Around The Coin
Around The Coin is a podcast exploring finance, fintech, and the future of money. Hosted by industry experts, it features deep dives into payments, crypto, banking, and disruptive innovations shaping the global economy.
Around The Coin
Investing in AI and Blockchain Startups - Samiz Bayan | ATC #623
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Host Stephen Sargeant interviews Samiz Bayan, partner at Draper Dragon, on the state of venture capital and the convergence of AI, blockchain, and tokenization. Bayan outlines Draper Dragon’s early-stage focus on infrastructure, its bridge between Silicon Valley and Asia via the Draper Network, and how that cross-border network supports founders with exchanges, liquidity, and distribution. He shares his path from traditional finance into crypto (via Cardano), lessons from building NFT authentication and peer-to-peer commerce, and what he looks for in founders—receptiveness, execution, recruiting, and distribution moats. The conversation covers a bifurcated VC market dominated by AI (about 65% of venture deals), longer fund timelines, valuation discipline, regulation’s growing importance, and why tokenization must be legally usable and composable to matter. They discuss accelerators, institutional DeFi, agentic payments with stablecoins, AI as an interface, diligence improvements from AI, and emerging interests in health tech like GLP-1s.
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