code: DCB 2nd entry: Someone who simply likes/RTs this post Good luck and see ya in the DCB Trading Desk

Being a Pear trader isn't something you just do, it's something you're born with. 🍐 What did you do with your HYPE stimmy? Let us know.

@pear_protocol Add half to spot HYPE stake stack, other half back into @pear_protocol for the next season ;)

This person is getting nearly $20,000 worth of $HYPE tokens today Just for using @pear_protocol But you’ll still fade us anon 🍐

Am I the best trader? Far from it. Am I even a good trader? The last 12 months tells me no, not yet. Have I put the graft in to be top of the Pear leaderboard for 2 seasons back to back and been rewarded with 1110 $HYPE as a result? You’re damn right. No bot, sybil or vol farming. Just rewarded for organic use and being part of the growth of the platform. Exactly how HL rewarded their patrons from the outset. Pear community and the team taught me ways to manage my risk better especially during the rough times we’ve seen of late, 10/10 would have zero’d me had I not been longing X vs Y for example. Now I do all my trading whether it be directional, paired, delta neutral, funding arb or multi-venue points farming across HIP-3 vendors all via the Pear UI. @hufhaus9 and the team never stop. Agent Pear is an amazing tool and ever improving. The payouts are generous. The discord is full of friendly like-minded individuals. Revenue now goes to buyback $PEAR. I don’t know what else to say, you’re a horse being led to a bountiful oasis of pear-flavoured water and if you’re not drinking from it then you probably deserve the thirst. Naturally, discounted fees with my ref link below but don’t feel obliged to use it, I’m more than happy with my payouts as #1 twice. 🍐 pear.garden/trade?referral…

Season 2 ends on @pear_protocol and with it an instant airdrop of HYPE worth $8000, following on from the previous season worth $3000. Even if you want to ignore: - their accountable, always shipping, goated team (we are in a bear market and they have just activated their 'shipping season') - the fact that pear traders are more profitable than perp traders (a huge part of retail's remaining potential edge is in execution and the app keeps iterating new features) - they are HL aligned, they reward in HYPE and you can buy their PEAR token for fee rebates and volume discounts AND access to their upcoming @agent_pear vault - an active and diverse trading community with insight from all markets... You can just use it to farm volume on HL, xyz and all other HIP-3 markets. Got to be one of the most generous yet unsaturated protocols out there, aligned with the most promising ecosystem for the next cycle. 🍐 Trade smarter with Hyperliquid pair trading pear.garden/trade?referral…

One, one too many schizophrenic tendencies Keeps it complicated Keeps it aggravated And full of this hopelessness What a perfect mess youtube.com/watch?v=QdMHy0… I am coming home As I used to be and meant to be

@pear_protocol is building on HL, providing the best front end to manage your pair trades. Devs keep shipping and community is active with great traders. Once cross-margin on HIP-3 markets go live all your bases will be covered for a higher chance of profitable trading in a choppy bear market

Shill me a project that is actually building something useful...

Abstract Wrapped: Year One In just 365 days, Abstract has built a thriving community, shipped top-tier products consistently, and created an ecosystem ready to onboard the next wave of users, developers, and industries to blockchain. Here's some of the highlights: ・ 800K monthly active users on the Portal. ・ 159 million transactions onchain. ・ 100 million transactions pioneering Account Abstraction via 4 million users on AGW. ・ Cultivated a loyal user base and community primarily based in high GDP areas. ・ 76 active onchain apps, among the highest of any blockchain. ・ Pioneered onchain recognition & reputation via Badges, Verification, Tiers and Perks. ・ $5+ billion in onchain volume across 4+ exchanges. ・ Dozens of updates shipped, consistently iterating on improving quality of user experience. ・ We created & retained significant mindshare within cryptonatives, with double digit percentage calling it home, while also curating experiences to onboard new users. A custom Abstract Wrapped is now live on the Portal for everyone who helped shape the success of Year One, show us yours below.

