Tag Archives: DeFi

Business, Technology

Where Did Sequoia Go Wrong on FTX?

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Sequoia Capital is the greatest venture capital firm of all time. So how did it lose $214 million on FTX?

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Sequoia made two large investments in the crypto exchange, which went bankrupt earlier this month. Sequoia has since marked down those investments to zero.

The firm’s top leaders apologized to investors on a call yesterday. From Bloomberg:

Top partners at the powerful venture capital firm Sequoia Capital apologized to their investors in a conference call Tuesday for backing FTX, a pair of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchanges that had allegedly been mismanaged by Sam Bankman-Fried, according to people familiar with the meeting.

Despite the mea culpa, Sequoia defended its process:

Although partners on the call were conciliatory, they also defended the due diligence they conducted on the deal. They said staff reviewed financial statements and asked on multiple occasions about the relationship between FTX and Alameda Research, a trading firm that Bankman-Fried also founded and which reportedly borrowed and lost FTX customers’ money.

Sequoia is wrong to defend this investment.

FTX had no board. This despite being valued at over $30 billion and entrusted with hundreds of millions of investor’s money.

Seed stage companies I invest in routinely form a board when the round closes! This is in line with the best practice recommended by attorneys.

Benchmark General Partner Bill Gurley said it best:

Benchmark avoided the crypto FOMO. The partners stuck to their knitting and kept backing real startups.

Sequoia was not so lucky.

Indeed, its diligence in other crypto deals appears questionable. From The Wall Street Journal:

When FTX declared bankruptcy earlier this month, Sequoia also edited another post for a crypto investment called LayerZero. An earlier version said the Sequoia partnership approved the investment just 48 hours after an investment memo was completed. The newer version removed references to the fast decision-making.

In yesterday’s call, Sequoia said it was considering making startups use Big Four accounting firms in the future. Especially for a huge company like FTX, that’s a no-brainer.

Like most angels and VC’s, I idolize Sequoia. They’re the best of the best.

I hope to see them get back to their roots. And if other VC’s want to chase crypto dreams, let them.

In the words of Sequoia founder Don Valentine:

“What is important is to have the ability and willingness to be different.”

Don Valentine


What do you think of Sequoia’s FTX losses? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

This is the last blog for this week. See you on Monday!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

More on tech:

Hedge Funds Lose Billions as FTX Implodes

Talking FTX, Twitter and Startups at Starta VC

Getting to $10 Million ARR Without a Series A

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Photo: FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

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Business, Technology

How SBF’s Hedge Fund Imploded

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Let’s say I create $1 million worth of Frankcoin. Will you loan me $1 million with my Frankcoin as collateral? 

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Not if you’re in your right mind, you won’t. But that’s exactly what lenders did for Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research. 

From a report out this morning in The New York Times:

 …Alameda, which held a large stake in the token, began using its FTT holdings as collateral for more loans to facilitate its trading activities. 

Like Frankcoin, FTT had no real value. It was created out of thin air by SBF.

This didn’t stop Alameda from making bold claims in a presentation to lenders:

…it could offer lenders “high returns with no risk” and “no downside.”

At this point, lenders should’ve known this was BS. There are no returns without risk. 

Anyone guaranteeing you a return is a fraud. Con artists, Bernie Madoff among them, love to promise you a sure thing. 

Perhaps these lenders were blinded by the big returns Alameda promised. 

For years, this house of cards stood. But as crypto came under pressure this year, Alameda’s fraud became harder to conceal:

With crypto prices falling, more lenders wanted their money back. The falling prices also reduced the value of FTT, which Alameda had used as collateral for some loans. As the firm struggled to pay lenders back, FTX resorted to using funds that customers had deposited with the exchange for ease of trading to pay Alameda’s lenders back.

What can we learn from this, as investors? 

Never believe anyone who says they can guarantee you a return. There are no guarantees. 

Don’t call something someone invented an asset. It’s funny money. 

And never let the promise of riches blind you to reality. 

What do you think of FTX and Alameda’s collapse? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know! 

Have a great weekend everyone! 

More on tech:

Talking FTX, Twitter and Startups at Starta VC

Is SBF Headed to Prison?

FTX Blows A Massive Hole in Tiger’s Portfolio

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Photo: FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

Business, Technology

Crypto VC’s to Crash: “YOLO”

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Despite cratering crypto markets and a slowdown in venture funding, crypto VC’s are upping the ante. From a report out yesterday in Reuters:

Even as the crypto sector shivers in the bleak winter, venture capitalists are pouring money into digital currency and blockchain startups at a pace that’s set to outstrip last year’s record.

