Pantera Partner: A bear market is the only criterion for filtering top-tier founders

Author: Paul Veradittakit, Managing Partner at Pantera Capital

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Reading: When everyone is talking about AI siphoning $211 billion while crypto is left with just $20 billion, Pantera partner Paul Veradittakit sees, in the bear market, the strongest founder lineup in four cycles. These operators who left Goldman Sachs, Citadel, and Stripe aren’t here to trade narratives—they’re targeting the finally “sexy” hard problem of institutional-grade financial infrastructure.

Founder-to-market fit is the most durable signal in venture capital. Products change, markets change, and regulatory regimes change too. But the pairing between specific founders and specific markets is the only constant—and the only thing that still compounds when prices aren’t going up.

We’ve never seen such a high level of founder-market matching in the blockchain space. Interesting questions have already converged into two directions: AI and fintech. And the most serious operators are moving in from Citadel, Stripe, Block, and Goldman Sachs, because that hard problem—institutional-grade financial infrastructure—has finally become the most interesting one.

We value four traits: deep domain expertise, high initiative, an unfair network advantage, and obsession. Every category-defining project we bet on in the bear market—from Offchain Labs to Ondo—has all four.

Founder-to-market fit is the only thing that compounds when prices don’t rise. Products change, markets get repriced, and regulatory regimes evolve. Only the pairing between specific founders and specific markets remains constant—and a bear market is the best environment to discover this pairing.

If you’re trying to decide what to do next, the market looks terrible. Bitcoin has been cut in half from its October 12.6 USD high last year, and market sentiment is fear; most capital and nearly all attention have shifted to AI—last year AI attracted about $211 billion, close to half of all venture capital, while blockchain had only about $20 billion. Electric Capital’s data shows that since the beginning of 2025, blockchain code submissions have fallen by about 75%, and in early 2026, a well-known cohort of operators announced a pivot to AI.

But this picture is missing something. The vast majority of developers who left had joined during the last bull market. Those who have been building here for two years or more have just reached historical highs, now writing about 70% of the code. This is exactly what happened in 2022—when the core developer cohort was still growing even during a 70% drawdown. A bear market doesn’t empty the room; it removes the people who came for price.

So the question has never been whether the market will come back—it’s who will still be standing when it does. The answer, every cycle, comes down to fit between specific founders and specific markets. That’s founder-to-market fit, and it’s the most durable signal.

What truly compounds

The word “fit” comes from Andy Rachleff and Marc Andreessen. But blockchain has compressed this idea more thoroughly than any other market. The people building this technology—crypto-punks and early libertarians—were obsessed with the market even before there was one. They had nothing else to own. Fit is everything.

Product-market fit asks whether the product found an audience. Founder-market fit asks an earlier, harder question: why is this specific person uniquely suited to win this specific market better than anyone else in the world?

In a bear market, that distinction is everything. Everything else on a founder’s roadmap is temporary. In blockchain, the product you deliver three years from now won’t be the same one you’re building today; the market will reprice, and the regulatory regime will move under your feet. When founders truly fit their market, none of this is fatal. They understand the underlying dynamics deeply enough to maintain an edge through transformation. When they don’t fit, they blindly pivot into a space they don’t understand, and the bear market swallows them.

We made our best bets in bear markets rather than bull markets—supporting founders even before the category existed, from the earliest Ethereum scaling infrastructure to today’s tokenization infrastructure. In such a self-referential market, fit is the most durable signal we have.

We’ve never seen matching this high

There’s a part that should change how you interpret talent exodus. In the previous cycles, talent was spread across hundreds of speculative narratives, and most people chased price. This time is different. The more interesting questions have converged into two verticals—AI and fintech—and the founder quality choosing blockchain to solve those problems is the highest I’ve seen across four cycles.

