Written after ABCDE Capital’s exit: When VCs leave one after another, is there still a future worth building for crypto?

Crypto venture capital firm ABCDE Capital recently announced the cessation of investments, which can be said to have shocked the Asian crypto domain. As one of the few VCs adhering to "long-termism", ABCDE's quiet exit is not only regrettable but also triggers a profound reflection within the community about the future direction and viable strategies of the crypto market.

Yesterday, seeing @ABCDELabs announce the stop of investments was truly disappointing. During 2049 last year in Singapore, I chatted with two bosses @BMANLead and @DujunX about the logic of first-level transformation chain market-making/lead agency, and at that time, I could sense they sincerely wanted to support long-termism, but were also somewhat anxious about adapting to the new market environment... https://t.co/l9Kgslr5Ny pic.twitter.com/JVtySAxgfT

— Crypto V🇹🇭 (@thecryptoskanda) April 19, 2025

He points out that most failed projects simply copied the traditional enterprise "platform-application" business model, which requires scale and decreasing marginal costs, but does not require liquidity; however, liquidity itself is the core indicator in the crypto field. Once liquidity is abandoned, the project is essentially exiting the Web3 competition and cannot possibly defeat established Web2 giants:

In the crypto, liquidity is the moat; mechanism is the primary asset, not the so-called application product.

The crypto field is not a casino, but a proving ground for future finance

Facing the widespread criticism of the crypto market as a "casino", the crypto advocate disagrees. He believes traditional VCs mistakenly equate "speculation" with "gambling", overlooking that Crypto's essence is a decentralized, highly efficient financial parallel alternative system.

He explains the fundamental purpose of finance: "More efficiently and quickly matching transactions continuously, allowing buyers and sellers to complete value exchange." This demonstrates that finance is not a product, but a mechanism or system.

Liquidity and volatility are not just market drivers, but the core of value creation. Assets that cannot be sold in traditional finance similarly cannot circulate on-chain.

(Will VCs be eliminated if they don't keep up? Crypto venture capital bids farewell to the token issuance era, and may usher in a major reshuffle)

The meaning of Crypto is obvious: Granting asset creation rights

Regarding Crypto's true value, the crypto advocate points out that with the emergence of public chains, finance is completely rewritten, allowing everyone to create trading and investment mechanisms at low cost and without permission. This is not just a tenfold improvement in traditional financial efficiency, but a decentralized revolution of asset creation rights:

Allowing everyone to have the right to create assets is itself a more powerful and fairer logic.

Despite numerous challenges, he believes the answer has long been floating in the market, just obscured by a "red cloth" for most people. That red cloth is precisely the inherent Web2 thinking framework and short-term speculative greed.

The crypto industry still awaits a "Black Ship event"

ABCDE Capital's exit can be both a warning and an opportunity. The crypto advocate states that the crypto market is underestimated and still awaits a "Black Ship" similar to the Western approach to Japan, breaking existing order and pulling currently marginal crypto assets and markets into mainstream pricing consensus mechanisms.