Apple Zucked Snapchat, BTC Miners Bankrupt & Reddit NFTs | Roundup

Transcript

before we jump into the app quick reminder that nothing on bell curve is financial advice everything is just a meme hope you guys enjoy all right everyone welcome back to another episode of bell curve you got Mike's one and two and Vance fellas welcome back to the show I apologize for rugging uh of the internet last week um it's also criminal I can't believe I haven't done a show with Janos stories and I got no I got no reactions and you you and I met in person for the first time a week and a half ago I know man we had a blast you know we had a very nice dinner I thought we had a nice panel but my favorite apartment for dinner I'm gonna be real it was lovely yeah we got some good

bonding time yeah we talked about some sci-fi books uh it was good wait speaking of what was the show that you that we were talking about yes counterpart yeah counterpart it's dude it is worth a watch JK Simmons is like it it might be better than his uh Whiplash that's a bowl of plants like it's extremely good yeah that's that's like top five that's a yeah it's a spicy okay just just watch the first episode watch the first episode and you'll see what I mean like it's a it's a tour de force for JK Simmons I think um wow you know he's not having a tour de force week is Kanye West

God God anyway so the first 45 minutes this Show's gonna be Kanye West and how he's on his way to no longer being allowed in America basically but uh tough week tough week for the yay yeah I mean the only thing to say about that is it it's pretty clear that you know something's going on in that you know probably should just step off the airwaves I think so too yeah that's the very Humane response yeah it's definitely like it is tough it is I mean he has such an enormous megaphone and I don't want to diagnose from you know I don't know what I don't know but yeah definitely someone should probably yank away the the Instagram the Twitter uh for a little while I think so the digital Retreat would be I'd be probably put the toys what's ordered

yeah well advised yeah well advised you'll try yourself out somewhere yeah um all right guys we're back I got some charts we're actually going to start with uh some non-crypto stuff here uh but I just wanted to get your take overall on so I've got up here let me know when you guys can see got a couple of different um assets here I've got meta and snap because those were some of the big web 2 companies that just had earnings and I've got Ethan Bitcoin over it so you know I saw this chart from uh Mika Hong kasolo and a butcher his last name but it was like year-to-date performance for you know meta and snap versus Ethan Bitcoin and I mean this is actually from one year

ago so this is from like the Pico top basically of both those assets and they're still outperforming uh you know much larger well-established web 2 companies um we're going to talk about uh meta earnings a little bit but you guys what's your guys take on this is uh this is the last five days it's been a nice healthy bounce here for eth uh and Bitcoin to a lesser extent obviously pretty and snaps done okay beta absolutely brutal like what do you guys think about just the bounce in in crypto this last week I I have more commentary around uh snap and meta than I do commentary around the bounce and [ __ ] I mean I think frankly like the bounce in crypto is just a an overdue uh adjustment of the understanding of the the valuation of

these assets um but frankly the The Meta stuff and the snap stuff just going back to that uh over the last year and we'll talk about this um probably later when we talk about nfts and apple um what has happened and and I think this is not a fundamentally nuanced state but having spent a couple years at snap um ATT ad tracking transparency is driving the business model of direct response advertising into the ground basically Apple has gotten rid of the identifier for advertisers the idfa replaced it with this thing called the this scad network which is essentially an audience Network um advertising element

um but that doesn't have the ability to basically say I want to Target these people and let me know when these people have purchased something and that was the basis of basically all of the ad app install ads for both snap and Facebook or meta and and that fundamentally is drawn away uh and this happened probably about a year ago so not not surprising that we've seen uh you know the business models adjust but I think that this isn't something that's going to change like this is this is going to be here for a while and that's and Apple's not going to relent they're not going to go back on what they've done already so you have to reinvent your business model meta is trying to do that but doing that at an exceeding exceedingly absorbitant cost yeah uh just to like double click on why

that's so important like attribution if anyone out there is listening is involved in like an ad sales type business model attribution is like a key key driver for how you're going to succeed in a sale because the first thing that if you ask someone to spend a million dollars in advertising with you they're going to say okay how can I determine what my Roi is Facebook arguably had the most advanced attribution mechanism known to me or basically and what they would do let's be clear too there is brand advertising which is basically putting out Billboards all over the Internet YouTube YouTube is classic and doing this they also have direct response which is a call to action based advertising unit and if you're not actioning if there's no way to to verify whether or not that action is happening you can't verify to your point whether or not the

advertisement actually works and the targeting actually works which is the basis of those businesses exactly and there is there's brat there's brand advertising then there's direct response the thing is uh the Google and Facebook oligopoly why those platforms are so seductive is there's this really easy kind of login sign-in and it make it very clear to say you spend x amount of dollars and you get x amount out right they make it very clear and easy to understand what the ROI is so just to be clear right in in theory there's been no difference for how effective Facebook's advertisements are but they can't as Clearly say right with as much certainty in their attribution models okay you've spent one dollar and you're getting two dollars out but the ads are still getting served to the same amount of

people they just can't prove it as effectively and it makes it less monetizing I actually that's a that's an interesting question the ads are still running the ads are still flying but what is changing is the audience or the lookalike customization where you say okay I'm adjusting my ad it's not like someone just like puts on a unique custom audience and they say okay just run it for the next 12 months it's constantly being refined constantly being adjusted and and now you don't have the ability to have that refinement and and so the the repurchases of these ad units are just not happening and and sure you can brand advertise everywhere and you basically say I want to Target you know males in the US age 20 18 to 24 but you're not going to be able to

refine that further after the fact and that and that's really where they make the money or or least used to right well the other thing that happens there too is because they can't trace as many purchases to the ad dollars that are spent it looks like your CPA is going up basically so what you do is like you go to an advertising agency they are the ones who typically like hey this is what we should we're going to spend on basically just Google and Facebook uh and then there's attribution that's done on those platforms and if Facebook can't do attribution as well because they're blocking the pixel on Facebook when you go to Safari on your phone then Facebook instead of being able to say oh look you spent one dollar and got two it's going to be like oh you spent one dollar and got a dollar and

fifteen cents and so suddenly you as the advertiser is gonna be like whoa why am I why am I CPA going up so much I'm going to spend less money that's the and so that uh that's like the big headwind that's that's happened a while ago but then they really it was a really tough earnings call for them so their stock is down something like 22 on the day we're recording this on Thursday the 27th um there was a whole lot there's a whole bunch of stuff uh basically that's been happening so basically there revenues down four percent um you know in the last quarter it was a revenue Miss and an earnings Miss uh the the other the other two reasons why they're getting dinged here is because their costs are continuing to grow right so you know ad budgets are kind of one

