Why Crypto Buybacks Are 'the Wrong Way to Allocate Capital'

ARK's Valente says self-custody is dying and crypto investment winners will be exchanges, infrastructure platforms, and tokenized equities—not L1 tokens doing buybacks.

• Self-custody dying: Valente says ARK sees self-custody declining as quantum fears, Ledger's ~$100M third-party reseller hack, and L2 shutdowns (like Abstract giving users one month to withdraw) push users toward exchanges and ETFs.
• Barbell strategy: ARK favors firms owning the user relationship (Coinbase, Robinhood) or core infrastructure with massive TAM (Solana, Uniswap, Aave), avoiding companies 'squeezed in the middle.'

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