‘Don’t forget about’ last cycle's hot investment categories

Episode 23 of Season 6 of The Scoop was recorded with The Block's Frank Chaparro and Volt Capital Managing Partner Soona Amhaz.

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Soona Amhaz, managing partner at Volt Capital, a venture firm focused on early-stage crypto and Web3 investments, joined Frank Chaparro on The Scoop, The Block's podcast, for a May 2024 conversation urging investors not to lose sight of the categories that drove returns during the prior market cycle even as attention shifted toward newer trends.

Outline

00:00 Introduction
03:40 New Venture Verticals
10:30 Last Cycle's Winners
14:29 Mainstream Crypto Adoption
21:26 Macro Impact on Crypto VC
25:44 The 'Memecoin Meta'
30:21 Points vs. Tokens
38:09 Tokenomics Best Practices
42:19 Closing Thoughts

Amhaz, an active voice in crypto venture circles with a background in research and investing roles focused on decentralized infrastructure, argued that as capital chased the latest narratives, sectors that proved durable in past cycles, such as core infrastructure, developer tooling, and consumer-facing crypto applications, still warranted serious attention from allocators rather than being written off as played out.

On the episode, she discussed the rise of memecoins as both a cultural phenomenon and a legitimate, if unconventional, investment category, weighing how venture investors should think about an asset class driven more by attention and community than traditional fundamentals. Amhaz also addressed the growing use of points-based reward programs by crypto projects ahead of token launches, contrasting these incentive structures with more traditional tokenomics design and raising questions about transparency, fairness, and long-term alignment between projects and their communities.

The conversation touched on how macroeconomic conditions, including shifting expectations around interest rates, were shaping venture capital flows into digital assets, and how funds like Volt Capital were positioning portfolios heading into what many market participants expected to be a more constructive period for crypto following the approval of spot bitcoin ETFs earlier in the year. Amhaz offered her perspective on what responsible token distribution should look like, cautioning against designs that prioritize short-term speculation over building genuinely engaged user bases.

Throughout the discussion, she encouraged listeners and fellow investors to apply the lessons of previous boom-and-bust cycles rather than assuming this time would be entirely different, making the case that pattern recognition, paired with a willingness to back overlooked categories, remains one of the more durable edges in crypto venture investing.