TechFlow x Lishuo | Crypto VC: Let's Go Speculate on Coins Together
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TechFlow x Lishuo | Crypto VC: Let's Go Speculate on Coins Together
This year, without an exceptionally high level of capability, survival itself may be impossible. But as long as one survives, the returns will be extremely high.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: TechFlow
Years ago, I watched the movie *The Yellow Sea*. Accustomed to Chinese directors’ restrained violence aesthetics, I still found the scenes of close-range combat—bodies colliding, blood splattering—oppressive and heartbreaking. In *The Yellow Sea*, people are like rabid dogs, tearing into each other desperately in their fight for survival. Later, I actually visited the Yellow Sea. The water was gray, freezing cold, and the wind cut across my face like a blade, carrying a fishy stench. Small fishing boats rose and fell with the waves, fragile as paper, seemingly ready to capsize at any moment. Only then did I release the emotions I'd carried for years: this place is both a drifting homeland and a grave.
When violence becomes the primary means of solving problems, crime no longer exists under the name of evil—it’s simply the law of survival where the strong devour the weak.
When fraud becomes a business model, victims often become perpetrators themselves.
This is a market that rewards greed and diligence.
In Shenzhen and Hangzhou, many startup teams remain hidden within low-key office buildings—no logos, no reception desks, not even landlines. Some rent offices solely to appear legitimate when hiring, so they won’t be mistaken for scam operations. It’s reminiscent of how, during family reunions back in hometowns, one instinctively names an acceptable job title when asked what mountain one hails from. With all profitable赛道 already carved up, those still operating domestically now have clearer goals: going offshore is about fishing—the rougher the seas, the more valuable the catch.
Shenzhen favors cash-flow businesses—pyramid-like structures, financial nesting doll games. They adapt quickly, typically equipped with fully English-speaking social media teams. Few know their real backgrounds; most can only guess. When you notice a project on some blockchain suddenly surging to top three in TVL within a week, with whales entering months earlier, staking loops, trending models, buzzing communities, and analyses flooding Chinese media—all while the official website reveals no founding team—congratulations, the “big brothers” from Shenzhen are about to make you rich.
Hangzhou-based friends opt for popular infrastructure development—contributing code, launching twenty projects hoping one hits big during the bull run. As for Beijing and Shanghai? Not much to say. A few funds still maintain offices, or host roving overseas project teams. Most have already left. Sometimes, gatherings can’t even muster enough people for a hotpot table. Once flourishing, now meeting in silence.
He said: “I’ve never seen an industry with such high tolerance for fraud.”
“Starting up in this industry feels incredibly insecure. Of course, having chosen this path, I can’t talk about safety anymore. As a founder, I feel like a minefield defuser—first, don’t blow yourself or your team up. Then protect investors. This isn’t a tech-first industry. Wherever the hot money flows, we must follow. Teams can’t afford to burn out. We need to hit targets within limited timeframes, or we’ll get liquidated. You see people checking U.S. market trading hours daily, tracking institutional inflows and outflows, monitoring macroeconomic policies from America. And yet they claim to want to disrupt traditional financial systems? Don’t make me laugh.”
“Ideally, you’d hit the sweet spot of a trending赛道. Today’s investors ask directly for metrics and exchange listing plans. Equity funding is basically impossible now—it’s all about token price and vesting terms. Talking about equity here is just unrealistic. Are there any so-called ‘early-stage specialists’ who invest purely via equity? No.”
“Even better would be organic discovery by the community, purely user-driven growth. But I won’t bet on that kind of perfection—I don’t believe it exists.”
“On the bright side, mainstream finance has accepted this industry. Yet it keeps ordinary people out. The barrier to entry keeps rising. Is it high? Relatively speaking, yes. But the cost of committing fraud keeps dropping. In northern Myanmar, you still need to hire guards and henchmen. Here, after years of market education, public tolerance for scams is shockingly high. From my perspective, technology solves problems but doesn’t necessarily make the world better. But for project teams, if you put in effort, you usually get returns. Technology, marketing, operations—if users sense sincerity and hard work, the market rewards you. Getting criticized? That’s trivial, as long as you survive. Failing to endure the bear market? That’s a different story.”
