Joey Krug
@joeykrug
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Partner at @FoundersFund Cofounder at @Eco & @AugurProject [email protected] for decks/dealflow
Puerto Rico
Joined January 2013
I'm delighted to share that I’ve joined @foundersfund as a Partner! I'll be focused on defining the next decade of Founders Fund's crypto strategy while looking for the next wave of generational crypto startups and founders to back. For more, read or below.
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For those new to crypto, we're now mid market cycle. We're at the part where China "bans" Bitcoin 3 times. Happens every cycle (2013, 2017, 2021).
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Retweet or quote tweet this if you’ve ever been de-banked because you own crypto or are in crypto!. I have, multiple times, whether it’s banks refusing to open you an account because of crypto, closing your account because of crypto, etc.
Guys I don't like this. Can I get names on who this happened to? Is there a huge techcrunch article about this or something.
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Super thrilled to be co-leading a round in our future life together with @emmarosepb … she said yes! . I love how brilliant and fascinating to talk to she is, her ambition and grit and relentless competence at anything she does, the way she understands me better than anyone, and
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A 1000 ETH trade has similar (often lower) slippage on dex aggregators than Coinbase right now. Rubicon crossed.
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"We see fundamental reasons to believe that — regardless of where the price of Bitcoin goes next — cryptocurrencies are here to stay as a serious asset class." Morgan Stanley.
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We’re gonna make ethereum great again, looking forward to a positive four years for defi!.
[🌲] ETHEREUM FOUNDATION EXPLORING STAKING OPTIONS: VITALIK TWEET.
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“The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a “mouse”. There is no evidence that people want to use these things.”- John Dvorak, Macintosh Review 1984. Why designing what the user says they want isn’t always the best idea, design what the user *will* want.
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1/🚀 Thrilled to announce @foundersfund's investment in @Polymarket! We believe @shayne_coplan and team have built the undisputed leader in the prediction market space. This marks our first consumer crypto investment and is a truly zero-to-one company. Here's why. 🧵.
Excited to share that @Polymarket has raised $70m:. A $45m Series B led by Founders Fund and insiders 1confirmation and ParaFi + @VitalikButerin, & Dragonfly. And a $25m Series A led by General Catalyst + Polychain, @jgebbia, & more. 🔮🧵
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Each crypto bull market typically begins in earnest after some terrible event occurs, I think Bitfinex is that event this time.
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If you want clicks sure, if you want something actually useful and informative for society you should just have Vitalik.
What do you all think -- should @VitalikButerin and @Nouriel come on my podcast for a debate?.
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Polymarket just did over $62mm in volume in May! The criteria I always considered strong product market fit for crypto based prediction markets was $10mm in volume a week. If you can get there, there’s a path to $100mm and onwards. I think it’ll heat up further as we get into.
1/🚀 Thrilled to announce @foundersfund's investment in @Polymarket! We believe @shayne_coplan and team have built the undisputed leader in the prediction market space. This marks our first consumer crypto investment and is a truly zero-to-one company. Here's why. 🧵.
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This feels like as good a time as any to disclose another critical Signal vulnerability I found. TLDR is that prior to mid 2021, Signal *didn’t delete* disappearing messages after they “disappeared.” So say you had a message from 2016 that you thought disappeared years ago, nope!.
I recommend unlinking any desktop device from your signal account. A long-known problem (that I was unaware of until today) is that Signal stores your decryption key on desktop in a plain text file, NOT your keychain, making it accessible to any app.
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1/7 Thrilled to announce @foundersfund's $7.5mm investment in @heliuslabs, the backbone of the @solana developer ecosystem! 🚀 Here's why we're bullish:.
We at @FoundersFund are so proud to be backing @heliuslabs, the go-to developer platform for Solana 🧵.
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As much as I love Ethereum, if something came out today that was 1-1 Ethereum compatible and 100x more throughput without severe security tradeoffs, developers would migrate in a heartbeat. Solidity network effects + web3 infra > Ether network effects.
Great episode of Unconfirmed today with @ljxie, cofounder at Scalar Capital, who says other smart contract platforms will be hard-pressed to attract Ethereum developers, explains why she's focused on privacy, and reveals common mistakes crypto teams make.
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I wanted to add some additional info on why we believe @pudgypenguins @IglooInc @AbstractChain is really cool and why we invested. 1) They have a unique distribution advantage. Most platforms in crypto pay massive amounts to acquire users, but Pudgy actually has a negative CAC.
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When @kaiynne (who I’ve known for years and have always been a fan of his strong execution in defi) reached out and walked us through his latest startup @infinex_app, after seeing the demo and hearing the vision, we knew we @foundersfund wanted to invest. I’ll walk through why.