@whoiskevin inverse @0xBlesd I summon thee

The scheduled unlock for $BERA comes tomorrow. But, I would be extremely careful and reserved if you think that shorting this is an “ez win”. 1. Assuming that only 30% of both investors and team fully sell the unlock (which is a reasonable assumption, given some investors would like not see the point in recuperating at these prices), the total sell pressure amounts to ~4M USD. That figure, when looked at statically, compared to looking at the +41.70% release percentage from a relative view has a very stark discrepancy. 2. A $50M DAT was announced a few months back, that’s more than enough to cushion some jitters on the unlock. I give absolutely zero fucks about legalities and divisions of control. The fact of the matter is, Polychain sits on the board of the DAT, and they’re also a private investor. Basic human principle alignment logic here would say something.

@hufhaus9 @pear_protocol Higher chance of being profitable, earn Hypear points to be converted to $HYPE in March, farm potential hidden season HL and any other protocols with instruments on HL? Why not?

gm ☕️ $25K → ? (Public Challenge) Fresh wallet Alerts every time I enter/modify/close a trade on @pear_protocol TG channel link below 🍐

@ibuyrugs I'll do option 3 on @pear_protocol with SIZE

my thoughts on hype valuation: "let's actually run the numbers on HYPE instead of vibing because i'm tired of seeing 'fundamentals are strong' tweets with zero math, zero understanding of competitive dynamics, zero comprehension of how exchange businesses actually work over time, and zero appreciation for what valuations actually mean in the most aggressive scenario, you need ~30% annual returns to justify holding through 2030. i think the most aggressive assumption of true circulating supply is ~60% of FDV (rest is locked/team/future incentives/reserved for ecosystem development/waiting to be distributed through future airdrop programs), so we're at ~$20bn market cap today assuming no dilution from future airdrop programs or team unlocks or ecosystem grants or whatever else might hit circulation. you need to believe the expected value of HYPE is $56bn by EOY 2030 to own it at current prices. that's not a vibe. that's not hopium. that's basic arithmetic. 30% CAGR from $20bn for 5 years gets you to $56bn. if you're holding HYPE at today's price and planning to hold for five years, you are implicitly making this bet whether you realize it or not. putting aside the 25-50% probability it somehow dies between now and 2030 (regulatory issues that kill decentralized perps entirely, oracle manipulation that destroys trust, competition destroying the moat, team implosion, technical failure, smart contract exploit that drains funds, regulatory crackdown on decentralized derivatives, China banning it, US declaring it illegal, insurance fund getting drained, liquidation cascade that breaks the system, whatever), you're assuming it gets to roughly Coinbase's current valuation but as a pure perps exchange with higher margin profile and zero regulatory clarity and no fiat on-ramps and no institutional custody and no actual legal protection. the market of non-fundamental analysts will point to the insane fee revenue, the low team count, the 80%+ margins, the elegant oracle design, the superior UX, the clean tokenomics as bullish signals. 'they're doing $800mm annualized revenue with like 15 people!' 'the margins are incredible!' 'no VCs dumping on retail!' 'no token unlock schedule that bleeds price!' 'the oracle design is genius!' 'the liquidation engine is better than CEXs!' and sure, all of that is impressive. genuinely impressive. legitimately impressive. the team has executed incredibly well and built something that actually works and actually has product-market fit and actually generates real revenue from real users doing real trading. but having 80%+ margins on $800mm annualized revenue isn't actually a GOOD thing for future defensibility - it's a massive flashing neon sign visible from space that screams 'please come compete with me, there are hundreds of millions in profit just sitting here for the taking, you don't even need to be that good, you just need to be 80% as good and charge 20% less on fees'. not arguing it's necessarily overvalued right now, not saying you should sell, just saying that high margins aren't inherently bullish for long-term durability. they're actually a massive invitation for competition. they're actually evidence that the market is underserved and there's room for new entrants. in every market in history, high margins attract competition. that's not a controversial statement. that's not a hot take. that's just how capitalism works. if there's a business doing 80% margins, other businesses will enter that market and compete those margins down. the only question is how long it takes and how defensible the incumbent's position is. so the question becomes: what's the terminal margin for HYPE in 2030 if it succeeds, what's the success case actually worth in dollar terms, and what's the multiple on 2030 earnings that you can justify paying today given the risk profile and competitive dynamics? let's say there's 25% probability of complete