Reassessing the Fit Between Founders and the Market in a Crypto Bear Market

Why are people from Goldman Sachs, Citadel, and Stripe rushing in now?

Written by: Paul Veradittakit

Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

Summary

The fit between founders and the market is the most reliable signal in venture capital. While the market, regulations, and products are constantly changing, the fit between specific founders and specific markets remains the only constant.

We have never seen so many founders fitting the crypto market. The truly interesting questions have converged on two tracks: AI and fintech, and the most serious players are coming from Citadel, Stripe, Block, Nvidia, and Goldman Sachs------because the truly difficult problem------institutional-level financial infrastructure, has finally become an interesting issue.

We look for four traits: deep domain expertise, high proactivity, unfair networks, and obsession. Every project we backed in this bear market, from Offchain Labs to Ondo, possesses all four.

Every founder starts by asking the wrong questions. They first ask, "Is this the right market?" The real question that can predict who will win is: Are you inherently suited to win in the market you choose?

Markets will change, products will change, regulations will change. The founder-market fit is the only thing that can transcend all of this and continue to compound, and it is the only thing that can continue to compound when prices stop rising.

This is easy to say in a bull market, but it must be faced head-on in the current market. Let’s lay out the real background: Bitcoin has dropped about half from its high of $126,000 in October last year, market sentiment is fearful, and capital and attention have largely shifted to AI------last year AI attracted about $211 billion, nearly half of all venture capital, while blockchain only saw about $20 billion. Artemis data shows that the volume of blockchain code submissions has decreased by about 75% since early 2025, and a number of the industry's most prominent players have announced a shift to AI. These are facts, but what they truly mean requires further examination.

The departing developers are mostly those who entered during the last bull market; now, the majority of code is being written by more experienced contributors. Artemis interprets this as consolidation rather than collapse. Talent has not disappeared------GitHub added about 36 million developers last year, with overall submission volume growing by about 25%, almost all directed towards AI.

The crypto winter is a clarifying moment. It allows you to see which builders are anchored to a mission and which are merely anchored to the prospect of rising prices.

So the question is never whether the market will come back, but when it does, who will still be standing, and who will have become stronger. The answer to every cycle boils down to the fit between specific founders and specific markets. This is the founder-market fit, and it is the most enduring signal.

We have never seen so many founders fitting the crypto market

This is where your perspective on "talent outflow" should truly change. In past cycles, talent was diluted across hundreds of speculative narratives, with most people merely chasing prices. Now, the truly interesting questions have converged on two verticals: AI and fintech, and the caliber of founders choosing to solve these problems with blockchain is the highest I have seen in four cycles.

The market has matured enough for serious players to treat it as a career, and the data is global. Specifically:

By 2025, the value settled on stablecoin chains will exceed the combined total of Visa and Mastercard, approximately $33 trillion, with about 60% already being business-to-business. This includes real economic activities such as corporate treasury, cross-border settlements, and vendor payments, rather than mere speculation.

Nearly 90% of surveyed financial institutions are using or piloting stablecoins; the amount of U.S. Treasury bonds held by stablecoin issuers has surpassed that of Germany or Saudi Arabia; Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and BNY Mellon have all launched tokenized products.

Tokenized real-world assets on public chains have surpassed $30 billion, growing over 400% since early 2025. The tracks are being laid globally: the GENIUS Act provides a federal framework for U.S. stablecoins, while Europe’s MiCA creates licenses applicable throughout the EU, and Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UAE are taking proactive political and regulatory stances.

BCG predicts that by 2030, the scale of tokenized assets will reach $16 trillion. When a serious version of a problem arises, serious founders will follow.

The clearest evidence is who is showing up. The truly difficult problem in blockchain now is institutional-level financial infrastructure, which has been the issue that the best operators in traditional finance have been solving throughout their careers. Nathan Allman left Goldman Sachs' digital asset team to found Ondo, now managing a product matrix of about $2.6 billion, bringing treasury bonds and other assets onto the chain. Ed Felten transitioned from being a Princeton professor and White House official to co-founding Offchain Labs and building Arbitrum. In our own company, my partner Franklin Bi also comes from JPMorgan's Onyx blockchain team. The founders walking into our conference room are leaving Goldman Sachs, Citadel, Stripe, and Block------they are not here to speculate on narratives, but because the truly difficult problem has finally become an interesting one.

The Four Dimensions We Underwrite

When I meet founders in such a market, I look for four things.

