I’m excited to announce that I’m joining the investment team at Pantera.

 

My crypto journey started in 2019 with the simplest possible entry point: buying Bitcoin and Ethereum. What began as speculation quickly became something deeper. I studied Computer Science, Math, Statistics, and Data Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where I held various software engineering roles in Web2 and Web3. Trying to draw the distinction between the two led me to realize that crypto isn’t just a new asset class. It’s a fundamentally new technology stack: permissionless, composable building blocks with the ability to program value and engineer human behavior.

 

At Penn, I was part of FranklinDAO, where I worked on MEV and ZK research alongside protocols like Scroll. These experiences grounded my understanding of crypto in its technical primitives — not just what’s being built, but how and why it works at the protocol level.

 

Most recently, I was an investor at IOSG Ventures, where I focused on investments in consumer infrastructure, DeFi, and trading. I spent my time sourcing and underwriting deals, publishing public research, and lurking on-chain.

 

How I Think About Crypto

At its core, blockchain is a tool built on trustlessness. People are able to trust the system to send money to one another, and as they used it, value was created. That value became financialized, and through that process, crypto built a financial structure that mirrors traditional finance: exchanges, market makers, brokers, the whole stack.

 

But I don’t believe this is the end. The opportunity extends far beyond molding DeFi into a digital version of TradFi. DeFi-native primitives like flash loans and liquidations already showed that this design space produces things that simply couldn’t exist before. We’re entering a white space where it’s possible to trustlessly program value.

 

The good news is that crypto is very good at speed-running the search for product-market fit. Projects rise quickly, but if there’s a lack of PMF, they die quickly too. Because on-chain data is public and transparent, the industry learns and grows at unprecedented speeds. It’s obvious to me that a creative and competent founder can do extraordinary things with such a powerful tool at their disposal.

 

I’m energized by founders with high conviction, strong opinions, and deep expertise in their target market — especially those who are obsessed with what they’re building and have a clear-cut vision for why they’re building it. Equipped with a background in both building and venture, I’m excited to provide valuable feedback as a user while also ideating on market direction.

 

Why Pantera

As one of the most respected venture funds in crypto, Pantera doesn’t borrow conviction from others. Over the past decade, Dan, Paul, Franklin, and the team have consistently developed a clear thesis on where the market is heading and backed high-quality founders building within those frameworks from a first-principles standpoint, before the crowd arrived. Being a pioneer in this industry requires developing conviction in-house and going all-in on supporting great builders. That independent thinking is rare and hard to sustain, and it’s what drew me here.

 

What I’ll Be Focused On

At Pantera, I’ll be focused on DeFi and infrastructure as investment verticals. I’m always excited to meet anyone who’s building a net new experience or can use blockchain technology to meaningfully change user behavior. I’ll be on the lookout for institutional DeFi stacks, novel market structures, or new primitives in Web3 infrastructure with tangible use cases.

 

If you’re building, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at joey.shin@panteracapital.com.

 

JOEY SHIN
JUNIOR PARTNER