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund invests in Infinex's Patron NFT sale as total amount raised hits $67.7 million
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Remember when all the pundits said the French @Polymarket whale was an idiot?. “When you have tremendous conviction on a trade, you have to go for the jugular.” - Soros/Druckenmiller. Congrats Fredi!.
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Completely disagree, Augur converted 90% of its funding to fiat to fund development going forward. People funded it to fund software development and get it built, not to run a profit seeking investment vehicle / hedge fund. If you want to speculate on crypto prices.
This is very tricky . 1. Augur raised over 1M ETH when price was $0.7, converted almost all right away which would worth at least $200M now, missed the upside completely . 2. If you build on Ethereum,by default you believe in its value. Selling off seems to conflict with that🤔️.
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I’ve had a bank call me to harass me because I bought some BTC on @coinbase once and they said they’d shutdown my account if I ever did it again. I’ve had multiple personal accounts closed. I’ve had many accounts refused to be opened. I’ve had multiple business accounts closed.
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Unconstitutional.
🇺🇸 JUST IN: The IRS has finalized rules requiring brokers to report digital asset transactions, including activity on decentralized exchanges. Starting in 2027, brokers must disclose gross proceeds from crypto sales and provide details about the taxpayers involved.
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Uber+Lyft should use your phone's accelerometer to see how bouncy drivers' cars are on average, then make a "soft ride" mode which charges a bit extra but gives you drivers in the softest quartile.
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Raiden, Plasma -> Arbitrum.Etherdelta -> 0x.Bancor, Airswap -> Uniswap.Infura -> Alchemy.Too many to list -> Coinbase, Binance.Too many to list -> MetaMask.Too many to list -> Ethereum.A bunch of failed stablecoins -> USDC, USDT, DAI.Opensea -> Blur. First mover rarely wins.
Good observation. First mover advantage in crypto is very important. What are examples of second mover advantage that contradict this?.
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Congratulations to @Polymarket @shayne_coplan @HugoMartingale and its users for successfully predicting the election! The pundits, pollsters, and experts largely got it wrong and were favoring Kamala (eg 538, The Economist, etc). 1/3.
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Some of the banks that previously closed my accounts have subsequently reached out asking me to become a private wealth client — nope!.
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Interesting thing about the college admissions scandal: pay to play happens all the time, universities are just upset this time that it’s bribes to coaches as opposed to donations for buildings.
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Woah Robinhood banned trading of GameStop! I guess their market makers in the backend couldn’t handle the heat. Stock doesn’t even show up in app when you search for it anymore.
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Seems like eventually almost every new artwork (digital or not) will have an accompanying NFT. Physical possession + digital possession of NFT = provenance through the blockchain.
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First $100mm @Polymarket month, super cool to see! Also really awesome to see them be the center of current events as a way to get a good market driven probability of what's most likely to happen
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“X will fail because the team didn’t work at Y.” Anyone who genuinely believes this should read a few history books about disruptions, rarely does it come from the class being disrupted. It’s like saying you shouldn’t invent new transportation unless you were an equestrian.
DeFi will fail because it’s technologists trying to solve financial services problems. These builders don’t know what the problems are because they never worked at banks or investment firms. There is no latent demand for “uncensorable financial products”.
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Once we break 42k resistance, ready for levered short liquidations to send it. Bullish liquidations!.
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At @foundersfund we’re investing in Avail @AvailProject because we believe it’s the best data availability solution, and will be an important part of the broader modular stack going forward. They have a very strong technical team and have solved a lot of tough 0->1 tech problems.
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We recently invested in #Sentient. It’s mostly an investment in the team for us, but there are also some interesting threads related to open vs closed source AI that I want to cover as to why we invested. More below:.
Big fundraise: @sentient_agi, with @0xPolygon's @sandeepnailwal as one of its core contributors, has raised $85 million to build an open-source AI platform. Sentient’s advisor from day one is @sreeramkannan, founder and CEO of @eigenlayer.
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Open a robinhood account buy $10k TSLA calls, $10k MJ etf, and $10k eth. There’s your millennial 401k.
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Love Uniswap, but this sets really bad precedent imo.
As of today, we have started restricting access to a small number of tokens at These changes pertain to the interface at — the Protocol remains entirely autonomous, immutable, and permissionless. Read more:.
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I remember in 2011 telling people I thought BTC could hit $10k someday, amazing to see $100k!.
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I feel like going to Mar a lago and asking Trump if he’d undo Biden’s attempt to kill crypto was probably more effective than most of the lobbying the industry’s done to date.
