🎯 Relayer Capital's Austin Barack on Growth, Value & The Next Wave of Crypto Apps

The crypto market is evolving. What worked in 2017, 2021, or even 2024 won't necessarily continue to work. But according to Austin Barack, founder and managing partner of Relayer Capital, one principle has shown replicable success: positioning at the intersection of growth and value.

In a recent conversation, Barack outlined how Relayer Capital approaches crypto investing, why liquid markets are capturing 95% of his attention today, and which tokens he believes are significantly underpriced heading into 2026.

🔍 The Relayer Capital Playbook

Barack's investment philosophy is straightforward: find assets that are growing rapidly while trading at reasonable valuations. "No one comes to crypto looking for a company growing 10% a year at a 4x multiple," he noted. Instead, the opportunity lies in identifying projects at inflection points — where strong fundamentals meet cyclical mispricings.

Founded roughly 2.5 years ago after Barack's tenure as a partner at Coin Fund, Relayer operates across both liquid and venture stages. However, the fund has recently tilted heavily toward liquid markets. Barack estimates that 95% of his current focus is on publicly traded tokens, up from a roughly 50/50 split earlier in 2024.

Why the shift? Barack believes the prolonged bear market created a clear separation between projects with genuine product-market fit and those without. "Instead of looking at 100 tokens, there are actually five or ten that are really compelling — growing quickly and priced attractively," he explained.

On the venture side, Relayer focuses on pre-seed and seed stage deals where absolute valuations remain compelling, even if relative pricing is high. Barack emphasized that the best venture opportunities rarely come cheap, but getting in early enough can still yield attractive entry points.

💎 The Core Investment Themes

Relayer's strategy centers on two major themes:

• Crypto x AI: The convergence of decentralized infrastructure and artificial intelligence
• 24/7 Trading & Tokenization: Onchain financial products that operate continuously and bring traditional assets onchain

These themes drive the fund's interest in tokens like Venice (VVV), Pump.fun (PUMP), Hyperliquid (HYPE), and EtherFi (ETHFI).

🤖 Venice: The $44 Price Target Breakdown

Perhaps the most detailed discussion centered on Venice, a private, uncensored AI platform that allows users to access frontier and open-source models without restrictions.

Barack shared his valuation model publicly, projecting a fair value of $43.89 per token based on what he considers a "reasonable scenario" for 2027. At the time of his analysis, VVV was trading around $12 — implying significant upside.

The Revenue Model:
Venice monetizes through two primary channels:

• Subscriptions: Tiered plans at $18, $68, or $200 per month
• Credit Purchases: Additional credits when users exceed their monthly allowance

Notably, Venice raised equity at a $1 billion valuation in mid-2024 — structured to align both equity and token holders. The company reinvests in growth but directs the majority of free cash flow toward programmatic token burns.

Current Burn Mechanisms:

• Burns tied to new subscription sign-ups (varying by tier)
• Burns equal to approximately 5% of credit purchases

Barack's model projects Venice hitting $336 million in revenue by 2027, with $70 million in annual token burns. As of August 2024, the company was run-rating at $107 million in annualized revenue and $8.3 million in annualized burns.

Applying a 50x multiple to 2027 projected burns — reasonable for a business growing 5-10x year-over-year — yields a token valuation of approximately $3.5 billion, or $43.89 per token.

The Wildcard: Minds Product
Of the projected $70 million in 2027 burns, $29 million (roughly 40%) is attributed to Minds — Venice's upcoming app store for AI products. Minds will allow power users to create structured AI workflows and monetize them, similar to an Apple App Store for AI.

This is a meaningful assumption. Barack acknowledged it's optimistic but pointed to Venice's track record: the credit purchase product, launched earlier in 2024, is already run-rating at $60 million annually — a product that didn't exist eight months ago.

"A product that didn't exist eight months ago is now doing $60 million a year of revenue," Barack emphasized. "Thinking about Minds doing $30 million in 2027 is optimistic, but reasonable based on execution so far."

Barack also models credit purchase burns increasing from 5% to 10% by 2027, and the potential addition of resubscription burns — currently, burns only occur on initial sign-ups.

He rates his model as a "six out of ten" on the optimism scale — not base case, but grounded in evidence and reasonable extrapolation.

🔥 The Growth vs. Value Tension

One unusual aspect of Venice: it's conducting token buybacks as a very early-stage startup. This goes against conventional startup wisdom, which prioritizes reinvestment in growth.

Barack explained that Venice is navigating the unique challenge of having both equity and a token. To build trust pre-regulatory clarity, Venice needed to "walk the walk" by returning value to token holders. However, the $65 million equity raise provides ample runway to continue aggressive growth while maintaining programmatic burns.

