Kayla Phillips

Phillips's overarching thesis is bridging the on-chain and off-chain worlds, primarily through market infrastructure — the 'unsexy backbone' of stablecoins, settlement rails, custody, tokenization, and institutional plumbing that lets traditional capital flow into and through crypto. She is bullish on regulated stablecoins paired with cross-border payments, on Bitcoin-native DeFi unlocking yield for BTC holders, and on AI agents becoming first-class economic actors on-chain (including as buyers of NFTs and other digital assets). Within Hivemind's '9 themes for 2025' framework, her work spans stablecoins, derivatives infrastructure, app-chain L1/L2 dynamics, and the broader institutionalization of crypto. Her framing is institutional and risk-aware — Hivemind explicitly pairs crypto-native expertise with institutional-grade risk management.

Founders building infrastructure that institutional capital actually needs — clearing, settlement, custody, regulated stablecoins, tokenization rails, derivatives venues. She gets excited about BTC ecosystem innovations that unlock yield without compromising security, and about consumer applications with simple, intuitive UI that solve real-world payment or financial inclusion problems. Strong AI x crypto positioning — verifiable compute, agentic commerce, autonomous on-chain actors — is also a sweet spot.

Pure speculation plays without infrastructure or institutional relevance, NFT projects without provable provenance or a curation thesis, and consumer apps with poor UX. She is institutionally minded — projects that ignore regulation, custody, or risk management are unlikely to fit.

BS in Finance from Virginia Tech; MBA from Columbia Business School. Began career in corporate innovation consulting and digital media. Crypto and generalist VC roles at Alumni Ventures, White Star Capital, and the Citi Impact Fund. Co-founded a consumer fintech startup before joining Hivemind Capital.