Bitcoin Strategic Reserve and three mega trends for DeFi's future

Transcript

GM good morning welcome to the milk Road show The Daily crypto show that rsvpd yes to the White House crypto Summit but somehow still didn't make the list I'm your host Jay Hamilton it's Friday March 7th last night TR Trump signed an executive order for a Bitcoin strategic reserve and a digital asset stockpile what's the difference why didn't the markets pop what is going on we got the big news and nothing happened we actually kind of dumped a bit we're g to talk about that also what if your bank account was on chain giving you better yields than a savings account and you didn't even know you were using crypto well that is just around the corner also what has the entire global economy moved

onchain I'm talking stocks bonds real estate you know all all assets all currencies we're talking hundreds of trillions of dollars in global assets what if they were all tokenized and programmable kind of sounds wild but it's already starting and the question is how fast will it happen we're going to break down rwas we're going to talk about what's going on in Defi and so much more today we're joined by Mason nrom Junior partner from Peta Capital leading crypto investment firm he's also previously worked at misari consensus and varant fun this guy's been around the block before we jump in if you guys want to hang out with me on a daily basis join our telegram group hit the

link in the show notes today's episode is brought to you by definitive Advanced trading on every every chain it's also brought to you by coin shift powering top crypto treasuries with their yield bearing stable coin CS usdl you hear more about both of them later in the show without further Ado Mason welcome to the milk Road Show YJ how we doing doing great man I mean big news last night I maybe it wasn't big news because we all we all knew it was coming it was like Trump has been teasing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve so much but he actually announced it and he announced it before the crypto White House Summit which was kind of interesting to do it the day before we all thought he would do it today but let's jump into what he

announced and what this means and why why markets aren't pumping I think is probably everybody's main question uh I I'll I'll go to you first on your takes on on what he announced yesterday yeah let's jump into it so uh yeah David Sachs uh you know announced last night that the executive order was signed basically did two things one it created a Bitcoin strategic Reserve uh that will hold the existing Bitcoins that the government has in custody and also uh potentially gives uh way for the government to increase their Bitcoin allocation and then the second thing that they announced was a digital asset stocks stockpile which will basically uh you know hold the other digital assets

that they the government you know has uh they didn't give much more information in terms of what would happen with those assets but it looks like for the time being that they'll at least be holding on to them yeah and so basically the the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is going to hold the exist just essentially all Trump could really do through an executive order was say don't sell the existing assets that we have he can't through an executive order say oh go buy more Bitcoin he needs more Congressional approval in order to achieve that but he does say this is the interesting thing he does say in the executive order where is the line let me find it here that the

the secretaries of Treasury and commerce are authorized to develop budget neutral strategies for acquiring additional Bitcoin provided these strategies have no incremental cost on taxpayers and this is great the first retweet is Michael sailor saying I have a few budget neutral strategies for acquiring additional Bitcoin I love it yeah I mean I think there's a few ways you could like take the you know strategic Reserve like maybe we could just like steal man the bull case and like the bare case really quick I think if like you look at the Strategic Reserve like what is bitcoin it's a store of value Asset and uh you know the ultimate honor for any store of value Asset is to be held by the US government and so I think what you know if you look at like the bull case this

kind of just gives the green light for Every Other Nation to potentially look at a similar strategic reserve for Bitcoin potentially you know buy Bitcoin into that strategic Reserve uh and I always like back to that saying of like you know first like they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you then you win this is kind of like Bitcoin winning right here because you know it's a store of value Asset and now it has like the highest honor of being held by the US government and then if we take like the steel man on the bease you know this is kind of priced in poly Market I think had the odds of like you know at least like 65% of this happening you know becomes more of like a marketing stunt than it and it actually does like the government doesn't end up

buying any new coins and just like hold that they have which you know might not move needle in terms of like marginal you know buying power for Bitcoin at least from from the US context what I do like about the delineation between the reserve as well as the stock pile is it removes some of the pitalization from what assets should be included uh and potentially gives us you know a longer time frame to to think about it from a fundamentals Approach at least from the the stock pile yeah I think that uh for I want to ask you next about why markets aren't moving but before I do I think that what we are seeing right now is as you said it's solidifying the place of Bitcoin as a reserve asset and it is also saying that there's other

assets that the US values and so therefore they want to hold a stockpile but it is not them saying hey we're going to go out and buy a whole bunch of this tomorrow that is not what is happening here so what why why markets not reacting what's going on in the markets what are your thoughts there yeah I mean I I think that but we're clearly at a time in the markets where there's still a lot of uncertainty and so you know when even when you see like some type of news that you would imagine to be like very bullish or or move the market ends up not in part because I think the Strategic Reserve like as I mentioned was seemed relatively priced in at least you know uh based on like poly Market odds and so I think because you have this like

consensus of the broader uncertainty in the market that leads you know to uh less you know less movement on you know whether it's like positive news uh and I think we've seen even like a a variety of other announcements this week that I would consider like relatively positive that have kept the markets you know more massively positive right like it's like like what is good news good news again we've got just endless Texas is not quite there but they're they've got a proposal to acquire actually buy Bitcoin 500 million a year now they not quite there yet it's not passed in the legislation yet but they're getting closer and Utah is getting closer we had

