I’m not a venture capitalist, but I get asked to angel a fair bit. As someone with a value background, I think there’s a wide open VC niche in crypto by just Moneyballing into the original DeFi promise of improving financial services access to the middle- and low-income countries.

Rather than invest based on speculative potential or liquidity, I think you could make a solid return by investing in the regional lending and stablecoin ventures (maybe others, but those are what I know best) that are “better than replacement.”
Note that Tether is a great example of this! As I harp on constantly, Tether isn’t burning budget trying to compete with JP Morgan or Duetchebank. They’re competing with crappy banks in Togo and Laos and Bolivia.
Fans of low budget horror may be familiar with Blumhouse Films. They spend $2-5m per movie based on what they think will make a return. They don’t swing for the fences, although once in a while they get a home run.
This kind of granularity is hard to get in crypto without yeeting into shitcoins.
But you could make a whole career out of starting little lending protocols or stablecoins focused on local markets. The goal is to make cash-flowing businesses for less than the opportunity cost. You don’t have to be enormous - you just need to make money.
I know crypto, as the intersection of technology and finance, naturally wants to plant trees that can go to the sky. But that’s a tournament model, and if the goal is just to make a competitive return, it’s probably worth finding a lot of teams that are motivated to build those $100m businesses instead of chasing $1b+ moonshots that mostly crash and burn.