Crypto Titans: Exclusive Interview With Prolific Crypto Author Markus Thielen

It is one thing to trade crypto and not care about its origin, but quite another to understand its history and connect the dots that puzzle.

But taking a step further to write about the history and the seesaw of the crypto industry can be said to be the most noble act. Only the most curious among us can be inspired to add to the vast literature that has accumulated on the subject.

Singapore-based crypto author and analyst Markus Thielen is the author of Crypto Titans, a four-hundred-page long newly published book, examining the history of cryptocurrency and reinforcing our understanding of how the crypto industry operates.

Thielen and I recently sat down for this interview. We talked about his new book, his career as a crypto author, and the crypto industry. Read on!

Mr. Thielen, can you tell us about yourself?

I am the Head of Research & Strategy for Matrixport, a $4bn all-in-one financial solutions platform for digital assets. Industry veterans started the firm, and Matrixport serves around 500 institutional clients. As a strategist, I monitor the markets and provide investment advice and insights through research reports about industry trends and investment opportunities.

What is your route to blockchain, crypto, and web3?

I have monitored crypto since 2012 and gained some sideline experience. Still, a few years later, I started trading crypto for a financial institution as part of a proprietary macro portfolio. During the last bull market, it was all about yield farming and the play-to-X opportunities but once the hype was over, it was time to focus on the fundamentals.

My approach has been more macro-focused, understanding the narratives, liquidity, and trends while keeping an eye on valuations and potential headwinds. I have also been focused on policy implications for crypto and this approach served me well to protect capital during the bear market last year.

Your new book, the Crypto Titans, is finally on Amazon. What is it about?

The book explains how the crypto industry started and evolved and how everything in crypto is ultimately connected. It shows the players behind the $3 trillion industry (at its peak) and how billions of dollars were lost. The book also explains how the four crypto bull markets of 2011, 2013, 2017, and 2021 unfolded, the drivers behind them, and what caused prices to correct violently during bear markets.

I also write about the players involved and how they have made money-while others have lost large sums. The red line of the book is that policy and regulatory decisions have influenced the trends in crypto more than most people are aware of, and I clearly show how those bull and bear markets were intertwined with those bigger trends.

How did your career as a crypto author begin?

Similar to tradFi, it is crucial to understand why prices go up and down and what and who influences prices, and I did a structural analysis around those concepts. Why and when did stablecoins become big, how and through what actions did Binance become such a giant player, and how did people make and lose money – connecting all those events with specific dates helps me tremendously understand the industry’s structure.

While for most people, crypto seems random, everything is interconnected I started writing down those patterns and dug deeper, and it led me to this book. As the Head of Research, I have a very structured approach to understanding the drivers of big moves and writing a book has been a natural extension of my research.

The evolution of cryptocurrency was one of trial and error before Satoshi came on board. How do you put this in proper perspective?

There were many attempts in the 90s and early 2000s to solve the double spending problem.

Initially, not many people paid attention to Satoshi as there were too many attempts. It took several months for people to look beyond the whitepaper and wait until Satoshi presented the software to run the Bitcoin code.

Despite the incorporation of many different problems into one whitepaper, it's also interesting that the invention of cryptographic currencies has continued.

Does the crypto industry have an image problem? Is it dying?

The crypto industry does not have an image problem per se but primarily a performance problem and a secondary adoption issue. Despite the bear market, many institutions are still keen to get and stay involved with crypto. However, those institutions are holding back from deploying capital. But those institutions will be back when prices climb higher, so it is a matter of price foremost.

Netflix only became a viable company once the streaming costs materially declined, and for crypto, it might be similar. It was the cost of minting NFTs that caused the collapse back in 2021. But with the upgrades that Ethereum is going through now, the cost issue could materially change.

You investigated how trillions and billions were made and lost in the different phases of the crypto market. Can you give us a brief explanation about it?

At its peak in 2021, the crypto was roughly $3trn strong. Some players made billions through mining machines, others made billions by setting up exchanges. But there has also been a material change in terms of people.

First, there were technology enthusiasts in the US, but a regulatory change caused the industry to move to Asia where crypto was scaled. At the same time, the Chinese invented these hyper-efficient mining machines that put every other region out of business.

A few years later, we have a lot of Stanford people entering the industry and making billions by setting up various crypto projects. The book talks a lot about the key players and critical companies that drove various changes within the industry.

Can we establish the thesis that regulation will kill the crypto industry?

We have numerous examples during the last ten years, and instead of killing the industry, it evolves and moves like water. This is precisely what I wanted to find out with this book: there is a magical relationship between policy / regulatory decisions and the industry's evolution. While many say that the U.S. is being very harsh currently, the industry will evolve.

There are now 420 million people who have crypto holdings, this is unstoppable. Nobody should be surprised if the Middle East or Asia will be the dominant centers for crypto.

But London is also making essential efforts, and London is still a global center of financial liquidity. Those three centers are still very positive on crypto, so talking about killing is misplaced.

What, in your view, is the biggest challenge facing it?

Most surveys still indicate that education is among the biggest problems for the industry. For many outsiders of crypto, they are curious and hesitant as it seems so random. For people within crypto, it appears a lot about short-termism.

This is really why I wrote the book and instead of keeping those insights to myself or a selected group of institutional clients, I wanted to share it and help others understand that there is a structure.

As with any asset class when it slowly matures, the volatility will decline as people become more educated. This will cap the upside but it will also minimize the downside. If I want to learn about WW2, I can pick up a book and read it over the weekend, up until now, this didn’t exist for crypto.

What can be done about it?

Hence publishing the “crypto titans” book, which goes through all the major turning points for crypto and solves the education problem from a bigger perspective. Several OGs and leading industry players have reviewed the book and everybody had positive feedback. So if those guys have learned something from the book, it will be a treasury for anybody else.

Any parting words?

The industry is evolving quickly because so many people worldwide are involved in it. Some need to catch up, while others need to be on their toes to stay ahead of the curve. With $60bn of Venture Capital money having gone into crypto over the last three years and many of the smartest people dedicated their careers to crypto, we must assume that the industry keeps pushing forward. The key is staying informed.