Multi-Lens Asset Grading with Venture-Stage Mapping
Grade one asset across four different jobs-to-be-done, then map its maturity onto venture funding stages to estimate remaining upside.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- —
A grading method the hosts use to avoid giving a single, oversimplified verdict on a complex asset. Instead of asking 'is Bitcoin good or bad,' they separately grade it as (1) a pure historical investment return, (2) a fulfillment of its original stated purpose, (3) a store of value versus a medium of exchange, and (4) they map its current adoption phase onto venture financing stages (seed, Series A/B, growth round, IPO) to reason about how much upside realistically remains.
Origin
Extracted from Acquired
Core principles
- 01An asset can simultaneously be an A+ investment and a D as a fulfillment of its original design goal -- grade these separately
- 02Compare performance against the most relevant, not the most flattering, benchmark (e.g., cash in a zero-rate environment, not just other cryptocurrencies)
- 03Map current maturity to a familiar financing-stage analogy to make abstract 'how much upside is left' questions concrete
- 04Explicitly state the assumptions/timeframe embedded in each grade since grades can shift dramatically with time horizon
How to run it
- 1
Grade as a pure investment
Look purely at historical returns delivered to holders over the relevant time window, independent of use case.
- 2
Grade against the original stated purpose
Return to the founding document or original intent and honestly assess whether that specific goal has been achieved.
Watch out Don't let strong investment returns bias you into inflating the grade on the original mission if it hasn't actually been fulfilled.
- 3
Grade as a store of value vs. medium of exchange
Separately evaluate the asset's usefulness for long-term wealth storage versus its usefulness for everyday transactions, since these can score very differently.
Pro tip Compare against the most realistic alternative (e.g., cash under inflation) rather than an idealized alternative.
- 4
Map maturity to venture financing stages
Place the asset's current adoption level onto a seed/Series A/growth/IPO analogy based on who is participating (individuals vs. institutions) and how proven the use case is.
Pro tip Use the total addressable market at each stage (e.g., gold market cap, global money supply) to estimate a rough multiple of remaining upside.
- 5
State the time horizon explicitly
Attach a timeframe to every grade, since an asset can look terrible on a one-quarter view and excellent on a multi-year view.
In the wild
The hosts gave Bitcoin an A+ as a raw investment (best 10-year return in history), a D/F against its original white-paper purpose as an everyday payments medium, a strong-but-volatile grade as a store of value versus cash, and placed it at roughly a 'growth-stage/pre-IPO' point on the venture-stage map -- implying meaningful but no longer explosive remaining upside if it merely reaches parity with above-ground gold.
→ This produced a nuanced verdict -- 'incredible investment, poor as originally designed, promising store of value, moderate remaining venture-like upside' -- instead of one flat rating.
Common mistakes
Collapsing multiple lenses into one score
Giving an asset a single overall grade hides the fact that it may excel at one job (store of value) while failing at another (medium of exchange).
Comparing to an unrealistic alternative
Grading an asset's 'store of value' performance against a risk-free ideal rather than the real-world alternative (e.g., near-zero-yield cash) produces a misleadingly negative grade.
Is it for you?
Best for
Investors evaluating multi-purpose or novel asset classes that don't fit neatly into a single evaluation category
Not ideal for
Simple, single-purpose assets where one clean metric already captures performance
From the transcript
“how would you grade an investment in Bitcoin? Like this is it's by far the greatest investment opportunity of all time in in humanity.”
“There's how would you grade Bitcoin in its sort of original purpose as laid out in the white paper of becoming a uh native internet…”
From the episode
Bitcoin