From theblock by James Hunt

Discussing the state of crypto venture at the Emergence conference in Prague on Thursday, VCs said it was still pretty early in the bull cycle, and they don’t yet see retail participation at the same levels of 2021.

With the crypto market heating up, with bitcoin trading at all-time highs above $100,000, Viktor Fischer, Managing Partner at digital assets investment and engineering firm Rockaway X asked the rest of the panel how they were thinking about exiting their positions this cycle.

“It's a very personal question,” Ryze Labs founder and Managing Partner Matthew Graham said. “Americans always want to use these dumb baseball analogies, but I don't think it's the seventh, eighth, or certainly not the ninth ending of this cycle yet. I think it's more like four, five, or six, maybe five or six. So we're still pretty comfortable.”

However, drawing on Warren Buffet's famous framing, he warned that “when people are partying and dating supermodels and buying yachts, that's probably a good time to sell because most of us aren't that good-looking, to be honest.”

“I still remember Breakpoint, November 2021, when Solana was at $250 and people were walking around with Louis Vuitton and off-white shirts, it was time to sell,” Fischer responded. “Twitter is very bullish right now. [In the] U.S., even government politicians are now shilling crypto, Jerome Powell said bitcoin is digital gold. There are a lot of positive signs already over there."

“However, I don't really see retail in yet,” Fischer continued. “It was in 2021. My friends are still not calling me, [asking] should I buy Cardano? We are not there yet. That's why I think this bull market will be a bit more prolonged than the other ones.”

Charlie Sandor, Investment Partner CMT Digital, agreed that it was still pretty early in the cycle and not that late yet, adding that it is important for most venture firms to stay on the pulse of the market as they have a significant portion of their portfolio in token outcomes. Sandor said CMT Digital has someone dedicated to managing its liquid positions, meets weekly to review performance and decides whether to take some positions off the table.

US regulatory bottleneck has opened up

Sandor also reflected on how tough it was for founders to build blockchain-based companies in the U.S. over the last four years, suggesting that bottleneck has now opened up after the presidential elections, with the hope that the incoming Trump administration will be more friendly to the crypto space. “I think you're going to see some amazing innovation and even just broader adoption now that there's less pressure on the regulatory side,” he said. “I think as you see over the next year or two, there'll be a lot of forward-looking regulation across the globe, which will change the landscape.”