Compiled & translated by: Ada, Deep Tide TechFlow

Guest: Mike Dudas, Founder and Managing Partner of 6th Man Ventures (6MV), Founder of The Block, former executive at Venmo/Braintree/PayPal

Host: Robbie Klages

Podcast source: The Rollup

Original title: Why 2026 Will Be An Iconic Year to Invest in Digital Assets

Air date: April 24, 2026

Editor's Note

In its annual roundup of interviews summarizing crypto VCs, The Rollup featured Mike Dudas, founder of 6th Man Ventures. He believes the crypto market is currently in a paradoxical period of "rapidly improving fundamentals, but a constant explosion of negative events." He also offered a clear assessment of the stablecoin landscape: Circle is essentially a "government dollar," and its refusal to freeze funds during the Bybit hack was a step against history; while Tether has undergone a complete transformation and far surpasses Circle in key decision-making. He predicts that companies like Paxos and Bridge will become the next wave of major fintech giants. Furthermore, he revealed that Pump.fun's annualized revenue is close to $400 million, believing its token is severely undervalued.

Essential Quotes

Current Status of the Crypto VC Market

• "I'm deploying funds in 2026, so I'll tell you this is the best year ever."
• "The market is not short of capital, founders, ideas, or users, but every week something unexpected comes crashing down on us, such as the next hacker attack, the next piece of bad regulatory news, or the next person to be arrested."
• "We are seeing an unprecedented influx of top talent toward mediocre or consensus-driven ideas. The reason venture capitalists aren't deploying funds is because they keep receiving the same pitches."

Pump.fun and On-Chain Consumption

• "Even in the current market environment, Pump.fun still generates an average daily revenue of over $1 million, with an annualized revenue approaching $400 million. You can't say that this market has peaked."
• "The crypto market doesn't reward fundamentals. It's not that people don't care about fundamentals, it's that we haven't figured out what kind of fundamentals matter. Tokens are so new, it means a million different things."
• "Everyone's saying Memecoin is finished. But the marginal retail investors who care about Memecoin aren't here right now. Those people will come back."

Circle vs. Tether

• "Circle's strategy is clear: get as close as possible to central bank digital currencies. They're basically saying: governments, we're completely on your side, your rails are our rails."

• "If North Korea is stealing hundreds of millions of dollars, and you have the ability to stop it, you should stop it. Circle has stood on the wrong side of history, and they will pay the price."

• "When it comes to key decisions, the difference between Tether and Circle isn't between a professional team and an amateur team; it's between an NFL professional team and a high school football team."

The Dilemma of New Chains, Application Chains, and General Chains

• "Mega ETH, in my view, is more like an application chain; it will become a super application. I don't really believe you can value Monad in the same way as Solana; the key is to look at the revenue of the applications on it."

• "Solana has not clearly explained why it would use a general-purpose public blockchain for settlement. Is it to resist censorship, speed up the process, or reduce costs? To be honest, I'm even less certain about this story than I was a year ago."

Stablecoin as a Service

• "Every company with users and funds should put their funds into stablecoins backed by government bonds. They haven't done it yet, but they will. They won't go and get a license to issue dollars themselves. So this is a huge market for a few stablecoin-as-a-service providers."

AI, IPOs and the Liquidity Cycle

• "Nobody cares about crypto IPOs right now. To be honest, they're eyeing SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. AI is sucking all the oxygen away."
• "Trump meme is the peak. Two years from now, that's 2027, which coincides with the IPOs of these companies and the four-year cycle. At that time, a group of people holding low-cost shares in crypto companies will gain liquidity, and many of these people have a natural interest in crypto."

Current Status and Fund Flow of Crypto VC

Robbie: This is our annual crypto VC status update. Last year, we did this in Soho, and the market was completely different. We had Tom Dunleavy from Variant Capital, whose framework was: VC funding is decreasing, the number of funding rounds is declining, there are fewer high-quality teams, the whole world is different. But my thinking at the time was: if you have funding and can identify good founders, then the competition is actually less, and there are many new founders entering this space, with potentially better backgrounds than the previous batch. We ultimately agreed that 2025-2026 could be one of the most rewarding years. Do you agree? What's your take on the overall situation of these founders now?

