Ideas
DeFi is a multi-decade theme
DeFi has reached product-market fit and remains a multi-decade investment theme. Coinbase Ventures was early in Uniswap and Morpho, and the category continues to evolve with battle-tested protocols and room to reimagine traditional financial instruments onchain.
Onchain social is contrarian long-term
Onchain social is still early and has not yet found killer product-market fit, but Coinbase Ventures sees a contrarian long-term opportunity; the winning version will likely look different from Web2 social and include a financialization component.
Prediction markets have mainstream utility
Prediction markets have gone mainstream because they combine retail speculative demand with useful information production; Coinbase Ventures backed Polymarket and Kalshi, which are racing to integrate into major platforms.
Stablecoin payments have 100x penetration
Stablecoins are a better way to move money—programmable, instant, low-cost—and have 10-100x penetration potential as they unbundle traditional payments. The growth is in stablecoin-powered apps and infrastructure such as B2C/B2B payments, FX, and remittances, with fintech-like companies positioned to disrupt incumbents; Bridge and Privy are examples of the payment stack being rewritten. He prefers fintech-like companies over issuers or token projects.
ReDay growth in ex-US remittances
Coinbase Ventures invested in ReDay, which enables remittances and stablecoin payments in Asia and ex-US regions and is growing rapidly; it is a concrete example of stablecoin penetration taking the shape of a fintech company.
Onchain markets for everything expand
Crypto's superpower is enabling 24/7 global liquid markets for anything put onchain. Coinbase Ventures expects real-world asset tokenization and perpetual futures to expand, including perps for equities and gold, and is backing protocols, specialized frontends, exchange infrastructure, and AMMs that bring unique assets onchain.
Privacy becomes mainstream crypto priority
Privacy is becoming a mainstream crypto priority; institutional allocators increasingly recognize that privacy solutions are necessary for the crypto economy to scale, making it a key investment area.
Agent economy uses onchain money
Coinbase Ventures expects an agent-based commerce economy with billions of agents transacting and meaningful GDP flowing through agents; machines will pay machines with internet-native money, requiring onchain rails, identity, KYC, and API frameworks. This is where top technical talent is experimenting.
AI agent tokens become AI slop
The first generation of AI agent tokens—LLMs or agents that trade or act on your behalf and have their own token—is interesting experimentation but probably not a durable long-term use case; it likely trends toward AI slop.
Decentralized AI training counters centralization
Generative AI is highly centralizing; blockchain networks can counterbalance this through decentralized training, attribution, and user-data ownership, enabling grassroots participation in model outputs. It is early R&D but where significant value can be generated.
Vanna pools private data with ownership
Coinbase Ventures invested in Vanna Labs, which builds data DAOs where users contribute private/personal data into pools that models can train on. Users receive attribution and ownership of the resulting monetization, addressing AI demand for non-public training data.
OpenMind incentivizes robotics training data
Coinbase Ventures invested in OpenMind, which is building a training network for robotics data. Crypto incentives can solve the hard problem of aggregating the right volume of decentralized robotics training data.
Four-year Bitcoin cycle may be broken
The classic four-year Bitcoin cycle may no longer hold because Bitcoin ETFs, institutional adoption, retirement-account exposure, and dispersion of liquidity/attention across thousands of tradable assets have changed market structure. The market may be transitioning to a long-term token-picker regime rather than the old cycle.
Fundamental crypto tokens offer mispricing
With the old cycle framework weakening and thousands of assets launching, the opportunity is shifting to a long-term token-picker market: projects with real revenue, value capture, and usage may be mispriced in the current environment.
This Milk Road Daily video, published January 26, 2026,
features Hoolie Tejwani
discussing DEFI, UNI, MORPHO, Onchain social, PREDICTION MARKETS, POLYMARKET, KALSHI, Stablecoin-powered apps/infrastructure, Bridge, Privy, ReDay, Internet capital markets, Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), Onchain perpetual futures, AMMs, Privacy, AI-SECTOR, AI agent tokens, Decentralized AI training networks, Data DAOs, Vanna Labs, OpenMind, BTC, Fundamentals-driven crypto tokens.
14 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.
Speakers:
Hoolie Tejwani
· Tickers:
DEFI,
UNI,
MORPHO,
Onchain social,
PREDICTION MARKETS,
POLYMARKET,
KALSHI,
Stablecoin-powered apps/infrastructure,
Bridge,
Privy,
ReDay,
Internet capital markets,
Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs),
Onchain perpetual futures,
AMMs,
Privacy,
AI-SECTOR,
AI agent tokens,
Decentralized AI training networks,
Data DAOs,
Vanna Labs,
OpenMind,
BTC,
Fundamentals-driven crypto tokens
