ANGEL Mr. Buzz (venture deals)

Recently, Irina, the founder of Barcelona's IT community @bcn_ithub, invited me to be a judge at Pitch Day held at TechBarcelona, an event she organized jointly with Denis from I2BF Ventures, the author behind the VC blog @ask_vc.
Usually, my day is packed with Zoom calls with founders, so I thought an in-person event would be a nice break from the screen routine. Interestingly, the co-founder and CPO of eatr.com, a company we previously invested in, happened to be in Barcelona, so I invited him to pitch Eatr for fun and get some extra feedback.
The atmosphere was fantastic — a sense of ease and boundless possibility, where even the most outrageous ideas felt within reach. One of my pals recently started a quirky project called sperm.me — a P2P sperm marketplace where celebrities and regular guys can offer their sperm to women who want kids. For a laugh, I pitched it to a few people during the break, and people couldn’t stop cracking up. I even found myself envying the founders a bit; it’s way more fun than being on the VC side

There were around 20 startups at Pitch Day — some interesting, some less so. But it was inspiring to see Barcelona's startup community growing, attracting more talented people every day. This mix of energy and ideas will undoubtedly lead to success in time. I didn’t just find great conversations there; I also made a few business connections that might lead to future collaborations outside of crypto.

Speaking of crypto, our recent investments include:
Hivello - A platform that enables anyone to earn passive income by renting unused computer resources to crypto projects. It’s a classic DePIN project, and we’re excited about the strong team and quality backers they’ve attracted.
Loop - A looping protocol designed for smart collaterals. Loop maximizes capital efficiency by allowing users to leverage DEX liquidity for additional yield generation. I actually met the founder at a party in Singapore, and his vibe was spot-on — plus, he’s got what it takes to take Loop to the next level.

And on final DD:
Arbera - Built on the Berachain yield farming protocol, it allows users to capitalize on market volatility through volatility farming and arbitrage, offering consistent real yield opportunities without relying on price oracles.
Kizzy - This one has a unique concept of betting on social media activity for popular figures (with safeguards against botting). Think of it as a PolyMarket-style platform, with a team experienced in X (formerly Twitter) analytics that lets them set enticing odds to appeal to the more adventurous crowd.
Winks - A service that generates Web3 links that display directly on Twitter without requiring any installation. This could be for swaps, betting, minting NFTs, and more.

Continuing from my previous post about Singapore, I want to share something not directly related to investments or crypto, but more rooted in ideology.
I entered the crypto space at its inception and still consider myself largely a Bitcoin maximalist. It’s fascinating to watch how the community has evolved, starting as an underground movement and now going mainstream on Wall Street. Looking at the people I met at Token2049, they’re clearly very different from those early meetups back in 2013, where people wore t-shirts with slogans like “Fuck the government.”
It got me thinking — have we abandoned the ideals of crypto-anarchism?

After all, this community was born from the cypherpunk movement, whose mailing list was where Satoshi first announced Bitcoin. They were the early adopters, and without them, crypto likely wouldn’t exist as it does today.
Timothy May’s manifesto predicted the creation of dark markets protected by cryptographic technologies, and we all know how that played out. Governments, with their strict AML/KYC regulations, now oversee and control the flow of cryptocurrency transactions. It’s like the famous saying: “If you can’t beat them, control them.”

If crypto was originally designed to free people from government control, now we’re seeing the rise of CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies), which, in many ways, feel like the illegitimate offspring of crypto and the state, taking the worst aspects of both. With CBDCs, governments can decide when, how, and how much people can spend, effectively tracking every individual’s behavior with alarming precision. This level of surveillance could lead to deep intrusions into personal privacy, almost like a dystopian system—reminiscent of China’s social credit system. Step out of line, and you might not be allowed on a plane, or even into Disneyland.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Shortly after Token2049, the Network State conference was held in Singapore. The idea is compelling: in essence, people can unite based on shared values and beliefs, rather than geographic location, and start building a new kind of “networked state.” Gradually and peacefully, these communities aim to replace outdated governmental institutions. Of course, they’ll need a physical hub to organize—and they’ve already found one: a beautifully ghost city in Malaysia, where these guys are starting to gather and get things moving.
As I’m writing this, the Network State idea reminds me of “Nomad Capitalist”—go where you’re treated best. But the Network State concept goes even further. Their plan is to create a meritocracy based on libertarian principles.
It’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

