YouSaid · the spoken record

Nick Tomaino

lines on the record: 60
first: 2023-10-30
most recent: 2023-10-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“No, I appreciate it. And for real, I told you this before. I really appreciate how much effort that you put into your podcast. It's clear that, again, your success too was not luck. It's a lot of hard work and determination, and that comes through in the prep and everything else that you do. So thank you.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really kind of want to be doing much of the same that I'm doing now, but I just want crypto to be much more important in the world. And that's kind of the lens. If we've invested in a lot more products that broaden crypto to many more users, billions of people are using crypto. There's still a lot of innovation and stuff that's happening. We want to continue to be kind of bleeding edge crypto investors that are investing in the new stuff. There's a lot of people that come and go. I am in crypto for my lifetime and I want to be kind of doing what I'm doing now, but crypto being much more important.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It hasn't worked out yet in a big way. So that's, I guess, what I've been wrong about to date. But, you know, I'm Dog Batting principal and I still think they're going to work. So I haven't given up on them yet by any means.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that could be very valuable for the world. Because how do we consume information today? Media, whether it's the New York Times or whether it's on X and everyone that creates media has their own biases. And I think if you can incorporate massive amounts of information, many different perspectives into a market and it reveals a price which reflects kind of a probability for an outcome. That's very valuable information for the world. And this can be done on crypto because of the global payment rails. And bridge markets haven't happened yet. Hayek, who's a famous Austrian economist, he wrote about prediction markets back in 1945. And he's written a lot of great stuff saying exactly what I'm saying right now, that how useful that prediction markets could be for the world. It hasn't happened yet. You know, it was one of my early bets in crypto. We invested in an early crypto project called Augur that didn't work out.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, here's one of my really strong convictions within crypto is that prediction markets are going to be massive. So, you know, prediction market is very simply a financial market for any outcome of any event in the world. So you could have a prediction market for who's going to win the 2024 presidential election or is Israel going to do a ground invasion in Gaza? Any piece of information in the world you can create a market for? And I think that is really powerful. It could be the most powerful thing that you could do with crypto. Right now, everyone speculates on, you know, whether it's cryptocurrencies themselves or NFTs or a lot of that is nonsense. There is a small portion, which I obviously believe is very important. But a lot of the speculation, I think, isn't very, very valuable at all. But if you could create like global liquidity around information.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The scapegoat would be the first book that I would read by Renee Girard. And then there's a few really good interviews that he gave. That would be kind of how I would start.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd ask him what he thinks of what's going on right now in the world in a lot of ways, whether it's in U.S. politics, whether it's in the Middle East conflict, and how his framework applies to U.S. politics, Middle East conflict. I truly believe that deeper understanding of his framework could be a huge catalyst for more peace in the world. He's the father of a lot of these frameworks. So thinking about one, how you kind of applied the framework to those. And then two, how do we grow awareness on a lot of these frameworks?”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I know you don't like NFTs, Harry, right? So, this might be surprising to you as well. But one of the things I love about NFTs, they're effectively user-owned brands. My favorite consumer brand, which again, this is a PFP project that you might not think of as a brand, but Crypto Punks, right? Crypto Punks is effectively a user-owned brand. There's not a ton that's been done with the brand yet other than just there's 10,000 of these 8-bit pixelated characters that all have different traits, but there's a really strong community. I love the artwork. I love the community over a long period of time. There's going to be increasingly interesting things that come out of this consumer brand. So crypto punks is my favorite consumer brand.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm an LP in a fund called 1789 Capital Omed Malik and Chris Buskirk. They are creating an America first venture fund. This aligns with my sentiment in a lot of Silicon Valley. There's a lot of soulless greed and just this desire to create these massive funds, massive attention. And I think, again, Sequoia is the best example of this. And 1789, I view as kind of this anti-Sequoia that's very much focused on kind of America first, mostly growth stage, but some kind of series A type funds. And one of their first investments was public square, an Amazon of kind, but focused on values that are very different than Amazon.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm just going to use funds that I am LPs in. The funds I want to be in is kind of like newish ones that aren't super well known. And basically the newest ones, I'm at a point where I can be. So the seed fund, I'd say, is a fund called Pronomos, Hatray Friedman, a very interesting guy, one of the founders of the seasetting institute. I would call him principal in some ways libertarian. His grandfather was Milton.