Welcome to the 23rd edition of the Analyst of the Month

Our mission at Artemis is to help shape crypto into a more fundamentals-driven asset class by building THE on-chain metrics with  leading analysts and protocols.

Every month, we highlight a leading analyst who takes a long-term view of crypto.

This month we highlight Jono Lee, Investment Associate at ParaFi, an alternative asset management and technology firm that operates liquid and venture strategies focused on the digital asset ecosystem.

Jono brings a unique perspective to crypto investing, drawing from his early days grinding BTC poker tables, building at a Web3 gaming start-up, and now investing across liquid tokens and venture at ParaFi. His journey blends the discipline of poker, the grit of start-up operations, and the structured lens of institutional investing.

We’ve enjoyed following Jono’s clear-eyed takes on crypto, DATs, and DeFi, especially his desire to see blockchain innovation chip away at rent-seeking intermediaries and expand access to financial tools once reserved for institutions.

Read on to learn more about his path from poker to ParaFi, his contrarian views on tokens, and the future of digital asset treasuries and real-world assets.

1. What is your story? What was your journey into investing and into crypto?

I first interacted with crypto by playing poker games denominated in BTC, back in 2016. Blockchain rails and the appeal of a “distributed ledger” back then, didn’t particularly interest me, but it was rather the sudden wealth effect that made those games particularly attractive to play in. I lost touch with the industry until 2017 when the ICO bubble started, and Ethereum started rising parabolically. Looking back, I got involved because it was an interesting way to make money, but remained incredibly curious due to the promise of "programmable money”.

I kept playing these BTC poker tables, and ended up paying for my college tuition via a couple lucky poker tournaments. Unfortunately at Wharton, you recruit for your full-time role Sophomore year (2018), and there were limited business roles in the industry. Hence, I started in consulting, and eventually transitioned to Digital Insight Games (DIG), a web3 gaming start-up. I was there for 2-years, helping raise a $7.5mm Series A.

During FTX, I took a break and played poker professionally for 1-year in LA.

Nowadays at ParaFi, I drive liquid investments across tokens & equities and in our venture arm. Concepts in poker have stuck with me throughout investing such as having incomplete information, understanding EV and distribution of outcomes.

2. What lessons from building at Digital Insights Game (DIG) shaped how you view investing now as an investor at ParaFi?

At DIG, I served as Chief of Staff to the founder, which meant wearing many hats from business development and go-to-market strategy to internal operations and data analytics. That experience gave me a front-row seat to the challenges early-stage companies face: how to sell, how to prioritize scarce resources, and how to navigate unknown environments with the best data available. My biggest lesson was witnessing the emotional toll that founders shoulder the pressure of limited runway and the weight of making high-stakes decisions that can determine success or failure.

Those lessons now shape how I invest nowadays. When I meet founders on the venture side, I think not only about their product, but also their ability to execute on distribution, build sustainable partnerships, and scale operations with limited bandwidth. Because I saw those pressures firsthand, I approach founders with greater empathy, but also a sharper lens on whether they’re equipped to handle the emotional and operational demands of building.

3. What is your role at ParaFi? What does your day to day look like?

My role spans both primary and secondary markets across liquid and venture strategies. What I find uniquely rewarding is the balance it offers: I get to learn directly from individuals pushing the boundaries in their verticals, while also having the opportunity to express my own views and theses in public markets.

The best part of my day-to-day life is how dynamic it is where I have full agency to determine priorities as they evolve. On any given day, that might mean analyzing protocols and reviewing on-chain activity, working with founders on their toughest challenges, stress-testing assumptions with our team, or streamlining internal operations to make us more effective.

What I enjoy most is the variety. The role constantly shifts between zooming out to identify big-picture trends and zooming in to refine granular details and optimizations, a balance that keeps myself both intellectually challenging and deeply rewarding.

4. What is your most contrarian belief in the crypto markets today?

I believe the biggest winners in crypto may never issue tokens, or if they do, the token may not end up being the cornerstone of value capture. The industry has drifted into a kind of “revenue meta,” where buybacks and tokenholder distributions mimic stock buybacks in traditional markets. In many ways, this functions as a form of regulatory arbitrage since launching a token is far easier than pursuing an IPO. But while this has driven activity, it has also created a wave of dilution and fragmented holder bases. The root issue is that teams are launching tokens far earlier than they would have ever been able to IPO.

This premature launch creates structural flaws. First, tokens often confine protocols to a single product line, and very few projects have successfully expanded beyond that. When you combine early token launches with buyback mechanics, you end up with companies that have limited capacity for capital expenditure, making it harder to reinvest and grow the business in accretive ways. Second, tokens complicate talent acquisition and M&A. A fixed token supply restricts flexibility, especially in downturns, where teams are forced to issue more tokens but cannot offer equity-style incentives like option pools or RSUs to attract and retain talent. Finally, each token has an underlying operating company with its corresponding cash flows to fulfill and for-profit shareholders. They have every fiduciary duty to ensure that labs co accretes value, and this further creates value discrepancies across token holders and share holders.

All this is not to say I dislike tokens, but rather believe they are great mechanisms to spread the value of a singular protocol permissionally to holders, but not the best mechanism to build an enduring conglomerate of business lines.

