Watch the video of this interview on Gamma Prime’s YouTube channel:
Interview with Nenter (Global CEO at BitMart Exchange) and Yuri Rabinovich (Managing Partner at VNTR)
Nenter (Global CEO at BitMart Exchange):
My name is Nenter. I’m currently the global CEO of BitMart Exchange, which has been around for the past seven years. I’ve been in the role for about two months now. Prior to that, I spent three years as a partner at Animoca’s venture fund based out of Hong Kong, and 17 years in traditional finance across M&A, leveraged finance, running a fixed-income desk, and so on. I’m really pleased to be here. I think one of the first Web3 events I attended when I officially joined in a professional capacity was VNTR’s flagship conference in Singapore.
Yuri Rabinovich (Managing Partner at VNTR):
Cool. Yeah, so thanks for joining. I think the goal here is to learn, right? So probably not a lot we can learn about your experience at BitMart, but maybe we can start with Animoca, right? You guys invested in hundreds of companies. What do you see happening these days in terms of investments?
Nenter:
Sure. Even though my current job at BitMart is running the exchange, I still think being plugged into the investment world is absolutely critical just to see where trends are going. I would say the market right now is somewhat bifurcated. On one hand, you have the U.S.-led rally, which is more Bitcoin-centric, as well as ETF- and NASDAQ-centric. You’re seeing most of the deal flow and activity—investors, whether venture funds or liquid funds—piling into these PIPE deals or reverse-merger treasury deals in the U.S. because there’s a lack of liquidity in the altcoin market.
When you look at the altcoin market, you’re seeing most tokens bleed out, and I think that’s a function of supply and demand. What do I mean by that? You have over 4 million tokens currently in the market, and more continue to launch daily. There’s not enough capital to deploy across all these projects, not enough actively trading capital, and especially when you combine that with the amount of liquidity that has been sucked out from the retail side due to rug pulls, hacks, and token launchers draining liquidity. I would estimate easily above $8–10 billion was drained over the last year from the retail side. So who’s holding up the bid, right? That’s why you’re seeing so much bleeding across these alts.
I don’t see it stopping anytime soon, especially with VC-backed altcoins, where unlocks are happening regularly. I was just in New York at Permissionless, and I ran into some projects I’d spoken to in the past. The overall sentiment is a bit tough right now because you have projects that raised a lot, but at the same time, they have 1% unlocking every month, with investors selling immediately as they receive tokens.
So over the next 12 to 24 months, I do not foresee this selling pressure subsiding anytime soon.
