In our predictions for '25, we 'poetically' suggested it might be time to short Nvidia and Google and that tech stocks and cryptos were artificially high due to the AI bubble and the Trump Bump. It was a poetic expression because we are neither stock nor crypto jockeys, but we know a bubble when we see one. When our predictions post for '25 hit your email box on January 6, Nvidia was trading at just above $149, and 60 days later, it was $112 (🔻25%), Google was at $197, and today it was at $165 (🔻25%), which both are down 2x NASDAQ's fall of🔻11% in the same period.
Similarly, Bitcoin was trading at $102,248 on January 6; today, it's $81,913 (20%🔻), down almost 3x the overall crypto market, which has fallen🔻7% drop overall in the same period.
Apparently, nothing can deflate a Trump Bump faster than a Trump Tariff.🤔 Or at least proposed—or threatened—tariffs.
Strangely, we've noticed corporate business media is starting to act as emotional and irrational as their peers on the political beat. The Boogeyman is moving so fast that they can't scribble quickly enough to express all their fears. The 'tariffs scare' definitely accelerated the inevitable correction of tech stocks and cryptos, which have been way overvalued and need to be brought back into balance. It's better we took the hit early and, largely, all at once. This quick reset—which may not be over yet— just might save us from a recession.
It looks like the Boogeyman made a grown man cry 😭 The status quo is hard to defend, and you can lose your job for doing nothing about it. Art courtesy xAI.
Zooming up 30,000 feet, there is much on the horizon to be optimistic about. The labor market and manufacturing job growth stats are up, including 30,000 new factory jobs and 151,000 new jobs overall in February, reflecting renewed optimism among US employers. Corporate profits (especially BigTech), the mother's milk of our economy, are still going up, while bond yields and mortgage rates are falling. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate decreased to 6.63% as of March 6, 2025, representing seven consecutive weeks of decline. Oil prices have also significantly gone down since the beginning of 2025, with crude oil dropping by 6.92% to $70 per barrel, a 4-year low.
The bottom line is the Boogeyman's policies are profoundly pro-growth. Trump aims to re-privatize the US economy like never before by radically chainsawing bureaucracy overhead and random foreign aid projects, eliminating agencies such as the Education Department, and redistributing federal tax money and power back to the states and local communities. He has also promised to cut personal and business taxes again (the Boogeyman lowered business taxes from 35% to 21% in his first term), rid businesses of unnecessary regulations, and boost domestic energy production.
The DOGE crew might look like 100 bulls storming a china shop, but they are both clever budget scrubbers and offering high-level BigTech knowledge about how to leverage new technology efficiency and operate a modern enterprise. From what's being reported, the government is operating like it's 1999. DOGE has already saved taxpayers $115B ($715 per taxpayer) and found all sorts of crazy spending as displayed on the DOGE 'Wall of Receipts.'
Sixty-five percent of business leaders express confidence in national economic performance growth for 2025. We similarly see no slow down, or recession in the horizon. Keep your chin up and hold on to your quality assets—they will rise again. 📈
The good old days at the USPS circa 1952.
"Fixing a broken organization that had experienced close to $100 billion in losses and is projected to lose another $200 billion without a bankruptcy proceeding is a daunting task. Fixing a heavily legislated and overly regulated United States Postal Service with a broken business model is even more difficult."
—US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's recent address to Congress, after agreeing to lay off 10,000 USPS employees as recommended by DOGE, who will also provide the USPS tech support to tackle the 'big problems.'
The IPO window creaks open
Based upon our optimistic outlook, we will stick with our prediction that there will be at least 25 new tech IPOs spinning out of the AI, blockchain, robotics, and other Web3 company sectors in 2025. The market will be further boosted by robust growth in AI revenues and pro-crypto policies, including a friendlier SEC. Many of the IPOs in '25 will be assets like Cryptonite 300 companies xAI, Databricks, CoreWeave, and Anduril, which are going to be must-own, long-term asset holdings.
