Bitcoin’s (BTC) long-term potential remains largely untapped, according to Dan Morehead, founder and CEO of Pantera Capital, who took the Mainstage at Consensus 2025 in Toronto on Wednesday.
“There are a couple more decades to go of outsized returns in bitcoin,” Morehead told the audience, underscoring Pantera’s ongoing conviction in the asset class.
Morehead offered a rare look into Pantera’s performance metrics, noting that the firm has turned a profit on 86% of its portfolio companies. Pantera has also invested in 22 startups that have gone on to achieve “unicorn” status with valuations exceeding $1 billion.
To capture opportunities in a fast-evolving landscape, Morehead recommended investors adopt a broad-based approach. “We advise investing in a wide spectrum of tokens and venture equity,” he said.
On the same panel at Consensus, Dan Tapiero, founder and CEO of 10T and 1RT, shared a sobering view on deal flow and valuations.
“In this space, founders think they should be raising capital at 50 to 70 times revenue,” Tapiero said, calling the expectations “unrealistic.”
Tapiero said his firm passed on approximately 200 investment opportunities in recent years, including some companies they genuinely liked. “We automatically passed on a lot of these deals because the price was just too high,” he noted.
Among those they declined? FTX, Celsius, and BlockFi, all three of which later collapsed amid scandals and market turmoil.
Morehead also addressed the increasingly international nature of crypto activity. “Ninety percent of crypto trading and protocols are based outside the U.S.—which isn’t right,” he said. He blamed regulatory inertia for the exodus but expressed optimism that change is underway.
“The election win was a huge unlock,” Morehead said, referring to recent U.S. political shifts. “We’re coming back to what should have been, the last 6 to 8 years was a weird anomaly.” He hopes the coming years will see capital and innovation flow back into the U.S. crypto sector.
Read more: ‘$500K Bitcoin Would Seal It’: Scaramucci Says Crypto Is on the Cusp of Becoming an Asset Class
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