of the first things they're super discretionary so companies you know kind of tend to reel those in when they're macroeconomic headwinds which there definitely are uh and I think what analysts expected were for Facebook to reel those costs in they've kept head count flat so that's at least relatively good but their costs are continuing to expand to between 96 and 101 billion dollars uh in particular reality Labs which is their metaverse sort of unit had a had a 49 drop in Revenue to 285 million that's an operating loss of 3.7 billion on the quarter uh and then they expect a 10 billion dollar Dent you know to operating profit in 2023 and Zuckerberg himself has said yeah that's

probably gonna go higher so basically officers are like dude you have got to fix this uh am I am I missing something from that take it doesn't look great I suppose I mean the what you're missing is that these platforms are growing like Instagram today has a billion two users they're supposed to get to 1.45 by the end of 2025 like adding a few hundred million users like that's a lot of Economics the growth rate isn't that good but like dau's Maus are generally up you know engagement with the app is generally up I think the thing that really matters is like they're just getting squeezed by Apple like that that's kind of really what's going down here like if things were status quo as

of last year probably a lot different conversation but now that this has changed like the underlying economics of the business and all of the assumptions that it was built on are kind of valid snap is a single platform app you know it's only existing on mobile devices Facebook at least has the ability to have web so Apple isn't as relevant to Facebook which is why you're seeing the delayed effect and sort of the the slow unwinding of the Facebook business model from an ATT direct response advertising perspective whereas this time last year I remember Advanced member sitting in a conference room and you know that was the day that's snap dropped 33 after earnings you know lost a third of its valuation in a day um the the other thing that I'd add just to The Meta conversation in particular um meta yesterday reported earnings the

the stock hits you traded up for a short period of time until Zuck got on the call and started asking answering questions about what was going to happen and what also happened this week is Brad gerstner from alternator Capital wrote an open letter saying you need to rein in costs so I need to rein in expenses this whole meta thing metaverse like that that is a red herring you need to run away from it and basically what happened on the call is he basically said you know I'm not going to do that I'm not listening to you um and I'm not listening to anybody either because I have super majority shareholding and I can vote however I want to uh so I I really think this is more a reaction to just the indiscretion for shareholders that zoc is showcasing

um but it is you know obviously all the other stuff as headwinds to you know this already bid growing problem of meta yeah I think you that was the the only thing I would add is that if you look at the chart of of uh meta so pretty good like a trillion 1.1 basically and it's gone down 70 since um even in that market cap are becoming pretty similar like etha's a pretty decent shot at flipping you know in the near future I think that's when things start to get really interesting is when you're like you're forced to mentally put you know one company ethereum anomaly in a sandwich when you

think about their valuation it's like well it has more cash flow than this one it's more deflationary than that one like you can start to make a real argument through these things is you know the next generation of tech stock assets and I think forcing that valuation framework will be very useful to people just even if it's just on a market cap basis like eth is already trading basically as much volume at this point the market is really changing a lot which feels you know pretty good and different than the summer yeah 100 I think you already started to see that narrative um you know you kind of started to hear this a little bit last year during the bull market but uh if Bitcoin was digital gold then eth was kind of like the Fang like bet and I don't necessarily agree with that but I do

think that's a powerful narrative right because Fang you know as a sector or a little subunit of the NASDAQ has basically been the best performer in the last decade you know by a mile so it's a powerful narrative I agree it's growth yeah and like the thing the thing that it has is no overhead you know basically no cost other than those worn by stakers and the cost to actually you know stake your asset it's kind of like the opposite of everything that you see with meta where it's like how do we get these costs down how much money do we actually need to spend a centralization actually like a bad thing or should you like compete on a more you know resource level um like ethereum I think those are going to be really interesting questions but you know at some level like if it gets back to all-time highs in

terms of fees you know eth is going to look from an economic standpoint very similar to these large tech companies for reasons why decentralization is important you know you've got literally the one of the largest most prevalent uh products on the face of the Earth run by someone who has 21 shareholding power uh and and maintains control um and you know it seems like the direction is whatever he says the direction is whereas you know you're talking about an open source protocol that doesn't have anyone who controls it like this is fundamentally the power of decentralization yeah there's a um I think that is kind of the the nail on the head of just uh like shareholder rights basically and

nobody cares about you know founder control right when everything's going well but as soon as it turns around everyone's like whoa I'm not so sure about this um there's almost like an interesting you know glass doors moment where you know Steve Jobs obviously was the Visionary specifically the product Visionary behind Apple uh and then you know R.I.P Steve Jobs passed away and passed it on to Tim Cook Tim Cook probably not a product Visionary but that guy was he was an operator right and he was definitely more friendly to shareholders he instituted BuyBacks that's like company life cycle type stuff so you know maybe you will see and honestly snap has the same problem here right everything's gonna be worse even worse you know you know how many votes a Class A shareholder has in snap zero I do not it's the first stock to ever

trade on the net uh the on the New York Stock Exchange without any shareholder voting how how okay with that is uh beyond me so so what is a like at a high level what is an equity if you have no claim on cash flow or voting rights I mean why does it have any value at all it snaps down 90 percent that look yeah I guess that the theory of like software investing is that you should have a product that's you know able to be digitally replicated it's low cost to distribute you can give it to people for free you know and at a certain scale you can just stop your costs but if it grows linearly like then you

have like a really big problem and if you can't downsize quick enough then you have like a big hole in your balance sheet and so I think that's going to be the really interesting thing to see is like do these tech companies issue more stock do they issue more debt like that was a core part of at least the the Netflix playbook in like the 2016-1718 time where the zero interest rates were prevalent so it's going to be interesting to see kind of what they do but I'd expect to see a lot of the small mid cap ones get pretty seriously hurt I think uh this is just a theory of mine I don't know what you guys I haven't heard anyone talk about this but I wonder if uh antitrust has anything to do with this because typically the way that Facebook dealt with innovation in the

past was they would just buy it right that's what they did with Instagram that's what they did with WhatsApp and they had to pay a higher and higher price but like who cares right I mean they were growing like mad now they can't do that because uh you know Department of Justice signaled like hey we don't like this anymore so there has to be something else has to be another story there has to be another and I mean that Playbook has been run through and and it's gone at least for the foreseeable future maybe you know a new Direction A New Perspective a new Administration that narrative changes but at least as it stands right now there is no ability to acquire growth yeah 100 um I got one last uh take for you that I heard from this guy Mitch Lasky I don't know if you know it from the gaming

world the board member at snap there you go all right he had a he had a take on I was listening to an interview he did uh where he got asked about reality Labs at meta and he was like basically there have been three pushes for VR in the past and they've all coincided with big uh big sci-fi novels which was neuromancers no crash in Ready Player one and he's basically like none of those really worked and I've I've noticed they're probably maybe there will be someday like a VR kind of world where we're all interacting with our avatars and and whatnot I've always personally thought the way metaverse has talked about in crypto has more to do with like base layer property rights

