Has Crypto Lost Its Soul? (feat. Jez) - The Chopping Block
Speakers
Haseeb Qureshi — Managing Partner at Dragonfly
— Dragonfly managing partner
Tarun Chitra — CEO of Gauntlet
— Gauntlet CEO
Tom Schmidt — General Partner at Dragonfly
— Dragonfly GP
Summary
- The panel debates whether crypto has lost its idealistic "cypherpunk" soul, noting a shift from "changing the world" (2017) to "financial nihilism" and memecoins (2024).
- A consensus emerges that the "Web3 ownership economy" (Uber on blockchain) failed and was usurped by AI, while "Crypto Finance" (Stablecoins, DeFi, Perps) is the only vertical actually working at scale.
- The group analyzes the Iran/Israel conflict, noting that price discovery happened in DeFi (Gold/Silver/Oil perps) over the weekend while TradFi was closed.
- Prediction markets (Polymarket/Kalshi) are discussed as superior information signals compared to traditional news, though they are considered "toys" for large-scale capital deployment compared to the underlying assets.
Trade Ideas
"Stable coins were also a paragraph in the Ethereum white paper now they're 300 billion... actually creating permissionless finance." While the "metaverse" and "social" aspects of crypto are down, the financial utility (Stablecoins/DeFi) is hitting all-time highs in usage. Coinbase (COIN) is the primary US-listed beneficiary of stablecoin growth (via USDC revenue) and the bridge to this "working" financial layer. LONG Coinbase as the proxy for the only crypto vertical (Stablecoins/Finance) that has achieved product-market fit. Regulatory action against stablecoin issuers or declining interest income on stablecoin reserves.
"There was a pitch... that every industry is going to be left behind and vanquished if they don't adopt crypto... Right now you see that AI is doing that and it has lived up to the promises." The speaker explicitly states that the "Web3/Everything on Blockchain" narrative from 2017-2022 failed to disrupt general industries, but AI has successfully taken that mantle. Capital and technological disruption have shifted decisively to AI. LONG the AI infrastructure leaders (Nvidia, Microsoft, Google) as they are fulfilling the disruption promise that crypto failed to deliver in non-financial sectors. AI valuation bubbles or regulatory crackdowns on AI development.
"If you believe that they're going to missile strike, buying oil is the correct asset trade. It's much more liquid. It'll move asymmetrically in the direction that you want." The speaker argues that while prediction markets (like Polymarket) offer signal on geopolitical events (e.g., Iran conflict), they are capital-constrained and inefficient for profit generation. The actionable trade is to use the signal from prediction markets to trade the deep-liquid underlying commodities that will react to the event (Oil and Gold). LONG Oil (USO) and Gold (GLD) as the correct vehicles to express geopolitical volatility views. Geopolitical de-escalation leading to a rapid drop in commodity risk premiums.
Up Next
This Unchained (Chopping Block) video, published March 05, 2026, features Haseeb Qureshi, Tarun Chitra, Jez discussing COIN, NVDA, MSFT, GOOGL, USO, GLD. 3 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.
Speakers: Haseeb Qureshi, Tarun Chitra, Jez · Tickers: COIN, NVDA, MSFT, GOOGL, USO, GLD