Below is a highlight of Cryptonite's list of the top 25 IPO candidates we would bet on today in the sectors we follow.
Our Cryptonite paid members can see a list of all our top IPO candidates and more data and inside information about out Cryptonite 300 top Web3 companies.
We haven't included two IPO picks from our Cryptonite 300 list that are popular with other analysts. OpenAI is not on our IPO list for 2025 because the GenAI leader continues to have legal structuring issues, and Elon's xAI is not on the list either because we figure he has his hands full right now, 🤖🚕🚀 and the company has raised a ton of cash.
CoreWeave, a Cryptonite 300company and provider of data center technology and services for AI companies, is set to go public in the next few weeks. CoreWeave investors include Nvidia, Cisco, Coatue Management, and BlackRock. The company's red herring shows that CoreWeave's revenue in 2024 soared more than 700% to $1.92 billion, with 60 percent of sales coming from Microsoft, but this is still real-deal growth. CoreWeave was valued at $23 billion in its last $1.1 billion equity round last May. Reuters reported in November that the company was targeting a valuation of more than $35 billion in its IPO.
CoreWeave's final IPO price and how its stock does out of the gate will be the first big indicator on how Wall Street feels about paying a premium over what we believe have been hyper-inflated valuations paid by later-stage investors in private AI companies.
Cerebras' wafer-scale engine is the fastest AI processor on Mother Earth, thank you very much.
Cryptonite 300 (C300) winner and AI chips and systems makerCerebras Systems is also currently preparing for an IPO, aiming to raise between $750 million and $1 billion for a value between $7 billion and $8 billion. The company's investors include Azure Ventures Group, Benchmark, Coatue, Eclipse Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Foundation Capital, Sequoia Capital, and SV Angel.
Who you know, what you know, and when you know it is the most valuable currency in the global Silicon Valley.
Even with spiking revenues, some AI companies are holding off on their IPOs. Another C300company, Gong, a startup that uses AI to help companies predict sales by analyzing customer interactions, has blown past the $300 million annualized revenue mark but is still cooling its IPO heels. It counts among its 4,500 corporate customers companies like Canva, Google, LinkedIn, and Square.
Gong cofounder and CEO Amit Bendov.
Gong was last valued at $7.25 billion when it raised a $250 million in 2021 in a deal led by Franklin Templeton and including Coatue, Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia, Thrive Capital, and Tiger Global.
‘An IPO is very interesting but not the most important thing. We are focusing on building amazing products,’ says Gong cofounder and CEO Amit Bendov. ‘We are nearly profitable and still have plenty of cash from our 2021 round which we almost haven't touched.'
Google went public in 2004, six years after starting the company and with only three rounds of VC funding.
Is going public a dated strategy?
We think so. In fact, we are confident there will be a time when very few companies, if any, go public. The bottom line is running a public company wastes a lot of valuable executive time and resources, and significantly boosts legal, accounting, and insurance expenses due to government compliance and regulation. This annual cost can get as high as $10 million.😳
Worst of all, public companies face much higher litigation costs, particularly due to class-action suits🖕🏻😎🖕🏻and other securities law-related issues. A study from Stanford Law School estimated that 8-10 percent of public companies face securities class-action suits each year.
Quarterly earnings reporting requirements also encourage companies to engage in unnatural acts to please Wall Street and stockholders, such as earnings manipulation, cosmetic cost-cutting, stock buybacks, etc., which are often not in the best long-term interest of the enterprise.
Over the last thirty years or so, private companies have largely gone public to gain liquidity for their investors, founders, and employees. Other than cases such as Tesla and in the biotech space, VC-backed tech companies rarely go public because they need the money. More recently, there has been a trend to sprinkle later-stage VC investment dollars into founder and key employee pockets to keep their fires burning, and buy more time before the IPO.
The VC investment token—Coming to a private blockchain near you! Art courtesy of xAI
Here are some brief bullet points on how the tokenization of private company equity will spare founders and early investors from the nightmares of being a public company.