In the first half of the year, VCs bet $17.5 billion on such firms, according to data from PitchBook. That puts investment on course to top the record $26.9 billion raised last year, a warmer and happier time for bitcoin and co.

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Overall US venture funding fell in the first half of the year. But US crypto investments are on pace to increase almost 50% over 2021.

Why are crypto VC’s behaving so differently? Because they don’t have much choice.

Numerous venture firms recently raised huge crypto funds. Predictably, Andreessen Horowitz is at the front of the conga line, raking in $4.5 billion in May.

Electric Capital pulled in $1 billion, and Bain Capital launched a $560 million fund.

All that money has to go somewhere. But deploying giant crypto funds today could be a big mistake.

Giant funds have to focus on late stage deals. After all, there’s no way a16z is going to hand out 1,000 seed-stage checks of $4.5 million.

It’s simply more meetings, diligence, and oversight than any firm could handle.

So they’ll put a lot of that in late stage megarounds. Since the startups are close to going public, their valuations depend on public markets.

But markets in public tech stocks and crypto tokens are extremely unpredictable right now.

These firms may pay prices that public markets soon find laughable.

If that weren’t bad enough, the SEC could soon be breathing down the necks of VC firms.

Yesterday, the SEC announced that it’s investigating Coinbase for offering unregistered securities. Crypto VC’s have likely sold similar securities.

The crypto venture market looks seriously overheated. I see companies with no product or customers getting valuations of $100 million or more regularly.

You don’t often see that in non-crypto deals. And there’s no reason why the rules should be any different for crypto.

I think crypto could have some awesome applications. Cheap international money transfer may be the best use case.

But thus far, speculation has been rife and useful projects few.

Meanwhile, I’m going to keep investing in great early stage companies with awesome products and happy customers. And if a crypto company can deliver that, a salute!

More on tech:

Inside the Seed Funding Slowdown

Why Technical Founders Win

The Top 5 Things I’ve Learned from Angel Investing

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Business, Technology

The End of Celsius — the Beginning of Crypto Regulation

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Cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network has stopped all withdrawals, imperiling the savings of 100,000 users. From The Wall Street Journal:

A few months ago, Mike Washburn’s cryptocurrency investment looked like a winner.

Now he’s just hoping to get his money back.

Mr. Washburn, a 35-year-old plumber in Otsego, Minn., had $100,000 in an account at Celsius Network LLC, one of the largest lenders in the cryptocurrency world. Recently widowed, Mr. Washburn said he and his two children moved in with his parents, and he planned to buy a house with his savings. The Celsius account offered him yield higher than would a traditional bank account, and the company was well-known in the crypto community.

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Celsius promised rates of over 18%, versus around 1% in a traditional bank account. Users flocked to the platform, perhaps unaware of the risk compared to a traditional bank.

The assets Celsius holds to pay those high rates plummeted in value as crypto markets crashed this year. And some of its investments are only semiliquid, making it difficult to meet redemption requests from depositors.

Yesterday, certain investors tried to engineer a short squeeze in Celsius tokens.

It caused some run-up in the price, but the tokens remain down over 75% in the last year. I would expect this attempt to fail in the long term, given the overall instability of the Celsius platform.

Source: Coinmarketcap.com

Some savers may have looked at the 18% Celsius was offering, noted that it was 18 times as much as the bank, and piled in. But comparing a crypto lending product to a US bank account is “apples and bowling balls.”


A bank account provides FDIC insurance for up to $250,000. What’s more, any interest is paid in US dollars, a much more stable currency than most crypto tokens.

I think Celsius is finished as a platform.

Any deposit-taking institution operates on trust. Even if it weathers the current storm and manages to stay solvent, who will trust Celsius with their money in the future?

The even greater impact of the Celsius implosion will be on crypto regulation. The industry has often tried to avoid regulation, espousing a libertarian ethos.

That ends when plumbers in Minnesota are losing their life savings. Once their constituents are losing everything and barraging their representatives with phone calls, politicians become motivated to investigate and pass new laws.

What’s more, pols and regulators see opportunities to make names for themselves by sticking it to unsympathetic crypto fat cats.

It may take several years, but expect stiff regulations on cryptocurrency to come out following this crash.

I expect crypto lending and stablecoins to be the first targets for regulation. They are the most similar to the heavily regulated banking industry in that they take deposits and aim for stability.

What do you think is next for Celsius and the crypto market at large? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know.

