Exclusive Interview with 6MV Founder: Why 2026 Is a Landmark Inflection Point for Investing in Crypto Assets
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Exclusive Interview with 6MV Founder: Why 2026 Is a Landmark Inflection Point for Investing in Crypto Assets
“I’m deploying capital in 2026, so I’ll tell you—it’s the best year ever.”
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsCompiled & Translated by Ada, TechFlow
Guest: Mike Dudas, Founder and Managing Partner of 6th Man Ventures (6MV), Founder of The Block, former executive at Venmo/Braintree/PayPal
Host: Robbie Klages
Podcast Source: The Rollup
Original Title: Why 2026 Will Be An Iconic Year to Invest in Digital Assets
Air Date: April 24, 2026
Editor’s Note
In its annual review of the crypto VC landscape, this episode of The Rollup features Mike Dudas, founder of 6th Man Ventures. He argues that the crypto market is currently in a contradictory phase—“fundamentals are improving rapidly, yet negative events keep exploding.” He also offers a sharp assessment of the stablecoin landscape: Circle is effectively “government dollars,” and its refusal to freeze funds during the Bybit hack placed it on the wrong side of history; Tether, meanwhile, has undergone a profound transformation and now far outperforms Circle on critical decisions. Paxos, Bridge, and others are poised to become the next generation of major fintech enterprises. Additionally, he reveals that Pump.fun’s annualized revenue is approaching $400 million and believes its token is severely undervalued.
Key Quotes
Current State of Crypto VC
- “I’m deploying capital in 2026, so I’ll tell you—it’s the best year ever.”
- “The market today isn’t short on capital, founders, ideas, or users—but every week brings unexpected shocks: the next hack, the next regulatory setback, the next arrest.”
- “We’re seeing top-tier talent flock to mediocre or consensus-driven ideas at an unprecedented rate. VCs aren’t deploying because they keep hearing the same pitch over and over.”
Pump.fun and Onchain Consumption
- “Even under current market conditions, Pump.fun still generates over $1M in daily revenue—annualized revenue nearing $400M. You simply can’t claim the market has peaked.”
- “Crypto markets don’t reward fundamentals—not because people ignore them, but because we haven’t yet figured out which fundamentals actually matter. Tokens are too new; they mean a million different things to a million different people.”
- “Everyone says meme coins are dead. But the marginal retail investors who care about meme coins aren’t even in the market right now—and they’ll come back.”
Circle vs. Tether
- “Circle’s strategy is crystal clear: get as close as possible to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). They’re essentially saying, ‘Government—we’re fully aligned with you. Your rails are our rails.’”
- “If North Korea is stealing millions of dollars—and you have the ability to stop it—you should stop it. Circle chose the wrong side of history, and it will pay the price.”
- “When it comes to pivotal decisions, the gap between Tether and Circle isn’t pro vs. amateur—it’s NFL vs. high school football.”
New Chains, Application-Specific Chains, and General-Purpose Chains
- “To me, Mega ETH looks more like an application chain—it’ll become a super app. I don’t believe Monad can be valued like Solana; what matters most is the revenue generated by apps built atop it.”
- “Solana hasn’t clearly articulated why anyone would use a general-purpose public chain for settlement—is it censorship resistance? Speed? Cost reduction? Honestly, I’m even less certain about this narrative than I was a year ago.”
Stablecoin-as-a-Service
- “Every company with users and capital should hold those funds in Treasury-backed stablecoins. They’re not doing it yet—but they will. They won’t go through the trouble of obtaining their own licenses to issue USD. That creates a massive opportunity for the handful of stablecoin-as-a-service providers.”
AI, IPOs, and Liquidity Cycles
- “No one cares about crypto company IPOs right now. Honestly, they’re watching SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI. AI has sucked all the oxygen out of the room.”
- “The Trump meme coin marked the top. Fast-forward two years—that lands us in 2027, neatly aligning with the wave of IPOs and the four-year cycle. That window will unleash liquidity for many early holders of crypto company equity—and many of those holders have a natural affinity for crypto.”