where you can build something in a digital realm and that ownership is verified outside of one monolithic institution but it's been like such a powerful meme that has just captured people's imaginations around I guess my question you guys like are we eventually like when Zuck talks about his is vision for the metaverse like do we head towards that or or not I mean because it is seductive and I kind of get it but I kind of agree with Mitch's take two Maybe like via I don't think VR and AR has as much to do with it like I think kind of it's like the metaverse is like technologically ambivalent I think it's like more native to the internet as a concept but I think what the metaverse is about

is like how do you log onto your computer and make money like you can't do that on Twitter you can't do that on Instagram you can't do that on any of these platforms what if I play a game what if I LP in some you know dexes what if I like you know stake my eth like can I make enough of like a financial life for myself like native to the internet and that to me at least feels like the metaverse like when you when you send ethereum transaction when you sign something when you interact with the contract like that feels like magic it feels like you're like touching something different and I think that's more at least native to my own understanding of the metaverse than like you know strapping on an Oculus like that I think we're already just like not as much for

me there is a way to do that now which is influencers and content creators and and that's native to the internet well for some but yeah precisely that sucks exactly my point which is that's the only viable option right now whereas if you uh you know in instead of trying to amass a million Instagram followers to be able to sell your your Instagram posts like there now are new ways of interacting on the internet and and doing jobs and getting paid like that's a fundamentally different thing and and I I do think frankly one of the things that I'm waiting for personally is like what will Apple do here and I know it sounds cliche but like they have invented these product categories multiple times over and you

would expect you know they're supposedly working on something that happened for the last four years it's supposed to come out in the next one to two years like we'll see what that ultimately ends up becoming an AR kit I think is you know that they've released over the last two or three years is a move in the direction to build the software base to be able to coincide with some piece of Hardware um but it's not going to be an Oculus it's not going to be I actually don't think it's going to be virtual reality I think this would be augmented or mixed reality um to Mitch's point but that like we haven't seen the hardware platform created yet that just blows this whole thing away right now what we have with the Oculus is the equivalent to the Palm palette I I agree with you on that he's just too

ambitious basically um I'm not smart enough Tech wise to be like is it actually ever going to work or is it not but I don't know um maybe just I also don't I don't think you can intentionally create a metaverse I don't think that's something that you can do like if you set out and say like I'm gonna go build this place for everyone to hang out online generally those like don't really work as Concepts but like you build like you know an association around an asset like eth or like you know being like a patron of the Arts like you know in nfts or like actually using your collateral with with D5 like that's how you create what I think is metaverse I don't think it games are just like an onboarding funnel I don't think VR has anything to do with

it it's not going to stop spending that money um now now man I I agree um but I guess we'll I guess we'll have to see it I will say uh if I could just offer one thing I mean that guy there are these stories about him right when like Yahoo tried to acquire Facebook when they were worth four billion dollars his entire board is begging him you know to you know go forward with the acquisition it's like nope and then there was the pivot to mobile right in whatever it was like 2007 or nine and it was like don't bring me anything unless it's mobile so but I guess the you can only do that so many times you live long enough as the hero to end up becoming the villain I mean the the other the other take here is like what did Cheryl now

you know what she she no yeah didn't matter yeah I mean how long was she there 14 years some some absurd a long time a long time yeah uh if I get this pretty easily I mean she was probably there like what 2007 2008 yeah yeah for 14 years 14 years in late 2007. yeah um good run Cheryl honestly way to get out at the top same with Jeff Bezos no one's really giving him this credit like well he was out instead of acting really you know he came back as CEO until jassy

took over um yeah it's true um all right I want to get you guys take on so there was uh there was an announcement not a great one from uh core mining uh but he's kind of signaled some let's say tightness uh or stress in the mining sector in general um but maybe we can talk about core a little bit because they're the largest I'm pretty sure public minor core scientific is one of the largest Bitcoin miners in the world uh warned that it may run out of cash by the end of the year and it could seek relief through bankruptcy protection so basically they cited operation performance and liquidity has been severely impacted by the prolonged drop in the price of Bitcoin and a rise in electricity costs and competition and litigation with

bankrupt Celsius Network and uh and yeah so they basically submitted this with the the Security and Exchange Commission uh shares of course scientific has plunged as much as 77 percent uh which is the largest decline since going public uh with the merger basically they've tried a whole bunch of different ways to raise Capital so they've done a couple of debt offerings but they also uh and they also have tried to raise Capital through Equity uh so they entered into 100 million dollar common stock purchase agreement with B Riley principal Capital Partners in July um but you know and then I guess the last thing that I'll say is they warned that they won't be able to make payments that are coming due in late early uh in late uh October and early November with respect to several equipment and other

financings so at the time of recording this it is October 27th so we are definitively in uh late October so basically they're defaulting on their debts um listen what do you guess so two two thoughts first of all open the the thing I just sent you the bitcoinetreas.net I don't know if you've ever seen this it's pretty cool oh yeah that's basically all the public mining companies and how much Bitcoin they have on their balance sheet so you know you obviously have if you uh throw it up there you have microstrategy is is the is the number one company of course I'm difficult only has 14 24 as of now this is another they had a thousand as of a month ago they now have

24 Bitcoin on their balance sheet as of today so I think like the order of operations if you're a mining company and I've never run one so this is like more of a guess but um you sell your Bitcoin because that's your your you know fundable asset if you get into trouble and then you have loans against your mining Rigs and I I think like if you think about the hierarchy of like risky stuff to do with crypto lending there's like unsecured there's like you know pull collateralization but there's also like I'm gonna you know have the ability to repo your rigs if you default on this um and so I think that's kind of like where things stand with them I know that a lot of other companies also have

similar issues like zackville who is a good uh follow-on footer for just like Bitcoin mining you know Insight he said repeatedly like how dire things are for basically everyone except for the absolute best managed and best run companies this is like this is also kind of similar to what happened in uh in 2018 with the monitor like you know we had the crash in like January or February that year um I think stabilized around you know 6K hung in there for like six months and then broke downward to 3K right when the miners kind of like gave up the ghost in a similar style scenario but less liquidity they had probably more Bitcoin um but this is like you know standard

operating procedure for a bear market like you kind of always have these minor white bets the way I think about it is it's kind of like you're starting to start up and you like choose the hard path by doing something like Hardware versus software and like time and time again you know Hardware startups get funded in in Bull markets not many of them survive multiple Market Cycles like proof of proof of work is is tough it's work like this I think emphasizes just the fact of you know proof of stake being at a core advantage to proof of work consensus where you know you get to make it across life cycles to make it across Market Cycles you really have to have a gross margin profile that enables you to have the flexibility and fungibility to to do things that are

