ChainFeeds Research on Aug. 23 published a new edition of its "VC Talk" roundup, collecting recent views from crypto venture firms and market participants on trading conditions, research themes, and primary market fundraising.
Investors zero in on the latest crypto rebound
In the section on what crypto VCs have been discussing, the article first compiled comments on market action from HashKey Capital, Waterdrip Capital, Amber Group, Syncracy Capital, DeFiance Capital, Delphi Ventures, 1confirmation, Generative Ventures, and Placeholder.
Rui of HashKey Capital said conversations with friends over the weekend led him to two lines of thinking. In one, long-duration bonds are effectively competing with AI company debt for the same pool of long-term capital. He said long bonds keep rising because people keep selling them, and that this usually ends with Federal Reserve rate cuts releasing capital. But he added that the current timing is sensitive, the Fed’s easing outlook is unclear, and Trump needs to protect the midterm elections, so fiscal tools rather than monetary tools may be the preferred choice. Rui also said BTC had a debt-resolution narrative early in the campaign, while stablecoin companies are high-quality buyers of bonds, and that a deleveraging or debt-management logic built around a shadow-banking structure has helped drive institutional buyers.
On trading, Rui said exchange open interest is too high and the market is waiting to pick a direction. He tied that to a poor macro setup, including tighter liquidity from rate hikes in Japan and an unclear Fed stance. In that setting, he said hot money from semiconductors, meaning hedge funds, could rotate into relative-value trades. With fuel, capital, and large crypto money all in the mix, futures led the first leg higher in ETH, according to his account. He said the setup feels similar to the sharp rebound after ETH fell to $1,300 in April last year, when the price range was around $2,900 to $2,500, followed by the DAT narrative. This year’s possible narrative, he said, is the clarity act, though he added that he does not know whether it can continue.
Jademont of Waterdrip Capital said he saw Bitcoin surge while on vacation and went to X to look for the reason. He said the discussion centered on two points: a drop in 30-year U.S. Treasury yields and a new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposal on token issuance, or ICOs. In his view, the second factor was the main one, though he said it would still take time before any rule actually takes effect. Jademont wrote that the ICO model that boomed in 2016 and 2017 was, in essence, a more advanced way to issue assets than equity offerings, with lower cost, greater transparency, and a lower participation threshold. What it lacked was regulation, and that allowed some bad actors to abuse it, eventually driving out better projects. He said he is looking forward to a new crypto market under regulation, and added: if you do not know what to buy, buy BTC.
Lao Bai of Amber Group focused on trade selection during the latest move higher. He said that aside from BTC, traders could choose among several buckets: rotation into centralized exchange altcoins with strong chart structures; new onchain names such as Marscoin, StonkBroker, Ansem, and 牛来; or concentration in what he called two "real cash cows," Hype and Pump, plus Zec, which he described as a privacy coin with strong consensus support.
Ryan Watkins, co-founder of Syncracy Capital, said it feels as if the whole world has been dismissive of crypto. After several quarters of poor performance, far worse than equities, even people who built careers in the sector have given up or left despite conditions that seemed to be moving in a favorable direction. But this week’s move, he said, was at least a warning shot that it is time to pay attention to crypto again. He added that crypto remains one of the most volatile asset classes in the world and that sentiment can shift very quickly.
Arthur of DeFiance Capital said this was one of the strongest price moves he could remember recently, and that it felt a bit like 2020 again.
Tommy of Delphi Ventures said that for someone working across both crypto and artificial intelligence, crypto may be more interesting than AI for a period of time.
Nick Tomaino of 1confirmation gave a direct price comparison. He said ETH was at $2,300, versus $4,200 a year ago. He also said stablecoins, DeFi, prediction market apps, NFTs, and RWA projects still have not developed, and that there is still only one truly neutral cryptocurrency in the market. Based on that, he told readers to adjust positioning accordingly.
Will Wang of Generative Ventures said he has been dollar-cost averaging for nearly a year whenever the market hit the "extreme fear" reading and has become numb to price swings. Whenever he sees AI projects that he considers even worse than bubble-era crypto projects, he said, he thinks of BTC and buys a little more.
Chris Burniske of Placeholder wrote: "Breaking out from the bottom, getting ready for the barrel, aware of the danger..."
Research list includes AI Agent and Model Fusion topics
In the section covering recent research output from crypto VCs, the ChainFeeds article listed three items: Arthur Hayes’ new AI Agent experiment for BitMEX, framed as making computing power the currency of the machine world; IOSG Ventures’ piece titled "From score gains to payment: the demand illusion of Model Fusion"; and Metrics Ventures’ market note, "Talk is Cheap."
The input text stops at that point, so no further detail from the original article is available here on the substance of those three research pieces.
10 fundraising events disclosed from Aug. 9 to Aug. 16
For the primary market, ChainFeeds said there were 10 publicly disclosed fundraising events in the week of Aug. 9 to Aug. 16, with total financing of more than $19.5 million.
The projects named were River Markets, Entravel, Botanika, BLOX, Memebook, RWA.xyz, Saturn, Digital Prime Technologies, Ansa, and LeveL Markets.
The article was by chunzhen and was published on Aug. 23, 2026.
