Author: Yogita Khatri, The Block; Compiler: Tao Zhu, Golden Finance

In the past few days, there has been a whirlwind in the crypto world. After Donald Trump won the election, Bitcoin The price of the coin exceeded the $93,000 mark. Thinking back to 2018, when I first started writing about cryptocurrencies, it was crazy to see that the price of Bitcoin was only around $3,000. But here we are, witnessing the future unfold.

I spoke with more than a dozen cryptocurrency VC investors, and while the excitement surrounding Trump’s win and Bitcoin’s rise is undeniable, most are sticking to their long-term plans . That said, some are adjusting their approaches to pay closer attention to new trends and changes in the market landscape.

“I think the industry is right to be ecstatic,” Lasse Clausen, founding partner of 1kx, told me. "You have to be an industry insider to truly understand the scale of the disruption to innovation over the past decade. So now that founders are free to try again, outsiders still underestimate how many exciting products the industry will create."

In light of Trump’s expected clarity on cryptocurrency regulation, investors expect more founders to start venturing into the web3 space. Earlier this week, Portal Ventures, founded by former Insight Partners investor Evan Fisher, raised $75 million for its second fund, which manages more than $80 billion in assets under management (AUM), and will exclusively Investing in cryptocurrency pre-seed stage startups. Fisher told me he expects repeat founders who have previously sold their businesses and are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars, but were hesitant to enter the cryptocurrency space due to legal and regulatory risks, to start entering the space now that the regulatory environment has removed the risk. "We're going to see high-level founders start to get more into the cryptocurrency space," Fisher said.

CoinFund founder, managing partner and CEO Jake Brukhman told me that his company is gaining ground for what he calls Said crypto market is preparing for a “super cycle.” Brukhman said CoinFund is well capitalized across seed, venture capital and liquidity investment projects, adding that the company has expanded its investment team with six new hires this year, five of whom have come in the past two years.Joined within three months.

Betting on Crypto AI, DeFi, and More

Looking ahead, crypto VCs set sights on crypto AI, DeFi, tokenization of real world assets (RWA), infrastructure, stablecoins, payments areas of high potential.

Many investors see the intersection of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence as the next transformative trend. Hack VC co-founder and managing partner Ed Roman describes crypto AI as “the undisputed sexiest category in crypto right now” and envisions a multi-layered web3 AI stack that leverages the cost of decentralized computing networks efficiency. "It's a multi-trillion dollar market when it comes to servicing web2 customers," Roman said. "Artificial intelligence is not a fad (like NFT). Artificial intelligence is creating real business value and may be the most important technological innovation since mobile phones and the Internet."

However, Roman said, The health of the crypto AI category depends heavily on the health of the web2 AI category, which was inspired by NVIDIA. As a result, Hack VC is keeping a close eye on NVIDIA as a “loose agent” for crypto AI.

Maven 11 Capital CIO and Managing Partner Balder Bomans also sees growth in crypto AI startups, with particular interest in the AI-powered DePIN protocol, which provides compute for AI model training. CoinFund’s Brukhman added that most retail investors looking to gain exposure to artificial intelligence will likely do so through cryptocurrencies next year. "AI coins are scarce, but in high demand. The summer of 2025 is the summer of decentralized artificial intelligence (deAI)."

Another focus for investors is that with the rate of institutional adoption improvement and the recovery of DeFi. Hack VC’s Roman noted that DeFi has suffered recently from high interest rates, which makes U.S. Treasuries more attractive. However, Roman added that Trump’s expected rate cuts could make DeFi more competitive against traditional financial (TradFi) instruments such as Treasury bills. He sees DeFi as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to simplify finance.