Crypto VC Landscape and Capital Flows
Robbie: This is our annual check-in on the state of crypto VC. Last year’s episode, recorded in Soho, felt like a completely different world. We previously hosted Tom Dunleavy from Variant Capital, whose broad thesis was: VC funding is shrinking, fundraising rounds are declining, high-quality teams are becoming scarcer—the entire ecosystem has changed. My counterpoint at the time was: If you have capital and can spot strong founders, competition is actually lower—and a fresh wave of founders is entering the space, many with stronger backgrounds than the last cohort. Ultimately, we agreed that 2025–2026 could be among the highest-return years. Do you agree? How do you assess the overall quality of today’s founders?
Mike Dudas:
I’m a VC—and I’m deploying capital in 2026—so of course I’ll tell you it’s the best year ever. But LPs, take note.
First, capital in the crypto VC market is abundant. Several large funds have already closed, and their announcements are public knowledge. Many early-stage funds have also completed raises—but haven’t publicly disclosed them yet. A huge pool of capital is sitting idle, waiting to deploy. Capital is not the issue.
Second, are there strong founders? Yes. Are there strong ideas? Absolutely—you can see breakthrough protocols emerging, many founded years ago, even during bear markets. Ideas exist, founders exist, capital exists. This is absolutely not a time to be bearish on crypto.
So what’s the problem? Constant explosions: hacks, founders charged and arrested on various counts, growing suspicions around the Trump family, and regulatory uncertainty in Washington—we’d expected legislation to pass or near passage, but it hasn’t.
The result is a paradox: macro-level chaos in crypto, while fundamentals improve rapidly. There’s no shortage of capital, founders, ideas, or usage—but each week brings another surprise.
Robbie: So does deal competition decrease for you?
Mike Dudas:
Yes. Consensus deals are hotter than ever, with valuations pushed to irrational heights. There’s always a final buyer—but five years from now, some of those bids may look absurd in hindsight.
The challenge is that although strong founders exist, they lack confidence to take big risks. Both external forces and internal crypto dynamics are changing too fast. In our talent assessments, the empirical pattern is clear: top talent is flooding into subpar or consensus-driven ideas at an unprecedented rate.
That’s why VC deployment has slowed. VCs operate at a higher vantage point—they see more—but they keep hearing identical pitches, making it hard to distinguish true excellence. Right now, there’s no founder sparking frenzy, no marginal innovation inspiring risk-taking. Classic examples: no marginal retail buyers, no breakout consumer-facing app driving excitement.
On the surface, the market lacks inspiration. Underneath? Stablecoin issuance continues to surge. Global onchain usage is staggering—yet these metrics rarely make headlines. Venture capital is flowing into these companies—not the headline-grabbing projects, but the hundreds building on public blockchains.
Robbie: Indeed, capital flows are shifting visibly. Companies operating at the intersection of onchain finance and traditional finance are attracting massive investment—tokenization firms, stablecoin issuers, onchain credit platforms, and next-gen digital banks are exploding in number. Where do you see concrete investment opportunities at this convergence? Is it about compressible profit margins—or reduced settlement times?
Mike Dudas:
We focus on what’s genuinely novel and inventive across the full spectrum. That’s 6MV’s DNA—we favor onchain-native solutions.
When Venmo launched, people thought it was alien tech. Polymarket took six years to go from alien to mainstream consensus after entering Asia. So we hunt for those “alien ideas” you mentioned—because we believe they’ll become mainstream in a few years.
The challenge is that entry into many of these markets still relies on regulatory arbitrage. For example, listing oil on Hyperliquid may create the most liquid market globally—anyone worldwide can trade, and market makers needn’t fear CFTC oversight.
In the VC stage, CLARITY Act remains unsettled—creating confusion. Many new founders hesitate: What’s the right path to compliance? In past cycles, companies moving too early on compliance were often punished by competitors.
