Archetype closes $100M crypto Fund III as institutional demand hits 'inflection point'

in performance transport box. Number one in competitive bake ops. Number one ranking on G2, baby. Let's go. And we have our next guest in the reream waiting room. Ash tight. Welcome to the stream. How you doing? Good. How are you guys doing? Thank you for having me. We're doing great. It's great to have you.

Uh give us kick us off with an introduction. Uh yeah, of course. Uh my name's Ash Egan, founder of Archetype based New York. Have been doing CryptoVC for the last 10 years.

founded Archetype four years ago and just today launched uh and announced our third fund, a hundred million dollar fund focused on backing the transformative companies of tomorrow. Great. Got to hit the gong. Got to hit the gong. Got to hit the gong. Third fund, too. That's a that's a real milestone.

You're you're you're really in the business. Take me through some of your your I'm sure it was a roller coaster ride, but uh you've been investing in crypto for a long time. Take me through some of your your various thesis and how they played out. Were you excited about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Salana?

We've seen a lot of VCs that have been like maxis on one thing. One day they went deep into one thing. Uh what what has been the the most durable source of alpha or excitement for you in crypto?

uh there is an inherent tribalism to in crypto and you know I I think that's it it's almost natural to any human right you you have something something new comes around you might not have exposure to it you just you know you have a bias against it right and so uh there is that human element um but for me it wasn't Bitcoin that got me into the space 10 years ago it was Ethereum and it was, you know, smart contracts natively tying compute and value.

And I wanted to get as close as I could to the Ethereum ecosystem. I told everyone to buy this thing called Ether. It was $2 on coinbase. com. Some of those folks are LPS today. Uh I had emails from who said, "Why didn't you tell why weren't you more aggressive about telling me to buy that thing?

" No, I had a friend in college back then. it was putting out the uh or launching the rails for this permissionless and valueoriented new internet. You know, we've come a long way since then uh from a throughput cost what you can what you can actually build on top of these blockchain standpoint.

Um I would say you know what we look for we we invest in both applications and infrastructure and operating businesses within crypto. Uh businesses that can aggregate developers and give them tools uh uh you know to create whatever they whatever they want you know uh to to build out their dreams.

those types of opportunities have staying power and escape the tribalism. Um, and I do think, you know, the tribalism piece is something that is is just part of the early days of crypto, right? Uh, we've matured a lot since then.

We're now a $4 trillion market, multiple publicly traded companies, tons of tons of publicly traded companies. Uh, talk to me about chain analysis. I think that's such an interesting company because it was one that uh it felt like uh it was it was a crypto company but it wasn't exactly indexed to a particular coin.

It was more like the first glimmer from my perspective of like the sassification like you could actually build a company on top of crypto that wasn't just a a network or coin by itself. Uh what led you to that investment? What was the thesis and how did it play out?

Sorry guys, I'm having a little bit of system issues here. No worries. Can you hear us? Okay. Okay, we're back. Okay, we're back. We're back. I was asking about chain analysis or really anything else. Yeah, basically like tradition opportunities for traditional SAS businesses in crypto.

I thought that was I thought it was one of the more interesting crypto companies to develop over the last couple years. Uh we're we're huge fans of chain analysis. uh we are investors as as a fund. I seeded them back in 2015.

It was my first ever investment in the space and you know I think they're just a great example of a team that they were initially selling to law enforcement and you know working with policemen and the likes to crack down on illicit use uh illicit activity and illegal activity where Bitcoin was the medium of exchange and they've expanded now to exchanges financial institutions ions actually having predictive analytics and having a sense of uh you know uh these wallets are affiliated with OFAC uh blacklists etc.

Um you know it it's been remarkable seeing that journey. It was it started for me 10 years ago and the company uh was founded just shortly there uh before that. Um, I think what we're seeing today is, you know, there is a huge amount of appetite for crypto from an institutional standpoint.

We started seeing that obviously with the Coinbase IPO, but then you look at the ETFs, Bitcoin, uh, Ethereum ETFs. Now you have the DATS circle uh you know a number of other sort of short list companies that people want exposure to.

And so when you think around their short list of who's going to go out, I'd say a number of crypto names are are on that list in uh you know going New York Stock Exchange or or NASDAQ. Have you invested in any companies that sold to Stripe? Uh that's correct. Yeah.

So, uh, Stripe has announced two investments, and one of our first investments was in Privy. Boom. There you go. You got to do the gong. I I love it every time. We also have a here. We're happy to see a privy back. Uh, I want to do a quick lightning round uh, questions.

What do you uh, how what's your vision for the future of meme coins? They feel like at this point somewhat lindy. They continue to evolve. Uh do you think they'll be as popular as they are today in five years? Do you think they'll be more popular? Uh do you think they'll continue to morph?

And I have some other questions. Uh I think meme coins you see in traditional markets every day, right? You you saw this in COVID uh with GameStop, AMC, etc. But when you have enough people voting for something and you have a collective that believes in something, it can evolve into something much larger.

And so what we're either dismissing or embracing as memecoins today, uh, you know, we think it's going to grow much much larger. you you talk to Gen Z folks and you know these kids graduating and you know they're buying memecoins and telling their friends to buy them and the likes.

Uh you know you can imagine a world where you know you're you're you're holding exposure to you know your favorite Pokemon cards.

uh you're holding exposure to, you know, any of your sort of childhood uh aspirational type figures and you know, you're you you have a lot of noise along the way and uh a lot of folks who are optimizing for the for the short term, especially when you layer on personalities and the agentic economy uh via LLMs, like there's some really interesting things uh that I think will evolve from what started as memecoins, dats, bullish, bearish, lukewarm.

Uh do you think we're going to be seeing more DATs every time there's a new kind of uh popular ecosystem uh in crypto or do you think it's uh uh this will this will be known as the DAT era and we'll move beyond it?

if it feels a lot like uh spaxs, you know, this is just a vehicle that has attracted interest very quickly amongst institutional investors. Um but also, you know, to get exposure to this to uh you know, this industry that has a lot of excitement around it.

Uh, you know, I think there's a number of teams that want to just launch a DAT and haven't thought beyond it.

Um, look, disclosures via DATs are a hell of a lot better than offshore foundation entities where, you know, you could have someone in, you name the country that's controlling the token supply of some of, you know, the next internet.

And so um I think we're still figuring out how DATs really evolve like you know is it going to be sort of a micro strategy you have one leader and then uh you know everyone else or is this just another vehicle for getting exposure to institutional interest in crypto assets. Very cool. Thank you so much for coming.

Congratulations. Congratulations your fund. Don't deploy it too quick, you know. Don't don't uh don't top ticket, but uh it's uh the asset class has a bright future and uh we'll see you at the next fund. We'll talk to you soon. Have a good rest of your day, guys. Cheers. Adio is customer relationship magic.

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