6MV Founder: 2026, the 'Inflection Point' for Crypto Investing Has Arrived

Compiled & Edited: Ada, TechFlow

Guest: Mike Dudas, Founder & Managing Partner of 6th Man Ventures (6MV), Founder of The Block, former executive at Venmo/Braintree/PayPal

Host: Robbie Klages

Podcast: The Rollup

Original Title: Why 2026 Will Be An Iconic Year to Invest in Digital Assets

Air Date: April 24, 2026

Editor's Introduction

In the annual crypto VC wrap-up interview, The Rollup invited Mike Dudas, founder of 6th Man Ventures. He believes the crypto market is in a contradictory period of "rapidly improving fundamentals but constant negative events." He also made sharp judgments on the stablecoin landscape: Circle is essentially "government dollars," and its refusal to freeze funds in the Bybit hack puts it on the wrong side of history; while Tether has transformed, vastly outperforming Circle on key decisions. He predicts Paxos, Bridge, and others will become the next wave of large fintech enterprises. Additionally, he revealed that Pump.fun's annualized revenue is nearly $400 million, arguing its token is significantly undervalued.

Highlights from the Conversation

Current State of Crypto VC

• "I'm deploying capital in 2026, so I'm going to tell you it's the best year ever."
• "The market isn't short of capital, founders, ideas, or users, but every week something unexpected hits us – the next hack, the next bad regulatory news, the next person getting arrested."
• "We're seeing great talent flocking to mediocre or consensus ideas at an unprecedented rate. VCs aren't deploying because they keep seeing the same pitches."

Pump.fun and On-Chain Spending

• "Despite the current market environment, Pump.fun is still averaging over $1 million in daily revenue, with an annualized run rate near $400 million. You can't say this market has topped."
• "The crypto market doesn't reward fundamentals. It's not that people don't care; it's that we haven't figured out which fundamentals matter. Tokens are too new and mean a million different things."
• "Everyone says memecoins are dead. But the marginal retail who cares about memecoins isn't here right now. Those people will come back."

Circle vs. Tether

• "Circle's strategy is clear: get as close to a Central Bank Digital Currency as possible. They’re basically saying, 'Government, we're fully aligned with you. Your rails are our rails.'"
• "If North Korea is stealing hundreds of millions of dollars and you have the power to stop it, you should. Circle is on the wrong side of history, and they will pay for it."
• "When it comes to key decisions, the gap between Tether and Circle isn't a pro team vs. an amateur team; it's an NFL team vs. a high school football team."

The Predicament of New L1s, App Chains, and General-Purpose Chains

• "Mega ETH looks more like an app chain to me; it's going to become a super app. I don't think you can value Monad like Solana. The key is the revenue from applications on top."
• "Solana hasn't clearly articulated *why* you should use a general-purpose L1 for settlement. Is it for censorship resistance, speed, or cost reduction? Honestly, I'm less sure of this narrative than I was a year ago."

Stablecoin-as-a-Service

• "Every company with users and capital should put that capital into a treasury-backed stablecoin. They aren't doing it yet, but they all will. They won't get their own licenses to issue dollars. So this is a massive market for the few stablecoin-as-a-service providers."

AI, IPOs, and Liquidity Cycles

• "No one cares about crypto IPOs right now. Honestly, they're looking at SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. AI is sucking all the oxygen out of the room."
• "The Trump memecoin was the top. Push that two years out to 2027, and it aligns perfectly with these IPOs and the four-year cycle. That window will see a lot of people with low-cost basis in crypto companies gain liquidity, many of whom have a natural interest in crypto."

The State of Crypto VC and Capital Flow

Robbie: This is our annual state of crypto VC. Last year we did this in Soho, and the market was completely different. We had Tom Dunleavy from Variant Capital on, and his big framework was: VC funding is down, deal count is down, quality teams are fewer, the whole world has changed. But my feeling then was: if you have capital and can identify good founders, competition is actually lower, and many new founders with potentially better backgrounds are entering the space. We concluded that the 2025-2026 vintage might be one of the best returning. Do you agree? How do you see the overall quality of founders now?

