Andrew Lunardi on memecoins as a market cycle indicator

13 Mar 2025 · 42:35

Andrew Lunardi, Head of Growth at Immutable and author of Magic Money, joins Milk Road host Jay Hamilton with a bullish case for the second half of the year. He points to coming US regulatory clarity, an administration willing to back crypto prices, and expected easing as the Fed responds to long-term yields. He also argues that fading memecoin activity can be a cycle indicator, and tells stories from Dogecoin, EtherRock and Axie Infinity that show the speculative side of crypto history.

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GM good morning welcome to the milk Road show The Daily crypto show that will never rug you unlike today's guest who's been rugged multiple times I'm your host Jay Hamilton it's Thursday March the 13th and I know that you all know that the markets are red and it's not going so great out there right now so today we decided to lighten the mood a little bit maybe take a step back we're going to talk about markets because we always do but we're also going to tell some fun stories zoom out a little bit more because today's guest Andrew lenardi who is the head of growth at immutable one of the leading l2s focused on gaming big fan of them been following them for a

long time uh but he also is the author of a new book called Magic money that it tells some fantastic stories about crypto and dgen and memecoins over the years and so we're just G have some fun cam it up talk about some of these stories hopefully you know give you guys a little bit of a CH change of the radio station so to speak today who listens to the radio anymore what a terrible joke Jay but give you guys a little change of tune from our regular programming this week where it's just been be bear bear to just kind of lighten it up because we all know longterm we're bullish although Andrew is a bull still so we're gonna hear about his take on that before we jump in I would love to meet you guys in person do you guys want to meet me in

person well if you do come to consensus in Toronto May 14th to 16th you can get $350 off your ticket with our discount in the show notes click the link buy your ticket would love to see you there I'll be speaking on stage as well as doing some live interviews today's episode is brought to you by definitive Advanced trading on every chain it's also brought to you by coin shift powering top crypto treasuries with their yield bearing stable coin CS usdl without further Ado Andrew welcome to the milk Road show thank you for having me very excited to be here yeah really excited to have you my man okay we're going to have a little bit more fun to's episode uh but before we get to the fun part uh just because you came on

in a week where we have one question that we're asking everybody which is are you a bull or are you a bear right now so I am a a bull um it is the the million dollar question um so I bull is is still my base case for this Market at the moment and so I might just quickly run through like my thesis as to why I were a bull I'll present a slight counter narrative on the be but I think things are slated particularly in the second half of the year for for a substantial kind of Rebound in in prices um maybe just to start I think there's some idiosyncratic things that are going to in crypto at the moment the market probably hasn't quite priced in I think

the first is the regulatory certainty that we're about to get from the Trump Administration now now we saw a rebound with Trump coming in but I don't think that has being priced in 100% now what we can expect probably in the next 3 to 6 months from the Trump Administration is that we're going to get very clear regulatory Clarity on what it means to have a compliant token now I think this is going to unlock a lot of investment in the space particularly on the institutional side but I think it's also going to unlock utility tokens now one of the big issues that I I've seen personally and what we've seen in Market is that projects have been very hesitant to actually give utility typically in the form of like Revenue sharing for

their tokens I think that has in part fueled like meme coins as well because meme coins for for whatever reason are fine from a regulatory perspective at least like in Australia and and generally in the US so I think I think we'll start seeing that and then I think the risk kind of premum that's attached to crypto actually reduce so I think that's probably my first conviction there the second one which again I think the markets haven't quite priced in is that the Trump Administration there's a willingness to back crypto prices um and you've seen this multiple times now obviously Trump through World Liberty Financial he's got an nft collection the Trump coin has a vested interest in crypto prices and and it seems that the

administration views crypto as a market that they can move probably more than e Equity markets which have a lot more factors and you kind of see this from Trump's from Eric uh Eric Trump about crypto is like great time to buy or or or even timing of press conferences I think think like as like as an investor I have confidence that they will be trying actively to support crypto prices um I think the third part is like meme coins are dying and and I know a lot of people point to this as like a bare Market indicator I actually think this is really bullish and you know for for most people who probably around when when Trump trumpcoin um was released we saw trumpcoin go up massively salana go up but then all altcoins essentially