Mike Dudas:

I'm a venture capitalist, and I'm deploying funds in 2026, so of course I'll tell you it's the best year ever. But LPs, take note.

First, the crypto VC market has ample funding. Several large funds have already completed fundraising, as announced by everyone. Many early-stage funds have also finished fundraising but haven't publicly announced it. A large amount of capital is waiting to be deployed; funding is not an issue.

Secondly, are there good founders? The answer is yes. Are there good ideas? Of course, there are. You can see a number of groundbreaking protocols, many of which were created years ago, even during bear market cycles. So, with ideas, founders, and funding, now is definitely not the time to be pessimistic about crypto.

But what's the problem? Explosions keep happening, hacking attacks, founders being charged and arrested on various charges, things related to the Trump family looking increasingly suspicious, and the regulatory environment in Washington: we expected the bill to have passed or be close to passing, but it hasn't.

So the current situation is this: the crypto industry is experiencing a series of macro-level problems, but at the same time, its fundamentals are improving rapidly. There's no shortage of capital, founders, ideas, or usage, but unexpected things happen every week.

Robbie: So when you're making a deal, is there less competition?

Mike Dudas:

Yes. Consensus-driven trading is hotter than ever, pushing prices irrationally high. Of course, there's always a final buyer, and looking back five years from now, some of those bids might seem incredible.

The difficulty lies in the fact that while there are good founders, they currently lack the confidence to take big risks. The external world and the internal workings of crypto are changing too rapidly. In our talent assessments, the empirical data we've seen shows that top talent is flocking to less-than-ideal ideas or consensus-driven ideas at an unprecedented rate.

This is why you're seeing a slowdown in VC deployments. Venture capitalists have a broader perspective and can see a lot, but they keep receiving the same pitches, making it difficult to discern who's truly exceptional. There aren't any groundbreaking, eye-opening founders emerging, nor are there any marginal innovations that inspire risk-taking. A classic example is the lack of marginal retail buyers and the absence of a blockbuster consumer app to incentivize adoption.

So, on the surface, the market seems to lack inspiration. But what's underneath? Stablecoin issuance continues to grow, and global on-chain usage is staggering—it's just that these aren't the focus of media reports. Venture capital is flowing into these companies, not the headline-grabbing projects, but the numerous startups building on public blockchains.

Robbie: Indeed, there's a clear shift in capital flows. Companies at the intersection of on-chain finance and traditional finance are attracting significant funding. The number of tokenization companies, stablecoin companies, on-chain lending, and new digital banks is exploding. Where do you see specific investment opportunities at this merging boundary? Is it clearly compressible profit margins? Or shorter settlement times?

Mike Dudas:

We focus on what's entirely new and truly inventive across the entire spectrum. This is the DNA of 6MV; we prefer things that are native to the strand.

When Venmo first came out, everyone thought it was an alien product. Polymarket also seemed like an alien product when it first entered the Asian market, taking six years to become the mainstream consensus it is today. So what we're looking for are those "alien ideas" in the market that you mentioned, because we believe they will become mainstream in a few years.

The challenge is that, often, access to these markets still relies on regulatory arbitrage. For example, listing oil on Hyperliquid could make it the most liquid market because anyone in the world can participate in trading, and market makers don't have to worry about CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) regulation.

During the VC investment stage, the situation is chaotic because the Clarity Act is still pending. Many emerging entrepreneurs are hesitant about how to pursue compliance. In the past few cycles, companies that went too early to comply have often been punished by their competitors.

For example, there are a lot of companies now tokenizing private equity, such as tokenizing Anthropic shares. Some structures are fairly standard, while others are simply YOLO tokens, and the YOLO tokens are currently growing faster. I'm not sure and don't believe this model is sustainable.

So this integration period was indeed very chaotic. We still tend to look for "alien ideas," but when you talk about traditional asset classes, such as stocks and structured private loans, these things require the endorsement of big brands, and our "alien model" doesn't apply as much. Frankly, in the very early stages, we didn't see much funding flowing into RWA issuance and tokenization companies.