It’s been almost a month since Token2049 in Singapore, and what a wild few days those were! I met an incredible number of new, interesting people at all kinds of events, including a couple of amusing closed-door ones. After a while, I got so caught up in the energy that I started chatting with strangers in hotel elevators, on the streets, and in parks. With the number of crypto people in town, it felt like every other person was in the space, leading to some pretty fun situations :) In fact, some people I barely know are still messaging me on Telegram with various offers and sharing photos we took together :)

I also met quite a few VCs, and we agreed to share deal flow going forward. When it comes to the value of in-person meetings, while Zoom is undoubtedly an indispensable tool these days, nothing beats the personal connection of face-to-face interaction. We managed to connect with a couple of tier-1 startup founders who had previously told us their rounds were closed and that they didn’t need more capital. But after meeting in person, we were able to change their minds. I'll be writing soon about the startups we invested in — a few of them are absolutely on fire!

As for startups, the founder of Directly.xyz was also in Singapore. It's a project that lets people buy real estate directly from developers with crypto and get a kickback (4-8%) in USDT — a commission usually pocketed by agents. They also have plans to tokenize real estate and launch a P2P crypto rental market in Dubai. During the few hours we spent together, we randomly met two amazing girls, which led to some exciting follow-up. Soon, Cointelegraph will be covering his startup, and the founder will be pitching Directly on stage in just a few days at Blockchain Life in Dubai. Considering the launch was initially scheduled for January 2025, our brief stroll definitely accelerated things into hustle mode.
There’s so much more I could share, but I have to mention the epic parties every night — they were awesome!

I'm writing a brief note on EigenLayer. This won't be a deep dive or an economic analysis, but rather my personal take on the project, especially since our LPs have acquired a significant amount of EIGEN tokens. We've also analyzed one of the AVSs (currently raising a round) that is responsible for transaction validation.

All AVSs on EigenLayer operate using a Shared ETH model.
Essentially, users deposit ETH with an operator, and the operator distributes it among the AVSs. Most operators are working with more than five AVSs. This introduces a significant slashing risk.
In my opinion, sooner or later, one of these AVSs will make a mistake, get hacked, or face some other issue, as the risk level is orders of magnitude higher than with native staking. And considering many users are also using liquid ETH the situation gets even messier.

There's a lack of incentive to hold EIGEN tokens. From what I see, a lot of tokens are being dumped on exchanges. Who's buying them back? Perhaps EigenLayer itself.
Apart from the airdropped EIGEN tokens, the AVSs themselves generate minimal profit (practically none), because there aren't any projects that are eager to "host" on EigenLayer. Why? Mainly because there’s no need for it, and every project prefers having its own token issued on an L1 like Ethereum or Solana.
Will this change in the future? I think that's a big "if."

Since there aren't any projects paying AVSs for “hosting” on EigenLayer, AVSs are now planning to issue their own tokens to raise funds (at insane valuations).
But who needs these useless AVS tokens? That's unclear.

I’m not here to predict the price of EIGEN or the fate of the entire EigenLayer ecosystem. But from what I’ve seen internally, there just aren’t any economic incentives to participate in the network (aside from the airdropped EIGEN). And there are no projects that really need EigenLayer at this point, for all the reasons mentioned above.
That said, crypto is unpredictable, and the famous VCs backing this project might just help it grow into something significant.

It's funny how things can go. I planned to catch up with @roxman for coffee, but in the end, we got caught by the Spanish police instead😒 Shit happens, but you gotta roll with it. While the police were busy checking Roxman’s expired driver’s license, we had time to hash out some ideas about collaboration between our ventures on Telegram.

I can definitely say that Roxman is a young, talented man with a bright future ahead, and I know I’ve gotta help him get there.
Just a few days later, V3V invested almost half a million dollars into @major to make that synergy happen. It’s not just about making a good deal—it’s about moving in the right direction😎

Hola Amigos!

The last few weeks I’ve been spending time in the Caribbean region. First, I came to the great Bitcoin nation of El Salvador. Initially, it was supposed to be a short business trip to organize smooth communication between our LPs and local financial institutions. On top of that, I wanted to check out a few promising investment projects.

But, as things often go, plans changed. Instead of two days, I’m now on my third week here, all thanks to various bureaucratic procedures and whatnot.

While waiting for everything to get sorted out, I decided to explore what else I could do and figured, why not improve my health with some biohacking? I remembered that in the nearby Bahamas, there’s a branch of Cellcolabs, a Swedish startup that’s conducting clinical research on stem cells. I booked a quick call with them, and we agreed I could come ASAP. Luckily, my loved ones were close by in Canada, so I gathered everyone together, and we had a blast there. Of course, I also had an IV stem cell injection - 200 million MSCs in total, to be precise.