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, we just, yeah, I mean, on the way up happened quickly. And I mean, it was more just a feel thing than anything else. It's like we actually invested on the way up a little bit and then sold on the big way up.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's harder to have conviction when you're just starting off. It takes lessons like this. So, yeah, I think you did have some conviction, but part of the reason we were doing that at the time was because we didn't really fully believe as much as we should in kind of, you know, our investment thesis. And we thought it would be a good thing for relationships to bring deals to our LPs. That was the thinking. And in some ways, I think a lot of first-time fund managers do that. And that could be a good decision, by the way. It's like it's good to build strong relationships and to help other people get into deals and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, when it comes to generating returns for LPs, which again is what we're trying to do in venture, it's like that was not the optimal decision for that.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interestingly, I would say it's also OpenSea because when we invested, we only invested 500K initially. And that was, again, like at that time, we had a 26 million dollar fund. Our mandate was, you know, checks between 500K and a million. It was within our mandate. But yeah, we invested 500K and then we brought a bunch of our LPs in to invest another between 500K and a million, call it. That was one where I learned if you have conviction, be more aggressive.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the most part, that was a Silicon Valley perspective and narrative. And we let kind of our user perspective kind of guide us. That is, I think, what allowed for that big win. But the loss, I would say, or”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Biggest win. I mean, we've talked about it. I think it would have to be OpenSea. That was a product that I just believed in from a user perspective more than anything. It's like I was buying and selling crypto kitties back in, I believe it was late 2016. Initially, on the crypto kitties website was the only place that you could trade crypto kitties. And they charge 5%. And then OpenSea was just a product that allowed you to trade crypto kitties for 2% rather than 5%. A marketplace to allow people to buy and sell these kind of off the main creator's website just made a lot of sense for me. And that was why we invested. And at the time, you know, they came out of Y Combinator, but there wasn't a hot deal at all. Like actually, we led the round and we were trying to convince our LPs to invest. It wasn't like, and some of them did and did incredibly well, but it was like there were crypto funds at that time. Everyone kind of looked at NFTs as kind of this stupid thing that didn't make sense.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My tweets in the past or something, but I'm very open to Solana. I've talked to some interesting founders that are building in Solana right now. I still haven't really seen anything from Solana that's new and pushing the space forward in unique ways. And then I'm kind of waiting for that. And by the way, the people that invested in Solana have done incredibly well. I missed a big investment opportunity as well. That's an example of a way where maybe a two dogmatic, too purist. And I'm constantly, you know, trying to reassess my frame and make sure that I'm not missing things because of that.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Live, however you define in terms of happiness or success. But yeah, I mean, in terms of like practically how can dogmatic be bad for me? A good practical example, right? Is Solana in the crypto space? Solana, to me, you know, we use this framework of like there's purists and there's tourists. The best crypto projects were kind of at the intersection of purists and tourists. I have historically viewed Solana as a very tourist thing. It came in right at the beginning of the last bull market. It was aggressively marketing. It was also one of these insider VC coins that sold a lot to early insiders who then marketed the out of it and kind of sold it to retail. So there are all these things about OpenStreet. And maybe I'm wrong on that, right? Maybe I'm looking at it from a two of a purist of a perspective and I'm a too dogmatic. I think the jury is still out. Like I'm not, some people would say I'm a salona hater because some”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I'm principled, and sometimes that can be an issue. Yeah. And so I think that is certainly a flaw of mine. I think it can also be a good thing, but there are situations where it can be a bad thing. And I don't know, one thing I think about is like, I think we all live in our own world and we all have a way that we perceive the world. And I think there are people that are kind of two in their own world. Sometimes I can be two in my own world. And then there are people that maybe are too out of their own world and, you know, paying attention to everything else that's going on. And there can also be an extreme of that. So I think finding a balance of like being in your own world and having principles that you live by, but also seeing what's going on in the world deeply and paying attention to that and kind of combining those two, that's the approach that you need to.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By the way, there's stuff I feel insecure about for sure. We all do, but I do think that's maybe an explanation for, again, my ability to not chase things, I guess”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are certainly things I feel insecure about, right? So I'm not saying I'm never, I'm secure about everything in my life, absolutely or something like that. But I don't know. I do think a competitive advantage that I have, especially in the crypto space, is a mental strength that I'm not constantly trying to.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cure about anything. I think insecurity can cause people to fill a hole, to be searching for more money or more attention or things like that. And I've just kind of always stayed grounded.