dangerous and and you know scalable um whereas you know electricity in a time of high energy costs is going to be costly Michael how many new proof of work pitches we heard in the past year I don't think I've heard one in the past two to three years it's been a long time it's just like you know I wouldn't say Bitcoin mining is a thriving industry I say I think it kind of looked really similar to real estate to a lot of people where it's like this income generating property but you know real estate doesn't take into account that when the price drops and your costs stay the same you know you might be forced to liquidate so it's uh just uh just to clarify like why this is a particularly stressful

situation for minors so we're looking at here is bitcoin price and hash rate and typically those two things are pretty correlated so we're looking like at and like I I personally think I know a lot of people debate about this I feel like uh price leads and then hash rate follows right because hash rate is kind of a combined measure of the you know the mining power that's being dedicated towards carrying the network so when the price goes up people chase just like every other commodity driven industry but if you look at what's basically been happening since May there's been an inversion and as the prices Fallen the hash rate has gone up and that's particularly difficult because when typically what happens is when the price goes down the hash rate goes down and then there's a difficulty adjustment which makes it more profitable for

existing miners but one of the big changes in this particular cycle is that there was an enormous amount of credit that was being given to miners so many miners are staying online that otherwise if they didn't have access to these credit facilities they would have gone offline and the mining would have passed into stronger hands so the result is that you know it's never been less profitable to mine Bitcoin than it is today and at the same time the other component that they're indexed to is a business which is the price of electricity has been skyrocketing so that's basically what hap what's happened right now I think if you want to go one layer past mining it's like you've already started to see stress at the at the firms that were extending credit here uh to those like you know I don't want to name any

I mean I don't want to name any names but like there are a couple big lenders right that have pre-publicly been in trouble and laid off a whole bunch of their staff and now they're in a tricky situation because they loaned against the Asics and most these A6 are outdated so like that's just a painful thing that's gonna have to get worked through I don't really know what's going to happen one one of the lessons from 2022 no leverage no leverage no leverage no leverage don't do it so I think I think you can ask the question very validly of like was the whole you know not just interest rate complex but also like cheap energy complex something that like structurally encouraged proof of work businesses and now that those economics are way different the structure of that market will be way different as well like

you'll have more concentration like because you'll have you know economies of scale like I think that's also a meaningful headwind on the decentralization Bitcoin is just the price of energy you know the lower it is the more you know far and wider you can spread it I mean if anyone's interested my understanding of that there are multiple different business models in these minors it's not like they all do exactly the same thing uh there are some that are like completely 100 vertically integrated so they own the kind of the space right they own the actual rigs themselves and they make profit by Mining and then eventually selling the Bitcoins for a profit and then there are there's kind of like Cloud mining as a business model which is you own the facility and you basically facilitate the purchase and storage of mining units that are mining rigs that are owned by

different individuals and the reason why that's coming under Fire is a business model is because when it becomes unprofitable to mine those individual people turn their mining their miners off but guess what you still own the facility so you have these like huge uh fixed costs that you're locked into it's a duration mismatch right so you have long-term you know fixed liabilities and your assets suck so that usually what happens when when this imbalance plays out is that like those companies go out of business and that's what I meant by the mining rigs passing from weak to strong hands and that's like not happening because of these credit facilities this time so I think it is going to be ugly when it gets worked out it's definitely the the one model that I have seen that seems to be at least at this point directionally correct

potentially you know if you think about what you have at the end of the day assuming that your your profitability goes down but you're still profitable and that your assets are probably not redeemable or you're not able to actually recoup any of the value if you've got mining Ridge that go out of out of style or out of capability in like one to two years the one model that I have heard of that makes sense is you know you're buying up large swaths of property so like the physical space to be able to do this you know you're talking like warehouses in Texas and you're using you're you're putting your Capital into the assets them so the minories themselves and then you're borrowing and Levering up on the real estate so that you're paying back the real estate and then that is something that's a recoupable asset whereas the

money rate is good at zero have you guys ever watched the founder the McDonald's Ray Croc story that's an awesome scene so I mean yep also while we've been talking uh Amazon just announced earnings and is now down 21 in the past four minutes dude so so much for so much oh brutal I mean it's the type of Market this is is like you know you announce earnings kind of one by one and like the good ones are kind of left alone but the bad ones are just like absolutely shot these are like taking a 21 L for I think this is still a trillion dollar

company yeah I think so 1.13 no longer um you know if I could actually like oh wait no this is no longer yeah right um meta now trains uh trades at a like sub 10 price to earnings something like that it's like eight and change or something like that uh you want to guess what Amazon's is like a zero 99.8 and 99.8 really oh right because they started actually generating profit yeah okay they started actually generating profit right yeah uh wow I mean like

it's it's like pretty bimodal right the good ones are like huge PE ratios the bad ones are like basically zeros I kind of wondered what happens like the snaps of the world like the small like the robin hoods of the world this is Robin Hood stock since it's IPO actually I've got a slightly worse one Blue Apron oh that actually is the worst no go to go to four ah maybe it's a little better because it at least made um one of the tapes here that I think is actually pretty interesting is I actually you know we're talking about uh Amazon who obviously is a Commerce business sleeping underneath that is AWS

as well but also a massive advertising business and um we're talking about the obliteration of the Advertising based business model you know who's the winner in all of this it's Apple yeah 100 yeah they have created their own advertising product it also it hasn't scaled yet it hasn't showed up in the earnings yet but they've created their own ad product it's going to be live Discovery for apps you know they're going to own app install ads essentially um and they have the keys to the kingdom and you know part of the one of the things that we want to talk about today is you know they also came out and said IAP is forever and we're going to maintain our 30 and if you don't want to sell out if you want to sell nfts you're

going through us yeah what okay I'd be actually I want to get I want to get yeah let's just move on to Apple uh but just I want to get your thoughts when we end on the eth BTC ratio and just uh flows uh between those two things but let's talk about Apple announced that they were going to be uh enabling nfts uh basically nfts and apps that were on their app store right but it's subject to the same you know restrictions and rules that basically in-app purchases are like every other in-app purchases which is it's a 30 take rate and you know the caveat to that that they're very quick to point out right is that it's only 15 if the developer is making under you know under a million dollars or so per year I you

know even where there's a lot of discussion about royalties right on nft marketplaces and we should probably talk about that as well there were some changes made to Magic Eden over on Solana but I mean the royalties that that they're talking about are far far lower than 15 let alone I mean 30 so on the one hand oh and by the way I should say this isn't just Apple I'm pretty sure this applies to Android uh as well so Google Play Store not Android you can still side load apps uh via Android cool um so I think that's the I mean my question to you guys is you know in in some senses this looks like a web 2 giant I mean it's the largest company in the world acknowledging nfts on the other hand I guess my question to you is