Back in El Salvador, I thought my business was finally wrapped up, but no - one more week of waiting! What to do now? Initially, I was hesitant, but boredom (and Bryan’s example) gave me the push I needed. So, I flew to Roatán, Honduras, and got minicircle.io ’s Follistatin gene therapy. Sounds kind of wild, right? But after COVID vaccines, nothing really fazes me anymore. Also, the island is really nice—I’m enjoying myself here, working remotely, admiring the beautiful coral reef, eating fresh food, and, well, sunsets are nice. 🙂

So, now I guess I’m officially a biohacker! Let’s see how this all works out. I’ll keep you updated.

Tomorrow I’m heading back to El Salvador to finally finish everything, and the day after, I’m hopping on a plane to Singapore for Token2049.

For me, Singapore isn’t just some gleaming, high-tech Disneyland. I actually spent two years there, building my network and gaining valuable experience. This time, I’ll be there for a week with lots of meetings lined up with founders, and I’m excited to catch up with some old friends too. Seems like everyone’s going to be there!

We recently closed the deal with Bracket.fi (a platform for Staked Liquid DeFi), along with a few other projects:

• Shieldeum.net - a Web3 cybersecurity solution for 440 million crypto users, powered by an AI-driven decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN).

• Brkt.gg is leading a new wave in prediction markets, focusing on innovation, transparency, and strengthening BRKT’s role in DeFi.

We’ve also made a few deals that will remain private for now, but I’ll probably post about them later.

Finally, we’ve partnered with Movement Labs to help Bitlayer become the most popular L2 on Bitcoin.

See you later, guys!

I have a few updates to share:
• Deal with U2U Network - Done.
• Bracket - in the last stage.
• Finally, we are working on an investment in Ghostdrive: The #1 Telegram Drive - https://t.center/ghostdrive_bot as it said: “Easy to use, upload files, and directly integrated with the Filecoin network.”

Recently, a lot of different games have become very popular on Telegram. One of those games is Hamster Combat, which gained over 250 million users in just a few months. When I saw this, I was really curious about how they managed to grow so quickly, and the answer, as always, lies on the surface - Freebies, Sir.

Users click, tap, play, and receive in-game currency, hoping that one day this currency will become the new Ethereum. Funny story - I recently took a taxi, and the driver was playing Hamster while driving, seriously telling me how he plans to buy a country house with the tokens he has earned. There are many people like this - they want to believe in a miracle, that there is some magic money button that will help them get rich quick.

Let's do some elementary school math: averaging a $50 giveaway to each user totals $12.5 billion. But $50 is not enough to motivate anyone.
If we average it to $500, we will get a cosmic sum of $125 billion, which exceeds the GDP of many countries.

Another question/consideration is that, unlike other cryptocurrencies, where users bring value to the network, Hamster’s users only want to make a profit, and the token giveaway will lead to its immediate sell-off and, consequently, a deep fall.

I recently heard from an acquaintance that Hamster’s owners plan to sell the users through a listing on some little-known exchange where, to get their tokens, users will need to trade on the exchange and perform some other actions. It sounds like the online casino model - everything has already been invented before us 🙂

Speaking of clickers, in the course of my activities I have contacted many people and even worked together with some of them on some things 🙂 One of them is Roxman, the creator of the @major project.
Recently, we collaborated on promoting our news and education resources in @major, so more people will subscribe to our channels. Here, I'll list them:

@venture - Insights on global startups and investment trends.
@trading - Essential trading tips, strategies, and market analysis.
@startups - Curated SaaS app ideas and useful entrepreneurial resources.
@ether - Latest cryptocurrency news, trends, and expert insights.

Let's make the Telegram ecosystem stronger and people smarter.

Just a few days ago we successfully invested in crosscurve.fi, now we are working on deals with U2U Network and also Bracket which is building a platform for Staked Liquid DeFi.

I used to be a good reverse engineer, so let's try to do something similar with older crypto projects.

By considering the market as a system where many hidden forces interact with each other, we can find patterns and make assumptions based on available data to extrapolate into the future, even without insider information.

In the last 2 years, many cool and promising projects have been created in the cryptocurrency industry. Most projects have already received VC funding and already have their own token, which is traded on various exchanges. Since many founders overestimate their new projects and there are many interesting old projects, some of which have tokens trading at their all-time low, the question arises: is it possible to choose promising old projects and buy the token through an exchange to achieve 5-10x returns in a few months?