1kx’s Clausen noted that TradFi institutions may now be working on bringing RWA on-chain and using DeFi infrastructure at scale. Clausen said: “Think about how bad trading, clearing and settlement are in TradFi, whereas DEX trading is three-in-one instant trading without any counterparty risk and there is no publicly verifiable exchange Operator fraud.It's like fishing with dynamite; it's not even fair. ”

Erick Zhang, managing partner of Nomad Capital and a former Binance executive, also believes that DeFi is poised for growth, especially amid the resurgence of altcoin activity and the continued challenges faced by centralized exchanges.

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Galaxy Ventures general partner Will Nuelle and BlockTower Capital general partner and head of venture capital Thomas Klocanas also foresee DeFi, RWA Tokenization, Stablecoins, and the Expansion of Payment Categories

“After Trump took office, it became clear that one of the biggest barriers to stablecoin adoption in the payments space — banking relationships that interface with fiat systems. becomes easier,” Nuelle said. “Our hope/expectation is that banks offering legal cryptocurrency services will not fear retaliation from the FDIC or other agencies, which should ease banks’ ability to integrate with clearly growing use cases. . ”

The consumer-facing applications and infrastructure categories are also gaining traction. “I’m particularly excited about the takeoff of consumer applications for cryptocurrencies because that category is Particularly adversely affected by his outgoing office. “We remain very interested in DePIN and ongoing infrastructure projects. ”

Borderless Capital partner Alvaro Gracia also highlighted the potential growth of the DeFi and DePIN sectors as Bitcoin dominance shifts to altcoins. Gracia manages a $100 million DePIN fund and she remains is particularly bullish on this category, noting that the fund still has approximately $70 million available and will be deployed over the next two to three years

1kx's Clausen. Adding that infrastructure, middleware and consumer applications are focus categories for his company, particularly consumer applications that require bank integration that have previously been hampered by regulatory restrictions

Finality. Adam Winnick, managing director at Capital Partners, expressed optimism about the infrastructure vertical, highlighting re-hypothecation and zero-knowledge technology startups as key areas of focus. Miko Matsumura, managing partner at Gumi Cryptos Capital. Said that he is focused on "middleware" infrastructure projects aimed at solving "normal people's problems" rather than solving "encryption people's encryption problems"

At the same time, for some investors. Infrastructure isn't that exciting, Maven 11's Bomans noted.Companies have shifted their focus to application-level investments over the past 12 months, as the rise of powerful monolithic chains and continued improvements in modular stacks have removed massive scaling bottlenecks.

Portal Ventures’ Fisher said his company has been short of infrastructure projects, preferring instead to favor commercial startups with clear distribution advantages and strong user demand.

Nomad Capital’s Zhang also mentioned that the company is being more cautious in the way it deploys capital on infrastructure projects, especially Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks. “Most infrastructure projects are essentially ‘infrastructure memes’ and their success often depends on the founding team’s ability to effectively manage the narrative and brand,” he said. “However, the number of teams that can excel in this unique dynamic remains limited.”

Trump’s Risks

While Trump’s presidency has brought renewed optimism to the cryptocurrency space, But several venture capitalists warn of potential risks that could affect the industry's trajectory.

1kx’s Clausen expressed concern about Trump’s immigration, arguing that reduced labor supply could lead to higher wages, which could be detrimental to risky assets such as cryptocurrencies.

Galaxy Ventures’ Nuelle noted that if “Trump becomes too laissez-faire on the crypto industry,” it could repeat FTX’s failures. He said balanced bipartisan legislation and overall clarity on the status of digital assets will create the most stable long-term value.

Nomad Capital’s Zhang emphasized that the “Trump effect” may lose momentum if bold proposals such as Bitcoin becoming a U.S. currency are made. Strategic reserve assets failed to be cashed in quickly. Unfulfilled expectations could dampen market enthusiasm, he said.

Hack VC’s Roman also said that one of the most important unanswered questions is: Will the United States actively stockpile new Bitcoin, or simply hold existing seized Bitcoin? Either outcome could be a win for cryptocurrencies. Aggressively building up Bitcoin stocks, which could become a new standard, influencing others and influencing theirs, would be an even bigger win for the cryptocurrency.