falling which said to that there was a little bit of extra liquidity but there was a rotation across coins and with kind of meme coins activity going down which I think would largely extractive to the industry I think we'll see that reallocating across to the alt coins so hopefully it would be good for our alt um portfolio and then probably zooming out outside of I think um crypto specifically is looking at macro and and my kind of firm belief is that all roads are leading to QE in the second half of the Year kind of my rationale for that is I think the Trump Administration actually has got the right steer on what they're trying to focus on which is long-term treasury yields I think I think again that's something they feel like they can control and it's probably

the right decision for the country now their main levers at the moment are Doge and then also tariffs which is caused probably the most consternation in the market now tariffs probably not great from a global growth perspective but good from a revenue perspective for the US um and then Doge you know there's been so much push back on on Doge which is probably to be expected a new time that you you cut government spending and probably tactically they've started with like us Aid where it's not going to to US citizens but um if you have conviction that Doge will be effective and then the tariffs can raise some Revenue I think we'll get the US budget into a better spot and we'll start seeing those long-term yields decline um simultaneously I think with some Market termo we're more likely to see that the

FED step in um sometime soon and and probably just the final final Point as well is I think we're in a unique position where we've got a lot of in institutional capital inflows and we got we've got the ETFs there's going to be more ETFs I think that's opening up in the market so I think that should be a good support for prices um so I think that's kind of my base case for the for the bull for the second half of the Year probably where you get into bare territories just that impac of tariffs like the worst case scenario is we have escalatory tariffs across the world um Global growth decreases simultaneously inflation goes up and if we have St inflation we're going to be in a in difficult perspective I think in the short to medium term we're going to be

very macro dependent so it's hard to predict but um I'm still buying um I'm still fully agree with your your your bull thesis I think as you said it's the short term that is uncertain right now uh the and the and the the length of that shortterm is uncertain right it's it's very clear that we have never had the regulatory Tailwinds the uh government support the setup for institutions to come in for banks to start to use crypto like all these things if you had told me that we would have all these things this early in

20125 or be lined up to have a lot of these things quite soon I would have said hey we're like bulmania right but the macro side is really holding us back and it's it's very difficult to predict the macro side particularly when you look at the the length of how long these macro conditions will last could be a few months could be longer if you guys go back and if you haven't listened to the episodes already this week you can listen to Mondays was a 9 to 12 month be case with Michael natu Tuesday was a three to four month macro bear case with Felix from blockworks and then uh yesterday Wednesday was a a a shortterm I would say a bull case with a short very short bull very short barar run

from from Kyle on our team at milk road so you're a lot of what you're saying is definitely in line with what what we're hearing what we're seeing right now you mentioned meme coins being a great indicator for cycles and market conditions uh unpack that a little bit more for us because I know that um in in writing your book you did a lot of research on particularly on the history of crypto and the major events that have happened and what has impacted markets the most and what has led to these like big swings in either direction so can you break down sort of maybe give us that story of like the rise and the fall

of mean coins and how that can be used as a proxy for marketing conditions and then maybe we can look at where we are today yeah I think like mean coins are are so fascinating I think it's probably the purest manifestation of animal spirits in markets and I know it's a term that we use explain explain animal yes I think it's proba I think this was a first year economics back when I was doing economic cigarettes this is from John man canes who talked about like animal spirits is like that kind of intangible emotional element that drives markets and that kind of drives the the Peaks and the troughs and markets you know when animal spirits are high you're buying everything um when when you're in a bear you're selling everything there

um and I think like now with like mean coins we're able to steal that kind of almost so perfectly in in one thing and and I kind of use it as a major proxy for markets as you mentioned so if we go back to kind of the Incarnation of of mean Clin what's super fascinating is if we if we rewind right back to 2010 so just in the very very early days of cryptocurrency there was there's a quite a famous um post on um on one of the Bitcoin forums and and I was talking about how you know once Bitcoin successful we're going to have all of these successor coins and a lot of these coins actually uh came came to be they talked about gitcoin uh titcoin was the one and I think I think it's do out

there as well shitcoin um Etc and and the central thesis kind of of the the post was that you know you have something like Bitcoin where it's like minting you know 50 50 Bitcoins every couple months like why not just have a coin that can mint 50 coins in a minute and everybody can buy it very quickly um so I think like from the very start people saw that mem coins could become a thing and I think it's a very natural theme because I VI me mem coins is just like another proxy for gambling and we know humans have gambled for for a very long period of time um and kind of fast forwarding a few years we have the creation of Dogecoin now um Dogecoin was literally created as a joke it was a

