From PE to crypto: how Theia uses Token Terminal to invest in crypto

Theia is a crypto investment fund that focuses on fundamentals. In practice, they do deep research and model out investments like a private equity firm would. Token Terminal’s API helps them do that quickly and with confidence.

The idea behind Theia

Theia started in 2021. Its founders, John McNiff and Felipe Montalegre, had both worked in private equity. When they got into crypto, they noticed something strange. A bunch of crypto projects were actually generating real revenue. But no one was treating them like real businesses.

They saw an opportunity: if protocols make money, you should be able to underwrite them. The same way you'd underwrite a company. That became the foundation of their strategy.

The early problem: messy data

When Theia started out, they ran into a big issue. The data they needed wasn't clean or easy to use. Protocols sometimes shared numbers, but it was all over the place. There was no standard format. Just getting basic metrics like revenue took hours of work.

That slowdown hurt their speed and made the process fragile. In crypto, timing matters. They needed better data, faster.

How they fixed it

Theia built their own Python-based system for analyzing protocols. Instead of building a full data pipeline, they plugged in Token Terminal's API.

Now they get clean, up-to-date data like fees, valuation multiples, and treasury info directly into their models. Everything runs inside Jupyter notebooks. No dashboards. Just real-time code and data.

How they use it

Theia's team uses simple Python functions to pull in data from the API. They look at both numbers and context. So they check things like cash flows and P/F ratios, but also consider things like team quality or audit history.

If they're looking at GMX, for example, they open a notebook, run a few queries, and see how it stacks up against dYdX, Synthetix, or Uniswap. They can tell if GMX's volume drop is happening across the market or just on GMX. They can see what's driving user growth. And they can adjust their models live, even while on a call.

They use the same setup for more than just research. It also powers their structured products. Whether they're estimating slippage or analyzing token incentives, everything ties back to this system.

What they've gained

Theia used to spend time wrangling messy data. Now they spend that time making decisions.

• They get real-time financial data, with no cleanup
• Their research process is built around code, not spreadsheets
• They can test and update ideas in minutes
• Their data stack scales with every new strategy
• They get dedicated research support from the Token Terminal team

Want to do the same?

If you want to bring structure and speed to your research, check out 👉 Token Terminal's API.