Crypto is the forgotten middle child of tech right now, sandwiched in between AI labs and vertical AI startups. Despite small glimmers of hope for blockchain technology, from continued hype around stablecoins to sustained hope for market structure legislation, sentiment is at an all-time low, especially because there’s no easy villain like Gary Gensler or Sam Bankman-Fried to blame for sinking prices.
Amid the winter, the blockchain venture firm Dragonfly Capital managed to close its $650 million fourth fund, avoiding the “mass extinction event” suffered by its peers, as general partner Rob Hadick put it. The simple reason for its success is timely investments into a number of category winners that convinced its backers to re-up the war chest, including Polymarket and the stablecoin card issuer Rain. But beneath that is a years-long belief that crypto would be hurtling toward Wall Street, and not toward a Web3 version of the internet that other VCs saw in the glimmering future.