The Misunderstood Value of Pumpfun and Hyperliquid

Robbie: You've consistently had a strong focus on on-chain consumption investments, making many deals in this category, with Pump.fun being the most prominent. I saw you tweeted that they were aggressively absorbing selling pressure, but the market wasn't reacting. There's a view in the market that refutes this investment logic, and it's now roughly a consensus: the token issuance market won't grow like the perpetual contract market, so Pump.fun's buybacks or economic model shouldn't be valued like Hyperliquid's, because perpetual contracts could be a huge category, while the on-chain token issuance market may have already peaked. Why is this view wrong?

Mike Dudas:

I don't even want to argue about it; it's just wrong. You can't see it now because we're in a brutal bear market. Even in this environment, people are still issuing tokens; Pump.fun earns an average of over $1 million per day, with an annualized revenue approaching $400 million.

An even more interesting question is, given this, why doesn't the token price reflect the two-year revenue record and nearly a year of buyback record?

I think part of the reason is the team's communication strategy. They don't do traditional investor relations, and they don't explain to the market how strong and defensive their business is. I understand the team, but I don't really like their attitude. At the same time, I also understand why they don't do IR, because the crypto market simply doesn't reward fundamentals.

At a deeper level, it's not that people don't care about fundamentals, but rather that we haven't figured out what kind of fundamentals are important. Stocks, as an asset class, have decades-old valuation systems. Bonds have clear, predictable frameworks. And tokens? They're very new, lack standards, and mean completely different things to different people.

Therefore, fundamental investors looking at Pump.fun's tokens, or even Hyperliquid's HYPE token, have no idea how to value them. The result is that these tokens trade at a significant discount, which makes sense in a bear market, but if Pump.fun continues delivery, it will reflexively swing in the other direction when a bull market arrives.

Regarding the sustainability of Pump.fun's business, I think it's actually more defensive than many companies. Look at Hyperliquid; the world's best companies are trying to compete with it, and perpetual contracts are already a highly consensus opportunity. Everyone agrees that perpetual contracts are a superior way to express an asset's value, and the market will eventually converge in this direction. But precisely because everyone agrees, the competition will be extremely fierce. Whether profits ultimately fall at the execution level or the market-making level is still uncertain.

Pump.fun is different. Everyone's saying Memecoin is finished, completely outdated. Nothing on the chain is popular right now. And they haven't really launched much new stuff publicly in the past year. But I think the reason is that the marginal users who cared about their product aren't in the crypto market right now, but they'll come back.

Opinions on popular projects

Robbie: So you still firmly believe that on-chain consumption will continue to grow. MegaETH (an Ethereum L2 blockchain focused on extreme performance) just announced its token launch on April 30th, and there are many interesting gamified primitives surrounding it. There's an interesting divide now: on one hand, there are products like MegaETH and Pump.fun that are still optimizing on-chain for retail users; on the other hand, there are tokenized assets, RWA, and large institutions entering the market, believing this is the future of the industry. Only a few chains and protocols are still serving more retail-oriented on-chain users. What's your take on this divide?

Mike Dudas:

Specifically, I quite like MegaETH. However, the Ethereum L2 blockchain is not an investment logic I can understand, and its performance has been objectively not very good.

I suspect MegaETH will eventually become a super application, branded as MegaETH, where people use all sorts of things, creating a flywheel effect. It's somewhat similar to Hyperliquid. Hyperliquid itself is the brand, the application, and the transaction activity on it feeds back into the underlying chain. But this is a different positioning from general-purpose chains like Solana and Ethereum.

Speaking of new L1, there may be some L1 that makes crazy innovations, such as quantum computing, or like Bittensor (a decentralized AI network), but we probably won't foresee it, and it will only seem obvious in hindsight.

For something like MegaETH, I'd probably value it based on application layer revenue rather than infrastructure. I don't know what applications it has, but I like the team, and the community seems very active.

The same goes for Monad (another high-performance EVM compatible with L1, which has received investment from top VCs like Paradigm). I've done angel investing in them and I really like their team; I believe they've created amazing technology. But I don't really believe Monad can be valued using the same valuation method as Solana.

