Interview with CMS Holdings
Why CMS is different, what they're most excited about Solana, when flippening, and much more
Today we're interviewing CMS Holdings, the principal investment firm based in Boston. They've quickly made a name for themselves, both in market-making and in VC. While CMS invests across the board, they have been very early investors in Solana and its growing project ecosystem.
So, let’s start with the most important topic on hand: what is CMS’ internal system to decide on your daily Twitter name? What’s the backstory on the name changes?
PROPRIETARY
On a more serious note, what is CMS, and how do you see yourselves versus other VCs and traders?
I think because we don't have outside capital our risk tolerance and speed is generally higher than most other shops, I think this has been a big advantage in things like farming and jpegs but really anything that is in a grey area around custody we have been able to play while others haven't. This also makes us heavy users of the protocols and such we have been able to make some good targeted investments.
Talking about Solana, what projects and tools are you most excited about in its ecosystem? Are there ones you like where they wouldn't even be possible on other chains, due to high fees?
I think we’re most excited about what SRM is doing and trying to build full orderbook utility into dex's, a lot of use cases will be built around having this core piece of infra work and work well. Obviously, on-chain fees make this gnarly in other systems but L2 might be the answer though unclear at this time.
Do you see Solana overtaking Ethereum in the medium or long run? What would be the catalyst for that to happen?
I don't anytime soon there’s too much inertia on Ethereum for it to just get flipped. I think we are a long way off from that.
About a third of Solana’s total supply is held by the Solana Foundation and Solana Labs. Given it’s a Proof-of-Stake system, and that 33% is enough to halt the network, what can be done to promote decentralization?
They should probably sell it off, there’s clearly demand in the market just sell it off OTC to larger institutions with a lock.
Talking about recent U.S. regulatory news, how bad were the recent events? Do you see CMS moving to other friendlier jurisdictions -- if so, where?
We already operate internationally because of this so not much gonna change there. I don’t think the recent events are really that bad just growing pains as the asset class has ballooned.
What advice would you give young people wanting to get into crypto, or wanting to launch new companies and projects? Should they go anon?
Take more risk.
To ask the Peter Thiel question, what is the most important thing you believe in, that most people in crypto disagree with?
That on-chain privacy is a thing and we should care about it.