Is crypto dead or is there hope for 2026? With Jordi Alexander and Zaheer

Speakers

Jordi Alexander — Founder/CIO, Seleni Capital

Zaheer Ebtikar — Founder/CIO, Split Capital

Tim Copeland — Head of Growth, The Block

Summary

Market Sentiment Dislocation: Despite a "9/10" bad sentiment score and a massive unwind event on October 10th (likely 2025), the speakers argue that crypto prices have bottomed, particularly in alts. The "pain" is driven by distribution from ancient whales and a lack of new retail capital, not fundamental failure.
The Death of the "L1 Premium": The era of launching a high-throughput Layer 1 and getting a 9-figure valuation is over. Block space is now abundant and commoditized. The VC thesis of "scarce block space" has been proven wrong.
Commodity Super Cycle via Crypto Rails: A major shift is occurring where crypto is becoming the preferred venue for trading traditional commodities (Gold/Silver) due to superior access and leverage. Volatility has migrated from crypto native assets to commodities.
Product over Infrastructure: The market has shifted from "infrastructure speculation" to "product realization." Winners in 2026 are apps that generate revenue and solve specific problems (e.g., trading, stablecoins), not general-purpose chains.

Trade Ideas

Ticker	Direction	Speaker	Thesis	Time
XAU	LONG	Jordi Alexander Founder/CIO, Seleni Capital	"We're getting a bit of a commodity super cycle... retail participants in China that are like lining up and bidding it up." Volatility is the lifeblood of traders. Crypto assets have become stagnant/correlated, while commodities are seeing massive geopolitical and retail-driven volatility. Traders will migrate to where the action is. Crypto is simply the rail (via Hyperliquid or tokenized assets) to express the trade, but the asset to own is the commodity itself. LONG. Bet on the asset class that has captured the "gambling/speculative" energy that used to belong to memecoins. Fed policy reversion (hawkishness) strengthens the USD and crushes commodity prices.	9:44
CANTON /RWA INFRASTRUCTURE	WATCH	Jordi Alexander Founder/CIO, Seleni Capital	"Canton is one of the projects that is really kind of bringing some of the traditional Wall Street players together... we invested along with Goldman Sachs and Citadel." While retail crypto is depressed, institutional adoption is quietly accelerating (UBS hiring crypto heads, banks tokenizing assets). These institutions will not use public, permissionless chains for core settlement due to privacy/compliance needs. They will use "Cabal" chains like Canton. WATCH. This represents the "adult" table of crypto. It may not have a retail-pump token immediately, but it represents the infrastructure that survives the purge. Slow adoption cycle; "Corporate blockchains" have a history of failing to gain network effects.	25:12
HYPE	LONG	Jordi Alexander Founder/CIO, Seleni Capital	Jordi states Hyperliquid is "probably the only thing that's really come out of recent times that's done tremendously well." Zaheer notes that "the second highest liquidation event was on XAU [Gold] on Hyperliquid." The market is suffering from "financial nihilism" and a lack of organic crypto use cases. However, the demand for leverage and trading remains constant. Hyperliquid has successfully captured the "Commodity Super Cycle" flow by allowing seamless on-chain trading of Gold/Silver/S&P500. It is effectively replacing the "casino" function of centralized exchanges with better UX. LONG. This is the clear winner of the "Product Era." It creates actual revenue and captures the volatility migrating from alts to commodities. Regulatory crackdown on permissionless derivatives; failure of the "HIPP3" permissionless market structure.	35:10