Binance

Tech companies buy media arms as cheap user acquisition

Shaan's thesis on why crypto media commands a premium: exchanges like Coinbase and Binance are worth $80-100B and want owned media as a cheap customer-acquisition channel, so they overpay for sites like CoinMarketCap. He'd put a 2.5x crypto premium on a normal media valuation.

“And so they've been buying up media companies in order to own their own media arm, which is basically cheap user acquisition for them. And so whether it's them or it's a traditional media company that will buy, I don't know. But I do think that a crypto news site is going to get whatever, whatever a normal media site would sell for. I'd put a 2.5x on it for crypto right now”

Picks and shovels: sell to the gold rush, don't join it

CoinMarketCap sold to Binance for a rumored $400M by just displaying crypto prices rather than speculating. Shaan ties it to the picks-and-shovels playbook: in any gold rush, sell tools to the miners instead of mining yourself.

“whenever there's a big gold rush, don't try to be one of the people in the gold rush. Go sell shovels to the people who want to go get gold.”

Steal thisWhen a market is exploding, build the neutral data/tools layer for everyone playing, not another speculative bet inside it.