satire of these altcoins that have been created with kind of no utility and Dogecoin found popularity within within Reddit is kind of like a tipping coin um it had some really wholesome stories about sending um the bob sled team the Jamaican bobsled team to one of the Olympics a lot of great really support the wait that Happ this is a little little known fact yes they sent uh they they did a fundraising uh for Doge then they sent the Jamaican uh Team to the win big like literally the cool running story unfortunately they didn't perform very well I they came last um but but like Al like a very positive thing I think the Dogecoin Community is actually been a really strong force for for for

good I think through kind of his existence and then it was really with the GameStop Saga in kind of 2020 2021 that we really started seeing mem coins explode um I was actually trading very actively at this time had a position in Dogecoin um liquidated myself way too early before the big run but I think like if you if you take that perspective of like at the time when you had very loose monetary conditions people wanted to speculate on on on something and you know GameStop became that Meme share but the virality like ability of crypto is that you can like make a meme coin in seconds now with pump pump. fun like don't know codes required it can tie directly to

the cultural zist um you know we saw Luigi man joone like Co pump and like it's not possible in traditional markets I think crypto was like the perfect fertile ground for um and what you kind of see if if you chart back from the previous cycle Dogecoin went first and what always happens is we have one coin go first and then there'll be imitators probably the biggest imitator from last cycle was safe Moon um which was this for people don't know was kind of like this somewh hilarious marketing slogan with safe Moon um was we're on a journey safely to the moon and that was the only marketing it had and it absolutely pumped and made an issue investers a heap of money all

of the founders of those have now been indicted I think they've actually been prosecuted as well um for it but but that was like the start and then when that fuse was lit we saw so many different main coins that went from safe moon to Safe Mars and every Incarnation that you can you can you can see the next step I kind of see in this is then celebrities start joining in and last cycle we had the Kim Kardashians of the world probably this cycle we've seen more of the political side but celebrities jump in and then and then I think we get to that extracted stage where people are throwing money in left right and center and then that's when we start seeing rug pools and scams emerge and in last cycle we saw a lot of pump

and dump groups like I would be invited to telegram groups literally pump and dump group and people would be selecting coins that they would all be buying at the same time um and then selling um what the the the I think the crazy thing about the pump and dump groups is that it was like almost like Inception there was layers of pump and D dump groups because it' be a broader group and then there'd be an inner group that would actually be deciding before what coin they're going to pump and they would buy then tell the out group so it' be layers of kind of so quite quite horrible and and I think we've kind of seen that play out this cycle as well I was just gonna ask that okay so like have we have we seen that right like I think Libra yeah

we've I think we saw Libra and then I think what subsequently came out particular the salana ecosystem is that there has been like insiders with knowledge of and running particular mean coins up as well and and I think what happens and I think it happened last cycle and the big kind of BL and I think this gets to the end end point is like the big blow up I think from last cycle was squid token now this was back when squid Games first came out obviously super popular um if you think about squid games it is a form of a Ponzi there's a big Ward up there every person that dies they add add to the pool and they launch this squid token at pumps at the start and to everybody's horror it

got rugged and I think that was like the Zenith point of people got fed up with like the extractive nature of the mean coins um so if I kind of summarize like what I look for in in in kind of mean coins is like that animal spirit is you kind of look one at like a trigger point and I think it was maybe Bonk for this cycle where that really went up then you start seeing imitators spawn and obviously we had pump up F and heaps of different meme Gins that come up celebrities come in we start to get to like Max extractives phase and then we see like a big blow up EV then I think that was Libra up um in in this cycle and then I think there's a bit of so but wouldn't that wouldn't that say to you

that we're in a bare Market just to play the contrarian then yes yeah this is and I I recognize some level of contradiction I think I think I kind of views it as a little bit of a proxy for like where we are at in the cycle now I think if if a bull market does come to pass as I predicted I think we'll see this repeat again and we'll see another major blow up with the mcoins but I kind of look at as like intracycle top so it's it's a bit of a checking mechanism when you start seeing this crazy thing the the the similar proxy I've got for me is every time I put my portfolio in an XL I know I should probably be selling because that's always the the cycle talk at least for for for me or close to it Incycle so I kind of use

