Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This episode is a special one: Haseeb reads his new essay, In Defense of Exponentials, a manifesto pushing back against the rising financial cynicism dominating CT. He breaks down why new chains launch into unprecedented hate, why revenue-based valuation models misunderstand the nature of exponential technologies, and why believing in ETH, SOL, and open financial systems still makes sense. It’s a zoom-out moment for the space — a reminder that crypto’s exponential arc is far from over.
Show highlights
🔹 Chain Hate Era — New L1s like Monad, Tempo, and MegaETH now launch into hostility, not indifference, reflecting a major psychological shift in crypto.
🔹 Financial Cynicism — CT has moved from “nothing has value” nihilism to “everything is overvalued” cynicism, insisting L1s trade 5–10× too high.
🔹 Revenue Meta = Linear Thinking — P/E ratios, REV metrics, and exchange-style valuation models misprice blockchains by treating exponentials like steady-state businesses.
🔹 Probability Premium — L1s are priced like biotech: a 1–5% chance of becoming the next ETH/SOL rationally supports multi-billion valuations.
🔹 The No-Prize Fallacy — CT’s new belief: even if a challenger chain wins, the prize is worthless because “ETH and SOL won’t be worth $300B anyway.”
🔹 Amazon Regime Misread — Amazon took 22 years to show profit; judging crypto on revenue today is the same error—arguing P/E ratios in an exponential curve.
🔹 Open Always Wins — Crypto turns money into a file format—24/7, global, permissionless—and every industry in history has eventually yielded to openness.
🔹 Believe in the Exponential — The core thesis: zoom out. Crypto’s exponential is still early, and long-term conviction is the edge everyone has forgotten.
Hosts
⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly
In Defense of Exponentials by Haseeb Qureshi
🔗 https://x.com/hosseeb/status/1994110900454949263
Disclosures
Timestamps
0:00 In Defense of Exponentials
01:05 The Cure is Worse than the Disease
07:10 Feeling the Exponential
16:23 So what exactly am I arguing?
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