Crypto In 2025, Is DAT Season Over & Market Outlook With Jordi Alexander

Everyone mentioned this on the show the other day, but Blockworks just co-hosted an amazing event in Korea with Story Protocol. Really excited. We had a bunch of great speakers. Arthur Hayes, Caroline Pham, a bunch of big like K-pop and Korean entertainment folks, but also our very own Felix, who's the host of Forward Guidance, was there. He sat down with Jordy Alexander. I listened to the conversation. It's an amazing, amazing, amazing conversation about just state of the markets, perps, dApps, and we wanted to release it on Empire as a little bonus. So hope you enjoy this episode with Felix and Jordy Alexander. Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice, or necessarily the views of Blockworks. Our hosts, guests, and the Blockworks team may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.

All right, everybody, welcome to another episode of Empire, and Obviously I'm not Janno. I'm Felix from Forward Guidance, but I'm going to do my best Janno impression here in Seoul. We're recording at the Origin Summit in partnership with Story Protocol and Blockworks, and I'm super excited to be joined by Jordy Alexander, founder of Selena Capital. What's going on, Jordy?

Good. Good to chat. A lot of energy going on.

Yeah, a lot's happening. You're just fresh off a panel. How'd that go?

Good. You know, there's a lot of people engaged. They had a panel fully in Korean and There's a lot of people engaged here.

Yeah, yeah. Super cool for sure. Yeah, well, I just want to get a read of where your head's at right now on the crypto markets. It feels like when I just scroll through the timeline right now, it's like half the people are looking at the classic 4-year cycle type idea and saying, all right, well, we're 90, 95% of the way there. Time to, time to get out. Then you have the other half that's saying 4-year cycles are dead. TradFi is here. You have a pretty constructive macro environment. What's your read? Where are we at?

It's so confusing because the macro is amazing. Gold is skyrocketing. Stocks are doing well. And so you would think that, you know, Bitcoin would be following and it's not yet. It's, it's been lackluster. You just have random alts popping off really hard. So there is liquidity. It's just sort of concentrating in a narrative, a theme, and then it'll go to the next one a week later, two weeks later. So I'm not bearish overall, but it does have signs that we're, you know, I don't believe in the 4-year cycle, but I do think that we're in the, like, you know, we had the Bitcoin, we had the ETH, ETH had its moment. Yeah. We had the Solana moment that was always gonna be short. Now we're, we're having a little bit of like the tail alts moment that usually doesn't end well. Yeah.

So we got a pretty big liquidation cascade yesterday.

Yeah. That, that might have just been the beginning.

Yeah.

It feels like, you know, you know, even the, the darlings like the hyper liquid token, uh, you know, is down a lot. Um, so I, I feel like we're probably due for a reset and then maybe kind of if gold is doing well, Bitcoin kind of leads the way and we get back up. I don't think we go into like a, a bear market.

Mm-hmm. So you still have the mind, yeah, 4-year cycle is not really a thing anymore. Is that mostly because of just the type of marginal buyer there is now in the market or what, what do you think? Or did you never believe in it?

I know I believe that it was possible when you were dealing with very large halvings.

Yeah, right.

And when you were dealing with these macro cycles that have now been completely wiped away because the Fed can't allow any kind of dip when you have $35 trillion in debt. So we're just going to be printing our way out. So I don't think we're going to have a real bear market. And the fact that the government is doing crypto themselves, they're all doing the mining and the DeFi and all of this stuff. So it's, it's way too soon. I think the, the next real dip maybe comes, you know, when you get midterm elections, maybe if that doesn't go well. But, um, yeah, this is just going to be a flush out and then we'll resume back up.

Yeah, I agree with that. It's just like when I look at the macro environment, like this is what Bitcoin is for, right? Like, and obviously we've seen these times where gold runs first and then Bitcoin chops around and then it's happening at this time where there's just so much leverage built up in alts right now. It's a tough situation. So I'm definitely in agreement with you. Just feels like there's—

I saw this metric that said the liquidation that just happened was like the largest in a long time. Like, it barely, like, really—

I know.

Yeah, people are going off the risk curve. There's a lot of people trying to catch the next thing. I mean, we can talk about the PerpDEX war.

Yeah, well, to your point about dispersion markets, it feels like little things are popping off. The thing that's popping off right now is the PerpDEX war. You got You got Hyperliquid, obviously, but now you got Lido, which is coming up, and then you have Aster, which is the Binance Hyperliquid. What's, yeah, what's your thought? How do you think about all of this?

Yeah, it's so weird because, you know, the, the perp deck space is a space that, you know, I've probably been the most involved in over the last many years. I've really kind of been on the ground at, um, working with the founders of all these firms. DYDX onwards. And it's crazy that, you know, the fact that this has become a sudden meta now, it makes sense because the one big winner of the cycle has been hyper liquid. And a lot of people have missed a lot of that and they're, you know, wanting to get involved in that vertical. Now, you know, I'll caution all the newbies who are just getting into the perp dex situation that, you know, we've seen amazing perp dexes, even like Vertex was a great Perp DEX, and it was just hard for them to get the token up. I mean, it was trading, you know, very low compared to what these things are, and it was a great product. So you, you can very easily get lost in, um, you know, owning the exchange narrative. That said, I think, um, Lighter has done fantastic. Uh, I am an angel investor in Lighter, so, um, I don't want to be biased. I think objectively Zero fees is a great feature.

