Hey there,

Marine here, writing to you with a slight sleep deficit and an overflowing notebook from The Network State School, where I've spent the week listening to the architects of our financial future.

This week, something happened that I can't stop thinking about.
Vitalik Buterin and Balaji Srinivasan sat across from each other in an overcrowded room. No moderator. No script. Just two brilliant minds riffing on what happens when systems collapse and what replaces them.

My Twitter thread about it went viral but 280 characters can't capture what was really happening in that room. Let me take you there.

When Balaji dropped this line, the room went quiet.

Not because it was shocking—we've all heard doomsday predictions before—but because of the matter-of-fact way he said it. Like commenting on the weather.

He wasn't predicting apocalypse tomorrow. He was noting a pattern playing out in slow motion: The US dollar has dropped 8% in two months. That's nearly double the decline during the 2008 crisis (4.8%). We haven't seen anything like it since the 1970s when abandoning the gold standard triggered a 31% plunge.

Ray Dalio calls this the predictable part of the cycle where empires and their currencies fade. Balaji simply added: "DeFi is what takes over after the financial system ends."

Not if. When.

Left Brain, Right Brain of Crypto

The dynamic between these two was fascinating.

Balaji positioned Ethereum as "the technocratic center-left of the crypto world," with himself representing the "center-right." Vitalik nodded.

But what struck me was how they approach the same revolution from opposite ends:
Vitalik begins with technical elegance—clean code, optimal systems—and works outward to society.

Balaji starts with societal changes—faltering institutions, new communities—and works inward to technology.

For a decade, crypto has led with technology and hoped society would follow. The next phase flips the script: social systems built on established tech foundations.

The World Isn't Made of Code (Yet)

"The friction of the physical world means adoption won't move as fast as the internet", Balaji reminded us.

This wasn't theoretical. The man is actively trying to build physical Network States—communities with actual land, factories, housing—where these ideas materialize.

Digital revolution is instant. Physical revolution takes time.

Balaji sees embodiment—robots, physical infrastructure, real-world implementation—as the biggest bottleneck for all technological change.

What This Means for Your Money

When systems rebuild rather than reform, they don't swap places overnight. They overlap. Compete. Create friction points.

For those with capital, the challenge becomes: How do you position yourself across both systems during the transition?

This is precisely why we founded MC² Finance: to build infrastructure that allows capital to flow freely between traditional finance and decentralized systems with minimal friction.

Our Swiss Stock Exchange pre-approved ETPs are exactly this—regulated vessels that give traditional investors direct exposure to DeFi yields without requiring them to become crypto natives overnight.

A protocol is only as safe as the crises it's endured

This Balaji insight guides our approach to risk management.

We don't chase the newest, shiniest protocols. We seek battle-tested systems that have weathered market chaos and emerged intact. Then we evaluate additional risk reduction through insurance and diversification.

It's why our first product focuses on Solana staking with vote auctioning—a strategy that has demonstrated resilience while outperforming the biggest SOL ETF by 9.6% and existing SOL staking ETPs by 6.2% in backtesting. Ask us about the factsheet.

Rebuilding Finance at 10x Lower Cost

The old system isn't just fragile—it's expensive. Traditional ETFs charge up to 2% for simple price exposure, without delivering actual yield.

We've cracked the code on reducing these costs by 10x through blockchain-based pre-trade compliance systems that automate verification. This isn't just incremental improvement—it's fundamental redesign.

As we explained to Balaji, we're not just building bridges between systems; we're making those bridges dramatically more efficient than what they replace.

Building This With Us

With our Swiss Stock Exchange pre-approval secured and our technology proven, we're opening our next funding round to scale this vision.

For those who see what we see—a extended transition period where capital needs efficient pathways between systems—this is an opportunity to build essential infrastructure for the next financial paradigm.

Join the Conversation

The future won't be built through prediction but through creation. Here's how to be part of it:

1. Try our approach at app.mc2.fi

2. Reply to this email if our funding round interests you

In a world rebuilding its financial foundations, we're creating the essential pathways between what was and what's coming.

Building the future, one bridge at a time,

Marine & Chris

Co-founders, MC² Finance

P.S. Learn more about the Network State,
follow Marine and see the full Twitter thread on the Vitalik-Balaji conversation.

Vitalik Buterin is the co-founder of Ethereum, the world's leading programmable blockchain and second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. A programmer and writer, Vitalik first proposed Ethereum in 2013 at age 19, aiming to build a platform for decentralized applications. He continues to lead Ethereum's research and development while advocating for its evolution toward greater scalability and sustainability.

Balaji Srinivasan is a technology entrepreneur, investor, and author of "The Network State." Formerly the CTO of Coinbase and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Balaji has founded multiple successful companies including Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase). He's known for his prescient predictions about technology trends, decentralization, and the future of governance.

Together, these two represent some of the most influential thinking in how blockchain technology will reshape our economic and social systems.