Finance
GEODNET: DePIN Investment Thesis
Michigan Blockchain Investments Team
- Role
- Investments Team Senior Member, Co-author
- Team
- Jeremy Moon, Filipe Botas, Simon Insinger
- Fund Size
- 40 ETH (~$158K)
- Date
- January 2025
As a senior member of Michigan Blockchain's Investments Team, I co-authored and presented a deep-dive investment thesis on GEODNET, a Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) that operates the world's largest decentralized RTK (Real-Time Kinematic) GNSS correction network. The network enables centimeter-level GPS precision by crowdsourcing a global array of satellite mining stations, serving industries from autonomous vehicles and precision agriculture to drone mapping and earthquake monitoring.
The thesis argued that GEOD was significantly undervalued relative to peers: at the time of analysis, GEOD traded at a market cap to revenue multiple of 16.8x versus Helium's 215x, despite GEODNET generating more real revenue and operating a larger, faster-growing network. We recommended a strategic 18% allocation of the fund, approximately $10,000, and secured unanimous team approval after presenting on-chain data, tokenomics modeling, and a competitor analysis. The pitch was built around three core pillars: strong and growing fundamentals, a compelling DePIN flywheel, and a relative valuation case that pointed to meaningful upside.
What Happened and Why
The token declined significantly following our investment. From an entry price of $0.19, GEOD fell to around $0.13 as of early 2026, a drawdown of approximately 32% from our cost basis, and well below its all-time high of $0.37.
The decline was not primarily a reflection of GEODNET's fundamentals, which in fact continued to strengthen. Revenue grew 19% quarter over quarter through mid-2025, the network surpassed 19,000 active miners across 145 countries, and token burns reached all-time highs. The underlying business was performing.
The price pressure came from several structural and macro forces. First, the broader crypto market entered a risk-off phase in 2025, with altcoins and DePIN tokens hit disproportionately as Bitcoin dominance rose and liquidity rotated out of speculative assets. Second, token supply inflation played a role: in Q2 2025 alone, 538 million tokens were unlocked, a 13% quarter-over-quarter increase, creating significant sell pressure from miners and vesting schedules that revenue-driven buybacks and burns could not fully absorb. Third, the DePIN sector as a whole cooled after a period of intense hype in 2024 and early 2025, when a 132% market cap surge attracted speculative capital that subsequently rotated out as narratives shifted.
Our thesis identified the halving-driven incentive decay as a risk: mining rewards halve annually, and if token price does not compensate, miner participation could decline, threatening network growth. That risk has not yet materialized operationally, but it remains a structural overhang.
Reflection
This investment became one of the clearest illustrations of a distinction that now sits at the center of how I think about markets: the difference between a company's fundamentals and its asset's price. GEODNET the network grew. GEOD the token fell. The divergence taught me that in crypto, and in markets more broadly, price is not a verdict on the underlying business. It is a function of liquidity, supply schedules, macro sentiment, and narrative cycles, forces that can overwhelm even a sound fundamental case in the short term.
This experience, more than anything else, accelerated my interest in understanding how assets are priced. It pushed me toward studying macro economics, the Fed's role in risk appetite, and the mechanics of how capital flows in and out of risk assets. It is a direct thread that connects to my interest in finance today.