Mike Dudas:

I'm a VC deploying capital in 2026, so of course I'm going to tell you it's the best year ever. But LPs, please take note.

First, there's ample capital in the crypto VC market. Several large funds have closed, as announced publicly. Many early-stage funds have also raised without public announcements. A huge amount of capital is waiting to be deployed. Capital is not the issue.

Second, are there good founders? Yes. Are there good ideas? Absolutely. You see a wave of breakthrough protocols, many founded years ago, even during the bear market. So we have ideas, founders, and capital. This is definitely not a time to be pessimistic about crypto.

But what's the problem? Explosions keep happening – hacks, founders being charged and arrested, things related to the Trump family looking increasingly suspicious, and the regulatory environment in Washington: we expected bills to be passed or close to passing, but they aren't.

So the situation is: the macro level of the crypto industry keeps having negative events, but simultaneously, the fundamentals are dramatically improving. We're not short of capital, founders, ideas, or usage, but every week brings unexpected events.

Robbie: So when you're doing deals, is competition actually lower?

Mike Dudas:

Yes. Consensus trades are hotter than ever, with prices pushed very high – irrationally high, I'd say. There's always a last buyer, and looking back five years from now, some of those bids might seem unbelievable.

But the difficulty is that while there are good founders, they lack confidence to take big risks. Both the external world and the internal crypto world are changing too fast. When we do talent assessments, the empirical data shows: great talent is flowing to mediocre ideas or consensus ideas at an unprecedented rate.

That's why you see VC deployment slowing down. VCs have a higher vantage point and see a lot, but they keep receiving the same pitches and struggle to distinguish who is truly excellent. There aren't crazy, eye-popping founders emerging, nor the marginal innovations that inspire risk-taking. The classic examples are missing: no marginal retail buyers, and no breakout consumer application to motivate everyone.

So on the surface, the market lacks inspiration. But underneath? Stablecoin supply keeps growing, global on-chain usage is staggering. These just aren't headline news. VC capital is flowing into these companies – not the ones making headlines, but the vast number of startups building on public blockchains.

Robbie: Indeed, capital flow is clearly shifting. Companies at the intersection of on-chain finance and traditional finance are attracting significant capital. The number of tokenization companies, stablecoin companies, on-chain credit, and novel digital banks is exploding. Where do you see specific investment opportunities at the boundary of these two worlds merging? Is it clearly compressible profit margins? Or Settlement time reduction?

Mike Dudas:

We focus on what's genuinely new and inventive across the entire spectrum. That's 6MV's DNA; we prefer on-chain native things.

When Venmo first came out, people thought it was an alien product. Polymarket seemed like an alien product when it entered the Asian market; it took six years to become mainstream consensus. So we look for those "alien ideas" in the markets you mentioned, because we believe they will become mainstream in a few years.

The challenge is that often the entry point into these markets is still regulatory arbitrage. For example, listing oil on Hyperliquid; it could become the most liquid market because anyone in the world can trade it, and market makers don't worry about CFTC regulation.

At the VC stage, it's chaotic because the CLARITY Act isn't settled. Many emerging founders are hesitating about how to navigate compliance now. In past cycles, companies that pursued compliance too early were often punished by competitors.

Example: There are a bunch of companies now tokenizing private equity shares, like Anthropic shares. Some structures are somewhat compliant; others are pure YOLO. The YOLO ones are growing faster currently. I'm not sure that model is sustainable, and I don't believe it is.

So this fusion period is indeed very chaotic. We still prefer to find 'alien ideas,' but when you talk about traditional asset classes like stocks, structured private credit, etc., they require big brand endorsements. Our 'alien model' doesn't fit as well. Frankly, at the earliest stages, we don't see much capital flowing into RWA issuance and tokenization companies.

The Misunderstood Value of Pump.fun and Hyperliquid

Robbie: You've consistently invested in the on-chain consumer direction, making many deals in this category, with Pump.fun being the most prominent. I saw you tweet that they are aggressively absorbing selling pressure with no market reaction. A counter-argument is becoming a half-consensus in the market: the token launch market won't grow like the perpetuals market, so Pump.fun's buyback or economic model shouldn't be valued like Hyperliquid's, because perpetuals might be a massive category, while the on-chain token launch market might have peaked. Why is this argument wrong?

