The Six Tokens To Own This Cycle | Yan Liberman
Summary
Yan Liberman is long the rally but does not see near-term Bitcoin highs without materially easier liquidity. The squeeze began from “bottomy” positioning plus the prospect of long-end curve control resembling QE; subdued leverage and Saylor’s absence are constructive, but Yan sees Bitcoin reaching the high $90,000s before needing a more accommodative Fed or favorable inflation data. “It kind of has to be in this order”: slow Bitcoin grind, pause, then alts.
The opportunity set has narrowed into a stock-picker’s market of perhaps 10–15 investable tokens. Obvious revenue names are already crowded and need growth to expand their multiples, so Yan wants assets that “look and smell like those” without the positioning. HYPE remains a comfortable long-term hold because of non-crypto trading activity and a prospective USDC bid supporting buybacks, although $200 within four months “would be really surprising.”
His six-token portfolio comprises HYPE, Zcash, Lighter, Venice, Grass and AERO, likely Aerodrome, with sizing undisclosed and positions split between spot and leverage. The preference is for productive revenue, especially demand not wholly dependent on crypto activity; Yan typically adds leverage early for “torque,” then unwinds it into spot after a substantial move. He distinguishes durable earnings from assets whose fundamentals are tightly linked to market reflexivity.
Grass is Yan’s clearest forgotten-business repricing thesis: roughly $70 million of expected revenue and $40 million of indicated operating profit against about $330 million FDV. Its roughly eight-million-node residential-IP network supplies continuously refreshed web data to frontier labs, while a planned Live Context Retrieval subscription could unlock real-time sites blocked to ordinary agents. Investor unlocks are scheduled to be done in October, roughly 30% of supply sits with the foundation, and there is no parallel equity claim: the token is the value-accrual mechanism.
AERO is an event-driven trade with a dated catalyst and explicit invalidation. Its delayed expansion is slated for the second half of September, with Ethereum and Arbitrum announced and Robinhood unconfirmed; Yan expects broader distribution to lift TVL, volume and fees quickly. Planned dynamic emissions and new revenue lines—estimated to add 40% without an emissions offset—could answer the longstanding criticism that token emissions neutralize staking revenue.
Delphi finds more opportunities in liquid crypto than new crypto venture, while its sole recent crypto startup investment targets a dollar-hedged Turkish-lira carry trade yielding about 10.5%. Tory Finance offers organic yield without token incentives and potentially large capacity. The conversation flags the dollar hedge and bank-counterparty structure, while users could add another carry layer by borrowing USDC against the position. Only one of Delphi’s five current venture investments is crypto, reflecting a broader-adoption thesis that has “fallen by the wayside” as AI absorbs talent, attention and capital.
The hardest pushback is opportunity cost: productive tokens remain among the highest-beta assets and must compete with Nvidia, SpaceX and other scalable businesses. Yan wants cash available for a brutal economic unwinding and asks what tangible flows and adoption would justify HYPE at $79 clearing a 2–3x return. The hosts’ corrective is blunt: “Do you want to be right? Do you want to make money?” Both AI private markets and crypto tokens can be simultaneously frothy.
Deep dive
1. The rally has legs, but new highs still need a buyer
Yan is “pretty long,” has not taken profit and thinks the move retains legs. The catalyst hit while consensus already viewed the market as “bottomy,” turning prospective long-end bond-curve control—effectively some form of QE—into the spark for a large short squeeze.
The tape still looks measured: leverage has not rebuilt aggressively, and Yan wants Bitcoin to grind higher slowly before pausing and handing leadership to alts. If everything rises too quickly together, he doubts the move will persist.
Saylor’s absence has been favorable in Yan’s reading. He has been “cash-maxing” and paying preferreds, while STRC is moving toward 100. Yan thinks the related arbitrage is difficult because the derivatives structure permits effectively unlimited selling when downside is capped at 100.
Yan cannot easily see fresh all-time highs without material new QE. Saylor supplied the last obvious buyer, although the counterargument is constructive: older holders sold into stronger hands, potentially improving the holder base even if rebuilding the required demand takes time.