When fraud becomes a business model, victims often become perpetrators. We easily witness this cyclical deception—an openness and numbness laid bare.
Go back nine years, and Shanghai-based entrepreneurs won’t forget the first time Vitalik gave a路演. I remember it clearly: a plastic poster printed at a street-side shop, a few rows of office chairs, a gaunt V standing next to chubby Chu Xiahu. Years later, some in that audience changed nationalities, some lost everything gambling, some returned to their original lives, some lingered at the industry’s edges, and some became scammers. Reality is this: success stories are extremely rare. Bottoming out, rebuilding, another round, sweeping the table—this fantasy only exists in short dramas or KOL threads on X.
Investor: Stop talking nonsense. Embrace reality.
The shifting foundation. “Many people will go bankrupt this year,” a fund manager told me during an interview. Many celebrated ETF approvals without realizing the price had already been set. You joke about upgrading from being a “crypto degenerate” to a Nasdaq trader, unaware you’ve stepped into another foggy, dark forest.
Recalling a friend’s recent comment: If blockchain becomes just another alternative financial circle, it strays from its original mission—to serve as an antidote to failing financial systems. An alternative financial circle brings zero value to the world. Real value only flows toward new hope.
The ideal investor role used to be “help them mount the horse and send them off.” But in today’s money-driven market, that model fails completely. Longtime一级market funds are quietly transforming—LD CAPITAL being a prime example. Its二级fund is led by Lou Zhiyue. I asked her a simple question: “Compared to一级investing, what’s your biggest takeaway from entering二级markets? Or rather, what’s the key difference?” Her answer surprised me slightly.
She said: “Honestly, I’ve never really done一级either.二级is definitely harder.”
Personally, I thought二级was just buying and selling—relatively easy, especially if you stay off-chain. Lou responded with three crying emojis and added: “It’s insane.”
Doing secondary exposes you to rumors, slander, conspiracy theories—no less than in primary. The bar for professionalism is extremely high.
Lou said: “Mainly because it’s tough. This year will definitely be highly volatile, and even U.S. stocks are uncertain.If you don’t have exceptional skill, you might not even survive. But if you do survive, returns will be enormous.”
“There are plenty who can analyze data into neat points, but data volume doesn’t equal mastery. The real experts are those who filter out noise and accurately predict medium-term trends. These masters usually stay silent. (Only after doing secondary do you realize) My skills are average. I used to understand nothing; now I understand a little, which means I finally know what I don’t know.”
Lou approaches the secondary market with caution and pragmatism.
Some investors are urgently switching to secondary, perhaps driven by anxiety. Narratives shift too fast. High-valuation projects once funded are now ignored by the market—especially this year, with Bitcoin ecosystem inscriptions and MEMEs booming through fair launches, wealth-generating trends leaving VCs completely out. Primary investing may look glamorous on the surface, but beneath lies endless pitfalls—losses swallowed silently. Many funded projects either die midway or hang in limbo. At best, responsible teams send apology emails: “Sorry, we failed.”
Even if you back a project listed on a top-tier exchange, and floods of private messages congratulate you—thinking financial freedom is secured—reality hits when the team changes terms pre-listing, extending lock-up periods. You’re left with only paper gains. From investment to full unlock, it often takes eight years or more. After two full bull-bear cycles, final returns may still underperform simply holding BTC/ETH/SOL during the bear market. “Good projects” hold all the power—VCs have no leverage. During a dinner, a tipsy investor lamented: “I’ve invested tens of millions cumulatively, zero returns so far. I wanted to sue a project (but I’m wearing a scholar’s gown—I held back).”
Anonymous VC: Whether primary or secondary, everyone eventually needs to exit and cash out. When the market realizes—or verifies repeatedly—that most aren’t suited for primary investing (though some Asia-based funds excel), shifting to secondary is wise.‘Coin speculation’ is also a critical赛道, and highly professional. Your research capability, market timing, macro and micro analysis—all impact outcomes.The key is, I’m less anxious now. In primary, I was too passive—Asian funds rarely gain access to top projects. Plus, pure equity investments probably don’t exist here anymore.