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's just my nature. I've kind of always been a contrarian in some sense. Like I think about even in high school, I didn't really care what other people were doing or thought. A good example of this is drinking. I never drank in high school or college, really. And I think of drinking as something that's also like super memetic. I mean, maybe for some people, it makes them feel good. And this goes back to what's biological and what's memetic. It's like maybe for some people drinking makes them feel good. I think for a lot of people, drinking actually makes them feel bad, but they do it anyway because other people do it. To answer your question, I've just always thought about things a little differently and wasn't really influenced by what people thought. Maybe my parents are a good explanation for why. I think my parents raised me very well. I never, I've always felt mentally strong and never felt really insecure.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say three to five years. That's kind of the time horizon, which I think it's likely before that, but with a high degree of conviction, I would say three to five years. I mean, NFTs aren't going away, right? Like even the simplest form of an NFT visual artwork, traditional artwork is massive. And there is a new wave of crypto rich people that view crypto art just like traditional rich people view traditional art. That's already happening. And even if that is the only thing that happens in NFTs, which I don't think it is, I think NFTs are still going to be very big. But then you have dynamic NFTs that can change on chain based on certain variables. You have NFTs within games. You have music entfts. You have all these other directions that NFTs could go that they haven't yet. That's the lens which I view a bookcase for NFTs.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Open seat was the authentic NFT marketplace. That's not to say that their success is a given moving forward. But for OpenSea, I think if NFTs become the massive asset class that I think they will, OpenSea as the kind of on-ramp into NFTs is a massive business. So that's my kind of long-term thesis on OpenSea that really hasn't changed since we started. And again, we're early stage investors. We're not as much making judgments about, you know, was OpenSea a great investment at $13 billion. You know, the last round was. I don't know about that, but do I think it's going to be an important product in the world in five years, much more important than it is today? Yes, because I think NFTs are important and because I think an on-ramp to NFTs is very valuable for people.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there is a chemical component as well. Again, the truth is nuanced, right? So it's not to say that there aren't fundamental things humans like more than others, but I think most people are way more influenced by others than they would fundamentally acknowledge, I guess would be my point. So there are some people that fundamentally gravitate to certain things for chemical reasons, but I think there's way more people that gravitate towards those things just because other people gravitate to them is what I'd say.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is exactly what Renee Gerard has written a lot about, this idea of memetic desire. And this is, I believe, what is unique about humans is that desire is actually not based internally. It's based externally on the desire of others. And so I think there's core human needs that everyone has. But outside of that, what we like, what we desire, what we want is fundamentally based on the desire of others. So why do I think in the terms of music, this explains why Taylor Swift gets so popular? You know, some people may like Taylor Swift early, but then once she gets popular, it kind of becomes this memetic switch that other people like her because other people like her. That's human nature. Humans are fundamentally memetic.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the music to grow at a very early stage. Because music itself is very mimetic, right? It's like, why do most people love Taylor Swift? Because everyone else loves Taylor Swift. And she's kind of cracked, the memetic code. Is there music good? Some people, yes, some people no. You know, a lot of why people think she's good is because other people.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“May not solve a problem for you right now, and that's okay, but it does solve a problem for a lot of creators that are creating content of any kind. What I would say is new technology often isn't ideal for the incumbents, right? So if you're a massive creator that is already being served well by existing business models, then NFTs might not be for you. They're certainly not for you now. They may never be for you. What NFTs are really useful for is for these kind of new internet native creators that don't have an existing business model, but maybe have some true fans. Taylor Swift is never going to create music NFTs. The next Taylor Swift, who may be 13 right now and may be having a hard time getting distribution on existing distribution channels, may sell music NFTs to 100 true fans who then may help her, you know, spread the awareness of the music. That's a use case that I think is quite interesting that really hasn't blown up yet, right? Is music NFTs and the idea of like giving a incentive.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It aligns incentives between creators and their orders, right? So incentive alignment is kind of an underrated aspect of what crypto can do, both within cryptocurrencies but also NFTs. You know, as a creator, you can sell NFTs to your supporters and they can have an ownership in your success. The combination of those two, it's not just the business model for creators. It's the new asset investable asset class for anyone in the world to participate in. To me, that combination is really powerful. And you're looking skeptical. I understand the skepticism, right? Because at the end of the day, why are you?”