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traction at milkroom coin ship okay okay so even though you're bullish for this cycle when you look at what's happened with meme coins over the past few month it does sort of indicate to you high Animal Spirits High gambling feels feels very toppy it's a real top signal you're saying local cycle top not the like it's it's not the End Cycle top you still think we have further to go from here okay tell us a little bit about um let's keep going with the stories I don't want to go I don't want to talk about markets anymore I need a break tell tell us a little bit

about your so you you wrote this book and you you got you wrote the book because you got rugged right that's that's that's how this all started so tell tell us the story of why you wrote the book and then I want to talk about some of the stories from the book because you've got it's almost like a history lesson every Everybody if you haven't been around since you know 2010 since the early days um I certainly haven't been around that long I'm more like two cycles now uh but if you haven't been around that long like go back and and read this book because it's just uh it's it's great great stories of some of the original original why we are really here right which is so important to remember in times like this when we're all just upset with ourselves for how rich we could have been a few weeks

ago exactly right and and finally enough that the original title of the title of the book was ranked but I did change it and and I guess it starts like that the book kind of starts like the introduction is a a story about me from the previous cycle so um back in 2021 I'm based in in in Melbourne Australia and we had the dubious honor of being the most lockdown city in the world I I don't even remember what number lockdown it was I was working in management consulting at the time and probably a lot of people maybe who were working kind of in Professional Services or just like in a professional capacity at that time probably saw their hours increase exponentially combined with there's nothing else to do so you just have to

work um so it wasn't a very fun time and I remember it was probably about 1:00 a.m. at night on a Wednesday and I I just clocked off work and probably like a lot of people were trading meme coins now back in 2021 it was a different world because it was binance smart chain that really had all of the mem coin activity we didn't have a pump dot fun at that time what we had was pcoin so the pcoin was his website I know it's so ridiculous you go on PO coin and You' see like new coins listing so I'm tired I see um this Morty coin Pock up and and I was like big fan of Rick and Morty I'm like here we go so I put I put $5,000 into the the mor coin um it immediately starts going up I

think it was about up about 8X in in 15 minutes I was already working out what car I was going to buy 25y old Toyota corw at the time I'm like Teslas are looking good maybe I'll get a Lambo um and probably like a lot of people gets rocked so evaporate $5,000 uh just in an instant um try to like go to bed thinking how I'm going to tell my girlfriend that I've lost $1,000 on a morid but it that's kind of like that was really actually the Genesis of motivation for the book because the people that into crypto that might not be a crazy story and some people would be like oh I've lost well more than $5,000 that's actually a small

amount um and it's like it is such a crazy world so like a large part of it was to try to articulate that for both people who are in in crypto and they want to have a laugh at people like me or who want to learn more about the industry but it it really kind of evolved because if you look at a lot of the other crypto literature it tends to be quite negative on the industry and and there are very negative impacts like negative things in the Stream we've kind of talked about that in the rug puls but there's also really positive things as well and I thought the best way to tell that was just through a series of stories that are interconnected and like each chapter normally has like some hook like when I talk about the history of thef nfts people don't really want to

hear too much about all the technical details but what they like to hear is like the chapter's framed around ether rocks which um people remember was just literally a JPEG of a a really bad jpeg of a rock that sold for like $5 million which is just absolutely ridiculous um but it's a good illustration of like some of the craziness in in the mark but also a good way to get people introduced to nfts and actually see where some of the utility for for for them are let me let me bring up if you guys ether rock this is bring up on screen this is this is an ether rock it is literally a a digital illustration of a rock uh and there's you can look at you can look on Twitter and see The Ether rocks and see

their current price current floor for ether rocks is $350,000 folks uh it remarkable these ether I don't I've never really go I mean Collectibles one of one Rarity that's really what this is is all about um but okay so let's tell let's tell some of the maybe let's not let's not tell more rug and hacky stories let's tell some of the good stories what are some of the good things that have happened in crypto since 2010 that you told in your book my favorite story was um Constitution D and and and this was kind of the hook for the chapter to talk about um DS more generally um so so maybe I'll kind of run through the story

