ChainFeeds Research published a new edition of its "VC Talk" roundup on Aug. 2, pulling together recent discussion points, research output and primary-market fundraising activity across the crypto venture space. The issue highlighted three main areas: rumors of a blowup at Situational Awareness, Ethereum’s 11th anniversary, and IOSG Ventures’ updated framing of AI and decentralized storage. ChainFeeds also said 14 funding events were disclosed between July 20 and July 26, with total deal value topping $249 million.
What crypto VCs have been talking about
Situational Awareness faces loss rumors
According to the roundup, the market has recently circulated claims that Situational Awareness, the AI investment fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, suffered heavy losses and has been seeking a new round of financing. That chatter led to another question in the market: whether Leopold could become "the next SBF."
ChainFeeds collected a range of reactions from investors and firms.
Jason Kam of Folius Ventures said that if the AGI trend remains intact, Leopold could still raise substantial fresh capital. He added that if other firms use leverage again to buy the dip, the artificial intelligence sector could continue moving higher, led by Mags, Neoclouds and some semiconductor companies, and could even revisit all-time highs over the next four to six weeks.
Lao Bai of Amber Group said that just last month, people were still discussing how to break down Leopold’s options positions, and now the market was seeing reports of large losses at Situational and efforts to raise new money. He said the situation did not seem that straightforward because the value of the fund’s put protection was not low, while also pointing to the shortcomings of 13F filings, which do not reveal many details of those put positions. Lao Bai also referenced a market guess that the fund may have closed short positions during the "epic squeeze" in the second quarter and then absorbed the full decline in July.
Jason of Tangent offered a very different reading. He said Leopold was still up 80% year to date and had net asset value in the 10-digit range.
Arthur of DeFiance Capital said every bull cycle needs a price to be paid before the cycle can continue, calling that inevitable.
Tommy of Delphi Ventures pushed back against mockery of Leopold. He said ridiculing him was "extremely stupid," arguing that Leopold left OpenAI, developed his own investment thesis, raised capital, executed on it aggressively and moved a large amount of money. Tommy said respect should go to people who are actually in the arena, not those commenting from behind a keyboard.
Kay Capital took a more outcome-focused view. The firm said the "post-2000 stock market prodigy" still looked much stronger than SBF because the Anthropic stake remained intact and the fund was still profitable. Even if the fund were liquidated now, Kay Capital said it could still be "walking away with $900m." It added that, as Fund 1, the vehicle should not be called a failure and that it was too early to judge the final result.
Ethereum turns 11
In the second discussion topic, ChainFeeds noted that Ethereum marked its 11th anniversary from July 30, 2015 to July 30, 2026. The roundup’s table of contents listed commentary from 1confirmation and LD Capital for that section.
Recent research and primary-market deals
Beyond market chatter, the issue also listed several recent research pieces. These included Dragonfly partner Haseeb on crypto venture capital, Real Vision’s founder on crypto’s place in the age of indices, and IOSG Ventures on decentralized storage under the theme "from hot storage to cold memory" in the AI era.
On primary-market activity, ChainFeeds said 14 public financing events were recorded over the week of July 20 to July 26. Combined funding exceeded $249 million. The deals involved Augustus, World Foundation, Cordant, Mandela Digital, Memecoin.Fun, Tenor, K25.ai, Notabene, Korbit, Creepz, Staking Rewards, Liquidity Land, Raven Market and Lunar Strategy.
The input provided for this story included the table of contents and part of the article body, but not the full text. Specific details from the 1confirmation and LD Capital anniversary discussion, as well as the full IOSG, Dragonfly and Real Vision research sections, were not included in the excerpt.