do you see this how do you see this benefiting or not benefiting the ecosystem I mean my take and uh fans may have a different perspective mate is the system and I don't know why this is like lost amongst the audience right now um this is probably one of the most bullish things that happened to crypto like in the last five years because there's a hundred billion dollars of Revenue that's not just like activity or engagement people spend a hundred billion dollars a year just in games via IAP imagine if you were to say okay let's take this massive Market that we think of which is nfts right now all the different drops all the secondary Marketplace transactions and we'll get into the differentiation here because I

think there's a nuanced state but if you were to say okay we're gonna have a hundred billion dollars of available business that you are now instead of selling virtual consumable Goods in your game that go away the second that you stop playing that game now you actually ascribe that to something that is recoupable as an nft that's mintable on chain outside of the app and you can do things with it outside of the app like that that is a fundamentally massive step change in in this industry the the tough parts are IAP is probably one of the most janky products ever you have restrictive pricing on the different skus if you want to change pricing you have to literally do an update to your app which you know takes weeks to review it takes

days for everybody to download but you have to sell you know 99 Cents 199 9.99 et cetera et cetera you can't change that pricing the other thing that's going to be really interesting is you also can't change quantity so there's no scarce aspect to the mints that you'd be performing and I I don't know how we reconcile that that'll just be something that we have to figure out maybe the industry gets big enough or there's some middleware that can step in to do that uh fix that but you know frankly like this is one of the most bullish teams ever the 15 30 whatever the fact that apple is enabling this developers who want to integrate nfts are going to make far more than they would have without IAP so uh I just want to point out there are a couple

more um you know restrictions and uh Michael Events maybe you guys think this is a big deal or maybe it's not but apps cannot have external links or buttons that take customers away from the App Store to facilitate purchases so for instance like openc auctions right this would decidedly not be good for their business all related transactions have to be denominated in USD not digital assets which I actually feel like is not insignificant at least for the core crypto users now who probably denominate a lot of their nfts in in eth uh which is certainly less painful in a bear Market is a better way to do it um I mean I'd be curious if you think either of those two things uh if that changes your mind Michael those are things that are just gonna have to get litigated basically I mean so the point

about non-linking uh Apple already lost a tour case with epic games saying that it cannot link uh that that is actually not I don't know how apple is putting this in writing right now because it runs completely in the in the face of the Court ruling that happened so I I would kind of like negate that point because I don't think they'll actually be able to enforce that the point of not having the ability to so here here's how I think it's going to work you're going to have an application where let's say 90 of the people don't even know that they're interacting with nfts or just playing a game they're playing you know the app they're using the app whatever 10 of the people will actually care about the nft and primary sales only will happen in the App Store in the app itself if you want to pull that nft off

platform and bring into openc bringing in some other ecosystems sell it you know borrow against it whatever whatever you want to do with that nft that's going to happen in the mobile web or the desktop web it's not going to happen in-app so like the secondary Marketplace not going to be possible what could get really interesting so what Apple says is you can only make purchases with IAP if you're paying Fiat if you're paying dollars what they also say is that if you are a permitted exchange you can transact in in Virtual currencies in in cryptocurrencies what might be interesting here is if you have a custodial wallet experience let's say like coinbase if you were to then go and say I loaded it up with eth which I can

purchase in app right now and then I use eth to make all these purchases in the secondary Marketplace that that actually may get around IAP but all of this is like TBD you know there are zero apps that actually integrate nfts right now in the way that we're talking about using IAP so we're just gonna have to see what happens yep also I would say just taking the worst case scenario of them basically Banning us off the table like that's so positive because before there's formal guidelines and the guidelines work on a like they make them and then they iterate basis like if they come out super negative there's basically no room to maneuver but now that there's like a relatively positive framework it feels like an olive branch and the industry can

actually work at them well they weren't I mean Apple wasn't the only one uh you know that there was also like Reddit news um this past week so read it I mean this this also kind of got uh slept on as news but basically uh back in July Reddit announced that um an 86 000 nft Avatar collection is not nfts it's digital Collectibles uh you know uh and they they announced that they were gonna have their own nft trading Marketplace so basically you could you could mint these things on I think their back their back end was on polygon which is how it worked and last week Reddit revealed that they onboarded over three million wallets and they minted over 86 000 nfts since uh since July I mean now I think the what's been pointed out is a lot of

these people probably didn't don't fully understand what they're calling it a digital collectible it's not on like openc or anything like that so the experience feels much more less crypto native but I kind of like who cares I mean that but that might who cares about that I don't even understand why that's important actually so that's a lot that's a big you know three million it's non-trivial I don't know what you guys think about that this is going to be a feeling that happens a lot over the next two years crypto Twitter is not going to be the first Circle that's in the know of something that's happening with normies and it's going to kind of get semi-derided as like the Reddit nfts kind of work um but I think that is like such a good

sign that the thesis that we have which is like games and nfts and whatever else like it's it's not happening but it's starting to play out um and so yeah I mean anything that onboards people is super positive read it messing around on polygon is great I think the question is how do you convert the people that have come in you know the normies that now have nfts into people that are using defy and doing other stuff on chain and you know downloading metamask like so like onboarding and then kind of like bringing them into the inner sanctum of like crypto Twitter and crypto culture and everything writ large that's kind of like the secret sauce that we now need to figure out and I mean frankly it could be fake but it does feel like it's

the it's the narrative or it's the sentiment right now is it was a post uh of someone's DM that they got sent uh which was you know in the in the Twitter byline of this person who sent the DM was basically like I don't believe in nfts they're all a scam and then the message was hey I just downloaded the Reddit nft like how do I know how do I check to see how much it's worth like the the point is I I think ultimately it's gonna be the same thing that frankly got most of D5 in I think which is like speculation brood's excitement and and attention and and I think you're you're ultimately gonna see that be like the the initial like the the tip of the iceberg and then it's going to be like a snowball rolling

downhill where you're just like okay now I got D5 now I got metamask now what else can I do like that that's the journey that I think a lot of us went down um and I think it's just gonna happen the same way yeah it was funny just because like we're in media get asked a lot um and my perspectives kind of changed about this over the years like how do you onboard people and if you ask people what they'll say is it all sounds so technical it's just so you know foreign and I don't want to understand it but I I don't so I used to think that was the barrier and it was like oh if we could just talk and I just don't believe that's true and I think the best way for people to get like become enthusiastic and get involved is like someone gives