Take private equity tokenization—e.g., tokenizing Anthropic shares. Some structures are relatively sound; others are outright yolo—and the yolo batch is growing faster right now. I’m skeptical this model is sustainable.
So yes—the fusion period is extremely messy. We still seek “alien ideas”—but when discussing traditional asset classes like equities or structured private credit, brand trust becomes essential, and our “alien model” doesn’t apply. Frankly, at the earliest stages, we’re not seeing much capital flow into RWA issuance or tokenization firms.
Misunderstood Value of Pump.fun and Hyperliquid
Robbie: You’ve consistently backed onchain consumption—executing numerous deals in this category, with Pump.fun being your most prominent. I saw your tweet noting they’re absorbing massive sell pressure without market reaction. A widely held counterargument—one that’s nearly half-consensus—is that token launch markets won’t scale like perpetual futures markets. Therefore, Pump.fun’s buyback or economic model shouldn’t be valued like Hyperliquid’s—because perps could become a massive category, whereas onchain token launches may already be peaking. Why is this argument wrong?
Mike Dudas:
I won’t even debate it—it’s just wrong. You don’t see it because we’re in a brutal bear market. Even here, people keep launching tokens—and Pump.fun still averages over $1M in daily revenue, with annualized revenue nearing $400M.
A more interesting question is: Why hasn’t the token price reflected two years of consistent revenue and nearly a year of buybacks?
Part of the answer lies in the team’s communications strategy. They don’t do traditional investor relations—no explanations of how robust or defensible their business is. I understand their team—but I don’t love this stance. At the same time, I get why they avoid IR: crypto markets simply don’t reward fundamentals.
Deeper down, it’s not that people disregard fundamentals—it’s that we haven’t yet identified which fundamentals truly matter. Equities have decades of valuation frameworks. Bonds have clear, predictable models. Tokens? They’re brand-new—no standards—and mean entirely different things to different people.
So fundamental investors looking at Pump.fun’s token—or even Hyperliquid’s HYPE—don’t know how to value them. The result? These assets trade at steep discounts—a bear-market phenomenon. But if Pump.fun keeps delivering, the bull market will swing prices sharply in the opposite direction.
Is Pump.fun’s business sustainable? I think it’s actually more defensible than many enterprises. Look at Hyperliquid: world-class companies are competing head-on; perpetual futures is already a highly consensus-driven opportunity. Everyone agrees perps are superior for expressing asset views—and prediction markets will eventually converge here too. But precisely because everyone agrees, competition will be fierce. Profits will likely accrue to execution or market-making—but it’s unclear where.
Pump.fun is different. Everyone says meme coins are dead—completely obsolete. Anything onchain is currently out of favor. And indeed, they haven’t publicly launched much new in the past year. But I believe that’s because the marginal users who care about their product aren’t in crypto right now—and they’ll return.
Views on High-Profile Projects
Robbie: So you remain firmly bullish on onchain consumption as a long-term growth vector. MegaETH—an Ethereum L2 focused on extreme performance—just announced its token launch for April 30, with fun gamified primitives emerging around it. An interesting divergence is forming: on one side, products like MegaETH and Pump.fun continue optimizing for retail users onchain; on the other, tokenized assets, RWAs, and institutional adoption dominate the narrative as “the future.” Only a few chains and protocols still serve the more retail-oriented onchain user. How do you view this split?
Mike Dudas:
I personally like MegaETH—but the broader Ethereum L2 category isn’t an investment logic I grasp well, nor has it performed objectively well.
I suspect MegaETH will evolve into a super-app, branded as MegaETH, where users interact with diverse services, generating flywheel effects—similar to Hyperliquid. Hyperliquid itself is both brand and application, with trading activity reinforcing its underlying chain. But this is fundamentally distinct from general-purpose chains like Solana or Ethereum.
Regarding new L1s—perhaps one will achieve wild innovation (e.g., quantum computing) or resemble Bittensor (a decentralized AI network)—but we likely won’t foresee it, only recognize it retroactively.