and I I was very privileged to be able to interview the team and get a lot of insight information on what happened so even people who have who are aware of constitution there there's actually so much that happened behind the scenes which is really fascinating but um so with Constitution D what what happened it was a grand Novak um he he' seen online that they were going to do an auction for the the US Constitution I think there's about 11 11 original copies there and kind of what transpired was quite extraordinary because in the space of two weeks graah Novak was able with a few friends and then the help of like a small group of Internet strangers do the biggest crowdfunding in history and they raised $47 million in two weeks

and it was really yeah it was crazy and it was really just off the back of a Nicholas Cage Meme and it shows like the power of there memes in crypto National Treasure uh I me um and so so so the this group came together to buy a copy a physical copy of the US Constitution there's only 11 of them they're worth I mean they're worth really it's difficult there's this is not a liquid Market or anything like that so I don't know exactly what the floor is but they're worth you know tens of millions of dollars rare piece of history and and a bunch of people said okay let's try to buy it they is 47 million okay what happens yeah and and and it was kind of quite like

extraordinary because you see like so so they they start doing this crowdfunding and you have people donating and like you know I'm I'm I'm Australian and have a particular Affinity towards the US Constitution but I found the messages moving like it was it was like people who were like I'm I've just become I've immigrated across I've just become a us uh Citizen and like this means the world to me that I can own a piece of our history um and and it really I think was such a powerful illustration of I think the power of crypto to actually bring people together in a way that would have been completely impossible because the intention of the Dow was you would buy into the Dow and then you would have governance rights over what they did with the the US Constitution if they

bought it so and a lot of the ideas they had was that it was going to go on like a road show around the US and be featured in places and Country towns that like wouldn't normally get to see that piece of history and and it is I just think it's it's it's one thing that when you see your portfolio down you get a bit down about crypto I think it's like such a beautiful story unfortunately the story didn't have a great ending um because they they raised they raised the 47 million and then they went to sub be auction and you can actually watch the auction um online it's actually quite fascinating because you see the bids coming through um so the team was prepared they they they they bid B bid into the auction and and

a private bit of one and there's a bit of conjectures like who who who won the auction who who who who won um and what what transpired was actually Ken Griffith so um he's a CEO of a hedge fund Citadel um if you've seen um dumb money the movie he's actually the antagonist of that movie and I think maybe actually became a little bit of a commentary on some issues in in the US where you have a bunch of people that is trying to buy like historical artifact for like the the public good and then a a billionaire kind of swoops in um what was really interesting that TR transpired behind the scenes was that K Griffith buys the the copy of the Constitution um and then in Graham

Novak's words makes like the most offensive deal that he could possibly imagine because K just didn't really get why they were doing it so the offer to Constitution D um and and this part's actually never been made public is that um they said hey if you give us $47 million what we'll just mint a copy of the nft like mint a nft of the Constitution and so like K would have been in a very good spot there so extractive so extractive exact exactly and and it's kind of like that that I think it was like like that part although it ended on kind of like um a sad note I think going back to what I saying is is such a like

positive kind of indication of where we can be for crypto where like you can participate in a down itn't matter where you are in the world how much money you've got you can still kind of participate and then be part of something greater and I think it's like a great story to kind of remember in you know so sometimes when you a b down in the the in the crypto markets well the irony also is that Citadel recently announced what like two three weeks ago that they're going to start becoming a market maker for crypto so yeah fa fa I mean and and I think back then uh you know they didn't understand it and and as you said I remember when

this happened and I remember how much the the Old Guard was almost like offended and scared and this is what happens with any Innovation right is the Old Guard is offended and Afraid of the new Young Innovation the change right they fear the change and they didn't understand why a group of Internet strangers want to buy the Constitution what are they going to do with it when in fact as you said the story really is that like they wanted to do beautiful things with it they wanted to put it on public display they wanted to share with the world they wanted everyone to be able to see it not have it be in some I'm sure it's in a vault somewhere and nobody can see it anymore it's probably the case right so you know a lot of a

lot of the original ethos of crypto in that story which is uh it's so funny because it's like so many of us who have been in the space for for a while and been working in the space yourself included uh came in for the tech and for the change and for this you know um very uh belief driven purpose-- driven Viewpoint not for the speculation of the money but once you've been here you get here you realize and you can't deny you are here for the money too like I I I'll fully admit that like I definitely am here for the for the money as well and once you realize that you really can get Jaded by that and get so focused and that's when