Mike Dudas:

I don't even want to debate it; it's just wrong. You don't see it now because we're in a brutal bear market. In this environment, people are still launching tokens. Pump.fun averages over $1 million in daily revenue, an annualized run rate of nearly $400 million.

The more interesting question is: why isn't the token price reflecting this track record of revenue spanning two years and buybacks lasting almost a year?

I think part of it is the team's communication strategy. They don't do traditional investor relations, they don't explain to the market how strong and defensible their business is. I understand the team, but I don't particularly like the attitude. At the same time, I understand why they don't do IR: the crypto market simply does not reward fundamentals.

Diving deeper, it's not that people don't care about fundamentals; it's that we haven't figured out which fundamentals actually matter. Stocks have decades of valuation frameworks. Bonds have clear, predictable models. Tokens? They're very new, have no standards, and mean completely different things to different people.

So fundamental investors look at Pump.fun's token, or even Hyperliquid's HYPE token, and don't know how to value it. The result is these trade at significant discounts. This makes sense in a bear market, but if Pump.fun keeps delivering, a bull run will swing it reflexively in the other direction.

As for whether Pump.fun's business is sustainable, I think it's actually more defensible than many enterprises. Look at Hyperliquid. The best companies in the world are trying to compete with it. Perpetuals are already a consensus opportunity. Everyone agrees perpetuals are a superior way to express a view on an asset, and prediction markets will eventually converge here. But precisely because everyone agrees, competition will be fierce. It's unclear if the profit ultimately falls on the execution layer or the market-making layer.

Pump.fun is different. Everyone says memecoins are over, totally passé. Anything on-chain is out of favor right now. And they haven't publicly launched many new things in the past year. But I think the reason is that the marginal user who cares about their product isn't in the crypto market right now. But they will come back.

Views on Hot Projects

Robbie: So you remain bullish that on-chain consumer activity will continue to grow. MegaETH (a high-performance Ethereum L2) just announced an April 30 token launch, with several gamified interesting primitives around it. There's an interesting divergence now: on one side are products like MegaETH and Pump.fun, still optimizing on-chain for retail; on the other are tokenized assets, RWA, and big institutions entering, believing *that* is the industry's future. Only a few chains and protocols still serve the more retail-oriented on-chain users. How do you see this divergence?

Mike Dudas:

Specifically regarding MegaETH, I quite like them. But the Ethereum L2 track overall isn't an investment logic I can fully grasp, and objectively, it hasn't performed well.

I suspect MegaETH will eventually become a super app. The brand is MegaETH, people use various things on it, creating a flywheel effect. This is a bit like Hyperliquid. Hyperliquid itself is a brand, an application; the trading activity on it feeds back into the underlying chain. But this is a different positioning from general-purpose chains like Solana or Ethereum.

As for new L1s, maybe one will make a crazy innovation, like quantum computing, or something like Bittensor (a decentralized AI network). But we probably won't foresee it; it will only seem obvious in hindsight.

For something like MegaETH, I would probably value it based on application-layer revenue, not as infrastructure. I don't know what applications will be on it, but I like the team, and the community seems active.

Same for Monad (another high-performance EVM-compatible L1 backed by top VCs like Paradigm). I angel invested and really like the team, believing they created great technology. But I don't think Monad can be valued the same way as Solana.

Robbie: Is this a timing issue? Or because Solana's era was different?

Mike Dudas:

Monad's pitch is too similar to Ethereum and Solana: fast, cheap, a chain for retail. Bittensor is completely different. So I don't think timing is the main factor; differentiation in positioning is.

We invested in Plasma (a blockchain focused on stablecoin payments). I think it will become a stablecoin-centric super app, with a supporting chain around it. This model has value, but it's a different thing from Solana, Ethereum, and definitely from Bitcoin.

Robbie: Speaking of Plasma, our fund also invested. Tempo (another stablecoin payment company) recently partnered with DoorDash for agent payments. A year ago, stablecoin chains were the hottest investment area. Interest has cooled somewhat, but they are fundamentally different from traditional L1s. What is your investment thesis for Plasma?

Mike Dudas: