Dialogue RootData List Listed Institutions | ABCDE Lianchuang BMAN: Heavily Invested in AI by 2025

Interview: flowie, ChainCatcher

Guest: BMAN, Co-founder of ABCDE

Organizer: flowie, ChainCatcher

*Editor's Note: During the Devcon in Bangkok, the Web3 asset data platform RootData, in collaboration with ChainCatcher, officially launched the * “RootData: 2024 Web3 Industry Development Research Report and Annual List”* (click the link to view the full report and list).*

The report provides a detailed analysis and interpretation of the development characteristics of the Web3 venture capital market in 2024 and prominently releases the RootData List 2024. This list is the second annual selection launched by RootData following its first release in 2023, and its results are gaining attention from more entrepreneurs, investors, LPs, and crypto enthusiasts.

The RootData List 2024 includes five categories: Top 50 Projects (TGE completed), Top 50 Projects (TGE not conducted), Crypto VC Top 50 Investment Institutions, Top 10 Angel Investors, and Top 20 Best CEOs.

ChainCatcher will publish a series of articles, engaging with the projects and institutions listed on the RootData List 2024, seeking builders who navigate through bull and bear markets and tracking the latest trends in Web3.

*Today's conversation features the listed institution *ABCDE Capital*, which has been included in the RootData List 2024 annual list of *“Crypto VC Top 50 Investment Institutions.”*

The bull market that began in 2024 was largely anticipated by ABCDE. A year ago, the Bitcoin spot ETF had not yet been approved. BMAN, co-founder of ABCDE Capital, emphasized in an exclusive interview with ChainCatcher that under the resonance of multiple factors such as the Bitcoin halving, the U.S. elections, interest rate cuts, and the approval of the Bitcoin spot ETF, ABCDE is bullish on the crypto market in 2024 and 2025.

Due to their continued optimism about the crypto market in the next one to two years, ABCDE has maintained a rapid investment pace in both 2023 and 2024. Particularly in 2024, ABCDE has made nearly two investments on average each month, investing in over 20 projects including Merlin Chain, UniSat, Solv Protocol, and Solayer, while previously investing in star projects across various sectors such as Polyhedra, Cysic, MegaETH, Babylon, Matr1x, and 0xScope.

Recently, BMAN stated in an interview with ChainCatcher that ABCDE's investment philosophy has always revolved around new technological dividends and demographic dividends. The Bitcoin ecosystem, AI narratives, and high-performance public chains remain key investment focuses for ABCDE. During the Memecoin explosion cycle, ABCDE is also learning and encouraging its portfolio to embrace more community-oriented meme strategies.

Bitcoin Ecosystem and AI Narratives Remain Investment Focuses

1. ChainCatcher: In 2024, ABCDE has maintained a rapid investment pace. Can you summarize your investment strategy or focus for this year? What are the biggest gains and regrets from this year?

BMAN: Our investment philosophy still revolves around new technological dividends and applications with demographic dividends. In 2024, we allocated one-third of our funds to the Bitcoin ecosystem, another third to Ethereum, Solana, and some high-performance infrastructure ecosystems, including real-time blockchains like MegaETH, and the remaining third to new types of applications, including AI, trading, chain abstraction, and high-performance applications.

Our biggest gain has been investing in many leading projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem, as well as in the leading real-time blockchain MegaETH.

In terms of applications, we have also laid out some AI applications. If there is a regret, it is that our bets on these leading projects were not heavy enough; moving forward, we will invest more aggressively in projects with leading potential.

2. ChainCatcher: A significant portion of ABCDE's investments this year has still focused on the Bitcoin ecosystem. It seems that the Bitcoin ecosystem is cooling down in the second half of this year. What stage do you think the Bitcoin ecosystem is currently in? Are there any directions that have been disproven? What specific sub-sectors of the Bitcoin ecosystem is ABCDE currently focusing on?

BMAN: The Bitcoin ecosystem is still very young. Since the introduction of BRC20 in March last year, Bitcoin has only been recognized as an ecosystem for about a year and a half. In contrast, the Solana ecosystem took six to seven years to develop through a cycle and I think it is still too early to make a definitive judgment on the Bitcoin ecosystem.

We can look at the Bitcoin ecosystem from both short-term and medium-to-long-term perspectives. In the short term, we will use our investment in Babylon next year as a barometer, as many projects will still revolve around native staking with Babylon.

Additionally, in 2025, we will focus on the BTCFi ecosystem. Once Bitcoin becomes a strategic reserve for the U.S., other countries are expected to follow suit and start holding Bitcoin. Financial giants like BlackRock, after acquiring Bitcoin, will certainly want to utilize it, leading to some BTCFi scenarios. We have already invested in BTCFi players such as Solv Protocol, Lombard, Echo Protocol, and Lorenzo Protocol.

In the medium to long term, we will pay attention to the progress of OPCAT and BVM protocols. If OPCAT and BVM can indeed enable Bitcoin's layer one to perform verification and scaling, it will encourage developers to experiment more within the Bitcoin ecosystem, such as native cross-chain solutions and native Layer 2 applications.

3. ChainCatcher: ABCDE is very focused on the infrastructure sector. However, many projects in this field have experienced high valuations, large financing, airdrop points, and listings, but their performance and ecosystem development post-listing have not met expectations. What do you think are the reasons behind this? What insights has this brought to your investments?

BMAN: The ICOs that started in 2017 were driven by entrepreneurs and VCs. After going through a cycle, many infrastructure projects emerged, many of which were just reinventing the wheel, leading to market fatigue.