like in times like this when markets are tough when like and it's scary like you know I say to everybody all the time like you know be safe out there and take care of yourself and like if you're down bad like go talk to a friend go talk to a family member and all that because like it can get really dark when all you do is focus on the the gambling and the speculation and the money when there is so many other good things okay any other any other stories we're sharing from the book uh I don't we don't need to go but I got to ask is there any other ones that are good should we tell the uh what about what about chapter 7 the uh the web 3 game that was played by 2% of the Philippines for a living yes yes so

obviously like um I I'm in the web 3 gaming space and and if you're not familiar with axi infinity again this is a crazy story so axi Infinity you can really just think of it as like it's kind of like a quasi like little Pokémon game you have these little axie characters that are nfts and you kind of create a squad of like three of these nfts and you and you play um and then again like so much of this happens during like Co lockdowns you're right yeah yeah yeah and and so like at the time in the Philippines like unemployment was sty High um and you know like when you're in these like developing countries that doesn't doesn't have the safety nets that maybe in Canada or the us or Australia have where you can afford to pay people to

sit in their homes like people were out of work and quite quite desperate um and then the the spark that kind of lit it was that there was this game with um uh where you could buy these little axes and you start earning you know uh tokens from them um so it kind of starts very small like a couple people down the street start playing the game and then the entire Street starts playing the game and it just explodes there's so many people like I said don't have a job they're at home they're playing this game like 247 which it was just it it went crazy and as I said 2% of the the adult population at one time was playing this game um unfortunately probably like a lot of and making money off it right

and making and making money as well and like this entire infrastructure built around it like there's this Guild concept where essentially like if you didn't have enough money to to buy the nfts was they kept going up was we'll loan you the nfts you play the games and then we do a a split of it um which is it was it got absolutely Bonkers um probably not unsurprisingly uh the tokenomics and the economy was not sustainable so we did see a kind of big crash in axi but I mean it's it's held up very well and I think um yeah yeah I was I was surprised because I I remember following it like the price has gone down but the player base is still is still quite strong and and I think I

think it's still probably like our Testament more broadly in web 3 in web 3 gaming that that there is like people still do love games and they will still play games although um sometimes their primary motivation to study is is to to make some make some money look look at look at this chart though here's the axi chart so axi peaked at $157 in November 2021 that was Peak peak of that bull run and the market cap was 10 billion it got up to 10 billion and today the price is four $3 and the market cap is 31 million W no no sorry 500 million 500 million oh gosh yeah

tough tough tough run but I mean that's through through through through through a bare Market it definitely has not come back as it did in the last run but it is it is really really interesting to point out the the ways in which the the economies that are built around these and like I remember hearing stories first of all we got to mention that the the token that you got from the game was called Sweet Love Potion which is just the freaking best name ever for a token uh and I remember hearing stories of like a convenience stores in the Philippines accepting Sweet Love Potion so you could like go and buy milk with Sweet Love Potion you know and you could

see like the it was a really ear it was too early and it was too soon and like you said the tokenomics did not make sense so it unfortunately collapsed uh but it did it certainly drove a lot of innovation play to earn and in gaming and maybe you can tell us more about that but it also was like the early days of seeing like oh wow like crypto can come into other parts of the economy such as like payments you know things that we hadn't really seen yet and we started to see it taking place which is yeah was is powerful to see and and I think like I think the most interesting thing um that kind of flowed from that in kind of web 3 gaming um in particular is how much people actually in board you

kind of look at crypto penetration across the world very high in the Philippines very high in India very high in Brazil all kind of web three gaming markets now now there are other reasons why they're they're using it remittances is a really big one and I think you know payments being such a a positive um use case for for crypto but it does does have that actually ability to kind of on board and and I think you see this in a lot of Industries a lot of people kind of start with gaming and they kind of go out from there because you know gaming is such a massive Market um as well um and particularly for developing countries where it's tends to be mobile first that it tends to be a very good entry point for them right right okay I don't I don't want to talk

we're not we're GNA kind of skip the gaming um conversation on this show I think you and I both believe very strongly very bullish on gaming and crypto long term I I keep it feels like a when not an if I keep thinking it's going to happen soon I I got so pumped when Off the Grid was doing so well last year Prime was doing so well and I'm not the only one a lot of people in the space really really really hype on gaming it just makes so much sense but just just while we're on it what what's your take on gaming right now is there what are you seeing from behind the scenes over at immutable like is is that another proxy for the fact that we're in

a bare Market is gaming down bad like everything's down bad right now look at like the G game fire sector has not been performing I think I was just looking last month was one of the worst performing sectors um there I like briefly I think one of the big issues that have that's kind of ran um that a lot of these gaming tokens have ran into is I think there's such actually fundamental demand for properly designed gaming tokens because if you think about like World of Warcraft for example like they've got a token it's just not it's not an ERC they got it's an iname organic fundamental demand for that token and it Maps perfectly oneto one um with with crypto which is kind of

a cool reason why I got into to web3 gaming I think what has happened to a lot of gaming projects is there's always a battle for fun and that that is just like the the reality of like 90% of gamees going to fail both you know and a lot of them just never even get to live operations it's very expensive to make a game um and I think where some games have kind of like not hit the mark is that they focus on that token as more of a fundraising vehicle and not really thought critically about how does that token fit within our game ecosystem and how do I design a token that as the number of players go up it's like either goes up or retains value and I think that's been a really core issue in in

the gaming space um I think on the positive side I think the market is kind of waking up to this now and we've seen some like very good examples of games launching on a mutable I think space Nation just launched token yesterday we've got Raven Quest um one of the largest games launching in a couple weeks where they thought about this very thoughtfully and I think that's probably the case going forward that we're GNA we've seen a bit of a reset and going forward that games will have to be a lot more thoughtful because a Mark will punishment punish them if not tough time to be launching a token geez very that's that's not on them right like you can't play conditions okay are you buying anything right now I

I got to ask you you you got you got some D gen in you I feel like you're still buying what do what are you buying right I unfortunately I I was doing as I mentioned putting my numbers into the EXL and the portfolio is not looking good across my 10 different wallets I think um look I'm I'm probably in the dcing mode at the moment I'm mainly focus on BTC I'm still kind of bullish on on on salana as well not not withstanding the the meme coins but maybe going back to my case thesis I think um when I was talking about um the Trump Administration backing coins I think US coins are one he's going to be particularly focused on and then utility ones as well so I'm very bullish on kind of the RV and Unis of the world because

um you know both with that that Nexus with the US the law suits dropping but also like I think they're making money as well so I think you'll start seeing that flow to to us so so those are the main ones I'm I'm focused on at the moment on on our episode that comes out on Saturday we talk we talk about a and uh and A's buyback program that they just announced they're buying like a million dollars a million US dollars in tokens a week right now like their buyback program is no joke and like you think about the the buying pressure that that puts right on a token like it's no wonder a has it's one of the few tokens that is like holding up decently well

right now uh and yeah I completely completely agree it's Isn't it nice to get this shift from pumpamentals to fundamentals like it feels yes it feels so nice so good we need it so bad even though we'll still have lots of animal spirits Andrew it's been been a pleasure to have you on the show today everybody listening in uh we're gonna throw a link to Andrew's book um in the show notes if you want to have a great read as you can tell by Andrew it's uh it's both it's both serious and humorous all at the same time so you can have some fun and get a bit of a history lesson on crypto or if you want to buy a a family member a book I don't know if would you recommend this for people who don't know crypto I guess

it's a fun way to learn crypto but isn't it like it's a scary way to learn crypto isn't it like I don't want everyone to know about the bad stuff funly enough the most positive feedback I've got is from um people whose Partners have read the book because they're like oh I can I actually understand what crypto is about now so um yeah it's quite interesting and I think my my mom now finally knows what I do for work which is positive oh yeah I might have to get my wife or coffee Andrew thanks so much for joining us today everybody listening in appreciate you as always thanks so much for listening we'll see you guys again tomorrow same time same place have a wicked awesome day as always if you liked today's episode please hit

subscribe and make sure you follow us so you don't miss out on the next one there's also a link in the description to our free 5 minute daily newsletter where we simplify crypto for you while making you laugh and if you're willing to step up your crypto investing game we're going to also leave a link for milk Road Pro you get access to our portfolio where you can see exactly what we are buying this is your number one resource to help you invest successfully in crypto one final note this show is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice investing in crypto or any asset is risky and you should never invest more than you can afford to lose thanks so much for listening in my friends have a

wicked awesome day