To do this we selected all projects that started in the last 2-3 years and created an excel sheet where we indicated: VC price (the price at which VC funds entered), Start price (the initial trading price), and Price now (the current price). Then we calculated the ROI for retail investors and the ROI for venture investors. We categorized the projects by industry. We made a selection of venture funds (with their tier) that invested in the projects. We added the exchanges on which the token is currently traded. We analyzed each projects' presence on social media and how actively they have continued project development (GitHub).
Additionally, one can check through Arkham or Messari, or manually, how many tokens the venture funds still hold.

This table is not a ready-made list for investment - it’s just some interesting research materials for making informed decisions based on your own preferences.

Using this method, we can also search for the hidden logic behind market movements. For example, one can ask: which funds have historically worked with "money makers" to pump tokens? Having their vesting period ending they can do a good pump. Another common indicator for a pump is a listing on major exchanges (e.g., Binance), so we should find funds that helped their projects to do such listings and extrapolate to other projects they backed, but haven’t listed yet. There are many other direct and indirect guesses that can be made using the table. For sure you should pay special attention to projects’ social media and GitHub.

In other words, to make the table work we need to find the data that is not currently factored into the project's price, and by modeling the future, buy the token at its lows. It is particularly interesting because the entire market is falling now, and the tokens of many projects are at rock bottom - the best time to buy!

Here is the table https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14k-H6lK8y2XhXfURI640kCB0SzSjRZ39JYiISPwH5Rs/

Sorry guys, I was away for a bit as moving to Barcelona took lots of time and effort. However, it was worth it and I’m enjoying my summer here with a great mix of parties and nature nearby.
Let’s come back to our work. Despite being summer, it is a pretty busy time for venture deals.

Recently we invested in BitLayer - a Layer 2 blockchain based on Bitcoin with BitVM that supports smart contracts.
It seems fancy to make an L2 staking solution on Bitcoin, so let’s see how it goes.
++Founders - technical lead at Huobi and head of business development at Tezos and Polygon.
++For the public round (July) they want to reach a valuation of $1 billion🤷‍♀️

The second project we invested in were two NFT farming games onewayblock.com and clasofcoins.com I liked their strong founders with relevant experience. It’s riskier than BitLayer but could be way more profitable for us.

We are in the final stage with:
U2U network - that wants to build L1 blockchain with its own blackjack and crypto farmers.

CrossCurve - curve.fi aggregator bringing multiple blockchains into a single, global market
++Michael Egorov, founder of Curve Finance in partnership with eywa.fi
++Using curve.fi infrastructure and liquidity
++cross-chain listings and increased yield generation and low slippage

Unfortunately I can’t speak about deals that we have declined to participate in.
We found red flags with those deals, but it’s very tricky to discuss publicly as it could be harmful for their reputation, and you never know – I could be wrong.

Overall, I think most founders overvalue their projects nowadays, but a bear market should help them to see things more clearly.

By the way, over the past 2 years, many cool and strong projects have been created, and at the moment their tokens are at the bottom. In my opinion this is a great time to buy. (I am not giving financial advice in any form.)
I carried out a large analysis on many criteria and in the near future I will post the table exclusively in this channel.

A couple of weeks have passed since Token2049 and I can more soberly express my opinion about this event.

I represented the V3V Ventures fund and therefore I had the opportunity to communicate with a lot of startups, sometimes in scheduled meetings, and also a lot of spontaneous conversations along the way.

I attended a couple of pre-parties and after-parties, some open and some private. Overall, it was a fun opportunity to chat in person with a lot of people I had only known online, have a drink and discuss some things, but overall it was a huge chaotic crowd, and while I liked a lot of the people personally, most of their projects left much to be desired. It created such an internal dissonance.

It was especially fun in The Secret Room, where experienced degens mixed with the clubgoers and go-go dancers, simultaneously discussing forks and staking.

Also, I met some guys from the Telegram community, channel owners, gaming projects, etc.
So, I think the Telegram ecosystem is developing, but there is a question of whether Telegram will be able to get out of the sandbox ex-Soviet Union space. Now we are seeing that in the US only people with right wing ideology use it, probably because they have been banned from all other places.

Of course, Indian and African users are very active on the platform, but only time will tell if a project must succeed in the West to become successful worldwide.

After analyzing more than 50 crypto projects together with live communication with founders, I can draw several conclusions:

1)80% are shit built on the cheap

But their founders want to show these as great deals.

It is especially funny when a project is 4+ years old, and has no GitHub code (but they said it is open source), no user base, just promises, and they want to persuade everybody that it’s a rocket.