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say the strong narrative now is that SBF is this evil mastermind behind this. And again, the truth is often far from the strong narrative. And while it is true that SBF is a big part of this, I think maybe what people don't realize is that the broader fraud of perception that we've talked about, right? That's a misconception.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You asked me what should happen, I think people should realize that it's not just Sam. So I think what ultimately will happen is that people will realize this, but it might take much longer, right? It's not going to happen quickly and maybe as quickly as I or some people would hope, but I think it will happen eventually. I tweeted before this all played out. It's like truth reveals itself in time. The internet itself is a very good tool to reveal truth, but it takes a long time. Sam is going to be the one that, you know, goes to jail and takes the brunt of it and it's the obvious, but over a long period of time, I think people will realize, you know, the character of these people that are involved.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good things going on. There really wasn't. And a lot of people within crypto recognize that, but that's kind of the fraud of perception that I'm talking about.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Outwardly signaling prestige and reality being very different, being focused on soulless grief or money or attention. It's like everyone involved in that, it's like a kind of vortex of soulless greed for money and attention. That's what was happening with FTX, right? Like if you ask investors, oh, why are you involved in FTX? Sam is so good at execution, right? That's what that's what was said. He's like, he's so good at getting media attention and working with regulators and politicians and all that. And why was that the case? That was the surface level perception. Why was that the case? Because he was buying off politicians and regulators and media. And also, you know, launched a topian in a way that wasn't very moral and hyping tokens and things like that. So it was just the surface level was the fraud of perception. It's like, if you look at the surface level, there are all these.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's a good question. Nothing would really make me happy what will happen, it just won't happen quick enough, is that, you know, the truth reveals itself in time. The people that got sucked into this perception game that the FTX was playing, that the politicians, the regulators, the investors, they all now are trying to just sweep it under the rug and say, oh, I didn't know about this financial fraud. It wasn't just a financial fraud, right? It was a fraud of perception, which they all played a role in. Ultimately, people will realize that. That's what should happen”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think many crypto funds are getting raised. It's going to take one thing is hopefully LPs are going to get a little smarter and do more diligence and not just deploy crazy into fund managers that don't really have any unique insights or defined strategy. They're going to start looking at results as well closely. And for even these big funds that maybe do some interesting things if you don't have really quality returns, I think LPs are going to be more skeptical. At the end of the day, it's like crypto needs to deliver beyond where it's delivered to date. And that's going to ultimately decide institutional money coming in or out.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Straightforward, and then decide to just deploy it all into Bitcoin and E. And if someone does that, I think they'll be successful and make a lot of money.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100% way too much money was raised. You know, you had people raise billion dollar funds that just had no unique insights or no investing prowess really or anything like that. But they had a brand name and access to institutions, whatever it is. And institutions just had FOMO and wanted to deploy. So are they going to give money back? Are they just going to milk management fees and deliver poor returns to LPs? I mean, it plays out over time, but maybe some of them will just put it in Bitcoin and ETH and maybe that will just work. But we'll see. Like I think a strategy, you know, a dishonest but probably successful strategy for one of these billion dollar fund managers would be to pitch LPs that you're investing in bleeding edge crypto that's going to push this.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I hear you on that. And again, I think some of that may be more recently due to fund size. They just have to invest in these token projects. I'm talking more historically. I think if you look at who's a winner in crypto, like Chris Dixon is undoubtedly a huge winner in crypto. But more recently, fund size caused them to do some of the stuff that people, you know, accuse them for. I don't think they're dumping. They have to be very careful about that. But I do think they are investing in some of these token projects that are getting hyped up to be dumped later. Some of these narratives that you hear are over exaggerated in different ways. That's what I'd say.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a combination, you know. AS16Z is a great fund in crypto. And I have a lot of respect for them. I do think they probably got too big, but they still have made good investments in, you know, like Christix and I have a ton of respect for.