Robbie: Is it a matter of timing? Or is it because Solana lived in a different era?

Mike Dudas:

Monad's pitch is too similar to Ethereum and Solana: fast, cheap, and geared towards retail investors. Bittensor is completely different. So I think time isn't the main factor; the differentiation in positioning is.

We invested in Plasma (a blockchain centered around stablecoin payments), and I believe it will become a super application centered on stablecoins, with a supporting chain around it. This model has value, but it's different from Solana and Ethereum, and even more different from Bitcoin.

Robbie: Speaking of Plasma, our fund has also invested in it. Tempo (another stablecoin payment company) recently partnered with DoorDash (one of the largest food delivery platforms in the US) for agent payments. A year ago, stablecoin blockchains were the hottest investment area, but the hype has cooled down somewhat now, though they are fundamentally different from traditional L1. What is your investment rationale for Plasma?

Mike Dudas:

Plasma, Arc, Tempo—don't think of them as blockchains; they're fintech companies. The future will be like PayPal, Venmo, or Stripe—it's about merchants, consumers, and other stakeholders choosing whose payment and settlement network to use.

Tempo is just a business; don't think of it within the framework of "blockchain." They are a company affiliated with Sequoia and Paradigm, DoorDash is collaborating with them, and the team is exceptional. In the short term, fees aren't important; the key is whether you can get people to transact in USD through your settlement network. Plasma follows the same logic.

Robbie: So you see these companies as payment service companies that earn fees and revenue from the volume of transactions paid in stablecoins.

Mike Dudas:

That's roughly it. But the future will be very different. My partners Carl (who previously worked at Paxos and Google Wallet) and Aaron (who has deep expertise in AI and agent payments), and I are discussing how the way people transact and pay will be completely different in a few months than it was six months ago. But I honestly don't know exactly how it will turn out, and I'm not being modest.

I can make a safe judgment: an AI agent cannot complete transactions on a payment system programmed 60 years ago. The way we buy things and express financial preferences will fundamentally change. This is what Tempo is betting on, and why we invested in Plasma.

For general-purpose chains, I think they're at a dangerous moment right now. By the way, we haven't mentioned Base (Coinbase's Ethereum L2). I think Coinbase is definitely struggling, a bit lost, and I'm not entirely sure what they're doing.

Solana has never clearly stated why it would use a general-purpose public blockchain for settlement. Is it for censorship resistance, speed, or cost reduction? Why are these factors important to businesses or individuals in Argentina or India? To be honest, I'm even less certain about this story than I was a year ago.

We're in an extremely volatile and chaotic period right now; the market feels disjointed. You can do an interesting exercise: count how many major partnership announcements Visa has made with different L1 and L2 blockchains in the past 24 months, and how many chains MasterCard has partnered with. It's a truly diverse landscape.

The competitive landscape of Circle vs. Tether

Robbie: Indeed, I've been in this industry for about the same amount of time as you. Before 2020, there were only one collaboration announcement of this magnitude every quarter or a year.

Regarding recent security incidents, first came the attack on Drift (a decentralized perpetual contract protocol on Solana), followed by cross-chain attacks on Aave and Kelp DAO. The two major stablecoin issuers, Circle and Tether, took completely different stances. Circle did not freeze funds that had been bridged from Solana to Ethereum and then smuggled through Tornado Cash. Arbitrum froze 30,000 ETH a few days ago, while Tether froze $344 million worth of USDT linked to a criminal organization suspected of involvement in everything from pig butchering scams to human trafficking, which may also be linked to the Lazarus Group (a North Korean government-backed hacking group).

The performance of these two companies is the complete opposite of public expectations. Circle is a publicly traded company with high compliance, while Tether has always been considered to operate in a gray area. However, Circle's decision not to freeze funds has drawn significant criticism, while Tether's decision to freeze funds has been widely praised. What are your thoughts on the stablecoin landscape? If the stablecoin supply reaches $1 trillion, will Tether hold 70-80%, or will it be more balanced?