“But Sam, why all of this and why now??”. Well it all started at an exclusive gathering of collectors of Trump’s Mugshot NFT …
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I don’t think any of the 100x+ investments I’ve made sent monthly investor updates. They just ship.
three tips for founders that VCs told me at ethcc:. 1. send monthly investor updates: it's a sign of unseriousness if you don't. 2. weaponize twitter: you will be judged for it based on your insight, character, and following. 3. turn on revenue: this is the bottom line.
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Best way to guarantee something is massively successful is if Paul Krugman doesn't like it.
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This sort of logic seems fairly off to me. if people can buy penny stocks and lottery tickets, they should be able to invest in startups. People maybe making bad decisions isn’t a good reason to arbitrarily restrict their economic freedom-it seems counter to the capitalist ethos.
We shouldn't increase the pool of accredited investors—the fact is the average American won't be able to invest in the Sequoia & Andreessens—they'll be stuck backing shitty fund managers that shouldn't raise a fund in the first place. And getting more average Americans into.
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Super pumped to have @bridge__harris on the @foundersfund team! From a raw talent perspective, she’s one of the best crypto investors I’ve ever met. Looking forward to FF’s next decade in crypto! More context below:.
thrilled to share I've joined the team at @foundersfund full-time . grateful to @joeykrug and the rest of the FF team for the warm welcome. more to come!.
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Bet: ~60% odds most evm scalability issues (> 1000 tps in production) will be solved by 3 projects operating symbiotically by end of 2019 w/o major tradeoffs. ~75% odds cheap fiat onramps sub 1% fees will be solved by Q1 2019. Augur UX becomes good w/ these two things!.
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This is a terrible take. The US historically had election betting markets for decades, at some points they were nearly as popular in the public zeitgeist as equities. Democracy didn’t end. Banning free markets because they’re a “threat to democracy” is super un-democratic.
from a mechanism design perspective, I personally see the mass adoption of prediction markets as a threat to democracy and an accelerant toward plutarchy. may not warrant banning them, and you probably couldn't anyway, but they are not unilaterally a force for good.
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I remember first meeting the @0xProject team in 2016 and doing my first token deal investment at the time. It's nice to come full circle and now @PanteraCapital we're leading their Series A. Crazy growth over the last year!.
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Thrilled to partner with @AvailProject and be backing their team. At Founders Fund we aim to make concentrated investments in smart teams we believe can achieve market dominance with some 0->1 technical innovation. I believe Avail is that.
Sharing our investment in @AvailProject . Over the past few months, we’ve gotten to know the Avail team better and quickly realized they are one of a kind. [more below].
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Very big deal! I remember talking to an exec at a FANG company a couple years ago and he said something: “I think one of the big institutional drivers for crypto could actually be large companies putting a small amount of their balance sheet into it!”. Finally happening #bitcoin!.
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Not seeing this covered in the press yet. AMC and BB also seem to be banned tickets. NOK too. Insane! Imagine if when Icahn wanted to do his Herbalife trade his broker said “nah.” This is one of a ton of reasons why decentralized finance is the future.
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Happy to be leading the Series A of @Calderaxyz @foundersfund! We believe they're going to be the dominant player in the rollup-as-a-service space and also solve the interoperability problem across all these different rollups.
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"Pick a stable coin and allow direct integration with an exchange so users can effectively enter markets by putting in a credit card number (conversion of credit card to crypto coin to stable coin to augur markets is handled in the back end and they don't have to see it)" /dreams.
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The alignment “anons” are a lot less interesting once you know who they are.
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The Augur UI works in Safari + mobile now w/ browsers like Coinbase Wallet, etc. [design not at all optimized for mobile, but it works]!.
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During my free time @ETHSanFrancisco, spun up an @AugurProject wrapper for @dydxprotocol so we can have margin on Augur #Ethereum. Next steps are to. get it actually compiling + passing tests haha! Oh and a UI, will need that!.
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MKR feels like Tesla did from '15-'19, mostly flat for years but at some point price action is just gonna go bonkers.
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This is huge It means you could have proper @AugurProject trading with proper worst case loss on @0xProject. Long time coming!.
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Looking to seriously build out the team further @PanteraCapital! If you're smart + in crypto, apply here!
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The richest man in the world @elonmusk, who is famous for repeatedly going all in and winning, is campaigning for @realDonaldTrump and running nonstop ground operations, and you think the @Polymarket Trump odds are too high? I wouldn’t bet against Elon!
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Feels too high. @santiagoroel would you bet on this? If you believe the true odds are 80%, then 66.66% would provide you plenty of edge. How about a $10k wager at those odds that Solana’s FDV is > ETH’s FDV on or before Christmas 2026? I’ll take the no side.
