I remember the first time I was asked to evaluate a major technological shift. I was a college student studying accounting in the mid-1990s, and one of my projects was to decide if the Internet could become a viable platform for commerce. My group and I researched, ran the numbers, made the presentations and gave the answer that felt obvious: No, the Internet would not work.<\/p>\n
At the time, we couldn\u2019t imagine using a credit card online. Or buying shoes on a computer. Like many people then, we underestimated what would become the most important technological advancement of our lives. How wrong we were.<\/p>\n
In the long run, though, my college experience would give me a deeper understanding of the forces of innovation. When I first encountered crypto in 2017, I saw parallels to the internet, including what I missed the first time. I saw a similar structure, incentives and also a sense of inevitability. That insight led me to found Pure Crypto, a digital asset investment firm which was the best-performing hedge fund-of-funds globally between 2018 and 2025.<\/p>\n
Since launching Pure Crypto, I\u2019ve watched digital assets transform from a fringe experiment into a Wall Street-approved asset class<\/a>. Despite this, I believe crypto is still in its early days. It sounds counterintuitive to call something \u201cearly\u201d when it\u2019s created trillions in value<\/a>, but consider how few people own crypto \u2014 only about 6.8% of people globally at the end of 2024<\/a>. For comparison, at the time of the dot-com crash, less than 7% of the world was online<\/a>, and some of the Internet\u2019s most transformative platforms hadn\u2019t even arrived yet. Facebook didn\u2019t exist until 2004.<\/p>\n What that tells me is simple: When a transformative technology arrives, the window of opportunity is longer and bigger than it looks.<\/p>\n One of the biggest shifts in my approach \u2014 and maybe the reason I didn\u2019t misjudge crypto like I did the Internet \u2014 was learning to dig deeper. When I initially dismissed the Internet as a viable commercial platform, I didn\u2019t understand the infrastructure. I looked at the surface \u2014 what seemed possible then \u2014 instead of understanding what might come next. With crypto, I\u2019ve made an effort to be more tenaciously curious. I ask different questions now:<\/p>\n What\u2019s the architecture? What does this protocol actually enable? Is it solving a real-world problem or is it just noise? I\u2019m not a computer scientist or developer, and I don\u2019t pretend to be. But I\u2019ve learned that understanding the fundamentals changes the way you see the space.<\/p>\n Story Continues <\/p>\n When I evaluate crypto, I try to treat it like infrastructure, not speculation. I want to know how a system creates trust without intermediaries, what incentives are built into the design and whether it unlocks new behaviors or markets that weren\u2019t possible before.<\/p>\n One thing crypto taught me quickly: you can\u2019t do this alone. It\u2019s such a fast-moving, interdisciplinary space that no one can fully keep up on their own. Early on, I realized my best shot at understanding the landscape wasn\u2019t about being the smartest person in the room. It was about being in rooms where I could learn.<\/p>\n That\u2019s become a theme throughout my journey. Some of the most important insights I\u2019ve gained in this space haven\u2019t come from a spreadsheet or whitepaper, but from conversations. From putting myself around people who were thinking deeply about this technology in ways I wasn\u2019t yet.<\/p>\n Finally, if there\u2019s one thing I\u2019ve come to believe about innovation, it\u2019s that the most important shifts don\u2019t happen overnight.<\/p>\n