You are missing the key point. It's not hard work, skill and luck.
The Fed has been on a money-printing spree since 2008 [0]. The idea was that it would create jobs and stimulate economic activity. In reality, it lowered the bar for things considered investable, so the Ivy-educated VCs were trying to tap into that stream of cheap money, while paying themselves handsomely. Either get acquired (using cheap debt that will also be used to pay the acquiring execs) or IPOed (using the excess money from the public). Profitability was out of question for at least a decade.
Not directly, sure. The low interest rates, and the overall increase in money in the system, made VC investing less risky compared to other options. Now that changes.
Interest rates are for banks borrowing from the Fed, affecting interest rates on loans issued by banks, and the rate of bank lending. But I don’t think VCs fund themselves by taking bank loans.
These crypto companies are primarily capitalized by VC and selling crypto.
Alternative "assets" like crypto gained more credence when rates were low. Bond returns in such a regime were not attractive, equity markets rallied to elevated levels, and there was little incentive for debt issuers to use free cash to pay down debt that could be rolled out into perpetuity.
The Fed essentially held the cost of money near zero and that had far-reaching effects.
It prints money, that money flows into institutions and chases returns. Much of it flows to VC, guaranteed. That’s what the Fed was literally created to do.
The fed was created to be an intermediary between banks so all banks form a network that in aggregate cannot be insolvent because if one bank is insolvent, another bank has plenty of money to lend to the insolvent bank. When you withdraw into cash, then you are basically banking with the Fed which means banks borrow from the Fed.
New money is created through bank loans, or monetizing government spending, or emergency asset purchases by the Fed – none of which are the typical source of VC funds.
From https://hackernoon.com/the-macroeconomics-of-venture-capital...:
"when the Fed engages in quantitative easing, it goes a step further and attempts to keep returns for longer-term bonds down as well. In the United States, this meant the purchasing of mortgage-backed securities and government bonds. (In Japan, central bankers have had to utilize even more extreme measures, going so far as directly buying not only government bonds but also stocks on the public market). By bidding up the prices of long-term bonds through quantitative easing, the Fed forces investors to seek returns in even riskier assets, such as equities.
As investors flow into the equity market, stock prices are bid up to the point at which expected returns for stocks also become unattractive. At this point, the logical next move for global, institutional investors is to move to more risky investment options such as private equity and venture capital. This is exactly what we’ve seen."
The Fed has been on a money-printing spree since 2008 [0]. The idea was that it would create jobs and stimulate economic activity. In reality, it lowered the bar for things considered investable, so the Ivy-educated VCs were trying to tap into that stream of cheap money, while paying themselves handsomely. Either get acquired (using cheap debt that will also be used to pay the acquiring execs) or IPOed (using the excess money from the public). Profitability was out of question for at least a decade.
[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m0