The token model that defined the last cycle is dying. Two years ago, 50M seed rounds and 100-200M Series A rounds were easy to fund; today those rounds are impossible to fund, and the investors who used to chase them are slashing valuations.

At Tokenized Capital Summit 2025 in Singapore on September 30, LKI Founder Laura K. Inamedinova, Chief Ecosystem Officer at Gate.io, and Principal at Gate Ventures joined a panel on venture capital in real-world assets- covering token models, valuations, and tokenized credit with six other investors:

Panelists:

1. Laura K. Inamedinova - Founder, LKI Consulting, Chief Ecosystem Officer at Gate.io and Principal at Gate Ventures

2. Will Wang - Generative Ventures

3. Olivier Galaud - Everstake Capital

4. Oleksii - Monolith VC

5. David Gan - Incption Capital

6. Petr - Mercuryo

7. Victor van Eijk - Maven 11

The token model is losing to revenue. VCs aren't running a charity - they're here to return capital, and the math on tokens is broken. Inamedinova pointed out that the company raising at 100M or 200M on a token faces a brutal unlock, often vesting in the worst stretch of a bear market. Investors locked for 3 to 5 years would be lucky to get their principal back. 

Valuations are getting cut, not negotiated. Two years ago, 50M seed rounds and 100-200M Series A rounds felt easy. That era is over. The new bar is proof of execution - real users, real clients, real sales - not a story.

The hype is gone. The memecoin heat has burned off. What's left is more institutional - experienced builders, clearer revenue, real go-to-market. Several investors framed it as a quiet merger of web2 discipline with web3 upside, and treated the cooldown as healthy rather than a warning sign.

Private credit is the bright spot in RWA. The market sits at 2-3 billion today and is set to roughly double by 2028, around a 15% IRR. Van Eijk pointed to early bets on Maple Finance and a 50M credit line with Falcon X, built on a securitization structure borrowed from Wall Street.

Distribution beats tokenization every time. Inamedinova mentioned that anyone will say yes to tokenizing an asset for extra yield. The real question is who buys it. Without a distribution channel and on-chain liquidity, even the smartest platform fails. She's far more interested in projects bringing liquidity on-chain than in building one more bridge.