Mike Dudas: Circle's strategy is clear: get as close as possible to a central bank digital currency (CBDC). They're basically saying, "Governments, we're completely on your side. We'll lobby, we'll go through all the compliance procedures. If we don't receive a subpoena, we won't freeze funds. Your rules are our rules." I'm exaggerating a bit, but Circle is essentially telling this story through their actions and silence. This is completely in line with their consistent style. They've never been DeFi native.

Circle will have its place. It can handle government dollars. Government dollars on the blockchain offer a better experience than those in my bank account. Circle has won this market, but I think it's a much smaller market than the entire future market.

The reason is that the world's boldest people, the people who are creating the future, and the entrepreneurs who want to serve them, don't trust Circle. They'll think Circle is tethered to the government. The world's best people, the people who build the biggest companies and the most profitable businesses, trust their own judgment. Circle doesn't align with that spirit. Circle is a bald man in a suit who'd rather let a judge tell him what to do to shirk all responsibility than make a crucial decision to protect customers from hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

I need to clarify that Tether has had its share of conflicts with us in the past. But today's Tether is completely different from the Tether I had serious reservations about seven or eight years ago. Back then, Tether's balance sheet had obvious flaws and lacked transparency. They later changed their organization. But what I respect is their willingness to make difficult decisions.

These companies need to make difficult decisions. Frankly, nobody looks at Tether and USDT and says, "These are decentralized assets." Once you decide to use them, the expectation should be: I might be censored, my transactions might be interfered with. Based on this premise, Tether has far surpassed Circle in handling clear-cut cases over the past month. If North Korea is stealing hundreds of millions of dollars, and you have the ability to stop it, you should stop it. Circle has stood on the wrong side of history, and they will pay the price.

Robbie: Is there any room for other stablecoin issuers?

Mike Dudas:

There is no doubt about it.

First, we haven't had any real scalable success with stablecoins outside of the US dollar. I think that will happen.

Secondly, you will start to see tokens that generate stable returns, such as USDAI. I firmly believe that alternatives to fiat currencies will emerge. What excited me about Bitcoin back then will now reappear in the form of dollar-denominated tokens pegged to real-world assets. Of course, many of these will also be tied to computing power in completely different ways than before, such as GPU funding.

Robbie: The stablecoin-as-a-service sector was extremely hot 18 months ago, but now profit margins seem to be shrinking, and initial capital requirements have increased significantly. What do you think about the future of these companies?

Mike Dudas:

Similar to the blockchain market, it will likely experience an initial boom followed by consolidation. USD stablecoins will most likely follow a 70-20-10 pattern.

The market is still unclear. Should they obtain an OCC license or a permit from the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS)? Every company on the platform with users and funds should put that money into a stablecoin backed by government bonds. But they haven't done so yet, finding it too troublesome and still hesitant.

They'll get moving, but they won't go and get licenses to issue them themselves. So for stablecoin-as-a-service providers like Bridge, Paxos, and Zero Hash, this is a huge market. Banks won't do this; it's not their core business. And there's a very large, completely untapped currency market internationally.

Robbie: Will Paxos go public?

Mike Dudas:

Good question. I think Paxos is a very valuable company. I've advised them and spent some time there after selling The Block. It's a very good business. Each cycle attracts the best partners—first Binance, then PayPal, now Charles Schwab, and there are many more undisclosed partners in the pipeline. As for whether Chad (Paxos founder and CEO) wants to be the CEO of a publicly traded company, I don't know.

The impact of AI giant IPOs on crypto

Robbie: Kraken has already filed for an IPO. We saw a surge in IPOs last year near the peak of the cycle. What's your take on the significance of crypto companies going public for the industry? We already have ETFs and various other products, so why is there a greater need for more publicly listed companies?

Mike Dudas:

In a market that people are paying attention to, this is great. When Coinbase, Circle, and Kraken go public, people will say, "What else is there to invest in? Alpha is on-chain."

But this isn't just a crypto issue; it's the same for SaaS and consumer technology. AI is sucking all the oxygen out of the room. Nobody cares about crypto IPOs. They're eyeing SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI.