For MegaETH, I’d value it based on application-layer revenue—not infrastructure metrics. I don’t yet know what applications will run on it—but I like the team, and the community seems active.
The same goes for Monad (a high-performance EVM-compatible L1 backed by Paradigm and other top VCs). I made an angel investment and deeply admire the team—I believe they’ve built excellent technology. But I don’t believe Monad should be valued using Solana’s framework.
Robbie: Is this a timing issue—or is Solana’s era simply different?
Mike Dudas:
Monad’s pitch sounds too similar to Ethereum and Solana—fast, cheap, retail-focused. Bittensor is completely different. So timing isn’t the main factor—differentiation is.
We invested in Plasma (a blockchain centered on stablecoin payments), believing it will become a stablecoin-centric super-app, supported by its own underlying chain. This model has merit—but it’s categorically different from Solana or Ethereum, let alone Bitcoin.
Robbie: Speaking of Plasma, our fund invested too. Tempo (another stablecoin payment firm) recently partnered with DoorDash (one of the largest U.S. food delivery platforms) on Agent payments. A year ago, stablecoin-focused blockchains were the hottest investment theme—but热度 has cooled somewhat. Still, they’re fundamentally different from traditional L1s. What’s your investment thesis for Plasma?
Mike Dudas:
Don’t think of Plasma, Arc, or Tempo as blockchains—they’re fintech companies. Their future resembles PayPal, Venmo, or Stripe: merchants, consumers, and other stakeholders choosing whose payment and settlement networks to adopt.
Tempo is a business—don’t analyze it through a “blockchain” lens. It’s backed by Sequoia and Paradigm, partnering with DoorDash, and boasts an exceptional team. Short-term fees are irrelevant—what matters is whether people transact dollars through your settlement network. Plasma follows the same logic.
Robbie: So you view these companies as payment service providers, earning fees and revenue from stablecoin payment volumes.
Mike Dudas:
Essentially, yes. But the future will be radically different. My partners Carl (formerly at Paxos and Google Wallet) and Aaron (deeply versed in AI and Agent payments) and I discuss how people transact and pay—how those behaviors will change dramatically in months versus six months ago. Honestly, I don’t know exactly how—but I’m not feigning humility.
I can safely assert: AI Agents cannot execute transactions on payment systems programmed 60 years ago. How we buy things and express financial preferences will fundamentally shift. That’s Tempo’s bet—and why we invested in Plasma.
General-purpose chains, meanwhile, face a precarious moment. We haven’t even mentioned Base (Coinbase’s Ethereum L2)—and I think Coinbase is struggling, somewhat directionless. I’m unsure what they’re doing.
Solana hasn’t clearly articulated why anyone would use a general-purpose public chain for settlement: Is it censorship resistance? Speed? Cost reduction? Why does this matter to businesses or individuals in Argentina or India? Honestly, I’m even less confident in this narrative than I was a year ago.
This is an extremely liquid—and extremely chaotic—period. The market feels disjointed. Try this exercise: Count how many major L1/L2 partnership announcements Visa has made in the past 24 months—and how many Mastercard has made. It’s pure fragmentation.
Circle vs. Tether Competitive Landscape
Robbie: Indeed, I’ve been in this industry as long as you have—and before 2020, such high-profile partnership announcements happened once per quarter—or even once per year.
Turning to recent security incidents: first Drift (a Solana-based decentralized perpetuals protocol) was hacked, then Aave and Kelp DAO suffered cross-chain attacks. Two major stablecoin issuers—Circle and Tether—took diametrically opposed stances. Circle declined to freeze funds bridged from Solana to Ethereum and subsequently laundered via Tornado Cash. Arbitrum froze 30,000 ETH days ago, while Tether froze $344M in USDT linked to a criminal organization allegedly involved in pig-butchering scams and human trafficking—potentially tied to Lazarus Group (a North Korean state-sponsored hacking group).