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, 100%. To me, it's one of the fakest parts of venture capital. It's like, it feels like everyone's competing for prestige. Everyone talks about fund size, you know, is trying to get press, these kind of vanity, you know, metrics that aren't really related at all to what the job really of a venture investor is. Yeah, I think, you know, the reason that one size is the metric is because the incumbents want it to be that way. The incumbents who they've got great relationships with these institutional LPs that allow them to raise these big funds. If everyone viewed fund performance as the metric of success, the big incumbents wouldn't have the prestige that they have.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's prudent if you have a big winner at the early stage, call it series C or Beyond to take money off the table if you can. We had some big winners that we sold somewhere between 10 and 30% of the position. If you have a big winner, I do think it's prudent to take cash and return it to your LPs.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think some players are worse than others, right? It's certainly not cross industry, right? Like there's a lot of good players in the space that aren't doing that at all.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is what FTX, a lot of people weren't paying attention, Silicon Valley invested hundreds of millions of dollars into FTX. FTX was doing exactly this. No one was paying attention to it, apparently. And then retail was getting sucked in. So FTX, Alameda was their investment arm that was basically investing in these token projects. Then FTX, the exchange, was listing these tokens, hyping up the tokens to their users. I don't know how quickly they were dumping. That's the piece of it. But again, you have private investors that are getting better deals. And then these tokens are being listed on exchanges. The dumping part of it is where there's gray area on holding periods and stuff and may or not may not be allowed. But if you're doing this, holding for the appropriate time and then dumping, that is technically legal.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it was mostly equity, actually. So, this is another thing, too. There's a lot of hate, I would say, for crypto VCs. And I understand that because a big part of the crypto VC game is doing these private token deals and then you kind of build some prestige media narrative hype and then sell the token to retail. And then retail gets sucked in and the VCs kind of dump tokens on retail. That's like a big game being played within crypto VC.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Both we're not religious about anything, really. We're very practical in terms of like the private stuff that we did for Fund One. It was very much equity. But we also very much believe in tokens as well. So for token deals, we're more buying, you know, like we bought a significant amount of Bitcoin and ETH in that fund.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've seen loss rates have been lower so far. And again, we're still 2017. We're about six years in, so there's still a long way to go. But like in our fund one, we have 22 investments on that fund, right? So I said about between 20 and 30. And every fund, even three, which is 130 million, we're still doing early stage leading edge crypto. We're still doing kind of first money in. Like we haven't changed our strategy. We do bigger checks now, but it's really the same strategy. And that's something I think that has gone wrong in crypto is like when you have a lot of money being thrown at you and a lot of hype and things like that, you can go in different directions and raise massive funds, start doing growth stage like that, which I think is, you know, I get why people do it for to make more management fees and to feel more important and things like that.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So fund two is 50 million 2019 vintage. Fund three is 130 million. And that was 2021 vintage. And the NFT fund is about 80 million.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yep. So our first fund, which was launched in 2017, is 26 million. At that time, Inventure for like a first time fund manager is big, but in crypto is actually pretty small. And I actually could have raised much more. And a lot of people in crypto is like, oh, why is your fund so small? It's like kind of looking down on me. You know, I had such a small fund. I thought it was important to start small and be disciplined, particularly because like our focus is very early stage kind of pre-seed seed. You know, the thinking was 26 million dollar fund make between 20 and 30 investments between 500k and a million or so in terms of initial investment. So that was kind of the first fund and the thinking.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think I came close to crying honestly. It's like it was very painful. And my wife remembers. But yeah, it took about 24 hours. You feel like shit. Blame other people. Or, you know, I certainly thought about like leaving the industry. But at the end of the day, it's like my belief in crypto more than anything else. It's like led me to the thinking like, you need to use this to level up. At the end of the day, it was my mistake. They caught me slipping. So it's like, you need to use it to level up and to motivate you to go bigger. That was kind of the lesson. And this is still an issue in crypto, obviously, hacking. And we all know someone that's gotten phished or clicked a meta mask link or something like that. And I still, it's kind of a big unknown secret, unspoken secret, I should say, in crypto, like how many people actually get hacked and no one really talks about it. But yeah, you basically just have to use it to motivate you and to level up to go bigger.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the end of the day, it was my own fault, but I basically got fish. I got an email saying that Coinbase updated terms of service. I clicked the link to try to update the Coinbase service, log into Coinbase to do so, logged into Coinbase with my password, boom, the hacker got into my account and drained all my Bitcoin. It wasn't a ton of in USD at the time. Call it $50,000, but it was the only money that I had and lost it all from that phishing attack.”
2023-10-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source