But what could be beneficial for crypto is that once these companies go public, many people holding low-cost shares will gain liquidity, and these people highly overlap with the crypto community. There's a lot of overlap between early crypto and early AI, and of course, some of those people are now in jail, not just SBF.

These companies will go public next year. I can't tell you whether the stock price will go up or down; there are too many geopolitical variables. But the key point is: crypto companies have a much smaller market capitalization than those AI giants, and they require far less capital to leverage on-chain assets.

Robbie: What do you think the timeline should look like?

Mike Dudas:

The last cycle ended earlier than I expected; I thought it would last until 2026, but it didn't. Trump's election was roughly the peak, and Trump meme coins were released after that. Shifting forward two years to 2027, that coincides with the timeframe of these IPOs and the four-year cycle.

I think this is a very constructive period. Surprisingly, despite all the negative news, prices haven't fallen much. Frankly, I'm quite surprised by that.

Interestingly, the industry is trying to save itself in ways some consider unhealthy. Tether supports Drift's recovery process, and Arbitrum freezes assets. We can discuss whether these practices are right or wrong, but they are stabilization mechanisms. Most of the problems in this cycle have occurred on-chain, but the centralized entities that messed everything up in the last cycle are actually stabilizing the on-chain ecosystem. The integration you mentioned is indeed working in some ways.

Ultimately, will the value belong to centralized entities or on-chain entities? In any case, I think in hindsight, people will say this period saw the most widespread institutional adoption in the industry's history. The bill passed, and we weathered the AI ​​IPO frenzy. Crypto was sidelined while everyone was chasing AI giant IPOs, but by Q4 at the latest, when the AI ​​giants go public, crypto may be at its lowest point.

There will be a period when crypto will be completely ignored, and I accept that. Then the bull market logic is: many people interested in crypto have gained liquidity. Another, longer-term bull market logic is: does the emergence of AI agents and new trading methods mean that the crypto market is much larger than it is today? The answer is most likely yes.

About Vault

Robbie: One last question. Carl and I discussed your research on Vaults (on-chain asset management vaults). The recent attack on Aave (the largest decentralized lending protocol) occurred within its asset pool lending model, involving flaws in Aave's curation model, Layer Zero's security model, and the entire Kelp DAO setup. This pooled lending model affects all types of users. Vaults are very institution-friendly because institutions want to express credit on-chain in a risk-manageable and parameter-controlled way, and to launch new types of credit or RWA products. Morpho (a decentralized lending optimization protocol) has become a de facto Vault layer. What exactly is the Vault thesis you are researching?

Mike Dudas:

The core issue with Vaults is that it's difficult for ordinary people and even institutions to understand what to invest in on the blockchain, what the risks are, how to assess various assets, and how to rebalance over time. Although the concept of Vaults has been very popular over the past 18 to 24 months, its level of professionalization is far from sufficient.

Morpho's approach is actually very hands-off. It pushes all the difficult decisions onto the people who list assets on its platform. I wouldn't say Morpho is solving problems; more accurately, it's shifting responsibility.

Upshift, one of the portfolio companies we've invested in, just announced a partnership with Securitize (a leading compliant tokenization platform) to conduct NAV (Net Asset Value) analysis on each Vault on the platform. This gives institutional investors confidence that it's not just Upshift's own valuation, but also a professional valuation done by an independent third party.

This is not a passive response to the recent attacks. Everyone knows that Vault is a mechanism to attract more dollars onto the blockchain: selecting different assets and combining them to start creating structured products. But the past month and a half has served as a wake-up call for everyone; asset screeners' risk management assessments must be upgraded.

In the Aave case, the exchange rate between rETH (ETH used for liquidity staking in Rocket Pool) and ETH was completely unacceptable relative to its underlying underlying assets. This is no longer a matter of shifting blame; it's a chain of terrible decisions.

What I'm seeing now is that the pace of new asset innovation will slow significantly. You'll still see massive growth, but you won't see anyone opening a $300 Vault with a weak asset, little collateral, and questionable practices anymore.

I am very optimistic about the Vault structure, but I am very pessimistic about its past practices.