Many large VCs excessively inflated valuations and then brought these projects to market, making it difficult to find enough buyers to support such large market cap projects. For community users, it might be better to chase projects that were launched fairly and are fully circulating from the start, as they expect to become real participants and builders of these token projects one day.

4. ChainCatcher: You mentioned that you are also paying attention to AI applications on the blockchain. What specific attempts or innovative trends are you observing?

BMAN: We have already invested in multiple AI projects, as we believe that blockchain and AI are a natural combination.

The interaction with blockchain is quite challenging for ordinary users; they need to learn to remember wallet mnemonics, gas fees, etc. However, if you interact using an AI bot, you will find it very native because blockchain is purely native, digital, and an entirely open ledger. If we consider bots and trading strategies as AI, then actually 90% of on-chain behavior is driven by AI or bots.

For instance, various smart money on Pump.fun chasing after meme coins are actually bots competing for targets and trading. Against these bots and AI, pure human trading has little advantage. We believe that in the future, even over 95% of on-chain behavior will be driven by bots and AI.

We are also looking at AI agents, AI payments, AI trading, and projects that grant financial rights to AI. We invested early in 0xScope, a project that combines data and AI, and recently invested in two AI agent projects and AI trading projects.

5. ChainCatcher: What are your investment plans for 2025? What directions are you focusing on?

BMAN: The major directions remain unchanged, still focusing on three main areas.

First is AI, focusing on giving AI more financial permissions, AI trading, AI assetization, and so on. Second is the Bitcoin ecosystem, with a focus on the BTCFi direction. Third is the new consumer-grade application ecosystem emerging after the appearance of high-performance ecosystems like MegaETH.

In 2025, we hope to invest in more leading projects, and we will also increase our stakes and add to the leading projects we have already participated in.

VC Tokens Should Embrace Meme Tokens with a More Community-Oriented Approach

6. ChainCatcher: Trump's election has excited the crypto community. Do you think the crypto market is overly optimistic? What predictions do you have for the direction of the crypto market after Trump's inauguration?

BMAN: When ABCDE was established in 2022, we anticipated the cycle of the Bitcoin halving, U.S. elections, interest rate cuts, and other overlapping factors in 2024. The current market development aligns with our expectations.

We are very optimistic about the market, especially in the first half of next year. With Trump officially taking office at the beginning of next year, more crypto-friendly policies are expected to emerge, creating a better entrepreneurial atmosphere. U.S. entrepreneurial teams are very optimistic and proactive, as they can now work freely without the pressure of high-stakes policies. Many founders are also preparing to return to the U.S. to build. We will also invest more manpower and funds in the U.S.

7. ChainCatcher: Some believe that after Trump takes office, with the loosening of crypto policies, the market's attention may shift back to value coins, which could be bearish for meme coins. What are your thoughts on this? What judgments do you have regarding the development landscape of VC tokens and meme tokens in 2025?

BMAN: Not necessarily. Both Trump and Musk are very meme-oriented. Memes have shown phenomenal performance in this cycle, and people will treat them as a crypto-native means, turning serious content into memes and allowing the community to unleash creativity to create new assets. This is somewhat reminiscent of the ICO boom in 2017, except that ICOs were more entrepreneur-driven at that time, while Memecoins are community-driven. Therefore, I believe memes will continue to be in the spotlight.

Although we, as an institution, cannot directly participate in memes, we will study it as a phenomenon.

We believe that memes are indeed fairer and more community-driven, and we also encourage our portfolio and community to get closer, question Memecoins, understand Memecoins, and become Memecoins.

8. ChainCatcher: Recently, a project called ORA conducted its TGE directly on-chain. Do you think this will become a trend? What are your thoughts on this approach?

BMAN: This is also a meme strategy. In the future, many so-called VC tokens will embrace a more community-oriented meme strategy. VC tokens will become meme-like, and many memes may become VC-like. This is a process of mutual integration.

Ethereum Foundation Needs a Major Overhaul to Break the Stalemate

9. ChainCatcher: What are your feelings about participating in Devcon? How do you view the challenges facing the Ethereum ecosystem and its future development?

BMAN: My impression of the main venue is that Ethereum still has a very pure idealistic atmosphere. It remains the first stop for many new builders entering crypto because its ecosystem has many relatively mature infrastructures that are easier to get started with. Most innovations still emerge from Ethereum before spreading to ecosystems like Solana and BTC. From an investment perspective, we will continue to pay attention to native innovations in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Of course, it also has some issues, such as the Ethereum Foundation being too slow. I believe that the "Beam Chain" proposed by Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake does not need five years; if it were Chinese developers, they could probably complete it in two to three years.

However, the inefficiency and slow iteration of the Ethereum Foundation have not been a problem for just one or two years. The organization is rigid, and some core personnel have long since become complacent. Therefore, the Ethereum Foundation needs a major overhaul to break this stalemate.

From the perspective of token prices, the extent of the increase in this cycle is unlikely to match the previous round, but it is highly probable that it will maintain its position as the leading public chain ecosystem.

10. ChainCatcher: As a listed entity on the RootData annual list, what are your thoughts? How do you evaluate such Web3 venture capital lists?

BMAN: I use RootData data every day. The industry particularly needs comprehensive and rapidly iterating data platforms like RootData to help investors discover good institutions and teams from a data perspective, producing professional data and research reports. These are tough and thankless tasks, and RootData has taken them on, making a significant contribution to the industry.