2)15% good ideas

Sometimes with some problems, but overall their main disadvantage (from the VC side) is that they are greatly overvalued:

For example, one team only had a white paper, but the guys had no previous experience in startups and crypto at all. It was a very interesting idea related to ETH restaking. However, they valued themselves with a 40m$ cap and wanted to raise 2m$.

So, the risk with those kinds of projects is very high and we decided not to proceed with them.

3) 5% winners

I would say they don’t need investments at all, because smarter VCs already picked them up. 
Projects like these with experienced founders are worth their weight in gold 🙂

However, we have something to offer besides money to these winners, as we have deep expertise in crypto marketing and enough experience to turn a startup into a successful company.

In the end, we chose a few interesting projects, which I will probably discuss here in the future to show why I think they will succeed.

From an early age, I've wanted to do big things. Nothing compares to the feeling of striking gold with innovative projects and future-focused opportunities, especially with so many projects out there that are weak or have major flaws.

Recently, our team at V3V was discussing the future outlook of Telegram. I recommended TON, the native currency of Telegram, and we decided to go for it.

The price of TON has increased very quickly over the last month, and we've made over 2x in returns on this investment so far.

We foresee a stellar future for TG as a social network and plan to ensure we are a part of it, so I’ve also been buying a lot of usernames on fragment.com. These usernames are NFTs and can be connected to any telegram channel and used as utilities on the network.

I'm focusing primarily on buying Telegram usernames that have organic traffic, and I now own over a hundred. Here are a few interesting ones:

@ether - non-mainstream/alternative crypto news channel
@trading - helpful advice for traders
@venture - information and tips for anyone involved in venture funding and investment
@insta - how to successfully grow your instagram page
@anime - for diehard anime fans
@freelancer - advice for freelance workers about how to optimize their services work, make more money, and find good projects

I probably paid more for some of these usernames than their current market value, but I think the future payoff will more than justify my initial investment.

In addition to buying these channels as an investment, I’m interested in leveraging them to make exclusive content and promote the values of information sharing and inclusion, so we can create a great community and be helpful to each other.

By the way, Telegram starts sharing 50% of all advertising income with telegram channel owners, and they are also planning an IPO in the US this year. It could be a gold rush for both TG channel owners and TON holders, so buying these channels was probably a good investment. Let’s see.

How did I get into Venture?

Back in 2021, I launched a web portal called Metaverse.SG with the goal of bringing Web3 and NFT market news to the world and offer convenient access to real-time data and analytics on all existing NFT projects.
This site traffic grew quickly and organically, with the majority of visitors/users in Asia and particularly from Singapore.

I created a channel for Metaverse.SG on DeBank to post news and other information, which was a very wise decision in retrospect. The DeBank channel eventually had a follower base with combined wallet balances of over $700m. Probably the wealthy community of followers was one of the primary reasons for the company’s valuation.

Earlier this year, I was contacted by V3V ventures with an offer to buy the MSG site and social network. I was pleased they had placed such high value on my work. You can read more about this here: https://hackernoon.com/metaversesgs-$3m-acquisition-by-v3v-ventures-reshapes-crypto-news-future

Throughout the acquisition process, the V3V team and I discovered how much we had in common in terms of our thought process and vision. They ultimately invited me to join V3V as a partner. I now help discover and research interesting startup projects and negotiate investment with project founders. It’s been a great experience and very interesting to try something new.

One of my current roles is as a partner with the Singapore-based VC firm v3v.com that helps startups get venture funds.

We invest in early-stage and innovative IT projects, startups, and ventures such as disruptive technology platforms, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs. Our data-driven approach enables us to make informed investment decisions and provide valuable support to our portfolio companies.

You can send your project to buzz@v3v.com so we can discuss possible funding options.
I’m happy to help a new generation of founders crush it!

I've come a long way from creating simple programs at 13 to becoming a partner in a VC fund with major family offices as LPs.
By looking within and working to change myself and my perceptions, I transformed my life, broke old patterns, and altered my trajectory. With that transformation came growth and achievements that would not have been otherwise possible.

Throughout my life, I've engaged in SEO optimization, affiliate marketing, traffic arbitrage, Forex trading, and even worked as a tech admin for large tech companies. However, I realized that sitting at a computer for twelve hours a day is far from a solution what I had imagined for myself, and that success could be achieved in a simpler, more straightforward way.

Eventually, I opened my own web studio, worked on interesting projects for a wide range of companies, and even helped launch a couple of ICOs at their peak in 2016.

In 2019, I decided to take it to the next level, went to study in Switzerland and earned an MBA, after which I moved to Singapore and with a partner, created our own cloud service.

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