More on tech:

Hedge Fund Tiger Global Losing $136 Million a Day, Down 52%

Managing a Crisis the Sequoia Way

Why Tech Stocks Are Oversold

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Business, Technology

Solana Is the Most Popular Crypto of 2022

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In what’s begun as a tough year for cryptocurrencies, Solana has attracted more investors than any other coin. The high speed network landed $6 million in inflows so far this year.

Larger competitors like Bitcoin and Ethereum have seen outflows in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

What I find particularly striking is that Solana’s market cap is only a fraction the size of its larger peers. Bitcoin has a total value around $800 billion, and Ethereum nearly $400 billion.

Meanwhile, Solana is worth just $44 billion. Nonetheless, it managed to beat these much larger protocols in attracting investors.

This is a pattern I expect to continue long term. Solana can process tens of thousands of transactions per second for virtually nothing.

Compare that to Ethereum, where completing a single transaction costs about $46!

Would merchants accept a credit card that cost them $46 in transaction fees every time someone used it? Of course not.

Ethereum’s high fees will severely limit its use cases until the fees come down.

Bitcoin looks better at about $2 a transaction. But Solana charges mere fractions of a cent.

A new technology that’s dramatically faster and cheaper will win, regardless of the market. I expect Solana to continue to gain value relative to the older protocols.

At least until a swifter competitor enters the ring!

More on tech:

How Solana Could Wipe Out Visa and MasterCard

A Day in the Life of an Angel Investor

Is Fathom the Future of Blockchain?

Photo: “Solana Beach, CA Neon Sign” by JoeInSouthernCA is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

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Business, Technology

Polygon: Crypto’s Killer App?

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Everyone loves Ethereum, right? It’s widely used and has a ton of code already out there for developers to slot into their projects.

But there’s one problem.

Ethereum can only process about 15 transactions per second. And the huge amount of computing power needed has gotten expensive. Some transactions can cost over $100 each.

What if there were a way to take the developer-friendly world of Ethereum and make it much, much faster?

That’s where Polygon comes in. Polygon can run at up to 65,000 transactions per second, far faster than even Visa’s huge network.

But developers can still use Ethereum-compatible blockchains and take advantage of the huge amount of code already available on Ethereum.

Similar to an API company like Plaid, the success of a smart contract platform like Polygon is all about developer adoption. The more widely it’s used, the more valuable it becomes.

Given that developers can write code on a platform they’re used to, I think Polygon will have a big advantage over most. It shows in the numbers: daily active users have gone from 750 at the beginning of the year to 192,000 in August.

Polygon is being used for a lot more than price speculation. The most popular project is QuickSwap, which lets you trade 100 cryptocurrency pairs quickly and easily.

My favorite project is Polymarket, where you can bet on real world events like elections or court cases. This could be useful for predicting the weather, a major need of agriculture businesses.

So will I be buying Polygon?

Despite its impressive technology, in a high risk investment like this, I’m looking for the possibility of a 100x return. I’d look for the same in a tech startup.

At a fully diluted market cap of $18 billion, Polygon may have already become so successful that it doesn’t make an ideal investment for me.

But I’ll be watching this awesome team to see what they come up with next!

More on tech:

How Elrond Could Take Over Payments Worldwide

How Tech Could Stop Wildfires

How Solana Could Wipe Out Visa and MasterCard

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Business, Technology

How Solana Could Wipe Out Visa and MasterCard

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Solana is all the rage in cryptocurrency markets these days. Its price is doing this:

Looking at that chart, it would be easy to think that this new cryptocurrency is all hype and speculation. But I spent the afternoon digging into its capabilities as a platform, and they are incredible:

Let’s assume you’re a merchant with $1 million in transactions to process. You can do it on Solana for virtually nothing. Or you can do it a little more slowly with Visa or MasterCard for $15,000 to $25,000. Which do you prefer?

Granted, most merchants won’t have the slightest clue how to use Solana. But it’s not hard to imagine a new startup doing what Square or Stripe did: quickly going from unknown to ubiquitous processors of payments.

If a new company handled your transaction using a stablecoin like USDC on the Solana platform, it could offer incredible speed and dramatically lower fees than the incumbents, while still keeping a nice margin for itself.

Visa’s market cap is $496 billion. Mastercard’s is $340 billion. What happens to those companies when a competitor shows up doing what they do for a tiny fraction of what they charge?

I don’t own Solana, though perhaps I should. And if someone builds a company that makes payment processing on Solana easy for merchants, I just might have to wet my beak.

More on tech:

Robot Hands, Vertical Farms, and the Future of Food

China’s Real Goal in Tech Crackdown: A Regimented, Obedient Society

How Do You Know If a Startup Is Getting Traction?

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