failure (gets regulated away, oracle gets exploited and they can't recover trust, team fucks up and ships a critical bug, better competitor emerges and takes all the users, market structure changes make perps less attractive, DeFi narrative dies and everything goes to zero, whatever). that's probably conservative honestly - most crypto projects have way higher than 25% failure rate over five year periods - but let's be generous. in the remaining 75% of scenarios where HYPE doesn't die, where it survives and continues to operate and maintains some version of its current market position, it needs to get to $75bn market cap to justify today's $56bn expected value calculation ($56bn / 0.75 = $75bn in success scenarios). that's the math. if you think the probability of failure is higher than 25%, say 40%, then you need even higher terminal value in success cases - you'd need $93bn market cap in 2030 to justify $56bn EV today. for a mature exchange business with real competition and stable market share, the correct earnings multiple is 20-25x. this is not a guess. this is what actual exchange businesses trade at in public markets. look at the comps: CME Group trades at 22x forward earnings, Intercontinental Exchange at 24x, CBOE at 20x, Nasdaq at 25x. even Coinbase at its most generous bull case trades at like 25-30x and that's WITH the regulatory moat of being the only fully compliant US on-ramp and WITH the custody business and WITH the staking revenue and WITH the brand recognition of being the 'safe' place for institutions. let's be extremely aggressive and say HYPE trades at 25x earnings in 2030 because crypto people are willing to pay premiums for 'decentralization' or whatever narrative wins, because there's still some growth left in the business, because the crypto market has matured and people value these businesses more highly. that's generous but let's give it to you. let's also say they maintain 50% net margins in 2030. that's extremely high end for any exchange once competition actually arrives and they have to spend on user retention, new features, insurance funds, compliance (even decentralized exchanges will face regulatory pressure and will need to spend on lawyers and lobbying and maybe KYC infrastructure), marketing, liquidity incentives, maybe team expansion, whatever. for context, Coinbase does like 30-35% net margins in good years. CME does 60% but they have regulatory moats that literally prevent competition and century-old brand recognition and relationships with every institution on earth. Binance probably does 40-50% but they also do everything (spot, futures, options, staking, launchpad, NFTs, everything) and have massive regulatory uncertainty hanging over them and CZ went to prison. traditional brokerages like Schwab or Fidelity do like 20-30% margins. so 50% for HYPE in a competitive 2030 landscape is GENEROUS. it's assuming they maintain margins higher than almost every comparable business while somehow also growing revenue 7.5x. at 25x P/E on $75bn market cap, you need $3bn in annual net earnings. at 50% net margins, that's $6bn in annual revenue. that's the requirement. that's what has to happen for the math to work. they're doing $800mm annualized right now based on recent run rate (was over $1bn at the peak a few months ago when meme coins were ripping and volatility was insane and everyone was aping into perps). so you need 7.5x revenue growth over 5 years while MAINTAINING 50% margins in the face of competition. not 7.5x revenue growth in a vacuum where they're the only player - 7.5x revenue growth while competitors are actively trying to eat your lunch, while new entrants are launching with better tech, while CEXs are improving their offerings, while regulations are changing, while user preferences are evolving. i'm giving you extremely aggressive assumptions here. i'm being generous on every variable. i'm assuming high multiples, high margins, relatively low probability of failure, continued growth in crypto perps market, no major regulatory headwinds, no technical failures. and i'm partially anchoring these assumptions to the entire history of exchange businesses and competitive dynamics in financial markets, which is actually pretty relevant even if everyone wants to say 'this time is different because crypto' or 'this time is different because DeFi' or 'this time is different because oracles'. i understand people will say 'margins will stay at 80% because it's all on-chain and automated and there's no customer service and no headquarters and no employees' or 'revenue was $1bn+ at peak so $6bn isn't crazy with crypto adoption growing' but that requires the future to differ from literally every other exchange market in financial history in ways that nobody has actually articulated a coherent, defensible thesis for. why would margins stay at 80%? because there's no competition? well, why is there no competition when there are hundreds of millions in dollars of profit sitting on the table every year? the current lack of serious competition is a function of HYPE being early to market with this specific design and being technically superior to the alternatives that exist right now. but 'being first' isn't a permanent moat - ask MySpace, ask Yahoo, ask Netscape, ask BlackBerry. 