Totally.

And they're really focusing on getting the right user flow for retail because that will kind of bring in— and that's what Jeff always was using as a philosophy is the market makers will come if there's organic flow. And then you have the new ones. You have the one on BSC and Base, which seem to be I'll just say like the token price being in the billions, maybe is a lot of excitement and we'll see how that settles down. The tricky thing with these perp dexes that I've gone through for years, you have to balance giving airdrops. And this is what Hyperliquid's finding now. Like, do they do a season 2 and then they give out another 10% and then that's not gonna do well for the token. 'Cause that's just gonna be, you know, like $5 billion worth of selling.

Yeah.

Or do they not do it and then they start losing customers to people who will do it? So it becomes very tricky to balance emissions of airdrops because you want that excitement and then that's going to hurt the token price. It's a very tricky spot. And I think even Aster, you know, they're potentially going to do an airdrop.

Yeah.

But the token's already too high to absorb a big airdrop. So it's very tricky.

Yeah, 100%. And then, yeah, you have the situation coming up where there's going to be these quote unquote unlocks for Hyperliquid 2 coming up at a time where retail's going to— there's so much like excitement from retail that's like, okay, well, I miss Hyperliquid farm. I'm going to go farm like crazy Lido. I'm gonna go farm like crazy Aster. It just feels like anytime people go for the catch-up farm, it never works out that well. Like, do you think there's even something to do there? Is it worth even farming or just like stick to what you know?

I think, I think in this case, uh, there is, I, um, the category is so big and Hyperliquid was so much further than everybody else that there is a room for, you know, someone to trade at, you know, $5-10 billion instead of $50 billion. Um, so, you know, there's a lot of gaming obviously going on. People just trying to wash volume in different accounts. There's a lot of this stuff. Um, I think as a regular user, you know, deciding where to spend your time, um, is tough. Maybe kind of make an account in several of these. The reality is these airdrops can be quite good and it's a lot of free money. Like, you remember Hyperliquid, people were getting liquidated and losing money and then the airdrop was like more than—

Made up that loss.

More than— Yeah. So I think that can repeat.

Yeah, I do too. All right, other than Perp DEXs, what are you excited about? We're obviously at an Origin Summit talking about AI, talking about programmable intellectual property.

Yeah.

What do you think about all of that? Where's your head at?

I mean, look, AI is a category I've been very bullish on, Web3 AI, for, you know, the longest time. I think we're due for like a resurgence of a theme. And honestly, compared to like the, the DAT season and, you know, the Perp season, like I said, I have a soft spot for it, but then I'm also like, these Some of these BS, like some of those tokens are doing something else. I would love to have an AI season part 2 that's maybe built on some cool new things. Maybe it's Q4, maybe it's Q1, but I'm expecting that that will come. So I'm staying very close to the category. Yeah, I think we just need a few killer apps that are bringing AI into crypto rails and it's going to happen.

Yeah. Cool new things, new killer apps. Like, is there any more specifics you can get into of what you're interested? Obviously right here it's like we're taking Web2 and we're bringing it into Web3 rails. And then I think you mentioned you're excited too about what Pudgy Penguins is doing, but taking Web3, bringing it to Web2, like, yeah, paint some color there.

Yeah. There's so many directions that things can play out. You know, I just like to keep a wide net. Yeah. Because you don't, you get so surprised. As an investor, like the things that pop off sometimes, it's not like, you know, I invest in something as like a, oh, I like the founder, he's a nice guy. I don't like the idea, but I'll just put some money in and that does incredibly well. And then the really hype stuff doesn't. So we'll see. I mean, we just invested in a company called Everlyn that does, you know, video generation and you can tokenize that and has like a lot of serious backing. Kind of coming back to the IP theme, I think like apps that really, um, bridge the two worlds of Web2 and Web3 are, are gonna potentially be the new, uh, explosive thing and maybe the next Polymarket. So we'll see. Um, you know, like from a first principle standpoint, trying to think through, okay, like what exactly should go on a blockchain? And you, you can go really far down that rabbit hole and sometimes you just get surprised by by what actually pops off.

Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Earlier you mentioned dat season and when you mentioned dat season, you kind of said it in like a past tense.

Yeah. It's a past tense, honestly.

Is it over?

I think, I think it's over because, you know, we've done some of these and even the ones where the token has done very well since, you know, since when the dat sort of marked it and maybe tokens gone up. Like, you know, you look at BNB, I mean, it's gone up a lot. There is not that much appetite for retail to buy most of these, especially if they're not, you know, BTC, ETH. And even the BTC with ETH ones, I mean, the margin, the MMFs are compressing so hard. I think it's over. Maybe because I want it to be over. Same. It never really made a lot of sense.

Yeah, yeah.

