The next $1 trillion of capital to flow into crypto won’t come from retail, but from TradFi institutions and funds That may be a cliché thing to say, but I don’t think people fully appreciate the implications Retail is tapped out and have written off crypto writ large Every normie-centric trend turned into a massive value extraction scheme, from ICOs to NFTs to memecoins You can only throw your money into the casino incinerator so many times until you question why you’re doing that Crypto-native VCs largely only invest pre-TGE and use retail as exit liquidity when a project without PMF launches a token with predatory tokenomics, leading to down only charts Retail won’t jump back in until they see external signals of legitimacy and trust And even if/when they do, their capital is unlikely to push crypto that many multiplies higher On the other hand, we are seeing a clear acceleration in institutional interest in crypto The BTC ETF was the most successful and fastest growing ETF launch ever, with tens of billions in inflow so far, creating a new type of systemic passive bid as more crypto ETFs launch each week (crypto index funds will be another) Stablecoin legislation (GENIUS) and the upcoming market structure legislation (CLARITY) provides much-needed regulatory clarity, while (the now pro-crypto) regulatory agencies give institutions the greenlight for crypto-related initiatives Ironically, institutions have become far more bullish on crypto than crypto-natives and retail, who have become jaded by years of value extraction by bad actors That said, I think it’s extremely unlikely we’re going to see a tide rises all boats situation as institutions are more selective / sophisticated about how capital is deployed This isn’t a coincidence as we are starting to see real PMF with select crypto use cases (stablecoins, perps, prediction markets, tokenization) The projects, protocols, infra, and teams behind these mega-trends will likely attract institutional capital while projects still focused on PvP zero-sum crypto games start are increasingly required to squeeze blood from a rock The crypto casino will never go away completely, but it will increasingly become a side story, not the main show This thesis will play out over a number of years, and break many people’s world view about crypto in the process (healthy) But it’s worth considering if you believe you’re well positioned for this inevitable shift or not, only you can make that determination(Zach Rynes | CLG)