Bankless
Bankless

The New Economics of Crypto Tokens | Austin Barack

September 7, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In the last eighteen months, even as crypto markets broadly drifted lower, a small handful of tokens—Venice, Hyperliquid, Pump, EtherFi—have grown their revenues and token prices idiosyncratically, decoupled from Bitcoin and Ethereum. Austin Barack, founder of Relayar Capital, argues this is not an accident. These are not infra tokens betting on future usage; they are applications that have already found product-market fit, generate real revenue, and return a meaningful share of that revenue to token holders through programmatic buybacks and burns. For Barack, this marks a structural shift: the center of gravity in crypto is moving from execution-layer infrastructure to applications, and the tokens that will endure will be those that function either as money or as claims on cash-flowing businesses.

The Growth-and-Value Lens

Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.

Read Full Summary →

Free • No credit card required

Listen to Audio Summary Open in App

What you'll learn

  • 1 Timestamped Outline: The New Economics of Crypto Tokens
  • 2 (00:13) **Investment Framework** - Austin Barack introduces Relay Air Capital's strategy at the intersection of growth and value
  • 3 (02:47) **Venture vs. Liquid Strategy** - Distinction between early-stage VC bets and public token investing
  • 4 (05:15) **Bear Market Opportunities** - Why the prolonged downturn created concentrated opportunities in liquid tokens
  • 5 (07:00) **Venice Token Valuation Model** - Detailed walkthrough of Austin's $43.90 price target for VVV at $1B FDV
  • 6 (15:34) **Key Assumptions & Pushback** - The most speculative inputs in the Venice model
  • 7 (20:11) **The Bull Case for Mines** - Why Venice's app store could be transformative

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

What if the most interesting crypto investments of the next cycle aren’t new blockchains at all? Relayer Capital founder Austin Barack joins David to explain why his attention has shifted toward a small group of applications with real users, rapidly growing revenue, and increasingly explicit token value capture.

---
📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24
https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium

---
BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:

🔓NEAR | TRADE CONFIDENTIALLY, GET 20% BACK
https://bankless.cc/near2026

🔑BITKEY | GET 10% OFF USE CODE: BANKLESS | #bitkeypartner
https://bankless.cc/bitkey

🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS
https://thedefireport.io/bankless

👑BANKLESS CONTENT MCP
https://www.bankless.com/premium

---
TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Finding Growth and Value in Crypto
4:17 Why Liquid Tokens Are Winning His Attention
7:00 How Austin Values Venice and VVV
15:34 The Biggest Bet in the Venice Model
24:53 Can Venice Balance Growth and Token Value?
32:53 Venice Growth and the OpenRouter Signal
37:31 Can Fundamental Tokens Outperform the Crypto Cycle?
43:50 Pump, Hyperliquid and EtherFi
48:57 EtherFi’s Shift Into a Neo Brokerage
58:24 Why the Market Discounts Pump
1:02:42 The Next Era of Crypto

---
RESOURCES

Austin Barack
https://x.com/AustinBarack

---
Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Bankless

More from this podcast

Bankless →