I think, um, we're starting to see the pitches— we get a lot of pitches for these dads still. They're starting to evolve, which is good. They're becoming more like operating companies, trying to actually have cash flow and revenue, rather than just, you know, this is a treasury, this is just a pile of gold, we're not going to touch it. In some cases they can't even touch it because the foundation won't even, you know, give them like the, you know, various ones where you just know these are never going to be sold. So at that point, what is the value of a pile of coins that can't be sold? And as you know, retail eventually catches up to this. Um, I don't know, you, are you more bullish on that?

No, dude. No. Well, okay. I see them in a few different buckets. There's the classic ones that are just copycat ones and they're all trading at a discount to AVNAV now at this point. You have the classic Bitcoin, you have the classic big dog ones like Strategy and Tom Lee, and they're still holding at a premium. And then you have the last one, which feels like this attempt, you called it like an operational company. I was sort of thinking about it. It almost sounds like they're becoming like a public discretionary hedge fund in a way, like the, the, what Kyle Samani and them are doing with Ford, where they're trying to find ways to basically create a sustainable premium to MNAV through doing stuff on-chain. So the copycats I think are done. The big dogs, they're not gonna be huge marginal buyers like they have been, but they're still, I don't know if they're gonna go to a discount. And then there's these sustainable ones, which I don't really have a strong view, but I'm interested to see where they go. What do you think about those 3 buckets?

I think the on-chain hedge fund, like whatever, like this weird thing, like the Samani's fund, now they're Drift and they're tokenized and it's interesting. As an experiment, yeah, we'll see what happens. I'm not bullish or bearish, you know, it depends, just depends how well they execute. It's an execution thing. But the other thing we've seen is that these things have run up the alts that they're buying so hard. You know, the, the most striking one is Athena because, you know, they ran up to 80, 80+ cents and then just the biggest slate of good news possible you could ever imagine.

It's just hammering every day at newsroom.

Incredible. Like, they get Binance integration finally, and then they can do the fee switch, and then they can more buying and the token is just that down only.

Yeah.

Because these things just get front run.

Mm-hmm.

And then there's so many people, they're just getting out. And so no matter, you know, how good, 'cause the Ethereum thing in my opinion is the best news possible. It just had everything working. And even that's, you know, and that, that's showing like what's gonna happen to these other ones. Yeah. Where, you know, you look maybe when they're 75% done with buying, even Solana now, you know, I think most of the Solana buying is done. I don't know if they'll be able to top up a lot.

Yeah.

But the other side of it, you know, is the hangover where people are just getting out of all the front-run positions. So, you know, choppy waters for things that have run up, I think.

Yeah. It also brings forth the issue of just the way we've structured these tokens. And like, Guy at Athena is the first one to admit this. He was, you know, had him on the show a couple of weeks ago and he's like, look, like I made some mistakes and how much I raised and how many tokens I sold, and now paying the price and trying to find a way to, you know, improve the tokenomics in a sustainable way. But even then, it's, it's tough. Like, do you, do you think that structure is going to evolve in a positive way, or are we sort of still stuck in this world that we're in right now?

Uh, which structure specifically you mean?

Like, just like high, like low float, high FDV?

Oh, this is like low float thing. I mean, we're, we're having a huge resurgence in the low float, high FDV. I remember when Binance was getting all the complaints because every single chart was down only. And they were saying, you know, we're going to do something about this. And they were going to try to force projects to have a higher float and avoid this. I think, you know, people have forgotten all about that. And now we're in like low float, low float season part 2.

This is awesome. I mean, for like 5 minutes.

Yeah. And these launches, like some of these short squeezes on.

Yeah.

We have like these tokens that are on Bitget, nowhere else, and they go to $20 billion. And like, clearly there's some stuff going on. So, yeah, look, I really don't like the consequence of the low float thing because eventually it sort of maps out very differently. I understand why people are doing it. They want to show traction and, you know, good price. I don't think it's going away soon. I think people are going to have to learn their lesson, um, just, just through going through like these down downturns once eventually tokens unlock.

Yeah, fair enough. Um, all right, last question here, just circling back on how we started the conversation, which is we're very much of the same mind, which is macro looks good. I don't really believe in the 4-year cycle anymore, like diminishing returns in the halving. So I'm like, fundamentally things are looking good. Just look at gold, just look at equities. But Crypto is struggling a little bit right now. So how do you— what's your advice to the average retailer for just navigating this situation where you know where we're going to go? It's just about surviving this bleed and these liquidation cascades in the interim.

Yeah, I think the large-cap mid-caps are probably a little bit expensive right now, so I'm staying out of most of them. It's hard to sell Bitcoin when it's so cheap relative to gold. So still holding Bitcoin, I think it might not do well for a while. Because like I said, if we get a flush out and everything, obviously Bitcoin goes lower as well and maybe we kind of test $100K. Yeah, it's a weird spot. You don't want to be in cash when everything is just inflating and going up. But personally, I think it's also not the time to top blast, just given, like I said, there's a lot of overhang from, you know, that front running and stuff like this. So I think just waiting, there'll be dips. There will be a good dip to buy.

There'll be a good dip to buy. Jordy, great to get you on Empire.

Yeah.

Enjoyed your panel here at the Origin Summit and yeah, all the best.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you.