5. What are the roles of DATs and how do you see them evolving over time? 

Digital asset treasuries remain deeply misunderstood. The core of the model is straightforward yet powerful: if the base asset has a higher compounded growth rate than the cost of capital or cost of equity, then long-term outperformance can be generated. For instance, if a company increases its bitcoin holdings per share from 0.1 to 0.12 BTC within a year, it effectively delivers a 20 percent BTC yield. This ability to expand bitcoin per share explains why Strategy (MSTR) trades at a premium to NAV, while BlackRock’s spot ETF does not. Importantly, DATs also serve as a practical bridge between traditional capital markets and the crypto ecosystem, creating exposure for investors who cannot directly hold tokens due to custodial or regulatory constraints.

The common misconception is that these vehicles are nothing more than levered plays on digital assets. While leverage can be part of the toolkit, framing the strategy this way is misleading. The real driver is the sophisticated use of capital markets, including convertible bonds, preferred equity, at-the-market issuance, debt facilities, and buybacks, all employed to consistently increase digital assets per share. When shares trade above NAV, companies issue equity to accumulate more digital assets; when shares trade below NAV, they repurchase stock to enhance value per share. Well-managed treasuries can therefore outperform spot assets not merely by borrowing, but by executing with discipline and applying creative financing decisions. Looking ahead, I expect to see large players emerging across major regions, supported by a wave of accretive treasury mergers and acquisitions.

6. You’ve talked about wanting to push financial innovation / access through crypto and how you desire for more DeFi to take market share from traditional finance. Can you expand on why this is important and how you see more crypto innovation happening? 

What keeps me most enthralled by blockchain rails is their ability to decentralize functions that were once controlled by rent seeking intermediaries and to transform those functions into yield bearing assets. As DeFi continues to capture market share, it will reduce the share of GDP absorbed by financial services. That shift is profound because financial services are not inherently value producing on their own. They are meant to be a lubricant that allows other sectors to generate value. Lowering the costs of intermediation therefore unlocks enormous potential for humanity by freeing more capital and resources for productive use.

Equally important is the democratization of financial strategies. Yield bearing and savings instruments that were once reserved for institutions are now accessible to anyone. In many ways, this is what true financial freedom looks like. Ethena, for example, allows individuals to access a market neutral hedge fund. Vault products such as HLP, JLP, and Drift provide access to market making returns. Money markets allow anyone to borrow against their positions without depending on banks. Pendle gives users the ability to sell coupons on an underlying bond without requiring a broker. Together, these innovations show the heart of DeFi’s promise: more open, more efficient, and more empowering access to financial tools.

7. How much do fundamentals matter for crypto markets today? How much do you think they will matter moving forward? 

Today, fundamentals are often overshadowed by narratives, liquidity flows, and speculative reflexivity. That said, we are seeing a gradual shift: as protocols mature and cash flows stabilize, fundamentals are beginning to matter more, which has ushered in this revenue meta with strong buyback names outperforming.

Long term, I believe fundamentals will be decisive and a key driver of outperformance. Just as equity markets evolved from story driven to fundamentals driven, crypto will mature into a space where sustainable token economics, real usage, and revenue will separate the winners from the hype cycles. In that environment, projects that can compound value over time rather than chase short term attention will ultimately define the next generation of market leaders.

8. What’s a protocol you are excited by and why? What’s the long thesis?

A category I am particularly fascinated by is right tail real world assets. These markets have historically been plagued by high centralized take rates, illiquidity, and even fraud. Trading cards are a good example. For years, participants relied on in person meetups, fragmented social media groups, or platforms like eBay that charged fees as high as fifteen percent.

The long term thesis is that by bringing these assets on chain, we can radically reduce costs, improve trust, and unlock liquidity for categories that were previously gated or inefficient. The blockchain creates a shared settlement layer where provenance, pricing, and trading can occur with far greater transparency and efficiency. Over time, I believe the projects that succeed in right tail RWAs will not only capture existing collector markets, but also expand them by making these assets more accessible and investable for a global audience.

9. If you could snap your finger and change how the crypto markets work, what would you change? 

Outside of regulatory clarity, the most pressing issue the industry faces is custodial limitations and the risk of ruin; the possibility of losing all funds due to hacks or operational failures. Self custody captures much of the beauty of blockchain technology, but it also creates natural constraints. First, it limits how many traditional institutions can participate meaningfully on crypto rails. Second, it raises the cost of capital since investors demand higher returns to compensate for elevated risks. Third, it undermines user confidence and slows adoption because the fear of irreversible loss discourages both individuals and enterprises from entrusting significant capital to the ecosystem.

10. How have you been able to use Artemis to help with your fundamental research?

Artemis remains my go-to platform for research, given the breadth of protocol coverage in addition to their variety of data points + charts.

The deep-dive section has extraordinarily detailed data-points that date back to protocols inception.

Additionally, as a big fan of excel, the Artemis excel plug-in is an amazing feature to manipulate data into my liking. Lastly, I’ll add the personal touch of being able to have a direct line with the team in order to sense check data and work on data coverage has significantly improved my ability to dive into nitty gritty data points. 

How to get in contact with Jono?

You can find or reach out to Jono on LinkedIn or Twitter and learn more about ParaFi here.