Their actions ran counter to public expectations. Circle is a public company, highly compliant; Tether has long been viewed as operating in gray areas. Yet Circle faced heavy criticism for not freezing funds, while Tether earned praise for doing so. How do you view the stablecoin landscape? If stablecoin supply hits $1T, will Tether command 70–80%, or will the market be more balanced?
Mike Dudas: Circle’s strategy is crystal clear: get as close as possible to CBDCs. They’re essentially saying, “Government—we’re fully aligned with you. We lobby, follow all compliance processes. If we don’t receive a subpoena, we won’t freeze funds. Your rules are our rules.” I’m exaggerating slightly—but Circle’s actions and silence tell this story. It fits their consistent tone. They were never DeFi-native.
Circle will have its place. It can be “government dollars onchain”—a better experience than my bank account. Circle wins that market—but I believe it’s vastly smaller than the total addressable market ahead.
Why? Because the boldest people—the ones building the future—and the entrepreneurs aiming to serve them won’t trust Circle. They’ll see Circle as tethered to government. And the world’s best builders—the ones creating the largest, most profitable enterprises—trust their own judgment. Circle doesn’t align with that ethos. Circle is the bald guy in a suit who’d rather let a judge dictate his actions to avoid responsibility—than make a pivotal decision to protect customers from losing hundreds of millions.
Tether and I have had disagreements—I must state that plainly. But today’s Tether is utterly different from the one I strongly criticized seven or eight years ago—when its balance sheet had glaring gaps and transparency was lacking. They restructured their organization. What I respect is their willingness to make hard calls.
These companies must make hard decisions. Honestly, no one looks at Tether and USDT and says, “This is a decentralized asset.” Once you choose to use them, the expectation is: “I may be censored; my transactions may be interfered with.” Given that premise, Tether has decisively outperformed Circle over the past month on black-and-white cases. If North Korea is stealing millions—and you can stop it—you should stop it. Circle chose the wrong side of history, and it will pay the price.
Robbie: Is there room for other stablecoin issuers?
Mike Dudas:
Undoubtedly.
First, we haven’t seen any truly scaled success outside the dollar. I believe this will happen.
Second, yield-bearing stablecoins will emerge—like USDAI. I’m certain alternatives to fiat will appear. What excited me about Bitcoin years ago is now re-emerging—denominated and pegged to real-world assets in dollars. Many will also tie to compute in radically new ways—e.g., GPU financing.
Robbie: The stablecoin-as-a-service sector was white-hot 18 months ago—but margins appear compressed now, and initial capital requirements have surged. What’s next for these firms?
Mike Dudas:
Like the blockchain market itself—it’ll boom, then consolidate. Dollar stablecoins will likely settle into a 70–20–10 structure.
The market remains unclear: Should you pursue an OCC charter? Or NYDFS licensing? Every platform with users and capital should hold those funds in Treasury-backed stablecoins. They’re not doing it yet—finding it cumbersome, still hesitant.
Once they act, they won’t pursue licenses themselves. So for Bridge, Paxos, and Zero Hash—the stablecoin-as-a-service providers—this is a massive opportunity. Banks won’t do this—it’s not core to their business. And internationally, there’s a vast, untapped currency market.
Robbie: Will Paxos IPO?
Mike Dudas:
Great question. I believe Paxos is an exceptionally valuable company—I advised them and spent time there after selling The Block. It’s a strong business. Each cycle attracts top-tier partners: first Binance, then PayPal, now Charles Schwab—with more unannounced partnerships in the pipeline. Whether Chad (Paxos’ founder and CEO) wants to be a public-company CEO—I don’t know.
Impact of AI Giant IPOs on Crypto
Robbie: Kraken has filed for IPO. Last cycle’s peak saw an IPO wave. What’s the significance of crypto company listings for the industry? We already have ETFs and diverse products—why do we need more public companies?
Mike Dudas:
In a market people care about, it’d be great. When Coinbase, Circle, and Kraken went public, people said, “What else is left to invest in? Alpha is onchain.”