Jayden (Greythorn): Late 2022. We realized primary investing had changed drastically compared to a few years prior. For us, truly innovative projects favored by the West command sky-high valuations—we struggle to participate. Second, we’ve been burned multiple times: SAFT terms changed, tokens withheld at unlock. Easier to just go direct into secondary. I still do some primary, but minimal. Mostly, I support early community-driven projects with a mindset closer to early crypto “donations.”
Kris (Sparkpool Asset Management): We focus more on secondary. We believe secondary offers better liquidity, superior price discovery, and greater transparency. After entering the bear market in 2022, several major asset managers collapsed, dragging sentiment down. But in 2023, as the market turned bullish, everyone saw the new cycle arriving in 2024–2025. So institutions and asset platforms are increasing secondary allocations. Bear market for primary, bull market for secondary—shorter cycles, faster results, higher ROI.
Both fundraising and investing are simpler for secondary funds than for primary.
The approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs granted crypto greater “legitimacy.” Amid declining yields and global instability in traditional markets, digital assets have become an attractive alternative. Public data this year shows native funds transitioning to secondary following market cycles, while traditional capital begins entering.
Outsider VCs have undergone several rounds of market education. Initially, they threw money around like internet investments, only to realize they were treated as pigs to slaughter. Bad debts piled up, LP capital drained, GPs too ashamed to open annual report slides in meetings.
Jack works at a top-tier USD fund and is launching his own crypto secondary fund. With years of experience backing multiple internet unicorns listed on Nasdaq and HKEX, his former founders are now emerging high-net-worth individuals worth hundreds of millions—even billions. They are his potential LPs. His strategy is simple: raise from the traditional world—internet tycoons and real estate magnates—and invest mainly in Beta, leveraging his informational edge to capture some Alpha.
As for returns, he’s unconcerned—not just because “crypto Beta overall outperforms traditional sectors,” but also because LPs may not care that much anyway.
In his view, for true high-net-worth family offices, the core is asset allocation. They won’t bet everything on one asset class. Most portfolios remain in fixed income (bonds), equities, and real estate. Crypto is an alternative within alternatives—small allocation, minimal portfolio impact—but they refuse to miss out.
Thus, he satisfies not the need to “make money,” but the need for “asset allocation”—a form of arbitrage between traditional and crypto worlds.
Relationships based on利益 dissolve when利益 ends.
After speaking with both investors and project teams, differing perspectives prove fascinating.
Harmonious, mutually beneficial relationships between investors and founders are rare. Surface-level peace is maintained. From the founder’s perspective, he chose an extremely risky path. He struggled through fundraising, built teams, hired staff, acquired users, endured bear markets. To him, the cash in the bank, the logos of financial institutions and exchanges on the website—they’re all deserved. When it comes to actual profit distribution, he thanks the VC who funded him, sometimes tearfully. Looking back at the investment agreement signed, “honoring the terms” is already the greatest courtesy he can offer.
Jasmine, founding partner at A&T Capital, wrote in November 2023 that A&T had ceased active investing over half a year prior, gradually shifting focus from一级to one-and-a-half and二级, partly to prepare for exits. She believes launching new一级funds is harder than incubation or moving into secondary from an operational standpoint.
In her view, “Communities are growing stronger, and demands for Fair Launch are louder. From certain scammy project teams’ perspective, deceiving the community is easier than courting VCs. From legitimate builders’ angle, VCs may not understand their field—so instead of ‘wasting time’ educating VCs, they’d rather educate potential users. Space left for一级VCs is shrinking.”
VCs have figured it out: Rather than this, let’s all just go炒币. Quoting Jayden of Greythorn again: Just go straight into secondary!
This article was co-produced by TechFlow and Lishuo through joint interviews, primarily featuring Asian-based funds. Follow our official account and message us to receive the full Greythorn Capital interview, including their 2024 investment preferences.
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