When I started investing in crypto in 2017, I didn't plan on building a venture fund. I was a biomedical science and business graduate from the University of Auckland with a side hustle selling subscription boxes to students.

The crypto world was buzzing with ICOs, Bitcoin was pushing toward its first major peak, and I was drawn to a technology that seemed set to reshape finance, governance, and digital ownership.

But my journey into crypto wasn't driven by speculation. It had a lot to do with where I come from.

Finding My Edge

Growing up in New Zealand shaped how I think about technology and investing. We have something here called the "Number 8 Wire Mentality" – named after the gauge of fencing wire that farmers would cleverly repurpose to fix almost anything on remote farms. This mindset represents the resourcefulness that comes from solving problems with limited resources, creating innovative solutions from whatever materials are at hand.

This spirit runs through our startup ecosystem – small but mighty, with ambitious founders who learn to think globally from day one because our domestic market is too small to sustain them. They build with resourcefulness and efficiency, focused on sustainable value rather than quick flips.

From this vantage point, I could observe the global crypto landscape with clarity that might be harder to maintain at the center of the hype cycles. I saw how DeFi summer brought financial speculators, NFTs attracted cultural creators, and meme coins pulled in gamblers – each wave leaving behind both wreckage and valuable innovation. This perspective helped me develop investment theses that look beyond the market's current fixations.

The Values That Guide Me

Another lens shapes my investment approach in ways few VCs share. I was raised as a Muslim, and through that upbringing I started to view certain financial practices differently - particularly those that prioritise risk-sharing over debt-based models, limit excessive speculation, and expect investments to create real utility rather than extractive value.

These values align naturally with the best of crypto's potential. While much of crypto has become dominated by speculation, the core innovation enables collaborative, peer-to-peer systems that share risk rather than extract rent.

Venture capital itself aligns with these principles. Unlike interest-based models that profit regardless of an enterprise's success, VC creates true risk-sharing partnerships. When founders win, investors win. When they lose, we lose together.

I'm a generalist crypto VC, but these principles guide how I evaluate projects, pushing me to seek sustainable value creation over more extractive models.

Real Businesses in Crypto

The crypto space is full of big claims about disruption that rarely come true. We've seen countless projects promise to "revolutionise" industries without understanding the real challenges of those sectors or building products people actually need.

I'm looking for something different: real businesses using crypto as infrastructure to solve genuine problems.

Take T2 World, one of our portfolio companies. While other crypto publishing platforms focused on attracting crypto natives, T2 created a community-driven platform where writers and readers can collaborate, remix content, and earn rewards based on contribution. They've attracted over 3,000 writers and 12,000 readers – most without prior crypto experience.

Or Opacity Network, which uses zero-knowledge proofs to let users bring Web2 data into Web3 in a secure, verifiable manner. One company using Opacity is Nosh Delivery, an Uber Eats alternative that has generated over $10 million in revenue by creating driver-aligned incentives. Drivers can sign up using their existing Uber or DoorDash credentials, with Opacity verifying their work history without requiring permission from those platforms.

"I'm not interested in companies building for crypto users. I'm interested in companies using crypto to build for everyone else."

These businesses share a common thread: they're using crypto primitives as building blocks to create genuine utility, not as speculative assets for trading.

The Skeptic Test

I've spent countless hours with LPs and institutional investors who remain deeply skeptical of crypto. They've seen the scams, the collapses, and the regulatory crackdowns.

This has forced me to develop what I call the "Skeptic Test" – can I explain a project's value without resorting to token price appreciation or circular economics? Does the business create value that would exist even in a world where token prices never increase?

The businesses that pass this test tend to have several traits in common:

  • Use crypto as infrastructure, not the main pitch
  • Solve real trust or coordination issues
  • Add value even for users who don't notice the blockchain
  • Work with existing systems, not against them

These businesses may not generate the explosive short-term returns of meme coins or yield farming protocols, but they're building foundations for lasting impact.

The GD1 Crypto Approach

At GD1 Crypto, we've designed our approach specifically for this vision of crypto's future. We invest at the pre-seed and seed stages, targeting a portfolio of 20-25 companies. Our investments are meaningful enough to demonstrate commitment while allowing us to be nimble and focused on founders rather than competing for allocation with larger funds.

We invest globally, creating opportunities to co-invest alongside established firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Electric Capital – access many LPs (especially in APAC) could never achieve directly. For founders, we offer a unique network, helping them access markets and perspectives they might otherwise miss.

Our investments span across:

  • Novel uses of token incentives to drive genuine engagement
  • Infrastructure that bridges Web2 and Web3 in practical ways
  • Financial systems that enable new forms of value creation and sharing

We're not chasing the latest crypto narrative or looking for quick flips. We're investing in founders building businesses that would be impossible without crypto infrastructure but valuable regardless of token prices.

Where Crypto Meets Reality

The next wave of crypto adoption won't come from speculative assets. It will come from businesses that use crypto infrastructure to solve real problems for real people – often without those people even realising they're using crypto.

We're already seeing this happen. Stablecoins have found genuine product-market fit in remittances and cross-border payments, particularly in developing economies. Identity and reputation systems are enabling new forms of coordination.

The future belongs to founders who see past the speculative excesses and recognise the fundamental coordination, trust, and ownership problems that crypto can uniquely solve.

At GD1 Crypto, we're backing these founders – the ones building bridges between crypto's potential and the world's needs, creating businesses that would be impossible without blockchain but valuable regardless of token prices.

If you're building in this space, I'd love to connect. The next generation of crypto success stories won't emerge from hype cycles or clever token economics – they'll come from founders solving genuine problems with blockchain as their infrastructure, not their selling point.

The noise is fading, and the signal is getting stronger.