The clearest evidence is who is showing up. In blockchain, the hard problem now is institutional-grade financial infrastructure, and that’s exactly what the best operators in traditional finance have spent their careers solving. Nathan Allman left Goldman Sachs’ digital assets unit to start Ondo, where he now manages an approximately $2.6 billion product suite, bringing Treasuries and other assets on-chain. Ed Felten, after leaving his professorship at Princeton and the White House, co-founded Offchain Labs and built Arbitrum. Even within our own firm, my partner Franklin Bi comes from JPMorgan’s Onyx blockchain division. Now, founders walking into our meeting rooms come from Goldman Sachs, Citadel, Stripe, and Block—they aren’t here to trade narratives. They’re here because this hard problem has finally become the interesting one.

Market data backs them up. Real-world assets tokenized on public chains have already surpassed $30 billion, growing more than 400% since the beginning of 2025; in addition, there are about $300 billion in stablecoins. Tokenization products have been launched by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Bank of New York Mellon. The GENIUS Act provided a federal framework for U.S. stablecoins last summer. BCG predicts that tokenized assets could reach $16 trillion in the 2030s. When a serious version of a problem arrives, serious founders follow. This is scaled founder-to-market fit—and we’ve never seen such concentration in any earlier bear market.

The four areas we evaluate

When I meet a founder in a market like this, I look for four things.

Deep domain expertise. You’ve lived in the market, not just read its maps. In bear markets, buyers only show up for the important meetings, and technical depth consistently beats polished pitches. Before Ed Felten co-founded Offchain Labs and built Arbitrum, he spent a lifetime on the hardest problems in systems and security. We led the seed round. This depth is also why the team can clearly see the scaling problem, while most of the market is still debating it.

High initiative. The ability to sell a vision by demonstrating, to dense and skeptical talent, how much you truly understand where a specific market is going. Stani Kulechov does exactly that. Without any finance background, he pivoted ETHLend to Aave purely through belief and understanding, and continued building DeFi’s defining money market protocol.

An unfair network advantage. When you have both background and relationships, your vision matters less than how fast you can move compared to everyone else. A warm introduction goes further than any cold start, and in the categories being built right now, this advantage compounds. Nathan Allman came out of Goldman Sachs’ digital asset world, bringing networks and belief that it was the right time to launch Ondo. I led our seed round in 2021, and today Ondo controls most of the tokenized equities market share.

Obsession. When things are bad, people leave. The truly obsessed have been in the game for years—across cycles—and started before there was any reward. Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, and Adam Back spent decades researching digital cash without a market and without money, purely on belief. It’s a trait that won’t show up on a résumé, but matters more than anything.

To founders already in the arena

In a bear market, belief is the only fuel left

In a bull market, momentum helps founders get the job done. Capital is cheap, hiring is easier, and every release garners attention they don’t deserve. A bear market strips all of that away; the only thing that keeps founders moving forward is belief.

Belief isn’t a mood. It’s an observable output of real founder-to-market fit. Founders who deeply understand their market keep building even after tokens fall 50% and all headlines turn to AI, because they can see the endpoint the market hasn’t been able to price yet. Those without belief look at the same charts, lose courage, and then leave. That’s why a bear market is the best time to evaluate founders. Price does the filtering for us, leaving behind exactly the signals we’re trying to buy.

If you’re one of the operators inside Goldman Sachs, Citadel, or Stripe who is wondering whether now is the right time, here’s my message: yes. A bear market isn’t risk—it’s a proving ground, the cleanest environment to build compounding fit. Blockchain doesn’t need more tourists. It needs more founders with real fit to drive progress in financial infrastructure, and there has never been a better starting moment than this window when everyone else is leaving.

To founders already in the arena: stay focused and keep building. Founder-to-market fit is the thing that compounds when prices don’t rise—and prices will test that belief. Fit is what allows it to keep going.

Our commitment hasn’t changed. We launched the first U.S. Bitcoin fund in 2013, when the price was $65. Since then, we’ve made category-defining bets in every bear market, including the seed round for Arbitrum in the last one. We’ll keep doing it in this bear market. If you’re building at the intersection of market and belief, that’s where we want to be early.