First, instead of physical stock certificates with entries in traditional databases, stockholders will hold digital tokens representing their shares.
These digital stakes will be managed on a 'private blockchain'—a permissioned network for authorized stockholders, executives, and regulators, to ensure security while still allowing transparency. Under this setup, stockholders will have real-time visibility to:
The complete history of their tokens (e.g., ownership transfers).
Associated rights (e.g., voting rights, dividends).
Legal documents, including shareholder agreements, voting and ownership rights, and dividend entitlements.
We recommend that companies that want to stay private offer their stockholders a regular 'dividend' once they reach certain profit goals. This dividend could be managed and distributed by a smart contract (coded agreements that execute automatically) based on the number of tokens they own.
The smart contract could also dramatically reduce paperwork and costs by automating administrative tasks and enforcing voting rights tied to token ownership during shareholder decisions. These tokens will also be more portable, and easily transferred, traded, and managed, simplifying ownership tracking.
Over time, companies could open up their sales of private tokens to broader audiences to raise capital on an as-needed basis with little administration. Broadening the base of private investors also helps build the company's brand.
We see a world where private companies seek angel and early-stage venture money from high-value, highly networked players and issue tokenized stock from the very beginning. As the company develops, hits its milestones, and typically seeks later-stage investment from non-value-added institutions, founders can open up these same rounds to broader audiences. These broader offerings could include fewer voter rights and reporting requirements than VCs and institutional investors require.
Google went public in 2004 after only three rounds of VC funding. Facebook did it in seven rounds in 2012, and Airbnb took in ten private rounds of capital before its 2020 IPO. The average number of rounds before an IPO today is somewhere between six and seven. The time from startup to IPO also rose from seven years in the 1990s to eleven years in the 2010s.
The value and benefits of tokenizing equity for company founders and their investors are so gigantic that the tokenization of equity is inevitable. The automation of the cap table and investor relations, the opportunity to sell equity for higher prices with fewer stockholder rights, and the ability to preserve ownership by not having to raise as much capital is a roadway to entrepreneurs’ heaven. Not to mention not having to live the life of a public company executive!
Full disclosure: Cryptonite is so thrilled about this new market opportunity that we are looking to build a program to help our Cryptonite 300+ companies take advantage of this trend and raise capital via equity tokens. We are tracking and building relationships with the top companies and continue to build our global Silicon Valley distribution network. We are looking for the best 'tokenization of assets' tech and blockchain partner. If that's you, contact Cryptonite founder Anthony Perkins @ TheEditor@cryptoniteventures.com
Seed capitalism
Speaking of where AI meets sales, Tel Aviv-based Alta, which automate sales with an AI' workforce,' just emerged from stealth-mode and closed a $7 million round led by Entrée Capital and Target Global, with additional funding from angel investor Ben Lang and others. Alta's AI-powered platform wonderfully automates prospecting, research, outreach, meeting scheduling, and other repetitive tasks while integrating with existing sales data. Imagine that! 🤔
Alta founders Tom Hoffen, CEO Stav Levi-Neumark and Mor Shabtai.
Alta was founded in 2023 by Tom Hoffen, Stav Neumark-Levi, and Mor Shabtai. Fascinatingly, the startup found users engage better with AI agents that are transparent about not being human. 'When people know they're speaking to AI, they expect it to be fast, accurate, and efficient,' says Alta CEO Stav Neumark-Levi. 'The moment it tries to act 'human' but gets something wrong, trust is lost.'
VC Whispers
Quantum computing is now the new fashion at VC cocktail parties all over Silicon Valley. According to Crunchbase, quantum startups raised $1.9 billion in 62 rounds during 2024—a new high. Clearly, the sector got a massive boost from the quantum computing breakthroughs in 2024, including the announcements of Google's Willow chip and IBM's Heron R2 chip.