"They've raised 10-20x what's been burned so far to be able to grow the business," Barack noted. "They found a good balance."

💰 Pump.fun: The Undervalued Casino

Moving to Pump.fun, Barack argued the token is "incredibly cheap" at a 5x buybacks-to-market cap ratio, compared to Hyperliquid and Lido trading at 30-40x.

Why the discount? Barack attributes it to three factors:

• Durability concerns: Skepticism about whether memecoin trading revenue is sustainable
• User base disconnect: Most crypto investors aren't active memecoin traders, creating a perception gap
• Negative associations: Memecoins carry stigma, despite being comparable to other forms of speculative entertainment like lotteries or daily fantasy sports

Barack believes the market is coming around. "Once you start to think about it as just another type of speculative product — like prediction markets or short-expiry options — it becomes easier to understand why this business is so durable."

He projects a 10x multiple to earnings is reasonable for Pump, implying a 2x return from current levels without assuming further growth. Given increased memecoin activity in a bull market, he expects revenue to grow substantially from here.

🏦 EtherFi: The Onchain Neo-Brokerage

EtherFi was Barack's first venture investment at Relayer, made at the Series A stage in early 2024. At the time, EtherFi was purely a liquid restaking business. Today, it's evolved into a full-fledged neo-brokerage offering credit cards, borrowing, and access to tokenized assets including stocks.

The Revenue Mix Shift:
Today, 65%+ of EtherFi's revenue comes from its neo-bank product — credit card usage and borrowing — with only 35% from yield and staking. This is a fundamental shift the market hasn't fully recognized.

"EtherFi has been fundamentally valued like a liquid staking or liquid restaking business for most of its history," Barack said. "But it's a fundamentally different business today."

Growth Metrics:
EtherFi's credit card volume grew 10x year-over-year, from $300,000 per day a year ago to $3-4 million per day currently. Barack believes this growth will accelerate.

Recent analysis by Blockworks projected $21 million in buy-and-burns over the next 12 months using conservative assumptions. Barack believes the real number could exceed $30 million. Applying a 30x multiple — reasonable for a neo-brokerage category leader — yields a token price over $1.00, roughly 2x from current levels.

Importantly, the majority of EtherFi's token supply is already circulating, creating structural buyback pressure without dilution — similar to how public equities operate.

🌊 The Coupling Question: Macro vs. Fundamentals

An important question emerged: do fundamentally strong tokens like Venice, Pump, and Hyperliquid benefit from broader crypto bull markets, or are they truly decoupled?

Barack's view: partially coupled, partially decoupled.

The decoupling comes from strong business fundamentals creating a price floor. These tokens rallied during the bear market because they're growing and returning value to holders.

The coupling comes from being tokens in a market with structural capital flows. For 18 months, crypto experienced negative drift — capital leaving the asset class. Barack believes this has "probably just flipped," creating a tailwind for all quality tokens.

Specific reflexivity also matters:

• Pump: Benefits from increased onchain activity and memecoin trading
• Hyperliquid: Sees higher revenue when crypto token trading volume surges (their highest-margin business)
• Venice: Less exposed to crypto cycles but benefits from broader AI adoption trends

"Pump and Hyperliquid get the best of both worlds," Barack concluded. "Their own growth plus exposure to the rising tide."

📊 Looking Ahead: The Application Era

Barack shared a striking chart: for much of crypto's history, execution layer infrastructure generated 95%+ of total crypto revenue. Today, applications generate about two-thirds of revenue, with execution layers accounting for only one-third.

He expects this trend to continue, with 90%+ of revenue eventually coming from applications and money.

"Looking back at 2026, I think it's going to be a story of what are the zero-to-one applications that have really found this intersection of crypto and the rest of the world," Barack said. "The Venices, Hyperliquids, Pumps, EtherFis, Bitcoin, Zcash — these are going to be the things people look at and say, 'Wow, 2026 had some good entry points.'"

✅ Key Takeaways

• Relayer Capital focuses on the intersection of growth and value, with 95% of attention currently on liquid markets
• Venice is modeled at $43.89 fair value based on projected 2027 revenue of $336M and burns of $70M
• Pump.fun trades at only 5x buybacks vs. 30-40x for peers, despite durable casino-like revenue
• EtherFi has evolved from liquid restaking to neo-brokerage, with 65%+ revenue from credit cards and borrowing
• Quality tokens benefit from both fundamental growth and structural capital flows returning to crypto
• The market is shifting from infrastructure to applications and money as primary value drivers

Crypto is risky. This content is not investment advice. Always do your own research.