uh Congress vote to repeal the uh the defi killer which was going to basically require anybody in the US to kyc in order to use a defi app now that hadn't come into effect yet but they repealed it before it did like all this stuff it's like one thing after another we put an article in the newsletter and I the list of bullish news was so long and markets are just continuing to struggle like is it just it's just all macro like macro is just is that your your thought is like macro is just in such a tough position right now and and a lot of that pressure is the political uncertainty from Trump tariffs uh doge is also creating a lot of uncertainty you know and the US economy is slowing down right

now now it doesn't mean it's going to do that forever but right now it certainly it's going in that direction yeah I mean I think that largely is is correct like we're at the point in crypto where the asset classes uh matured to a larger extent and even though it's still nent it's it's matured to the place where it's a little more correlated to macro and so I think it is at least in you know the near to midterm uh going to track uh the more macro environment uh and we see that in the The Venture Capital markets as well and not just the the liquid token markets if you're only trading on centralized exchanges then you're not going to make it the best Traders know the alpha is on chain

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that what what are you seeing in the vental capital markets in terms of flows right now yeah so I would say there's a few things happening kind of in the the state of of Crypt VC uh the first is that uh you know valuations have kind of risen over the past summer months and so you know what that ends up resulting in is a lot of venture capitalists kind of sit on their hands rather than uh deploy Capital uh just because you know the the valuations are less attractive I think as a result we've seen the the preed and Seed markets uh slow to a greater extent over the past several months uh we have seen a little more of a bid at the series a and series B compared to what we were seeing six months ago and I think uh in part of this is just like as

a a reversion to you know fundamentals and so you know if you think about the you know state of the market uh we've kind of gotten to the point in the cycle where narrative matters less and people once again are valuing fundamentals and so that causes people to you know really correct to an extent and look for companies that are generating Revenue uh generating fees uh and quite sustainable business models and I'd say the last kind of quick thing happening in the The Venture Capital landscape is you know a lot of funds uh started deploying around 2022 and so a typical VC deployment cycle is anywhere from three to four

years you have a lot of funds now coming to the tail end of of that deployment cycle and so that means either they're writing fewer checks or they're going back out to Market to fund and so that also slows some of the investment process do you do you think that there will be a pickup coming is like how do you if you were to project out the rest of this year in terms of the the VC and the investment Flows at that level where do you think it goes yeah I would say that broadly The Venture markets are lagging the public markets and so when the public market corrects valuations in the private Market stay a little bit higher uh and don't don't correct as instantly and so I think that the uh slower Place pace of deployment uh and

this is more more anecdotal uh I'd have to actually look at the data to see if this is actually happening but we'll probably continue over you know at least the the near- term as the market stays like relatively uncertain and then you know I imagine once uh more certainty in the market uh is there and people are more excited then we'll start to see an increase in deployment as valuations come down uh that increases Capital deployment and then also as more funds rais our new funds and announce new funds that will also catalyze more investment uh from the private side okay let's shift gear slightly to you mentioned there's a a move from pumpamentals to fundamentals uh which I think is a much welcome U Move in the space a little bit less degeneracy and a

little bit more uh stable decision making happening and we've talked a lot about how We Believe defi to be one of the best sectors to invest in this cycle and it seems like that moment might be coming and you wrote a great article recently where you broke down three trends that you're seeing around the creation of consumer grade crypto apps that are going that are some are already here but more are coming the the next phase of rwas and I just hate the term rwas but like just bucket every it's like the only term to bucket every Global asset in the world and put it

into a term and that's rwas and the what you're seeing in rwa is an opportunity for New Capital to come into crypto which we desperately need so we're going to talk about that and then finally also um the the new stack that's happening around the evolution of of di5 protocols becoming platforms and we want to break that down as well so let's jump into these three Trends first on the consumer defi side what are you seeing there yeah so the first Trend in def5 that I'm seeing is the rise of more consumer grade uh defi applications and uh if you think back over like what's changed over the past 18 months to kind of enable this like consumer defi moment it's

really a few things one is we have a cheap abundant block space uh you have blockchains like salana that are high through put and matur to offer you know a lot of reliable cheap transactions you have l2s that are offering cheaper block space and you have you know more blockchains that are verticalized wallets they don't have to build out you know wallets themselves uh and then I would say the the final kind of thing that we're seeing is just like in Improvement on the ux form factor and so it's been pretty wild that we haven't seen a ton of mobile iOS native crypto

applications this cycle we saw moonshot kind of uh come to the the front as like one of the leading new kind of consumer def applications as we as crypto moves to like have this mobile moment uh it will you know further enable these types of like defi consumer applications and then I think we're also just at a a more mature part of the consumer defi stack where there's more assets on chain uh there's more ways to get yield in a sustainable way and all of these def5 Primitives start to stack up to you know enable people to build applications that more consumers want okay really like your take on consumer defi because I think that um people don't quite yet see what is coming on these like