'better tech' isn't a permanent moat in crypto - everything is forkable, everything is open source or gets reverse engineered within months, every innovation gets cloned by teams with more capital and more resources. there's massive recency bias letting people believe current metrics are sustainable indefinitely into the future. 'look at the revenue! look at the volume! look at the margins! look at the growth!' but the most likely outcome - based on literally every other market in history, both in crypto and in TradFi - is that high margins + massive revenue opportunity = competition arrives. and competition doesn't arrive politely. competition doesn't wait outside and knock gently on the door. competition comes in aggressive. competition undercuts on fees. competition offers better rebates to market makers. competition offers better incentives to users. competition spends more on marketing and user acquisition. competition builds better features faster. competition poaches your engineers. competition copies everything that works and improves everything that doesn't. in order to defend market share when real competition arrives, HYPE will have to make a choice: either sacrifice margin (cut fees to stay competitive, offer better rebates to traders, spend more on liquidity mining to keep market makers happy, reduce insurance fund fees) or spend more on differentiation (build better UX, add new products, add new chains, improve the oracle, build insurance funds that are larger, invest in compliance infrastructure, hire more engineers, do more marketing, build more brand awareness, whatever). there is no scenario where they maintain 80% margins AND keep growing revenue at 30%+ annually for five consecutive years while competitors with billions in capital actively try to take market share. that has never happened in any market ever. not in stocks, not in commodities, not in forex, not in crypto, not anywhere. competition won't just be crypto-native perps platforms, though there will definitely be those too. dydx already exists and has venture backing and a team and brand recognition. Vertex exists. GMX exists. Gains Network exists. Drift exists on Solana. Jupiter is building perps. There will be ten more by 2026. But the real competition, the competition that actually matters, will come from entities with actual resources, real capital, established user bases, regulatory relationships, and the ability to undercut on price while still making money. it'll be Binance if they survive their regulatory issues and decide they want this market badly enough. Binance has hundreds of millions of users. They have brand recognition. They have liquidity. They have capital. If they decide decentralized perps is strategic, they can clone the entire HYPE model, launch it, market it to their user base, and compete aggressively on fees. What's HYPE's moat against that? it'll be Coinbase derivatives if they decide decentralized perps is a big enough opportunity and they can wrap it in enough compliance theater to make US regulators happy. Coinbase has the regulatory relationships, the institutional clients, the retail brand, the distribution, the capital to build whatever they want. If they see $6bn in perps revenue as achievable, they'll enter this market. it'll be OKX or Bybit or any of the other major centralized exchanges that have more users, more capital, more liquidity, more brand recognition, more ability to cross-sell from their existing spot and futures businesses. These exchanges do tens of billions in daily volume. They have established market making relationships. They have tech teams. What stops them from launching a decentralized perps product that's 90% as good as HYPE but integrated into their existing ecosystem? and if the market actually gets big enough - if perps actually becomes a $6bn+ annual revenue market globally - then TradFi players will come. CME will come. They already offer Bitcoin and Ethereum futures. If decentralized perps gets big enough, they'll figure out how to offer it in a regulated wrapper. ICE will come. Nasdaq will come. Actual regulated entities with decades of experience running exchange businesses, with deep relationships with regulators across every jurisdiction, with massive compliance budgets, with institutional credibility that crypto projects don't have. They'll wrap decentralized perps primitives in a regulated structure and offer it to institutions and retail with the backing of real regulatory clarity, real insurance, real legal recourse if something goes wrong. And institutions will choose that over HYPE because institutions care about regulatory clarity and legal recourse and counterparty risk and all the things that HYPE can't provide as a decentralized protocol. 