The Ledger
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Tomaino: Crypto VCs hype private tokens and dump them on retail
“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 G…”
Tomaino: Taylor Swift exemplifies soulless greed for money and attention
“To me, she's kind of the definition of someone that has this, like, soulless greed for attention and money, and is not authentic at all.”
Tomaino: Silicon Valley is driven by soulless greed, citing Sequoia Capital
“My sentiment in a lot of Silicon Valley is that it's very, there, there's a lot of soulless greed, and just this desire to create these kind of you know, massive funds create massive attention, and I think, again, Sequoia is the best example of this, and 1789,…”
Tomaino: Crypto tribes and economic alignment will reduce global violence
“So I actually think, like, crypto shilling, crypto tribes can reduce the amount of violence in the world in the long term and will.”
Tomaino: Donald Trump will run for president and win from a jail cell
“I think he'll be running and winning from a jail cell as well. The entertaining, the most entertaining outcome is is the most likely, right?”
Tomaino: NFTs will achieve greater mainstream adoption than cryptocurrencies
“Yeah, I mean, I think NFTs are gonna come back in a big way. I, I've said, and I think still you know, NFTs have a good chance to be you know, bigger than cryptocurrencies in terms of mainstream adoption. And the reason is because people, I think more people i…”
Tomaino: FTX was a perception fraud enabled by politicians and investors
“The people that got sucked into this perception game that FTX was playing that, you know, 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 ju…”
Tomaino: Crypto fund managers must beat a 50/50 BTC/ETH benchmark
“I mean, as a venture manager, you get paid two and 20, maybe more, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, but those are meaningful fees. The reason that you get those fees is because you can outperform you know, an index and you know, every private equity F…”
Tomaino: Incumbent VCs would lose prestige if judged on fund performance
“If you know, everyone viewed Fund performance as the, you know, the metric of success, these, the big, you know, incumbents wouldn't have the prestige that they have.”
Tomaino: a16z's large fund size drives investment in hyped token projects
“But yeah, I think more recently Fundsize has probably caused them to do some of the stuff that people you know, accuse them for, which again, 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 t…”
Tomaino: Crypto VC Funds Should Downsize After Raising Too Much Capital
“A hundred percent. I mean, this is again, a generalization, but I think way too much money was raised. You know, you had people raise billion dollar funds that just had no unique insights or you know, no investing prowess really or anything like that, but they…”
Tomaino: Crypto VCs would succeed by secretly buying just BTC and ETH
“Like I think a strategy, you know, a dishonest, but probably successful strategy for one of these billion dollar fund managers would be to, you know, pitch to LPs that you're investing in, you know, bleeding edge crypto that's gonna, gonna push the space forwa…”
Tomaino: Solana was an insider VC token marketed to retail
“I have historically viewed Solana as a very tourist thing, you know, because it came in kind of right at the beginning of the last bull markets. It was, you know, aggressively marketing. There's also one of these insider VC coins that sold a lot to early insid…”
Tomaino: Crypto speculation empowers people disenfranchised by legacy financial systems
“I actually think it's a really good thing. Like, there's a lot of people in the world that are disenfranchised by the existing economic systems, and crypto is like permissionless speculation that anyone can participate in, in kind of new financial systems. So …”
Tomaino: Sam Bankman-Fried was Joe Biden's second-largest donor
“The second largest donor to Joe Biden was Sam Bankman Freed.”
Tomaino: Donald Trump will lean into crypto in a big way in 2024
“I personally think, you know, he's going to be leaning into crypto in a big way in 24, 24, that's my prediction, but we'll see.”
Tomaino: Crypto market cap could reach $10 trillion on speculation alone
“I still think there's a chance we get to. 10 trillion in total market value without that, because again, this, the idea of, you know, empowering billions of people around the world with this kind of new financial system is revolutionary”
Tomaino reveals he was effectively pushed out of Coinbase
“Well, frankly, I mean, I got pushed out of Coinbase. Like, I wasn't a, Great employee, I think is the truth. I think I did a lot for Coinbase in the early days. But I wasn't, Coinbase got to a certain point where I wasn't great at kind of office politics and f…”
Tomaino: Andreessen Horowitz's crypto fund has probably grown too big
“A-Six and Z is a great fund. In crypto. And I have a lot of respect for them. I do think they probably got too big.”
Tomaino: NFT trading activity will resurge within three to five years
“I would say three to five years, you know, it's likely before that, but you know, with a high degree of conviction, I would say three to five years.”
Tomaino: Influencer culture of shilling and dumping on retail is toxic
“I think if you're like a leader in the space, I think shilling is, toxic. And there's a big, you know, crypto Twitter influencer culture of these people that are, you know, shilling loudly, dumping on retail, and that gives a bad experience to new people and a…”
Tomaino: Big tech engineers enter crypto in bull markets, leave in bear
“They always come during bull markets and then leave during bear markets.”
