Recap · August 4, 2025 · 50:24
The Future of Finance is 'Internet Capital Markets' (Ben Pasternak)
The Signal
Believe founder and CEO Ben Pasternak explains the platform's emerging idea of internet capital markets: coins that can bring attention, community, feedback, and funding to builders outside crypto. He treats the format as an experiment rather than a finished financial product, while laying out the harder operational work ahead: safety, snipers, founder education, and much more direct communication.
Key Takeaways
- 01
A COIN CAN BE A PRODUCT LAYER
Pasternak says Believe initially treated launches as attention coins, but creators began adding utility without being told to. He now describes a live experiment in how a coin and a product might reinforce one another, rather than forcing a settled label on the asset.
- 02
THE GOAL IS NEW DEPLOYERS
Believe judges its contribution by whether it brings people who would not otherwise launch coins into crypto. Builders are the immediate focus, though Pasternak says the same system could eventually apply to many types of creators.
- 03
CAPITAL AND COMMUNITY ARRIVE TOGETHER
He argues leaner AI-era companies can reach meaningful revenue without pursuing unicorn-scale venture funding. A launch can give founders capital while also attracting users who promote, test, and give feedback on the product.
- 04
CURATION IS NOT THE ANSWER
Pasternak says it is difficult to designate a launch as good in advance, but easier to identify clear bad actors and projects already working well. Believe has shifted toward those two signals instead of playing gatekeeper.
- 05
MECHANICS NEED TO CATCH UP
The team is iterating on anti-sniper measures, including an early-purchase tax and purchase limits, alongside in-app launches and updates. Its longer-term priority is an education library that helps non-crypto founders become capable community leaders.
On the Record
“We saw different creators and builders use their coins to add utility to their product and create kind of harmony between the coin and the product.”
“I think the key thing that Believe has done for the space so far is we've created net new coin creators.”
“Curation is not the answer. It's really hard to say, 'This is good.' It's much easier to say, 'This is going really well,' and it's also very easy to say, 'This is bad.'”
“We want to just have infinite resources for founders to consume. To me, that's kind of priority one.”
The Breakdown
From a hard memecoin purchase to Believe
Pasternak starts with a pre-Believe crypto lesson: trying to buy dogwifhat through Coinbase convinced him there should be a Robinhood-like path into memecoins. Instead, he became Moonshot's first investor and came to see the format as fast, immediate technology despite its reputation. Clout followed from a related question — whether someone could effectively IPO themselves as a trader — and Believe grew out of that broader instinct to let people be backed directly.
What the new coins are becoming
Threadguy presses him to define a Believe coin: a memecoin, a startup coin, or something new. Pasternak declines a fixed answer. The original model was an attention coin tied to a startup's visibility, but builders independently began connecting launches to product utility. The team is watching how founders, holders, and regulators shape that relationship rather than claiming that the token mechanically tracks revenue or product success.
A safer on-ramp for non-crypto builders
The immediate challenge is making the system safe enough for people who would never have launched on an existing pad. Pasternak says trust in him and his past work helped early founders take the step, but that cannot be the long-term mechanism. Transparent standards and safety guardrails have to replace personal reassurance. His central metric for Believe and any rival is whether it actually brings new deployers into the space.
Why founders might want the format
Pasternak thinks venture capital is under pressure because AI lets small teams build more efficiently and because revenue, downloads, and monthly recurring revenue now carry more status than a headline raise. For a company that may reach tens of millions in revenue without becoming a unicorn, he argues, a coin can preserve independence while providing growth capital. It can also create an immediate group of believers who test, share, and respond to the product — an advantage he compares loosely to Product Hunt.
Founder responsibility and public communication
Threadguy warns that a short burst of posts can leave a non-native founder looking like a celebrity-memecoin launch with no future catalyst. Pasternak agrees that founder and trader incentives need more harmony, and says Believe should supply launch resources rather than expect creators to understand crypto culture alone. He also accepts the criticism that his own communication has been too sparse, promising a more public build-in-public approach and more frequent product updates.
Curation, fees, and the sniper problem
Pasternak explains why the team pulled back from signalling which launches it backs: identifying a bad actor or observing momentum is simpler than declaring a project good. He calls sniping an old, effectively whack-a-mole problem and describes a 50% early-buy tax, potential higher taxes, rate limits, and maximum initial purchases as experiments rather than a final fix. Competition is welcome if it creates new deployers, not merely another launch surface.
The next layer is education
At the end, he says engineering still matters — anti-sniper iterations, new launch methods, in-app launches, and founder updates are all underway — but the main work is social. Great builders are not automatically great cult leaders. Believe wants a deep resource library: coin-product integrations, founder case studies, communication guidance, and Discord basics. Pasternak frames that as the route from a fast zero-to-one moment to a platform capable of supporting far more builders.
Distilled from the episode transcript · Counterparty Recap Desk
