controversial take: crypto VC take on fewer funds deploying is downstream of there being ENOUGH good founders and ideas to back. the quality of early stage founders and ideas in crypto, taken in aggregate, is simply not as large of a surface area as other high growth industries. the gap is noticeable to me over the last 4 years, hence Crucible's focus beyond crypto (although we have backed incredible crypto founders and will continue to). on founders, there used to be an acceptable risk / reward over a shorter timeframe where founder risk wasn't as material to success. invest in project w token, founder has orange flags, but you fully vest in 24-36 months so downside is hedged. founder having a CT presence and audience to shill to was enough. on ideas, crypto was still nascent so less data to pattern match, less market intelligence, easier to underwrite raise follow on at high valuations since it was harder to underwrite risk with data and experience - no one really had any. we're now a decade into formal crypto venture, the things that have worked and generated venture scale outcomes are stablecoins / payments, exchanges, and financial products. crypto today is on HARD mode. there are fewer breakout outcomes and they take longer to build and require more domain competence and long term thinking. founders must have a HIGH pain tolerance, much more so than any previous cycle. the gap to go from seed to Series A is much larger. there are still many incredible founders on generational runs building category defining companies in crypto. a GPs job is to find them and win the right to invest in their companies. deployment is downstream of ability to underwrite and every dollar deployed has a very real opportunity cost for GPs. there's a massive gap between what founders are pitching and what GPs can reasonably underwrite. founders should focus on closing this gap.(Meltem Demirors)