'but HYPE has better tech!' sure, today, right now, in February 2025, HYPE has better tech than most alternatives. the oracle design is elegant. the liquidation engine works well. the UX is cleaner than most DEXs. but technology advantages in crypto are temporary. they last months, not years. everything is open source or gets reverse engineered within quarters. the oracle design is elegant but it's not magic - it's a clever use of price feeds and validator incentives, but it's not some uncrackable code that nobody else can figure out. the liquidation engine is good but it's not impossible to replicate - it's just an orderbook and a matching engine and some smart contracts, which are all things that lots of teams know how to build. the UX is clean but design can be copied - you can literally fork the frontend repo and improve it and launch in weeks. there is no technical moat that lasts five years in crypto. none. zero. every technical advantage gets competed away, gets copied, gets improved upon, gets made obsolete by the next innovation. 'but HYPE has the community! the brand! the trust! the users are loyal!' okay, sure, brand matters. community matters. trust matters. but brand isn't worth 80% margins in perpetuity. Coinbase has arguably the strongest brand in all of crypto - they're the household name, they're the one your mom has heard of, they're the 'safe' option - and they do 30% margins because they face competition and have to spend to maintain their position. They spend on Super Bowl ads. They spend on compliance. They spend on customer service. They spend on new products. They spend on lobbying. Brand gives you pricing power but it doesn't give you infinite pricing power. Community and trust are valuable but they're not infinitely defensible. Users are loyal until they're not. Traders are mercenaries - they go wherever the fees are lowest and the liquidity is best and the features are most attractive. If someone launches a competitor with the same features, the same UX, the same trust guarantees, but 30% lower fees, where do the traders go? Some will stay with HYPE out of loyalty. Most will leave for the better deal. That's just how markets work. 'but HYPE has no VCs! no unlock dump! the tokenomics are clean! there's no sell pressure from investors!' that's legitimately nice and it does help with price stability in the short to medium term and it does mean there's no massive dump incoming from Sequoia or a16z or whoever. but it doesn't create a business moat. it doesn't make users more loyal. it doesn't make the revenue more defensible. it doesn't protect against competition. if Binance comes along with a better product and better fees and better liquidity, users will leave regardless of how clean the token unlock schedule is. users don't stay on a platform because the tokenomics are good - they stay because the product is better than the alternatives. hyperliquid absolutely has first-mover advantage in decentralized perps with this specific oracle design. that's worth something real. being first matters. being first means you get to iterate faster, learn faster, build brand faster, attract users faster, attract market makers faster. the team has executed incredibly well - probably better than 99% of crypto teams. the product is genuinely good - it works, it's fast, it's reliable, people actually use it for real trading with real size. the oracle design is clever - it solves real problems that other DEXs have struggled with. the community is strong - there's genuine enthusiasm and genuine belief in the project. all of that is real and valuable and shouldn't be dismissed. i'm not arguing HYPE is worthless. i'm not arguing the project will definitely fail. i'm not even arguing you should sell if you own it. i'm just arguing that at $20bn, a lot of good outcomes are already priced in. i'm willing to pay a premium vs what a pure DCF model would suggest because there's optionality value in crypto, because crypto markets are structurally inefficient and misprice things, because sentiment and narrative matter and can drive prices independent of fundamentals for extended periods, because there's some non-zero probability of a 2017-style mania where fundamentals don't matter and everything goes up and retail floods back in and nobody cares about valuations. but that doesn't mean the current price is the correct price for a rational long-term holder who's trying to maximize risk-adjusted returns. the most likely explanation for current valuation is that there's still broad overvaluation across altcoins generally. people who manage capital, who run crypto funds, who have LPs or investors asking questions, who feel forced to have crypto exposure because that's what their mandate requires, who need to deploy capital into something because sitting in cash feels like missing out - they feel they need HYPE exposure because the other large-cap alternatives are relatively worse expected value. it's not that HYPE is cheap - it's that everything else is even more expensive on a fundamental basis. SOL at $100bn? doing what exactly? the network still goes down randomly. the apps are mostly memecoins and ponzis and degenerate gambling. the actual revenue to the network (the fees paid to validators, the value accruing to SOL holders) is like $100-200mm annually. you're paying 500-1000x price-to-sales for a network that has mostly speculative activity, that has serious technical issues, that has centralization concerns, that has questions about long-term sustainability. ETH at $400bn? the roadmap keeps changing every six months. L2s are cannibalizing