Crypto has to be more ‘efficient’ with the money being used

“Be prepared to do more with less,” Framework Ventures’ Michael Anderson said

article-image

Framework Ventures co-founder Michael Anderson | DAS 2025 New York by Mike Lawrence for Blockworks

share

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


“Be prepared to do more with less,” Framework Ventures’ Michael Anderson said on this week’s Empire round-up

Empire co-host Santiago Santos joined the Bell Curve round-up to chat about the cycle, and he talked a lot about what this moment means for founders, given that the overall attitude around crypto is pretty bullish…and yet it’s a tough time to build in crypto. 

As Dragonfly’s Rob Hadick told us yesterday, the valuations are pretty high at this point, and Anderson added another interesting layer: This industry has to be “efficient with the money that we’re using.”

“ There is generally going to be less money than people expect. Every year over the last five years, we’ve had less money than the previous year from a venture-allocation perspective,” he added. 

For the founders out there, Santos offered some advice from his unique position of being both a VC and a founder himself: Keep at least 24 months of runway and “understand your position in the stack.”

Which means having an understanding of a monetization plan. 

Santos added that Facebook, back when it was planning to go public — and even after it IPO’d — didn’t have a monetization plan. It actually got dinged by investors for it, if you look at the historical data.

“It just said, we’re gonna build a killer product that people love and we’ll then figure out how to monetize,” Santos said. But as crypto evolves, the path towards monetization models will also become more clear as users come onboard and — as Santos put it himself — “ if you have attention of the user, you can monetize the shit out of it.”

So go forth and monetize…one day.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Hilton Park Lane

Tues - Wed, November 10 - 11, 2026

DAS London is a two-day summit at the Hilton Park Lane in London featuring conversations between the builders, allocators, and policy makers who are shaping the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the UK, Europe, and North America.

Marina Bay Sands Singapore

Wednesday, October 07, 2026

DAS Asia is a a single-day summit at Marina Bay Sands Singapore featuring conversations between the builders, investors, and global leaders are shaping the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in Asia & North America.

recent research

Hyperliquid Purple (4).jpg

Research

HIP-3 has successfully scaled market creation on Hyperliquid, but it has not yet created a sustainable competitive deployer layer. Growth mode, USDH depreciation, high auction costs, and the 500K HYPE stake have made the model increasingly difficult for non-TradeXYZ deployers, leaving market creation concentrated around one clear outlier. We look at why deployer participation has slowed, what that means for HIP-3’s long-term design, and how tiered exchanges or temporary auction-fee relief could make smaller and more niche markets economically viable.

Newsletter

The Breakdown

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Blockworks Research

Unlock crypto's most powerful research platform.

Our research packs a punch and gives you actionable takeaways for each topic.

SubscribeGet in touch

Blockworks Inc.

133 W 19th St., New York, NY 10011

Blockworks Network

NewsPodcastsNewslettersEventsRoundtablesAnalytics