Deep domain expertise. You have lived in the market, not just looked at the map. In a bear market, buyers only schedule truly important meetings, and technical depth can crush a pretty pitch every time. Ed Felten spent a lifetime on the hardest issues in systems and security before co-founding Offchain Labs and building Arbitrum. We led the seed round precisely because this depth allowed the team to see the scaling issue while the market was still arguing.

High proactivity. Clearly demonstrate your judgment on market direction to mature, skeptical people until they want to build on top of you. Paul Frambot founded Morpho in Paris at the age of twenty based on a counter-consensus judgment: DeFi would win in the form of infrastructure, not another application------it is a layer embedded directly by brands and institutions, rather than built by them. Because of this, Coinbase's crypto lending runs on Morpho, Robinhood's on-chain yield product is built on it, and Apollo's credit uses the same track. He didn’t win anyone over through marketing; he simply saw the shape of the market earlier.

Unfair networks. The right relationships can allow you to act faster than anyone else; a warm introduction is worth more than any cold start. Jeremy Allaire launched USDC at the bottom of the last bear market in September 2018, binding it to Coinbase from day one, which became its distribution engine. The market took nearly two years to turn, but Circle was always building, making USDC one of the two major dollar stablecoins relied upon for on-chain economies. What an unfair network buys you is the space to continue delivering in the winter, so that when the market catches up, the track is already yours. We have always been investors in Circle.

Obsession. People leave when things get tough; those with obsession stay across cycles, persisting long before it pays off------the kind of belief that kept Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, and Adam Back committed to digital cash for decades without a market or money. The grounded version is Alchemy. Nikil Viswanathan and Joe Lau shut down a viral consumer app to create a blockchain data product, discovering that the underlying infrastructure was the real jackpot, building Alchemy into the industry’s default developer platform in every cycle since 2017. We support them because they will never stop. This is a trait you won’t see on a resume, yet it is the most important.

To Founders Already in the Field

Belief is the Fuel of the Winter

In a bull market, price is the product, and momentum does the work for founders. Capital is cheaper, hiring is easier, and every release gets attention------regardless of its worth. In a bear market, products are truly products; those chasing prices are washed out, leaving behind the truly resilient builders. The bear market strips away all comfortable momentum; the only thing that can push founders forward is belief.

The true founder-market fit is essentially belief, and belief is an observable output. A founder who understands their market to that depth will continue to build when tokens drop 50% and headlines turn to AI, because they can see the endpoint that the market has yet to price. This is also the least crowded time. When capital and attention leave, the noise also goes: there are fewer teams chasing the same idea, less competition among engineers, and the market you truly want to own is no longer being inflated. The winter gives you what the bull market can never provide------time to build quietly when no one is watching.

Moreover, capital is actually there, which surprises many. Most blockchain funds raised capital in the bull market, so the money promised at the top will continue to flow through the winter. The next strategy is straightforward: use this belief to recruit and retain talent, shift towards the true product-market fit in your field, and complete the next round of financing as the market accelerates into the next cycle. The only thing worth adjusting is the runway------aim to raise close to three years, rather than the usual 18 to 24 months, because winters are longer than anyone expects, and those who plan ahead are the ones still standing when the shift occurs. This is also beneficial for us. With valuations down and holdings up, it is the best time to enter.

If You Are Still Inside Goldman Sachs, Citadel, or Stripe

This section is specifically for you. The truly difficult problems in digital assets are no longer clever consumer applications. They are institutional-level financial infrastructure: settlement, credit, custody, compliance------the less glamorous underlying machinery you are already working on every day. For years, this skill set has been mismatched with digital assets. Now, it is the entire game.

This is a noteworthy shift. You don’t need to have been here for years, nor do you need to time the bottom. You need to understand a market that traditional finance understands better than crypto natives, and start building when the space is quiet enough to do so. The winter is not a risk; it is a proving ground; tourists have left, the noise has gone, making it easier instead. The founder-market fit is what can still compound when prices stop rising, and the fit between operators like you and this specific problem may be the strongest in the current market.

To Founders Already in the Field: Stay grounded and keep building. The founder-market fit is what can still compound when prices stop rising, and this season is the time to test it. Fit allows it to stand firm.

Founders defining the next cycle are not waiting for it to arrive. They are being quietly activated by those who understand their market too well to be scared off by token prices. Every truly important category in blockchain has been built this way------by those inherently suited to build it, in a winter that sent everyone else home.

So the real question is never whether the market will come back. But when it does, are you still standing in the market you are inherently suited to win? If that is you, we hope to see you before the rest of the market remembers you exist.