you some Bitcoin or Ethan it goes up and you're like suddenly this makes this feels a lot less scamming like it doesn't feel so scary it's really tough to use okay here's 100 bucks that was it tough oh now it's 500 bucks maybe there's something here actually yeah you know I didn't look at it before it's just funny how do we get them in games nfts loyalty points you know blocking attack on PD for the most part I would call that how do we get them to stay here I think it's it's kind of like the technology moments that I remember from my life are like getting on Facebook you know like using Instagram at least like the early years in college um

but basically after that after college the only transformative technology experience that I've had is like using ethereum like sending a transaction like having it hit instantly like being able to do different stuff like the feel of like the hardware wallet that like I really do think it's about abstraction but it's also about like you've got to put them on channel edition part of what I was saying I think speculation is literally the tip of the iceberg like that's just enough of like an activation energy to get people to do something but I think the second that you actually start to understand with decentralized technology in the face of meta in the face of snap you know writ large could provide I think that's where you actually get people to stay there's a talk that a guy named Josh Rosenthal gives that I find extremely

compelling as a very high level way of thinking about this he gave it a permission list he he's done it on Empire and bankless and a couple of other podcasts but you know the analogy that he uses is if you were like a feudal surf right and uh you know you're living on land that's owned by someone else you do work that is you know the fruits of your labor goes towards someone else uh and someone from this time tried to go back and say hey man you how do you deal with this like you're not free he'd be like what do you mean I'm not free like you you have such little understanding and now we also like everything that you produce in an online setting is not owned by you right just as an example if anyone wants to I tried to recently um like uh pull some

old like photos and whatnot off Facebook because I was just like should probably do that and just try to see how hard it is to do that just watch how hard it is to just limit the views of your own old like Facebook uploads you know from I'm from like Middle School you know it's just like this can't be on the internet man uh but yeah you just own so little and you see so little of the computer what photos you got I think he's descending to check no need to check brother don't worry um yeah nothing that's going to get me canceled but I definitely don't need everyone digging around you know my Facebook uh yeah yeah I know one platform that'll still play too oh God I got so I got so I got some pull-on one platform still

um [Laughter] and I love that speech that he gives um it's so true yeah I've got a just on the theme of speculation I have a um I'm trying to think about this because you know Aptos and sui are launching um and I have no I have no particular opinion I've actually heard from some pretty smart people and I respect a lot that there's something there from a tech perspective I can't diligence that I will make the observation that extremely high valuation l1s launch at the end of bull markets basically never work and I would pause it that the reason why that is is because the distribution mechanism in crypto is you

start at a low valuation you a bunch of retail people buy in they become very wealthy and then they scream about your uh product for like everyone to hear and like it's it's a very viral kind of distribution mechanism and that's why I think you've seen less I know you got I'm not I don't mean this against like VCS in general but like less super VC heavy chains as opposed to like more retail organic driven like funded chains from the beginning maybe outperform a little bit better I'd be curious what you guys think about that they also have this you know the first bear market after you're like parabolic blow off top as a base layer in terms of the asset like that's when you have all the VCS unlocking

so you know there's like there's no magic property which says like this one is better than the other a lot of it is just like flows and and those are set on the margin of like who is the biggest structural seller or buyer and like you're just going through you know like probably 40 Years of supply and lock and and most of it is concentrated at I would guess you know of all the chains and like all the supply schedules that I've seen at like the kind of like front end of the bear Market but you just have this like especially because it's at a higher dollar value because it's all you know Mark in trading higher but like you just kind of have this like Relentless pressure on a lot of these assets but you know I think what is the good news like for the tokens that have a lot of

cash flow that um also have a lot of token emissions or Supply unlocking from VCS like it's going to be at its weakest point I'm invested in a venture fund that has invested in both mistin labs and Aptos and um you know they they invested at you know an earlier evaluation um and they bought equity and the way that they mark their boats and this is sort of like one of the traditional like a like a traditional perspective silicon plus quote unquote Silicon Valley venture capitalist the way that they view this investment in the way that they're marketing on their books is that they own equity in the company which has gone up since there's there was a

subsequent uh raise it's gone up 1.8x from the original raise that they've had they also own millions of Aptos tokens which they literally do not even count in their portfolio evaluation the value of the equity has grown up 1.8 x and is legitimately five percent the size of the value of the tokens that they hold at current market cap valuation without those tokens but like that perspective I think pervades how you know traditional Venture capitalists think about these assets and so what do you think is going to happen the second that they have this asset that is liquid that they can actually recoup value on in their illiter Adventure portfolio they're going to sell it and and I think this is

where like the traditional Silicon Valley VC perspective is almost like a red stain on any cap table in my mind I tend to agree with that so they almost treat it like an option it's basically a free option call option the the entire Aptos token has returned the value of it right now has returned the entire fund yet they don't even account it in their in their tvpi that's pretty wonky that's that's pretty wild I I agree with you I um yeah I don't want to you know they're obviously Good and Bad actors in every set of people

um you know I'm sure there are you know I definitely can think of some good more traditional VCS off the top of my head but definitely there are a lot of ones that aren't as I don't know um aligned and I don't know as a Founder you know if I was faced with the prospect of taking capital it would be I've always I've always been like why who cares about a blue chip at the end of the day that's such a vanity metric I just don't I think the much more important thing is like do you have people that you agree with are you aligned with them like you trust these people I don't know there's a bit more Nuance to this which is like there is a structural difference where like technically Venture Capital funds cannot hold tokens uh and so you you there is

like a a reason why this has been the case and and so you know you saw Andreessen be the first one to do this register as an investment advisor with the SEC you know framework is an Raa with the SEC all the funds in crypto are because you know it does take a structural difference so there is an element of that to it as well to your point uh Mike Venture is a relationship business like we've talked about this a little bit but like I don't think it scales to you know you know billions of dollars you know every like year or two but especially when you're in a small sub sector like crypto and it's all about just you know being aligned with the people that are investing in you like having them be someone who's not just capital and that very has a little

there's a very little to do with like the reputation of the firm it's it's just like who are you working with who is the partner like do you get Michael and Vance or do you get like you know somebody else and I think that's the real Difference Maker I um I remember having a conversation with Jason do you guys remember a little while ago when Sue before he was crypto's number one villain he was going back and forth with Kane online um and he kind of dunked on Kane and I actually remember I can't even really remember what it was anymore but I remember having like a Little Bit of Sympathy for his argument but I remember talking to Jason be like I would never take money from that guy now like never in a million years because you just don't

