There is a lot of snow on the ground here in NJ. The temps have been in the teens. And Bitcoin dipped below $70K.

I guess it’s winter.

We keep on keepin on, though!

Here’s the latest in the world of Deep Ventures:

• Portfolio company highlights from Xitadel (new investment!), Torram, and Enclave

• Industry insights - big dump, but good stuff too

Let’s go!

Portfolio Highlights

Xitadel (Our Latest Fund Investment!)

We are excited to announce that we’ve invested in Xitadel, a DeFi protocol specializing in Web3-native fixed-income products.

Xitadel introduces Liquid Treasury Tokens (LTTs) to help DAOs and foundations leverage their token treasuries to acquire stablecoin capital through overcollateralized debt, avoiding token dilution or price crashes. This creates predictable yields for investors while filling post-token-generation-event capital gaps in DeFi.

And they are launching very soon with their first partner, FlashTrade!

We are excited to back Xitadel in their mission to help DAOs and foundations leverage their treasuries to fund operations.

Torram

Torram is building vertically-integrated RWA (real world asset) infrastructure purpose-built for Bitcoin, enabling financial asset tokenization on Bitcoin rails.

Their team has replicated ERC3643 (Ethereum’s standard for RWA tokens) to bring institutional tokenization to Bitcoin via Torram Chain.

As such, they signed an MOU to bring $300M of tokenized assets onchain!

RWAs are poised to grow massively in 2026, and Torram will drive this growth on Bitcoin.

Enclave

Enclave is a protocol for verifiable, private compute that allows developers to run programs on encrypted data from multiple sources without exposing inputs or relying on trusted hardware.

They announced their first formal partnership announcement with Aragon, introducing verifiable secret ballots for Aragon DAOs. As part of this partnership, they delivered a full encrypted voting flow with CRISP integrated into Aragon, including a successful end-to-end encrypted vote execution. They are in deep partnership talks with many DAOs for use of CRISP to run governance and engaging multiple node operator businesses to participate in Enclave’s testnet.

We are excited about all of the use cases Enclave’s privacy infra can bring!

Interested in investing with us? We’ve launched Deep Ventures Fund 1 and we’d love for you to be involved. Please take a look at our deck, ping me at [email protected], and schedule a chat!

Industry Insights

Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad.

Let’s start with the bad.

Prices pulled back sharply. Bitcoin dropped toward $60K before stabilizing around $70K. Other majors like Ethereum and Solana faced double‑digit negative returns, making last month one of crypto’s weakest January performances in the last decade.

The cause of this dump could be attributed to the nomination of Kevin Warsh as Fed Chairman. Known for favoring higher interest rates and a smaller Fed balance sheet, this appointment triggered a one‑day wipeout of about $430B in total crypto market value.

Now on to the bright side!

BlackRock described digital assets as a defining investment theme for 2026, reinforcing the narrative that traditional finance is building around blockchain rails despite token volatility. And they followed up on this promise by enabling direct onchain trading of its $2.4 billion tokenized Treasury fund BUIDL via UniswapX in collaboration with Securitize and Uniswap Labs.

Cross-chain protocol LayerZero just launched their own Layer 1 and obtained funding from Citadel, ARK Invest, Tether, and others. Google Cloud and DTCC partnered with LayerZero to explore blockchain infrastructure for high-performance trading, settlement, and tokenized assets, and the NYSE is exploring ways to work with LayerZero as well.

Policy‑wise, the Clarity Act is slowly advancing in the Senate, promising clearer rules after years of regulation by enforcement, with regulators are sharpening their focus on areas like stablecoins and sanctions compliance.

Real adoption is here, despite the crypto market not looking great.

Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the DV monthly newsletter!

Hit me up at [email protected] or @mikewchan on Telegram with your thoughts about the newsletter, what’s happening in crypto, or anything else!

Talk soon!