Crypto Fund Investing Secrets Revealed! with Rob Hadick
🎯 Summary
Crypto Fund Investing Secrets Revealed! with Rob Hadick - Comprehensive Summary
This 44-minute podcast episode features Tony Edward of Thinking Crypto interviewing Rob Hadick, General Partner at Dragonfly, a cross-border crypto venture fund. The discussion centers on Rob’s transition from traditional finance (TradFi) at Goldman Sachs into full-time crypto venture capital, the evolution of institutional views on blockchain technology, and the future landscape of corporate adoption of tokenization and custom blockchain infrastructure.
1. Focus Area
The primary focus is Crypto Venture Investing and the Institutional Adoption of Blockchain Technology. Key themes include the shift from private/permissioned blockchains to embracing public, open networks, the role of token incentives, and the emerging trend of major corporations launching their own customized Layer 2 solutions or subnets.
2. Key Technical Insights
- Incentive Mechanisms of Tokens: The conversation highlights that the value proposition of tokens is now understood to be tied to network effects, active liquidity, and the openness of the network, moving beyond early skepticism about their utility.
- Infrastructure Readiness: The initial vision for reinventing financial market infrastructure via smart contracts is finally being realized because the necessary infrastructure layer (scalability, speed, finality) has matured significantly since the early 2010s.
- Hybrid Execution Environments: Companies are increasingly opting to build customized execution environments (like their own L2s or subnets) that leverage the security and interoperability of major public chains (like Ethereum) while maintaining control over validator sets, sequencing, and economic sharing (e.g., MEV).
3. Market/Investment Angle
- The “Blockchain, Not Bitcoin” Flip: The industry has moved past the initial Wall Street narrative that favored private DLTs while dismissing public tokens (like Bitcoin). Institutions now recognize the exponential value accrual potential of open, permissionless networks.
- Corporate Tokenization Future: Hadick strongly believes that by 2030-2035, the majority of major brands will have their own L2s or specialized tokens to enhance brand affinity, customer engagement, and retention.
- Tokenized Loyalty vs. Equity: While tokenized equities are expected, the more immediate and clear application is tokenized loyalty programs. These tokens (potentially stablecoin-pegged points) offer clear balance sheet uplift for companies by converting deferred liabilities into actively used assets, though companies will likely control the interoperability between these loyalty ecosystems.
4. Notable Companies/People
- Rob Hadick (Dragonfly): General Partner whose background spans Goldman Sachs (early crypto discussions, DLT exploration) and traditional asset management before moving fully into crypto VC.
- Blythe Masters (Digital Asset Holdings/R3): Mentioned as a key figure in the early “Blockchain, Not Bitcoin” movement, championing permissioned private blockchains.
- Larry Fink (BlackRock): Cited as an example of a TradFi leader who initially dismissed Bitcoin but has since capitulated due to market evolution.
- Robinhood, Circle, Stripe: Mentioned as examples of major players launching their own L2s or integrating crypto services in a way that optimizes their specific business needs while plugging into public chains.
- VeChain: Featured as a sponsor, noted for its enterprise adoption (Walmart China, BMW, UFC partnership) and its focus on being a secure, scalable L1.
5. Regulatory/Policy Discussion
While the conversation acknowledges the importance of regulatory clarity (mentioning the Clarity Act and the Digital Asset Markets Consumer Freedom Act), Hadick suggests that many corporate decisions regarding custom L2s are currently driven more by business optimization and control (e.g., controlling sequencing, MEV, and validator sets) than by immediate regulatory fear. However, regulatory clarity is seen as a catalyst that will encourage boards to finalize their Web3 strategies.
6. Future Implications
The industry is heading toward a highly modular and interconnected system where large enterprises operate their own execution environments (L2s/subnets) for specific business functions (like loyalty or supply chain) but rely on the security and liquidity of foundational public blockchains (like Ethereum) for interoperability. This signals a maturation where blockchain technology is treated as essential, customizable enterprise software.
7. Target Audience
This episode is highly valuable for Crypto Venture Capitalists, Fintech Professionals, Corporate Strategy Executives, and Institutional Investors looking to understand the strategic rationale behind corporate blockchain adoption and the current investment thesis driving infrastructure development in the space.
🏢 Companies Mentioned
💬 Key Insights
"basically everything can be interned into a tokenized market, right? And if everything can be turned into a tokenized market, then all of a sudden you have a much more direct way to express viewpoints than you've ever had before, right?"
"the blockchain allowing these social interactions and conversations and even memes, like we're seeing with memecoins, to go on chain and we're able to financialize it and tokenize it. It's a fascinating concept, like human behavior on the blockchain."
"culminated in now this intersection of traditional finance and ICE in the New York Stock Exchange wanting to partner up in a real way with Polymarket, a DeFi-first prediction market, a DeFi-first financial market, and wanting to build this business in a regulated way in the US..."
"they were just the information was more right than the polls. Like it was clear that, you know, Polymarket and the story around putting money to work to express a view resulted in more accurate information than something like a poll."
"we could see Polymarket start to become more social... that the social aspect of the conversation also became part of the Polymarket conversation, or those two things merging was when it really clicked for me that the markets for everything now is the time."
"if you look at, you know, the pillars of what has accrued the most value in crypto, those pillars have really been, you know, finance, right? So whether that's CeFi or DeFi, those pillars have been stablecoins. And the third pillar is really like the blockchains themselves, right?"