But this isn’t just a crypto issue—it applies to SaaS and consumer tech too. AI is sucking all the oxygen from the room. No one cares about crypto IPOs. They’re watching SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI.
Yet there’s potential upside for crypto: After these companies go public, many early shareholders holding low-cost equity will gain liquidity—and these individuals heavily overlap with the crypto community. Early crypto and early AI share significant crossover—though some are now in prison, not just SBF.
These companies will go public next year. I can’t predict whether their stocks rise or fall—geopolitical variables are too large. But key point: Crypto companies’ market caps are far smaller than AI giants’, and the capital needed to move onchain assets is far smaller too.
Robbie: What’s your timeline view?
Mike Dudas:
Last cycle ended earlier than I expected—I thought it would extend into 2026, but it didn’t. Trump’s election timing roughly marked the top—and Trump meme coins followed. Fast-forward two years: 2027 aligns perfectly with this wave of IPOs and the four-year cycle.
I think we’re in a remarkably constructive period. Shockingly, despite all the negative news, prices haven’t fallen much. Honestly, I didn’t expect that.
Interestingly, the industry is self-correcting in ways some deem unhealthy. Tether supports Drift’s recovery process; Arbitrum freezes assets. We can debate the merits—but these are stabilization mechanisms. Most issues this cycle occurred onchain, yet centralized entities that wrecked everything last cycle are now stabilizing the onchain ecosystem. This “fusion” you mention is, in some sense, working.
Where will value ultimately reside—centralized or onchain entities? Regardless, I believe history will record this period as the most institutionally adopted era in crypto’s history. Legislation passed. We weathered the AI IPO wave. Crypto got sidelined while everyone chased AI giant IPOs—but by Q4 at the latest, once AI giants list, crypto may hit its cyclical low.
There will be a period where crypto is utterly ignored—I accept that. Then the bull case kicks in: Many crypto-interested people gain liquidity. A longer-term bull case: Will AI Agents and novel transaction methods expand crypto’s total addressable market beyond today’s size? The answer is almost certainly yes.
About Vault
Robbie: One final question. I spoke with Carl about your research on Vault (onchain asset management vaults). Aave—the largest decentralized lending protocol—was recently attacked within its pooled-lending model, exposing flaws in Aave’s curation model, LayerZero’s security model, and Kelp DAO’s entire setup. This pooled-lending model impacts all user types. Vaults are highly attractive to institutions—they want risk-manageable, parameter-controlled ways to express credit onchain, launch novel credit or RWA products. Morpho—a decentralized lending optimization protocol—has become the de facto Vault layer. What’s your specific Vault thesis?
Mike Dudas:
The core Vault problem is that even institutions—and certainly ordinary users—struggle to understand what to invest in onchain, what the risks are, how to evaluate diverse assets, and how to rebalance over time. Though the Vault concept has been hot for the past 18–24 months, professionalization remains woefully inadequate.
Morpho’s approach is essentially hands-off: It pushes all difficult decisions onto the entities listing assets on its platform. I wouldn’t say Morpho solves the problem—more accurately, it shifts responsibility.
Our portfolio company Upshift just announced a partnership with Securitize (a leading compliant tokenization platform) to conduct NAV (net asset value) analysis on every Vault on its platform—giving institutional investors confidence not just in Upshift’s valuations, but in independent, third-party professional assessments.
This isn’t a reactive response to recent attacks. Everyone knows Vaults are a mechanism to attract more dollars onchain: selecting diverse assets, packaging them, and launching structured products. But the past six weeks have sounded alarm bells—asset-selector risk management must level up.
In the Aave case, the rETH (Rocket Pool’s liquid staking ETH) to ETH exchange ratio was wholly unacceptable relative to its underlying collateral. This isn’t about blame-shifting—it’s a chain of poor decisions.
What I see now is a sharp slowdown in new asset innovation. You’ll still see massive growth—but no one will launch a $300 Vault backed by a weak asset, minimal collateral, and questionable behavior.
I’m extremely bullish on the Vault structure—but deeply unimpressed by past behavior.
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