A weekly update in plain English

As we kick off a brand-new year in crypto, first and foremost, all of us at Theta would like to wish you all the very best for 2025.

With a new year come new initiatives. One valuable recurring strand of feedback we receive is that traditional investors would like to get a short, regular weekly update on the world of blockchain compacted into one email to get more of a feeling of what is actually happening on the ground. Importantly, they would like to read something in plain English.

We very much appreciate this sentiment. Traditional media outlets tend to focus on largely irrelevant and by-and-large negative news, X, or Crypto Twitter, requires a serious filter and most crypto newsletters cater to crypto traders rather than traditional, institutional investors.

It is with that backdrop that we are delighted to introduce you to our inaugural TBV Weekly Satellite, which will land in your inbox every Friday at 14.30 CET. The idea is that those with lives outside crypto, will stay up to date by way of this short read. We aim to provide a filter to all the relevant news flow and share comments and thoughts as to what we believe is interesting for traditional investors.

This is not is a research publication. These are personal musings on blockchain from somebody who deals with investors on a daily basis. To dig deeper into the space, I can highly recommend reading our quarterly newsletters, our annual Satellite View or listen to our TBV Webinars (see below), but to get a brief post Friday lunch snapshot of all things relevant to blockchain, we hope this is for you. In fact, we hope you will share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues, if you enjoy it, so they too can start finding their footing in the world of blockchain technology.

Perhaps to kick off proceedings, I will leave you this week with a thought: Very few institutional investors have developed deep knowledge of blockchain technology. Even less have actually taken the plunge and invested in the space. The FTX collapse and a chilly crypto winter provided cover in recent years to ignore blockchain. More fundamentally, targeted harassment of the most compliant crypto firms and enforcement-led regulation (the SEC filed 120 lawsuits against the most compliant entities) made even the most forward-thinking investor feel uneasy. The outcome of the US election however, has flipped the dynamic 180 degrees. Going forward we will see the world before the 5th Nov 2024 and the world after. President-elect Trump wants to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” and his appointments have emphasized this. Not only are incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and SEC Chief Paul Atkins (goodbye Gary) firmly pro crypto, we have even seen the appointment of a dedicated AI + Crypto Tsar, David Sacks (See the section “Interesting things to read and listen to” below for more on the very hot topic of the intersection of crypto and AI). Perhaps most importantly, the House of Representatives now enjoys 278 pro crypto members vs 122 anti and the Senate 20 pro crypto Senators vs 12 anti.

This is encouraging because it is telling developers that they can build without the risk of getting debanked or worse, and it will see an acceleration of real-world assets, like, for instance, treasuries moving on-chain (after the success of stablecoins) bringing us a step closer to the True Internet Economy.

What has not changed, however, is that very few investors have a good understanding of the technology or have invested yet. This to me feels like a very interesting backdrop to 2025.

Relevant financial updates

• Fuel Labs* (FUEL) a layer 2 scaling protocol launched at a $510mln fully diluted network valuation
• Movement Network* (MOVE), the first Move-EVM L2 for Ethereum, launched at a $8.8bln fully diluted network valuation
• Pudgy Penguins* (PENGU), the web3 consumer brand, launched its token network at a $3.1bln fully diluted network valuation
• Magic Eden (ME), a leading NFT market place, launched its token network at a $2.7bln fully diluted network valuation
• Sonic (SVM), a gaming chain on top of Solana, launched its token network at a $2.0bln fully diluted network valuation
• Bio Protocol* (BIO), a curation and liquidity protocol for Decentralized Science, launched its token network at a $1.8bln fully diluted network valuation
• Alpen Labs*, a Bitcoin layer 2 network, raised a $8.5mln strategic round from dba*, Cyber. Fund, Castle Island*, Geometry, Ribbit Capital

*Underlying TBV portfolio position

Upcoming events

• CFC St Mortiz (Ruud Smets), 14-17 Jan
• iConnections Miami (Ruud Smets, Jeroen Tielman, Olga Vazquez), 27-30 Jan
• Consensys Hong Kong (Marc de Kloe, Jeroen Tielman), 18-20 Feb