the base layer - all the activity is moving to Arbitrum and Optimism and Base, which means all the fees are going there instead of to ETH holders. the Ethereum Foundation moves slower than any other major chain - they're still years away from finishing the merge to full PoS, the sharding roadmap keeps getting delayed, the gas fees are still terrible for small users. revenue to stakers is okay but nothing that justifies $400bn - you're getting like 3-4% staking yield, which on $400bn is like $12-16bn in staking rewards, but a lot of that is inflation not real revenue. you're paying for the brand, for the developer ecosystem, for the hope that 'ultrasound money' narrative makes a comeback and ETH becomes deflationary again and we get back to the glory days of 2021. but the fundamental picture has gotten worse, not better - activity is fragmenting across L2s, users are going to other chains, the roadmap keeps changing, the EF seems to have lost its way. everything else in the top 50 is even worse. most altcoins do low single-digit millions or low double-digit millions in actual revenue. most have questionable product-market fit - they're solutions looking for problems, they're infrastructure for infrastructure's sake, they're speculation masquerading as utility. most have massive token unlocks coming that will create sell pressure for years. most have teams that are clearly just there for the pump and dump - they raise a bunch of money, they market aggressively, they get the token listed, they dump on retail, they lose interest, the project slowly dies. so in that context, HYPE at $20bn doing $800mm in revenue with 80% margins and a team that actually ships and actually gives a fuck about the product looks amazing. it IS amazing, relatively speaking. it's legitimately one of the better fundamental pictures in crypto. but 'less bad than the alternatives' isn't the same as 'good on an absolute basis'. 'better than SOL or ETH' isn't the same as 'worth $20bn'. if you're buying HYPE at $20bn you're either: option 1: betting on 2017-style crypto mania returning where fundamentals don't matter at all and everything goes up 10x and retail floods back in and CNBC is covering crypto every day and your uncle is asking you about shitcoins and narrative matters more than reality. this might work! i'm genuinely not saying it won't work! if we get a proper mania phase in 2025-2026 where everything goes vertical, HYPE could easily go to $50bn or $100bn or $200bn on pure momentum while doing the exact same revenue or even less. but that's not a fundamental investment thesis, that's a 'greater fool' thesis, that's market timing, that's speculation, and you need to be honest with yourself about which game you're playing. if you're buying at $20bn hoping to sell at $100bn to someone who cares even less about fundamentals than you do, that's fine! that's a legitimate strategy in crypto! just don't confuse it with investing! and make sure you actually sell when things get frothy, because if you hold through the mania peak thinking 'this time is different', you'll watch it crash back down and you'll be underwater for years. option 2: genuinely believing they'll do $6bn+ revenue at 50%+ margins in 2030 while facing heavy competition from both crypto-native competitors and TradFi institutions. this requires you to believe something about market structure and competitive dynamics and business moats that has never been true in any financial market in history. maybe you're right! maybe this time IS genuinely different! maybe crypto perps is such a unique market that normal rules of capitalism don't apply! maybe 'decentralization' creates such strong network effects that nobody can compete! maybe the oracle design is such a strong moat that it lasts a decade instead of a year! but you should be able to articulate WHY it's different, not just assert that it is. you should be able to explain what specific factors make HYPE immune to competitive dynamics that have affected every other exchange in history. you should be able to explain why margins will stay high when every other high-margin business in history has seen margins compress as competition arrives. you should have a coherent thesis, not just vibes. option 3: making a calculated relative value trade where you think HYPE is mispriced relative to other alts you're shorting or selling. you think SOL is more overvalued than HYPE, so you go long HYPE short SOL and capture the spread. you think ETH is dead money for the next year so you rotate into HYPE for better risk-adjusted returns in the medium term. you think the top 20 altcoins are all overvalued but HYPE is the least overvalued, so you hold it as your 'least bad option'. you're not making an absolute value judgment, you're trading the relative value, you're playing the spread. this is intellectually defensible! this is actually how you should think about crypto if you're running an actual book, if you're managing real money, if you're trying to generate alpha! most assets are mispriced relative to each other - that's where the opportunity is! if you think HYPE is expensive at $20bn but everything else is even more expensive, then being long HYPE short everything else is a