In February, Citrini published The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis, a report that was linked to a wave of selling in U.S. software stocks and intensified anxiety around job losses in Silicon Valley. In April, Citrini’s Analyst#3 traveled to the Strait of Hormuz and wrote a field report that drew a strong response by describing the real operating conditions at a key conflict chokepoint. More recently, Citrini semiconductor analyst Jukan accurately identified the importance of copper foil within the AI and semiconductor supply chains, helping trigger another round of investment interest.
Behind the research firm is founder James van Geelen, a non-finance professional by training. He holds dual degrees in biology and psychology from UCLA, worked as an emergency medical technician and caregiver, founded a healthcare company, and later entered the investment world. At 33, van Geelen has become known by some readers as a “god of investment research.”
How Citrini entered the crypto conversation
For many people in crypto, Citrini first stood out in May, shortly before the listing of Cerebras (CBRS). In a post, Citrini said fund managers were conducting price discovery in advance through Trade.xyz, a platform in the Hyperliquid ecosystem. The post was later reposted and confirmed by Trade.xyz founder Shokun.
Citrini already had visible influence in traditional finance after publishing The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis. Its recognition of the Hyperliquid ecosystem and Trade.xyz’s role in pre-market pricing for U.S. equities brought more attention to crypto-native RWA platforms, U.S. stock pre-market contract platforms and on-chain U.S. equity trading venues. In that sense, Citrini helped push this year’s “U.S. stock RWA asset boom” further into public view.
The firm also functions as a signal to traditional finance that crypto participants are moving toward the large opportunity set represented by traditional markets. Its founder’s framework is closely tied to “second-order thinking” and long-termism, two ideas that appear repeatedly in Citrini’s research style.
From UCLA and emergency medicine to Citrinitas Capital
Public information shows that van Geelen graduated from UCLA with dual degrees in biology and psychology. He also worked in downtown Los Angeles as an emergency medical technician and caregiver. That background shaped a personality focused on efficiency and planning. As he once put it: “If you do not have a plan, you are going to have a bad time.” He has also described himself as a “genius musician,” though the source article notes that he does not have notable works to point to.
Van Geelen’s original path would have led him toward becoming a doctor. Instead, he moved into entrepreneurship. He first founded a healthcare company and sold it to a private equity fund, breaking away from the more conventional track of elite university, employment and corporate management. He then founded Citrini. In a 2023 appearance on the Odd Lots podcast, he also said that he had co-founded one of the earliest medical cannabis dispensaries in Connecticut.
In 2018, after obtaining some initial capital, van Geelen began his personal investment career under the name Citrinitas Capital. He captured early opportunities in AI, including Nvidia, and in GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, including Ozempic and Wegovy. In December 2025, according to PitchBook information cited in the source article, Citrini completed a seed round of about $5.05 million. The company had only around 10 employees and remained privately held.
The report that shook U.S. software stocks
In February, van Geelen and Alap Shah, who came from a traditional finance background, co-wrote The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis. They repeatedly stressed that the report was a “thought experiment” and a scenario exercise rather than a forecast. Even so, its discussion of “mass white-collar unemployment, declining consumer spending and economic contraction (Ghost GDP)” generated concern in capital markets and contributed to sharp declines across delivery, payments and software stocks.
IBM shares recorded their largest single-day drop of 2025 on February 23. American Express and Blackstone both fell more than 8%. The software sector as a whole dropped nearly 5%. DoorDash, Uber, Mastercard, Visa, Capital One and Apollo Global Management Inc. at one point fell 3%. Several U.S. stock sectors were pulled into the selling wave, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average at one stage dropped more than 800 points. Alap Shah later publicly described his investment stance as “short and long”: shorting companies they believe will be disrupted by AI while holding semiconductor technology stocks that benefit from AI. The report prompted follow-up coverage from Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and other overseas media.
Hormuz, second-order thinking and a broader analyst bench
On April 6, Citrini’s “Analyst#3” traveled to the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint in the U.S.-Iran conflict, and published field observations. The report described the specific operating model of Iran’s “toll booth” in the strait and offered several counterintuitive conclusions: regardless of how the situation develops, shipping volume through the strait will gradually rise; Iran does not want to close the Strait of Hormuz; traffic order in the strait is highly standardized; even if ground operations begin, shipping volume can continue to increase; and the conflict is not a simple two-party confrontation, but a multi-party game and a restructuring of the regional order.
When asked why the company was named “citrinitas,” van Geelen said the inspiration came from George Soros’s The Alchemy of Finance: “It is actually a stage in alchemy, but what most people do not know is that during this transitional stage, lead begins to transform into gold, but has not yet fully become gold.” This also reflects the moment he prefers as an investor: seeing the birth of “gold” before others have noticed the change in the “lead.”
Citrini’s investment style is tied to van Geelen’s cross-disciplinary experience and multiple labels. The firm places strong emphasis on second-order thinking. Based on its past content and public information, Citrini focuses on long-term “super trends,” including AI, robotics, energy demand, fiscal policy, geopolitics and modern warfare. It also aims to provide executable “basket” investment references and tactical macro trade ideas, with judgments leaning toward long-term structural change rather than short-term trading.
On its Substack homepage, Citrini highlights its preference for practical application, writing that readers will no longer need to ask, “What is the trade?” Van Geelen has also said: “Do not always think about what you think will happen. Instead, think about the things that must happen. How will the market’s reaction change reality? What secondary effects will there be? What obstacles stand in the way of a trend continuing? And where will capital flow in order to overcome those obstacles?”
Past examples in the source article include his purchase of overnight financing rate call options during the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023, a trade that generated nearly 50 times returns, and his comments last December on investment opportunities in Venezuelan sovereign bonds before the United States launched military action in Venezuela. Since the start of this year, Citrini has brought in multiple independent analysts, including macro analyst Nick Reece, Korean semiconductor industry analyst @jukan05 and AI chip industry analyst @zephyr_z9. These additions have helped fill gaps in industrial detail, process technology and changes in sector direction. The firm continues to operate through a founder-driven model supported by an anonymous elite analyst team.