that's just you're you so it told me he viewed himself more as a traitor than as a VC um because I don't know maybe other Founders were listening to this have had different experiences most of like the hard times about block Works have been like emotional times but like this person wants to leave but they like want more money and like I don't know what to do and just you just want someone that you can call man sometimes you just need to vent anything else it's just that yeah I bet you guys feel like kind of therapist some of the time like it is you just gotta listen and provide a healthy workers but that's valuable I mean we've also you know I I like to say like you know Vance and I did a startup prior to this and like you know

one of the lines that we didn't come up with but kind of resonates is like our friendship was formed in The Crucible of A Dysfunctional startup and you know like that that is kind of true in a lot of ways and and you without having that experience and I'm sure you and you know feel the same way like without having that like you you can't really advise like you can't be like oh I remember when or like I've seen this before and you know it's just not authentic and I think to to the point about Sue like every single Market cycle we've been through and you know this is the third one so far every single time there's a grifter class of people masquerading as Venture firms that should not be doing so you know and way back in the Ico days it was you know 2017 2018 it was the the

liquid funds who were literally getting tokens and selling on Market the second that they were liquid you know this time maybe it's Kyle and Sue who are originally FX traders that started Venture funds on the side for fun um you know who who will it be again you know the next time we don't know but like once again you you have to find partners that you can trust and work with and and that that I think you know is a resounding truth across Market Cycles 100 that all the best firms at least on the investing side have two people you know like uh obviously Michael and myself but like Fred and Matt Chris and Joel Colin Tushar um I'm trying to think of the other uh examples

uh Chris Chris and Joel the placeholder yeah like it's it's it's valuable to have a partner 100 I actually sometimes look at um the like soul single Founders and I'm always like how do you do it man like how do you do it because there have been so many days where it's like I feel like everything is going wrong and nothing is right and Jason will just call each other be like dude it was a week and he'll be like it was a week yeah the single founder energy is different 100 like you know it's just like one guy you know does he have it it's a pretty

it's a pretty I would say that we have the back single Founders but the first like post-investment conversation is like okay who are you hiring is your number two who's going to be that person why aren't you talking with recruiters right now when is this person coming when can I interview them like that's that's step one yeah 100 and I think uh you have to be very cognizant of like what your strengths and weaknesses are um like we actually there's there's a woman our CEO of Julie miroff who's like I would say she's she was a super critical hire is one of the best ones you've ever made she's just like Jason and I you can probably tell like I think you know we're not exactly like this you know Julie's like a hard charging Bulldog operator who's like you just want to

have on your team so I gotta I Gotta Give Jules a shout out here um she's a legend yeah she's a Legend um all right guys I I want to get your your take I know we're running low on time we're talking about villains so so uh there's a story from last week uh but we didn't get to cover it because we didn't do the show so SBF basically posted his overview of what he would like to see from a regulatory standpoint and there were there were a whole bunch of there were a whole bunch of different um you know angles that he sort of covered uh a lot of it was basically how that the most important part that I want to get your guys take on is how D5 would sort of be regulated so I think there was a there was a clause that he got a

lot of pushback on which was you know he kind of maintained the idea that the the D5 protocols right the back end uh would be uncensored right and basically largely unregulated but that the front ends would be regulated as broker dealers right so the distinction there being between like uniswap the the back end um and then versus like the the front end so I think the the pushback that he got was it creates an enormous amount of regulatory burden right on anyone that would just want to connect to one of these things and it's also this is just this is software right there are very different uh I think in a lot of in a lot of Senses doesn't make sense to regulate these things it's broker dealers and the criticism was is kind of self-dealing right it's I mean basically

it makes it it lessens his competition as defy and and probably makes it so that we're all trading on centralized exchanges you know in three to five years time how did you guys I I'll present the steel man for like the other side of that but like how do you guys interpret uh spf's outline so I I think like one of the main things about the build it's a little bit lost in in the noise is that you know if you look at something like defy yes it's about the front ends it's about the back ends but it's also about preserving The Economic Opportunity for consumers and making sure that they are able to transaction use digital goods and services in a way that's very efficient so buried in the dccpa was this language that we originally found I don't think

really but anybody else was paying attention to this that says if you want to go yield Farm or liquidity provide you're dealing in a digital commodity we've expanded the definition of a commodity pool operator to include digital Commodities and so therefore you might need to go register with the cftc even if you're some hobbyist at home that wants to stake or swap or liquidity provide or do any of the things that really kind of represent the actual functionality of crypto and you know protecting the developers and then keeping the Economic Opportunity open for the consumers is basically the platform that we have and with legislation you're not going to get like a thousand shots we're like we're not going to get like you know a year or two to basically come up with our best ideas you know have a pow-wow make everybody feel good and then

um you know put them all in there this is kind of how the process runs where you know it might get put into an Omnibus Bill it's kind of like the the Congress and Senate might change over at the end of the year you know there's going to be kind of this Rush towards these deadlines and that's kind of the scenario that we're going to find ourselves in regardless of of which legislation eventually passes like are we definitely pro-regulation absolutely we want like regulation that makes sense like dccpa needs changes it's possible it gets there it's also possible it just like doesn't pass um and so you know I'm looking for what the language is in the bill I'm not really paying attention too much about like the Kabuki theater of like oh we didn't know this language might do that like at this level they're basically

just are no mistakes and so I don't really believe that um and yeah so if it comes back and it's positive we're gonna be in favor but if it comes back and it's negative we're just not um and I think there is a lot of room room in a Grassroots movement that you know right like legislation like this should make sense eventually um but yeah totally how we feel about it like the way I liken this is kind of like we were talking about with apple you know it's not gonna be perfect and Apple's gonna want their cut um and they uh what they put out maybe isn't what Apple put out in the guidelines this week isn't perfect it doesn't align directionally with you know what a lot of people wanted but it at least gives us a Playbook that we'd start operating under now and we could

Define products and categories that we'll be able to abide by that the other thing I'll say is um with any of this regulation and you know yes everybody loves to hate on the SEC maybe cftc is you know now under the guise of you know being hated on by crypto Twitter the intention of this and the attention of all of these rules is to create fair and actual even markets um and you know we've seen you know fraud we've seen things get out of out of hand um you know the the whole three arrows Capital situation is something that like literally the SEC and and other regulatory bodies are there to protect against and defining fair and even rules I think is actually one of the most

bullish things that could happen for this industry but to advance this point if it's not going to be that and it's Draconian in nature and it's basically just like screw D5 it's not gonna be something that's workable and and like how do you get a protocol to to write to register like how do you get a protocol to become a broker dealer or like have a have a you know kyc into the protocol like it just can't happen so like there needs to be a meeting of uh in the middle somewhere I think I would agree with that I think um you know at the end of the day I don't think the U.S wants to because the the opponents of defy and crypto writ large have always kind of said something