2. A thinner alt market rewards uncrowded productive tokens
The hosts count perhaps 10–15 broadly investable coins, repeatedly owned by the same liquid funds. Yan accepts the crowding problem but argues that a shallower alt universe lets sidelined capital coalesce around fewer assets, creating “a bit of a stock-pickers market.”
These tokens are “not necessarily cheap” and require meaningful growth for multiple expansion. HYPE earns a higher multiple because investors trust its earnings and anticipate a durable USDC bid supporting buybacks; Pump trades cheaply because the market questions whether its cash flows endure.
Yan’s preferred setup is a token that “look[s] and smell[s] like those” revenue names but has not been bid up. Lighter could still appreciate substantially; HYPE is easy to own over a long horizon, but a rapid move to $200 would surprise him.
The discussion turns to HYPE near $79 and the flows needed for a 2–3x return. Yan says very large outcomes are possible—even a much higher long-term valuation—but asks where the volume and demand would come from: U.S. adoption, additional trading activity, fee increases and an “everything exchange” role.
3. The six-token book pairs crypto beta with outside demand
Yan’s six-token book is HYPE, Zcash, Lighter, Venice, Grass and AERO, likely Aerodrome. He declines to disclose weights because prices move faster than he rebalances. As of the September 11 recording, some positions were spot and some remained levered.
The discussion favors “productive rather than reflexive assets,” while recognizing that trading-fee revenue will still decline in a broad selloff. AI demand or non-crypto markets can nevertheless make a token’s business less dependent on speculative turnover.
Venice fits through private inference: periodic privacy-related events can remind users why the product matters, while revenue does not rely primarily on crypto activity. A financing round exposed the awkward pecking order between equity and token holders, temporarily stalling the token.
Yan nevertheless expects Venice’s token to become the long-term value-capture mechanism. More proprietary hardware and greater scale should improve margins, and he is less optimistic about investors exiting through equity; importantly, there is no separate equity value-accrual mechanism competing with the token.
4. Grass is the forgotten-business repricing bet
Grass solves a concrete data bottleneck: many websites block data-center IP addresses, so its browser plugin uses spare residential bandwidth for geographically distributed scraping. Yan stresses that it does not inspect browsing or keystrokes; it merely uses excess bandwidth for ad hoc requests.
That network has grown to roughly eight million nodes, with frontier AI labs as customers. Yan says labs continually need new data because web content changes and they do not retain everything internally, producing an underlying business expected to reach about $70 million of revenue and, based on company indications, $40 million of operating profit.
A planned product called LCR—Live Context Retrieval—could arrive this year. It would sell subscription access to live information from sites that current agents cannot reach, including pages shielded by Cloudflare, adding a higher-level product atop the existing collection network.
Against roughly $330 million FDV, Yan sees a business that might command a $1–2 billion private-market valuation if it were ordinary equity. Investor unlocks are scheduled to be done in October and about 30% of supply remains with the foundation; there is no parallel equity claim, making the token the sole value-accrual vehicle.
5. AERO offers a catalyst that can confirm or invalidate quickly
Yan frames AERO as a catch-up trade to UNI, whose performance followed moving to Unichain and activating value accrual. AERO’s own migration was expected in mid-July, then delayed, punishing the price.
The new timetable was the second half of September. Ethereum and Arbitrum had been announced, while Robinhood remained unconfirmed; Yan thinks rapid multichain expansion could materially lift TVL, trading volume and fees.
The historical objection was that emissions paid liquidity providers while revenue went to stakers, making apparent value accrual illusory. The proposed fix makes emissions dynamic and one-to-one with trading volume and revenue, producing “positive reflexivity” because higher prices reduce the required emissions.
Management also estimates new business lines could add roughly 40% to revenue without corresponding emissions, with proceeds directed to token holders or buybacks. Low open interest relative to FDV gives Yan a lightly positioned catalyst with a clear event, confirmation and invalidation.
6. Liquid crypto now clears a higher bar than venture
Yan sees more opportunities in liquid tokens “purely [as] a numbers game,” with much shorter realization periods and therefore attractive IRRs. Forgotten legacy assets can keep building while attention disappears, allowing investors to re-enter at unusually compressed valuations.