And the money is still coming into the sector in quantum leaps. Recently funded C300companies include QuEra Computing which raised $230 million last month from SoftBank's Vision Fund and Google Quantum AI, Israel-based Quantum Machines which closed $170 million led by PSG Equity, and Palo Alto-based PsiQuantum which closed $594 million in a mix of equity, grants and loans from the Australian Commonwealth and Queensland Government.
Paid members gain access to Cryptonite lists and data on the top 300 Web3 private companies, influencers, and IPO prospects, as well as invites to Silicon Valley '25 and CPRO crypto rewards to boot. 😎🤙🏼
Welcome to the New World Order
It is true that the Boogeyman Doctrine does call for reorganizing all our trade relationships and agreements to ensure they are more reciprocal and fair. Trump is also using tariff threats to force our neighbors in Canada and Mexico to better secure our borders so gang members and fentanyl stop slipping through. Since the opioid epidemic was declared a public health emergency by the US in 2017, it has claimed over 454,000 lives, so we take this subject seriously.
So far, Mexico, Canada, Panama, Colombia, and even Venezuela have all been cooperating, admittedly after some tariff threats, etc., and we do not always communicate in the most gentile manner.
To put it simply, the Western World is still living like it's 1949—a time when the US was the only superpower and the aggressively expansionistic Soviet Union was still in business. The US is now calling for an end to the 'Marshall Plan hangover.' In spite of our burgeoning trillions in deficits, the US still provides significant foreign aid and underwrites NATO and the very bloated and often anti-American-acting United Nations.
'So I get all of Eastern Europe and half of Germany?—Sweet!' Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at Yalta carving up Europe circa 1945.
Europe will always be our allies, particularly Great Britain—we are still 61.6% of European descent. However, we have moved on from the idea of engaging in and supporting conventional war. The Boogeyman Doctrine is to minimize death by maintaining a state-of-the-art military, building and strengthening our special forces and using all our financial and market power to keep the peace.
Ronald Reagan helping tear down the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989.
The Trump Doctrine is very reminiscent of the Reagan Doctrine of 'peace through strength,' which brought down the Soviet Union without shooting a bullet. Under Reagan, there were only 19 US combat deaths (Grenada invasion) and 65 during Trump's first term, mainly fighting ISIS. The biggest difference is Reagan’s approach leaned heavily on supporting anti-communist movements to pressure and exhaust the Soviet Union. Trump’s is more about flexing economic muscle—like tariffs and sanctions—while keeping a big stick in the background with military posturing.
Corporate media and the Europeans, in particular, like to cast the new US regime as ‘isolationist,’ but that is far from the truth. As an example, the Trump administration has actively set out to secure and protect key shipping lanes in Panama, Greenland, the Red Sea, and throughout the world from pirates and terrorists and to counter the CCP’s efforts to control them. Just last night, the US executed military strikes against Houthi-controlled sites in Yemen in response to months of attacks on mercantile ships in the Red Sea and Suez Canal—a critical artery handling an estimated 12 percent of global trade.
The total death toll from the Ukraine war now stands at 311,000 soldiers (211,000 Russians and 100,000 Ukrainians) and an estimated 40,000 civilians, surpassing the casualties of both the Vietnam war and Middle Eastern wars of the last 25 years. Let’s pray that the current US-led negotiations end this hell-on-earth quickly and stop the killing, and we don’t give it all away to the Russians in the process like we did in Yalta.
Part of the New World Order is a revitalization of the Monroe Doctrine—that is, a shift in the US strategic focus to the Western Hemisphere, particularly to Central and South America.
According to Gallup, we have lost faith in every major centralized power since 1999. When Bitcoin was introduced in 2008, it was a rebellious, grassroots act against centralized agencies, particularly the Central Banks. Bitcoin has since proved its point and has become a metaphor for a much bigger 'power back to the people' movement in society.
The new attitude is: We will never trust Big Media, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Food, Big Banks, Big Gov, or Big Anything again, so f*ck it, we don't need the intermediaries; let's go encrypted, peer-peer and on the blockchain. These practices will take hold globally over the next 20 to 30 years, and it's a very good thing for all of humanity and our planet.
