Our THESIS

We launched NIV in 2020 with this simple thesis: crypto is the next great enabling technology. At the time, it was unclear if the industry would grow, and even whether it would survive. The infrastructure was primitive, clear rules were lacking, and many people considered broad adoption a fantasy. 

The ensuing years were a roller coaster of booms and busts. There was steady innovation in the underlying technology, but the field remained a wild west. Bad actors dominated the headlines, and the overwhelming majority of on-chain usage was related to speculation.  

Today, it is clear to us that crypto is here to stay.‍

Bitcoin has crossed the chasm to become a mainstream financial asset. Stablecoins are being used for trillions of dollars in annual transaction volume. DeFi is a battle-hardened ecosystem of trading, lending, and investment primitives that clear billions in daily volume. Mature blockchains now offer abundant blockspace at near-zero cost, enabling new use cases in financial services, AI, DePIN, gaming, social media, and more.

The old world is taking notice. Legacy asset management firms are launching ETFs and tokenizing their own funds. FinTech incumbents are going all in on stablecoins. And major Wall Street institutions are creating their own networks and bringing more use cases on-chain. Meanwhile, there’s been a dramatic sea change in crypto policy in Washington, with leaders on both sides of the aisle pushing for more regulatory clarity and smart legislation.
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We believe we are entering a golden age of crypto adoption. 

We believe crypto is ushering in a third era of finance, which we call Finance 3.0. The first phase began in ancient societies and was physical, based on tangible currency and paper certificates. The rise of money, banking, and capital markets during this era was critical to the growth of civilization. 

The second phase began in the 1960’s with dematerialization, whereby currencies and securities were converted into electronic records and processes. This unlocked a huge wave of economic growth and turned finance into a gargantuan industry, but resulted in a “kludge” of inefficient silo’d systems for recording ownership and processing transactions.

We are now entering the third phase, in which decentralized blockchains enable self-custody, P2P payments, tokenization, and smart contracts.  We believe blockchains will transform the kludge into an interoperable network-of-networks that hosts the world’s financial assets. All of this will serve to make the global economy more efficient and its people more innovative and prosperous. 

Finance 3.0 is not just about “financial services” – the new infrastructure can be applied to building new networks and upgrade user experiences in categories such as AI, DePin, social media, gaming, new “network states”, and more. While the industry remains nascent and messy, use cases that deliver non-speculative value to their end customers and underpin sustainable growing businesses are gaining steam across the board. 

We believe crypto is about more than speculation. 

‍Ultimately, we care about crypto’s impact on human beings. Our mission is to back companies and protocols enabling greater economic efficiency and economic freedom. Combined, these two elements can unleash prosperity for real people across the developed and developing world, by opening up new capital markets, lowering the costs of payments and remittances, and allowing individuals to earn, save, spend, and invest with less friction and fewer limitations. 

We aim to do this by building a principled firm that practices Big Picture Thinking, values Long Term Relationships, and prioritizes Values that Transcend Profits. On the latter point, while our primary goal is to create as much financial value as possible for all partners in our ecosystem, we want to do it in a way that comports with our human values and that we’ll always be proud of. We don’t claim to have perfected this balance. NIV, like all ambitious businesses, is a continual work in progress. 

But the key to accomplishing all of this is clear: we must partner with founders who have what we call the “three I’s” – extraordinary intelligence, sustained intensity, and unquestionable integrity. We exist to back these founders, and it is our great honor to support them on their journeys to transform the world.