The Catalysts for This Crypto Bull Market: AI, DeFi, Real World Assets?

As the crypto bull market gets started, Alex Pack of Hack VC dives into why he thinks crypto is still so early and how his firm believes crypto and AI will intersect.

Mar 6, 2024

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ABOUT

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In this episode of Unchained, Alex Pack, managing partner at Hack VC. Pack discusses the firm's recent $150 million fundraise, the challenges of raising capital in a bear market, and the firm's focus on early-stage Web3 infrastructure. He also shares his thoughts on the intersection of crypto and AI, the future of DeFi, and the importance of security in the crypto space. Pack believes that the current infrastructure of crypto is still in its early stages and needs significant improvement before it can reach mainstream adoption. He also sees potential in the development of more secure smart contracts and the integration of AI into decentralized applications.

Show highlights:

How Hack VC was able to raise $150 million in a bear market, especially after the blowups of FTX, 3AC, and Terra
Alex's interaction with SBF, whom he calls a "sociopath," and why he didn't invest in FTX
Hack VC's philosophy to "back hackers" in crypto
The goals behind Zuzalu, the new community that resembles Balaji Srinivasan's idea of a network state
What the main focus of Hack VC's investments are, including scalability, AI, and DeFi
Why Alex believes that "we are still so early"
How Alex believes crypto and artificial intelligence will intersect
The role of AI agents and how to use them in decentralized applications
Why he thinks that EigenLayer is a great solution for middleware applications
Alex's opinion on the modular vs. monolithic approach for scaling blockchains
How DeFi survived the last bear market, contrasted with the collapses of CeFi companies like Celsius, BlockFi and FTX
Whether algorithmic stablecoins can ever work and what Alex thinks of Ethena's USDe
How to improve security in crypto, according to Alex
Why the outcome of the Bitcoin ETFs exceeded Alex's expectations
What he believes the catalysts are for the next bull market

Thank you to our sponsors! Polkadot

Guest |

Alex Pack, Managing partner at Hack VC

Previous appearances on Unchained:

Dragonfly Capital on Why Ethereum Is So Far in the Lead

‘The Last Big Whale’: Why the Crypto Contagion of 2022 Eventually Hit Genesis

Links |

New fund

Bloomberg: Hack VC Raises $150 Million for Bets on Battered Crypto Industry

Hack VC Closes $150M Venture Fund I, Bringing AUM to $425M

Stablecoins:

Unchained:

What Is Ethena’s USDe Synethic Dollar? A Beginner’s Guide

What Is Terra and Why Did It Fail?

Why It's so Hard to Keep Stablecoins Stable

What Is Depegging in Crypto and Why Does It Occur?

What Is Real-World Asset (RWA) Tokenization? A Beginner's Guide

EigenLayer ecosystem

Unchained: What Is EigenLayer? A Guide to the Decentralized ETH Restaking Protocol

The Block: AltLayer closes $14.4 million strategic round co-led by Polychain and Hack VC

Modular vs. monolithic approach

Unchained:

What Are Modular Blockchains? A Beginner's Guide

Three Crypto Pioneers on Crypto’s Monolithic vs. Modular Debate

Crypto x AI crossover

io.net and Ritual Collaborate to Boost Global AI Compute Landscape

Ritual x EigenLayer: Restaking for AI

Unchained: 5 Use Cases of AI in Blockchain

Zuzalu

Decrypt: I Spent a Month Inside Vitalik Buterin’s Social Experiment—Here’s What It Was Really Like

Unchained Podcast is Produced by Laura Shin Media, LLC. Distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Michele Musso and Executive Producer is Jared Schwartz.

HOST

Laura Shin

Laura Shin is a crypto journalist, host of the Unchained podcast, and author of “The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze” (Public Affairs, 2022). Formerly a senior editor at Forbes, she was the first mainstream journalist to cover crypto full-time, and her podcasts and videos have had more than 15 million downloads and views. Shin has spoken about cryptocurrency at places such as TEDx San Francisco, the International Monetary Fund, Singularity University and the Oslo Freedom Forum.

She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with Honors from Stanford University and has a master of arts from Columbia University’s School of Journalism. She lives in New York City.