Delphi has made roughly one crypto venture investment in the past year; among its five current investments, only one is crypto. AI has diverted talent, attention and capital, while experience has narrowed which crypto businesses appear defensible and capable of capturing value. The majority of Yan’s venture book is now outside crypto.
That exception, Tory Finance, tokenizes a dollar-hedged Turkish-lira carry trade yielding about 10.5% organically—“no juice,” incentives or subsidies. Private-wealth relationships secure high-tier counterparties, while the trade offers large capacity and yield originating outside crypto. The company does not yet have a token.
The conversation highlights the dollar hedge and its banking counterparty; the host describes the bank as backed by Turkey’s central bank and says it has historically held up during unwinds. Users could add another carry layer by borrowing USDC against the position, while higher base yield lets the protocol earn more per dollar of TVL.
7. Gaming and prediction markets exposed venture’s moat problem
Yan has cooled sharply on crypto gaming because short game lifecycles make long-duration NPV difficult. Gunzilla was a high-quality, AAA-caliber bet comparable in ambition to Call of Duty, PUBG or Fortnite, but he attributes its failure largely to management and spending.
After multiple smaller-game attempts, Gunzilla was intended as Delphi’s final large barbell swing. Yan still expects isolated games to work, but doubts gaming will return as a broadly investable crypto category; Delphi’s remaining interest is concentrated in “financialized apps.”
One rejected concept used paired impact markets—for example, Trump-BTC and Kamala-BTC contracts whose prices represented Bitcoin under each election outcome. The team liked the mechanism but passed because adoption was uncertain and distribution, rather than protocol defensibility, could determine the winner.
Yan views Kalshi primarily as “regulatory arbitrage on sports betting”: peer-to-peer matching removes the bookmaker’s traditional vig, but avoiding state gaming taxes by classifying income as trading revenue could eventually backfire. The hosts consequently struggle to underwrite the floated $40–80 billion valuations.
8. Missed deals changed the process more than the appetite
Delphi saw Pump’s earliest round but passed because the available allocation was only $25,000–$50,000 and did not feel like a venture deal. One host passed around a $20 million valuation; Yan had previously missed Axie and says that experience helped him avoid repeating the mistake with Pump.
Yan says AI has become a “talent vacuum.” Crypto no longer receives the concentration of ambitious founders it attracted in 2019–2021, leaving fewer new companies and making established teams—and their already-liquid tokens—relatively more compelling.
To learn AI, robotics and, more recently, defense technology, Delphi has reviewed roughly 500 emerging managers and backed seven or eight. It seeks first- and second-time funds across China, San Francisco, Europe, South America and India, using them as both investments and distributed sources of market intelligence.
The decisive manager trait is a repeatable “right to win”: taste, hunger, differentiated sourcing and principles that identify trends early. Founder diligence now carries more weight too—Delphi walks through a founder’s life history and looks for “spikiness,” exceptional prior achievement and the relentless energy Yan sees in Ethena’s Guy.
9. Cross-asset opportunity cost has replaced crypto exceptionalism
The hosts challenge whether any token’s possible upside compensates for liquidity risk and violent downside when Ethereum already sits near $300 billion and many venture-era “10x” assumptions no longer work. Yan increasingly wants cash available for a brutal economic unwinding and asks what concrete flows and demand would justify a large HYPE outcome.
The hosts argue that recession precursors could initially help crypto: rising yields might force the Fed or Treasury to respond, reviving the debasement trade and demand for harder assets. Yan agrees that the buildup could be bullish, while keeping the hedge that once “it all goes to shit,” everything falls.
The opportunity-cost example is Nvidia after the ChatGPT moment: investors tried to find “the next Nvidia” because simply buying the leader felt too easy, despite Nvidia gaining more than 2x at virtually unlimited size. Yan also cites copper’s roughly 2–2.5x move and concedes that most of Delphi’s venture book is now outside crypto.
Both sides retain valuation humility. Miro reportedly fell from a roughly $17 billion last round to a $1.3 billion acquisition, while Kraken secondaries once available around $3–7 billion preceded a roughly $21–22 billion investment. Momentum can reverse either way, and AI froth can coexist with roughly 99% of tokens trading below their pre-TGE valuations.