Other than Bitcoin, cryptos, Wall Street's move to DeFi apps, and the general spread of blockchain apps across all industries, the decentralization movement has also manifested in new attitudes about how we organize our society and government. DOGE is a perfect example. Its job is to chainsaw the fat off of centralized federal power and redistribute money and power to the states, local agencies, and taxpayers.
The Bitcoin and DOGE metaphors reckon back to the principle of subsidiarity articulated by German theologian Oswald von Nell-Breuning in the early 1900s. Under this organizing principle, the autonomy and human dignity of the individual are paramount. All social bodies exist for the sake of the individual, not for the benefit of the institutions or the people running them. Ideally, each individual strives to take care of themselves, but if in need, first turn to the closest and most personal source of support, starting with family, friends, churches, and local charities.
'The President's mandate is to work with Congress and shut down the Department of Education. We are taking the bureaucracy out of education by letting money flow directly to the states and local school districts, empowering local superintendents, school boards, and parents, and offering kids a more effective and personalized education experience aligned with their local values. I think we'll see our student test scores go up as a result.'
The Boss Lady @ Dept. of Edu. Art courtesy of xAI.
—Education Secretary Linda McMahon on the day she announced the termination of over 2,183 employees out of 4,133 at the Department of Education. Previously, Ms. McMahon co-founded World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) in 1980,
¡Viva las Américas!
Under the subsidiarity principle, government and large institutions only undertake initiatives that exceed the capacity of individuals or private independent groups. Decentralized blockchain apps powered by AI-infused smart contracts will eventually replace most of what these larger institutions do. Solving problems in the most locally administered and personal way usually delivers the best solution and results. Going local while thinking global is the new mantra, and Web3 innovation is making this possible.
"We must take seriously the opportunities for collaboration presented by countries like Ecuador, El Salvador, Argentina, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Guyana, and Costa Rica.
As the son of Cuban immigrants, Secretary Rubio has a personal connection to the region that informs his perspective on the opportunities and challenges in Latin America. Art courtesy xAI.
Our region is currently experiencing at least six major crises. These range from unprecedented mass migration at the U.S. southern border to the complete breakdown of social order in Haiti to ramped-up state oppression in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. At the same time, the outlook for our region remains bright.
Is this a contradiction? Only if we ignore the bright spots in Latin America and the Caribbean. Even as we recognize the horrors occurring not far from our shores—and do our best to counter them—we must draw inspiration from the new generation of potentially pro-America leaders in the Western Hemisphere.”
This retro-thinking naturally supports the idea that we have the responsibility to first work peacefully and prosperously with our neighbors. We are blessed to be buffered by Mexico, Canada, and two great oceans. We also reside in a Western Hemisphere where we all largely share the same values and aspirations (not to sound like Ms. Kamala😭), especially between the US and the Latin American communities. Hence, a modern version of the Monroe Doctrine is needed and will happen because that is the way the new world is evolving—inward out!
The Digital USD flies South. Art courtesy of xAI.
Standardize Central and South America on a Digital USD
We have long been advocates of the creation of untraceable digital USD and the idea of pitching Central and South America to convert to it to end their currency fluctuation woes. This proposal should be a top-priority initiative under the new Monroe Doctrine. It's critical we deliver on the Digital USD no matter what, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is light-years ahead of us. The CCP has been developing and successfully testing its central bank digital currency (e-CNY) issued by the People's Bank of China since 2020.😳
The Governor of the People’s Bank of China, Yi Gang, earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois.
'The e-CNY trials during the first half of 2022, such as acting as a means of payment during the Beijing Olympics, were spectacularly successful. The velocity of digital currencies is significantly higher and more efficient than any other payment system. Fully implemented, I see the e-CNY improving quality of life, stimulating consumption, growing internal demand, and ensuring steady economic development.'