to the effect of well you know this isn't truly anonymous because the government can send people to your house and throw you in jail and it's like that's true but I also don't really believe that the government wants to do that they don't want to be taking Draconian action against something that is popular so I I think that is the and I credit to Melton dimiros who's been talking about this is for as long as I've been in crypto crypto has to win hearts and minds I think uh and that's still a challenge that I think we're working on but I think those uh we're working on ourselves this year I agree with you yeah we we next year needs to be better the only reason why we tweet about this stuff and why we actually like you know get louder about our perspectives on

gccpas because like the wrong regulation to Michael's Point can be catastrophic and it's going to kind of be run in this like hurry up offense style where you need to like mobilize and talk about the issues and hash out you know how everyone feels in almost real time and we're very lucky that Twitter allows us to do that um but you know the message needs to be very clear that like basically everything is D5 you know every use case is financialized to some extent or another and so if you want to ban that you're kind of banning everything and and people might say like oh like what's the like why why not have it be you know the token be a security or commodity it's like you want to go hold your tokens in your Charles Schwab account like and use them

in fidelities like wallet like that doesn't sound like the future that we want to to that point I completely agree the other thing I'll say too is like there are a lot of entrepreneurs that we work with who who still have the perspective of like I want to get the US market but getting the market in the US which is arguably one of the biggest that you could go after is going to require some capitulation on regulatory fronts mostly it comes down to kyc and probably you know standard Open Standards of you know how you're managing assets uh but you know if if you can find if we can find a way for a decentralized protocol or even a UI to do kyc that's decentralized in nature I'm all ears because that would be a huge Boon for the industry

yeah I'm with you on that um I like I'm obviously on the side of crypto I do I suppose if I was sitting at one of these agencies right uh what what we're trying to say right is exactly what you were saying Vance like The Economic Opportunity and freedom is like enormous Boon to Consumers and I get some people are super cynical about Regulators in the government I'm not as cynical as other people I genuinely think they're good people trying to do their job but I can see how they would hear like hey we just want to be able to track you know a transact with anyone in total privacy with no accountability and I'm unwilling to hear anything and it's kind of like we you okay a middle ground needs to be found we have to come to the table with at least something right like

okay if you don't like this proposal like tell me how it should be fixed and and you know if I was working at the blockchain association or coin Center I'd be saying yeah we do do that so this might you know bi-weekly appreciation post for those guys because they're literally advocating for our entire industry so yep props to those guys and gals you're great um we're down here we love them um guys any memes of the week I guess to to close us off I mean there's one that's like the obvious one Elon which one Elon dude he went he goes into Twitter with a sink someone had the best response yeah which was uh you know

just imagine the assistant that had to go off and buy a sink for Elon laughs he's laughed in that video is like oh man he's he's interested in trouble yeah he and he's like and he looks like direct [ __ ] like I thought he was gonna drop that sink off the roof or something I I didn't fully get why he throw them out with the kitchen yeah yeah because he's gonna fire 75 so this is a man who's about to chop 75 of the head count and just giggling like this I fully expected him to just show up with the paintball gun all right gold Style I think we just watched the real world

version of that by the way like I think we just watched I'm so happy he's he's good yeah yes he is I yeah do you think he solves the bot problem I think that's his first week yeah really had two very different responses there I mean that's like okay think about the narrative win that that would be and like he's getting so much negative oppressed around this yeah even his investors are trying to back out because he's at the 44 billion dollar Mark like if he can solve that problem that's like the that's the highest leverage thing with probably like not the most difficult uh um implementation of but think about it like the reason why they haven't been able to do this it's not because of a

technical issue it's because they've been publicly traded and so the second that your active user base goes down 40 or 50 whatever the percentage is the second that happens quarter over quarter you know you're screwed it's probably you know 20 looks like Child's Play at that point you know but now that it's private who gives a [ __ ] you think yeah you guys ever watch succession yes do you know when uh Kendall like inherits the company in the first season they like take him up to the roof and they're like so there's a debt problem you know it's based on the whole company is like levered to the tits do you think that when you know the new Twitter CEO got in they were like so buddy like about those user numbers or do you think

it's like everyone knows that because I was kind of just assuming it's at least 50 thoughts or something but do you think everyone assumes that or will we all be shocked there's definitely some skeleton there there's like user mismanagement skeletons and all of these big tech companies closets like I don't think it's just a Twitter problem I think it's probably like a OG actually for sure Instagram as well problem um but I think I would not I would not be surprised to see Elon announce something about like his official number of bots that he's found in his plan to eradicate them like I think that has to be one of the first things that he at least tries to do taking control of the company I'm actually pretty bullish on him able being able to turn this around

um if like if his whole Vision comes true Tesla SpaceX starlink x.com the app like this is going to be pretty powerful so I definitely would not fade him he's also the world's richest man and just doesn't give basically a [ __ ] about what anybody thinks it's like that's that's a very million dollar eliminate because he said he wanted to on Twitter and couldn't back out oops yeah and he settled I I would assume he settled so that nobody else gets to read whatever else was in his phone or stuff like that like it it felt like he just made a mistake he's like I don't know yeah so you know

the funny part about so that's like when you go out to a dinner and it's like three times as much as you thought you're like oh that sucks that's basically what he did but with 44 billion and he could absorb it he's like oh that hurts but it's not the end of the world it's just 44. I'll put 250. um yeah because uh he's a bold guy I agree with you I mean he's a good operator obviously so I mean it'll be interesting to see what he uh I think this will be so I'm sure you guys know this but maybe not everybody does you know he bought Tesla he didn't start it yeah um and so he has done this before obviously hasn't done this at the scale but this is not like a new thing for him and and yeah I think he'll be able to do

well I I do think this will be a new type of challenge because you know massively publicly traded company with a bunch of skeletons as we're describing but he's going to get a couple of early narrative wins and basically just have you know the the buy-in at that point to kind of do what he wants I think the biggest you know people love to indict Elon Musk but the biggest you know check in the Pro category for him is when he made all that money from x.com or whatever it was what did he choose to do he could he could easily roll that into another internet start up right everyone would have backed him he could have easily made a bunch of money doing very what'd he do he started an electric car company and a space so here here is so he made something

like 130 million dollars was caught if her number is probably around there but right uh put 100 million dollars in to create SpaceX which started off by buying a 20 million dollar ICBM rocket from Russia and then which ultimately didn't work or do anything and then he put something like 28 or 29 million into to buy Tesla he started off by investing and then he ultimately bought the founders out and then put one million dollars into something else and then literally had to borrow money for rent like you know from 130 million dollars like sleeping on couches like that that's the type of person in his mindset that he you know operates under it's pretty extraordinary it's pretty

extraordinary um all right fellas I think that's all the time we have so I'll wrap it but uh see you same time next week [Music]