Probabilities can change very quickly. And so I think you should be prepared to change your mind often. But in school and most other places they don't emphasize this enough. As if it's some heroic act and higher moral ground sticking to your original thesis. But when you.
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P.S. We're hiring an associate to work with me. If you think that could be you, reach out!. For more detail, see
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I agree. I believe:. - Solo staking if actually running a full validator (& not using a pool etc) requires 32 ETH, whoever’s doing that can afford a real machine and modern internet. - We should abandon the “enable solo stakers with bad hardware and internet” vision. Starting.
This post represents a very strange way of thinking to me. The way I was trained to think about problems is to start from Desiderata: . What do we want? What is the function we are trying to maximize?. In this case, for Ethereum, my proposed objective function would be we want.
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Imagine thinking digital gold was the most interesting thing about crypto #blockhain #ethereum.
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is a super cool product that lets you borrow against your bitcoin in a secure way, super happy to be working with @MarediaShehzan and leading this alongside @rabois! More on why we invested below:.
Today, we announce our Series A co-led by Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund. It’s an honor to be working with the best fintech investors: @rabois @peterthiel @vkhosla @heyjchu @joeykrug. Lava makes bitcoin-secured loans simple and reliable. Download at
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“Why isn’t the market way lower?”. Markets bottom when they stop going down on bad news.
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If a firm tells you this and your reaction is “alright, see you in the arena!” come talk to @bridge__harris and I at @foundersfund. We love backing strong and powerful founders who aren’t intimidated easily. More on our philosophy:
I know about two big funds that have been telling founders that if they can’t invest in that round, that the founder will regret it for his whole life and that they will compete with them. Those funds are insta banned from anything than Lambda will do in the decade to come and.
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Super pumped that @foundersfund is leading this round in @neuralink. I can't think of anything that better reflects our thesis of "Investing in smart people solving difficult problems". It's truly a 0->1 company when restoring vision is only one of the things they're working on!.
We’re happy to announce our $280M Series D round led by @foundersfund. We’re extremely excited about this next chapter at Neuralink. If you’d like to help make the first human experience incredible and work on engineering challenges to restore vision and mobility, come join!.
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Very smart move by @brian_armstrong. Rare to see a company this big execute a fairly drastic move like this to prioritize / refocus the culture and minimize distractions.
Scoop. Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission.
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To anyone (in crypto) who says Augur is too hard to use, show them @guesserio, it's pretty easy! In crypto caveat b/c it still requires metamask + acquiring crypto, although I hope the former will change and the latter will def. get easier over time.
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Hmmm, this is super far off base in some places and hits the mark in others. Let's start with 1) "Ethereum should be more like a company": this misses the point completely, Ethereum is *NOT* and shouldn't be a company, it's a protocol.
Oct 2018 @fredwilson w/ "tough love" comments on Eth. TLDR; He says Ethereum isn't killing it, they're blowing their lead. They're wittling value away by missing ship dates & are lacking basic operational leadership to get shit down. What do you think?.
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update: 2, 3, 4, 9 done, 5 coming in a matter of months, 1, 6, 7, 11 coming 2019 by EOY. Need on chain margining + automatic rollover solutions!.
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Bitcoin ~= arpanet, Ethereum ~= the web. Only been 3 years.
It’s been nearly 10 years since Bitcoin launched, and there are still only two things people use blockchain technology for in production, at scale:. 1. Speculation.2. Money laundering. (By now, the web had Netscape, Yahoo, Google, and more.).
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Yes, because Bezos is a far more effective operator than the govt.
So Jeff Bezos is putting $2 billion into homelessness and preschool. Laudable. But you have to ask -- is this better than just taxing the wealth of the richest man in the world, and making that money democratically accountable?.
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#1 mistake in misunderstanding scalability (made this myself initially on) is assuming the main bottleneck is CPU. It’s not. First is networking/bandwidth, then disk i/o, then and only then is it cpu. The folks at @bloXrouteLabs understand this well.
Thread on Ethereum hardware scaling bottlenecks: "If CPU is a bottleneck for ETH that's bad news.".
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The only thing you need to know about this debate is @ErikVoorhees and @Scaramucci publicly have massive Bitcoin positions and @Nouriel and @PeterSchiff don’t have massive Bitcoin short positions. The “Bitcoin has no value” side isn’t willing to bet on it.
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Ethereum governance has always been like this. A small technocracy of core devs, but anyone can join to be a “core dev” (calls are open + anyone can submit a PR). Also always been a bit dysfunctional when compared to a startup, but the bazaar is always like that.
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