—Yi Gang, Governor, People's Bank of China
The following ten Latin American countries have experienced the most significant economic currency devaluation, ranked by the severity and consistency of their currency's decline against the US dollar.
Country Ranking Criteria: The rankings prioritize countries with consistent mentions of significant currency devaluation across recent years and trends since 2000.
China's goal for e-CNY is to boost its global financial influence by offering developing nations faster and cheaper cross-border payments and setting the world's digital money standards in their favor. We believe China's early mover status and its work on projects like mBridge (a cross-border CBDC initiative) are the greatest economic threats to the real world.
The e-CNY system includes a certification center that maps the identities of all digital wallet users, a registration center that tracks ownership of digital wallets and transactions, and a big data analysis center that monitors payment flows. The e-CNY surveillance apparatus. aligns with the CCP's broader strategy to monitor and control citizens and matches its established pattern of digital oversight.
This Big Brother move by the CCP is precisely why we need to design and launch a non-traceable digital USD as soon as possible.
The benefits for the US and potentially many Latin countries to adopt a digital USD are:
Stability: Tying the currency to the USD, a relatively stable and globally trusted currency, would reduce the region's historically wild volatility and encourage investment, trade, and economic growth.
Faster transactions @ lower cost: A digital dollar would streamline cross-border payments and lower transaction costs, which is especially valuable in a region with active trade networks.
The biggest challenge is to what degree can we create an 'untraceable' digital dollar.Governments and Central Banks will oppose a currency they cannot monitor or regulate. It is true that untraceable transactions would facilitate illicit activities by all kinds of sex-trafficking, arms dealing, and drug smuggling bad actors. Somehow, we need to create a system that balances privacy, anonymity, law enforcement, and national security.
Secretary Rubio talks about how our biggest south-of-the-border issue is 'the mass migration at the U.S. southern border.' What most people from the States don't understand, is the vast majority of Latinos that have gate-crashed the US border would rather live and prosper in their home countries, close to their families. They are coming to the States, in part to earn green backs that aren’t being devalued like their home currencies, and support the their loved ones. We would do the same if we were them.
The digital USD and the free transfer entrepreneurial knowledge and expertise can raise all boats and make for a happy Américas. Let’s do it!
Keep the eyes of over 520,000 global innovators on your brand here. Contact theeditor@cryptoniteventures.com and make it happen!
Pura Vida and the Longevity Pyramid
Our health guru, Dr. Frank Lipman, says, 'The modern pursuit of longevity isn't just a matter of adding years to life, but about adding life to those years. The goal? A vital healthspan.' A healthspan, according to the good doctor, is a road map that combines health and longevity-promoting lifestyle habits with cutting-edge scientific innovations.
In his practice, Dr. Lipman uses the 'Lipman Longevity Pyramid' above as a framework for cultivating optimal health full of resilience and vitality. Think of longevity as a pyramid made up of four levels, each building on the other to create a strong foundation for lifelong health. Please read all about it straight from Dr. Lipman here.
Join us at Silicon Valley 25—Where is Web3 taking the world? —33% off tickets until April 1st!
Silicon Valley ‘25 is a gathering where entrepreneurs and risk investors share how emerging Web3 innovation will create new prosperity and address the world’s most pressing issues. We also celebrate the Cryptonite 300 top Web3 companies in the world. See the current prograJeremy@datarobot.comm and other SV ‘25 details here.
Somewhere between the raw startups and the Unicorns are the blockchain, AI, and metaverse companies pioneering Web3 and offering the best equity investment ROI potential in the global Silicon Valley.
What you get behind the ‘paywall’ as a paid Cryptonite member
List and data profiles on 3,500 venture capital-backed AI/ML companies and blockchain/crypto companies, over 240 of which have made the Cryptonite 300 nomination list thus far.
List of the top Venture Capital funds that invest in the top 300 private Web3 companies.
List of the top Web3 Influencers as ranked by top deal relationships.
The ability to nominate companies to the Cryptonite 300 competition for 2024!