Tomaino: Crypto is the most important social technology of our lifetime
“Like, I genuinely believe and still believe that, you know, crypto is the most important social technology of our lifetime.”
1confirmation's first fund had zero complete write-offs across 22 investments
“In the first one, 22 investments, we've only we haven't had any zeros. We've had two projects that basically you know, dissolved, but they actually gave back, in one case, about 50%, and in, in another case, about 70%. So we actually haven't had any, Zeroes in…”
Tomaino: Alameda invested in tokens that FTX listed and hyped
“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.”
Tomaino: Controversial VCs still get deal flow from prestige-seeking founders
“There are certain founders that that go for the prestige. You know, maybe they get some hate from a non's on Twitter or something, but they're still, they get you know, press and they have prestige.”
Tomaino: Crypto investing rounds are no more collaborative than traditional venture
“I don't feel strongly that it's much different than a traditional venture. I think that's kind of a narrative that some people Believe, but I don't know.”
Tomaino calls VC fund size focus the fakest part of venture
“Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, I, to me, it's one of like the fakest parts of venture capital. It's like everyone, it feels like everyone's competing for prestige. Everyone talks about fund size or, you know, is trying to get press. These kind of vanity you …”
Tomaino: Taylor Swift will never create music NFTs
“Taylor Swift is never going to create music NFTs.”
Tomaino: Bitcoin and pop stars derive value from mimetic desire
“A lot of why people think she's good is because other people think she's good. And I think that can, that, that applies to cryptocurrency too. Why does everyone think Bitcoin is valuable? Because other people think it's valuable.”
Tomaino: OpenSea will be significantly more important in five years
“Do I think it's going to be a, 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 is very valuable for people.”
Tomaino: I missed a huge investment opportunity in Solana
“The people that invested in Solana have done incredibly well. So You know, I missed a big investment opportunity as well.”
1confirmation bought OpenSea on the way up and sold near the peak
“We actually invested on the way up a little bit and then sold on the big way up.”
Tomaino: 1confirmation prefers uncredentialed, deep crypto-native founders over Silicon Valley resumes
“How we view talent is like, we'd rather give money to, you know, a founder that doesn't maybe look good on paper, doesn't have credentials, but has been studying crypto deeply since 2013 when they brought their first Bitcoin or something like that.”
Tomaino: AI will make assessing the vibe of authenticity increasingly crucial
“Especially with, you know, AI, it's going to be harder and harder to tell if something's authentic or not, if someone's a genuine human or not, so I think authenticity and kind of an assessment of the vibe of authenticity is going to be increasingly important”
Tomaino: FTX's Super Bowl ad was inauthentic and purely attention-seeking
“It's like that FTX Super Bowl ad Felt very inauthentic to me. It was Larry David and Tom Brady or something, and it was just, it was clearly very concerned with what other people think, and just trying to get the maximum attention in the simplest way.”
Tomaino: 1confirmation partner posted the first viral tweet exposing SBF's lobbying
“Richard on, on, my team, my partner, tweeted out on October 13th that Sam was working behind closed doors on a bipartisan bill that would have been very good for FTX, but bad for DeFi, right? And that tweet went viral. Obviously, a lot of other stuff happened …”
Tomaino: Every crypto wallet will eventually feature integrated on-chain messaging
“So I now think every wallet is going to have a messaging component. And on-chain messaging is going to be a big you know, crypto use case eventually.”
Tomaino lost his entire $50K net worth in a phishing attack
“I got an email saying that Coinbase updated terms of service. I clicked the link to try to update the 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. So it wasn't a ton…”
Tomaino: Frequent Crypto Hacks Are an Unspoken Secret in the Industry
“It's kind of a big unknown secret. You know, unspoken secret, I should say in, in crypto, like how many people actually get hacked and no one really talks about it”
Tomaino: 1confirmation $1B AUM is mark-to-market portfolio value
“Well, a billion in AUM includes is kind of the mark to market, right? It's the value of the total portfolio.”
1confirmation sold 10% to 30% of stakes in major winning investments
“We basically you know, had some big winners that we, You know, sold somewhere between 10 and 30% of the position.”
Tomaino: Few crypto funds will raise capital as LP scrutiny increases
“I don't think many crypto funds are getting raised. And I think LPs are going to get a little smarter and do more diligence and not just you know, deploy You know, like crazy into you know, fund managers that don't really have any unique insights or defined st…”
Tomaino: Best crypto projects blend purists and tourists
“There's purists and there's tourists, and the best crypto projects were kind of at the intersection of purists and tourists.”
Tomaino: 1confirmation invested $500K in OpenSea from $26M fund
“When we invested we only invested 500 K initially. And that was, again, like at that time we had a twenty six million dollar fund.”