What Happens Next in Crypto? with Fiskantes & Matti

Hey Bankless Nation, exciting topic for you today. The next big crypto narrative.

Where is it? What is it? Have we lost the plot? Where's crypto going next? That's what we're gonna talk about today. This is a fireside conversation format with Maddie and Fisk. These are two of my favorite investors in the DeFi space, uh, working at an organization called Z Prime Capital. And uh we're all gonna have a round uh table conversation on what is next. Um, David, what uh are you excited about getting into in this episode?

Yeah, crypto runs on narratives, right? A as we know. And even when those narratives are very real and very based on fundamentals, sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. We still have narratives no matter what. And I think post merge, everyone feels a little bit lost. Like we've run out of roadway. Like, what is the next narrative? Because all we can really see right now is just a bunch of macro.

Bad weather. Uh, and that's not a narrative that's scary. Uh, and so while we are like going through this bear market together, we're looking, we're searching for what is the next big narrative. And I actually did a uh a layer zero with uh Fiskantes forever ago that was on like the rotating narratives of the crypto space. And so Maddie and Maddie and Fisk are just two of the best people to talk to about this kind of conversation as to where is where is the narrative? Because we need one. Without one, we feel lost. Uh, and so I'm excited for all of this.

Guys, before we get into the episode, um want to tell you about our friends and sponsors at uh Alright, David, one last question before we get into the episode with our guests today is what should people be looking for

out of this episode?

Yeah, so we're of course going to talk about the various new possible narratives that could come about. Uh and you we should all be dubious as to when we propose narratives, right? Because you no one proposes the narrative. A narrative finds you.

It's like a hypothesis.

It's a hypothesis, right? And some narratives are going to resonate with you, the individual, the listener, more than others. Some might be your narratives, the things that you really care about, and others might not be so interesting to you. Like, are you a frontier ZK roll up low transaction fee DeFi person? That might be that might be an interesting narrative to you that's different from like the tokenization of IP from the NFT side of things. So, what narratives are on possible narratives are on the horizon seem likely and also resonate with you? I think is something to consider.

Yeah, for me, it's not just what resonates with me. I want to know actually what resonates with the market because I want to plan my like investment decisions. And so at some level, like if it resonates with me, that's okay, but that's not necessarily the signal, right? And sometimes I can get deluded by that. So I want to find out what the Z Prime folks think about this bear market, how we're gonna tap into the next market validated narrative and what the fundamentals are behind that. So let's look for that as well. Guys, we'll be right back talking about the next big crypto narrative. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

Hey guys, we are back talking about the next big crypto narrative. Are we lost? That's the big question for today. Answered, hopefully, by the four of us. Maddie and Fiskantes are partners at Z Prime Capital. This is a

hedge fund VC firm in crypto. I respect a lot of the ideas that these two put forth. They have kind of independent ways of looking at things. I can't really pin them down into a specific crypto tribe, but I do know they are crypto bulls to the max, and they've got a great head on their shoulders when thinking about this space. Maddie recently wrote a post called The Next Big Crypto Narrative. I think we're going to draw a lot of inspiration from that post as we talk about what the next big crypto narrative might be. Maddie, Viscantes, welcome to Bankless.

Hello, uh happy to be here.

How's it going guys?

And for the uh YouTube viewers out there, we have uh two Anons here, so we have their profile pictures, uh, instead of their actual video cameras. And so Maddie is the ghost from Pac-Man, and Fiscantes is the uh what character is that, Fiscantes?

It's Hisoka from Hunter X Hunter, this uh psychopathic uh joker magician character. But I added uh I mean, not me, but some artist on Twitter

added a beard to it. So uh I'm kind of making it uh my own and stealing this uh character.

Beautiful. Well Foscanti's it's in the top right, Maddie is in the bottom left. Uh and so now you now you know.

I and that was Fiscanti's voice just now. Um let's kick this off with the first question. Maybe I'll throw it to you uh to you, Maddie. Um because you wrote the post.

Um

Are we lost right now?

Um, I wouldn't say that we're necessarily lost. I think that you know we're just hitting like a you know peak reset,

um

as opposing to the you know, opposing to the uh peak ape or peak imitation that we had.

And I think it it could feel like that, but um

I think it's

time to, you know, we're now dismissing the old ideas and we're sort of acknowledging that imitation took place and

We do our little witch hunt, you know, Doe and the whole Tera thing, Sue and Kyle and whatnot.

And um now we're heading into you know the speak idea dispersion, or at least we should head there.

So some novel concepts should be tried. And and because of that, you know, it may feel like we're lost, but

you know, being lost because forking Olympus Dow and dumping on retail don't work, it's you know, it's not really uh being lost. I think that

alt concepts um you know have been banished now.

Uh people don't think those will work.

And now the ideas will not come from the masses, from the chatter, but uh from within the founders.

Um and I think that only those really mean it will stick around and build solutions to the real problems. So

we we're looking for ideas, I would say, right now. So we're not lost.

I think that um, you know, I probably felt the the bear market uh creep in, obviously after the you know Terra Luna crash in fiasca, and I was like, okay, we're entering. This is something new, right? You know, something's been burst here, and then we had three hours capital, etc., right, into the summer. Um, but I think the maybe the um longevity of this potential bear market probably hit me post-ethere merge, because it did feel like throughout the summer at least, we had this one catalyst, which was Ethereum's going to merge, and maybe something could even even though the the the macro clouds in the sky are very, very stormy, like there is this bright spot of the Ethereum merge. And now that we've had that, right? I mean, we have other things, we have like the ZK EVM coming out, there are other developments and such, but um, like the Ethereum merge didn't really move the market at all. And that after merge, where I saw prices still down, like ETH off $500 from what it was even like pre merge, that's when I feel like I fully capitulated into the uh length of time of this bear market. And I I'm wondering, Maddie, to you, because I know you've been in crypto for a while. Um

What does this feel like? Are there any analogs from the past? Is this like 2018 to you? Is this like 2019?

Is this a whole different thing that we've never

uh felt before? When have you last felt like this about crypto?

No, to me, it's it feels familiar, I would say. Um if I would map it to a year in the past, it would be 2018

for sure. And um

Yeah, I yeah, I remember back then.

I mean,

it's funny. I and I wrote about it is is is you know the merge narrative and everything. Like we're trying,

we're begging the market to recognize the fundamentals where we were happy to ignore them uh all the way through through the bull.

Um so to me, to me and to us at Z Prime, we're we're um yeah, it's very familiar territory. And I think that um

we need to feel the pain a little,

everyone in the space.

Kind of remind ourselves, you know, that we need to build

more things and more useful things. Um, and um, yeah, I guess it's a it's a it's a good reminder,

but I don't think this is a new new new territory for us. I mean, it's always new, right? Like the more change

the more the world changes, the more it remains the same. So I guess that

um all the cycles are in some way different, in some way they are the same on the top and at the bottom as well.

So no, I wouldn't I wouldn't say that um you know that this is the macro looks scary, but you know, there's always

there are always things that

um you know make you

uh go sort of very pessimistic. But um I I wouldn't say that this is something that these are uncharted waters.

Fisk, what's your take on all of this? Uh what does this feel like to you? It's have you fully capitulated that this is a

A bear market? Is this like 2018? Have you or is this different?