Building the DC Crypto Community with Ledger Capital

3 min readAug 15, 2018

Washington DC — I caught up with Avi Felman at a cafe in Chinatown. Avi is a partner and cofounder of Ledger Capital. He’s part of a new millenial breed: purpose-driven entrepreneur armed with an elite education and life hacking skills. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis but came back to the nation’s capital to help build the crypto community.

Interview highlights below!

What is his crypto origin story?

While doing his engineering studies at Washington University, he religiously delved into crypto for two years. This included cryptography, game theory, market economics, and social innovation trends. Finally, he poured fiat money into Bitcoin.

When serving his short tenure at Capital One, a large commercial bank, crypto markets had an extended bull run, which gave him an opportunity to build his portfolio. He decided perhaps it was time to jump in with both feet.

What is Ledger Capital?

Ledger Capital has an investment side and advisory arm. While they plan to raise a $2 million fund, currently they’re focusing on advising clients on business strategy, token economics and system design.

They also help new token projects build investor materials, whitepapers and design robust token systems. They educate larger companies understand how blockchain and cryptocurrencies can help improve their business models.

What is Avi’s Investment Thesis?

You can read Avi’s commentary to better grasp his view on markets. It’s centered on the long-term value of cryptocurrencies. Right now these markets are terribly inefficient and volatile, which creates arbitrage opportunities. Avi’s team has a rendition of the Fear & Greed Index that captures what emotions drive crypto markets at a particular time. Their method integrates social signals (alternative data like Twitter sentiments), behavioral finance and technical analysis.

Source: Ledger Capital, Crypto Fear & Greed Index

He sees cryptocurrencies falling into three buckets: transactional (e.g. Bitcoin that are designed to be a medium of exchange or store of value), platform (like Ethereum that provide the layer for other applications), utility coins (coins that are used to access decentralized applications or perform certain tasks), and stable coins (e.g. Tether, DAI, Saga). The taxonomy is ever evolving.

We didn’t touch on security tokens or tokenized assets much; this is a whole other class that could explode as institutional funding comes in (whenever that occurs). I sensed Avi isn’t as optimistic as I am on that liquidity pouring in, at least on the timing. Avi keeps a close watch on how regulatory developments will shape these markets — for instance, the SEC is considering a slew of Bitcoin ETF proposals. Being in DC keeps him closer to the conversation at think tanks, Congressional hearings, and wonky policy circles that I became familiar with during my tenure there.

How are they building the crypto community in Washington, DC?