consumer apps that are going to allow you to use defi because like defi is still this like super small niche market right like how many people are actively using defi I don't know if you have a guess but like maybe like maybe maybe Millions on a on a regular basis maybe like it's not it's not I don't think it's in the tens or the hundreds of millions like not even close no for sure not I think you know the only thing in the tens of hundreds of millions is probably people you know from like an exchange perspective but from a you know borrowing or uh leverage you know leveraging like yield protocols like that is definitely a smaller number today and in part just because it's like really hard to to do that like most

consumers don't want to figure out how to like manage those types of positions or you know there's a lot of you know concerns when it comes to you know even like how to do that from a a ux standpoint so when you talk about uh the the growth of crypto apps that are meant for mobile they're meant for consumers they're not these like clunky difficult to use apps that we have right now uh where you know where you have to you basically have to be like a crypto scientist or a crypto Tech wizard in order to use them are these apps here you mentioned moonshot are these apps here now or do you think that there's more apps coming that we

just don't even know about yet I think there's definitely a lot of uh apps and Innovation that we're seeing in the private markets that are going to be coming to Market over the next six to 12 months I think there are some apps that are offering uh you know similar service a day or at least like combining different distribution mechanisms so like you know we see people trying to offer uh you know ease of use in a telegram you know native way how do you combine like where where these users already are I think the the first use case that we've kind of seen the most adoption here isn't just in payments uh in particular in Emerging Markets that's by far been like the types of consumer apps that are doing the best and these are like a dollar app or a bell or you

know there's a variety of others uh that are moving real volume um that's kind of I think the first use case that we started with and then you know then you can start to layer on these additional defi Primitives on top of that and when we look at this so our our audience is is retail investors and the big question I think everybody everybody's excited about defi everybody believes in the fundamentals you look at the fundamentals you're like holy like these Protocols are making real Revenue like legitimate Revenue right unlike pumped off fund which was making real revenue and then all of a sudden making no Revenue right we're not seeing these are these are more consistent building so but the question on everyone's mind right now and I don't

know if you have the answer but I would love to pick your brain or have a conversation about it quickly is where is the opportunity is is it on picking a chain so uh is it like okay I'm gonna stick with eth and I'm gonna go with like Lio and maker and a and Athena and Unis Swap and I'm going to make like that my ecosystem or I'm going to go with salana I'm going to go with Jupiter and and Camino and radium or or I'm going to go with bass I'm go with Aerodrome like is the how does how does an investor differentiate between all of these different defi apps is it just the chain that's the difference or is there other differences that you think about I think

there's a variety of differences I mean I go so far as to say is like if you're a consumer and you're trying to use defi like you don't really care about the chain itself you care about the product that you're getting and so you know know the reason that a lot of trading moved over to Sal over the past you know 24 months is because it was a better chain experience for that I think that as we have more things to do on chain uh users will flock to whatever chain is going to offer that in particular I think it'll be up to the application to provide an opinion AED experience and so you know you as a user should just go will just be able to go to the app you'll be like hey I want to borrow against my Bitcoin uh you don't really care what chain

that's on how that gets done maybe it's going to go through coinbase and morfo maybe it's going to go through uh you know some Bitcoin L2 uh you know defi lending app but the idea is I think that it's going to be up to the developer uh and the application to be opinionated about what that user experience should be right so it's it's really about paying attention to which apps are providing this this user experience doesn't really matter what the chain is it's it's the user experience kind of like how Phantom came along and just created a better ux for wallets right and we all wanted that and Phantom has really done incredibly well over the past year and so when you think about investing in these various def5

protocols you're not necessarily thinking like hey I'm an eth maxi or I'm a salana maxi because you think the chain gets abstracted you're thinking okay which one of these protocols is just going to provide the best ux and the best experience yeah absolutely I think that is all that matters uh and that's why you see you know moonshot did incredibly well uh you know this year and it Aggregates both salana and ethereum uh and I think that will become more more default for you know applications because like if you're an application and you're providing yield to your users like you want to provide the safest best yield that yield might be on salana but maybe you know the greatest liquidity for borrowing against your Bitcoin is on base and so you're going to have to uh Cobble together use cases and D5

protocols from different chains okay okay let's look at rwa because um we've had we had Dan tapiero on the show recently and he just launched his new fund 50t predicting that crypto total market cap is going to go to 50 trillion in the next 10 years rul Paul has said that crypto is going to go to 100 trillion so we got some big big estimates here and I trust these guys like these are two very well respected they're not just throwing out numbers for the sake of it I mean Rell might be a bit of a sensationalist but he's got a lot of experience and he knows what he's doing so the question is like how the heck are we going to go from three trillion to 50 trillion or

even a 100 trillion we're going to lead a lot of new capital we can't just do that like we're not going to get there by speculating on bitcoin Bitcoin I mean maybe maybe like a long time from now but Bitcoin is not all of a sudden going to A50 trillion doll market cap I would love it but it's not the case so we need new capital comeing into the space how is that going to happen yeah let's talk about where we are today and where we've been historically so if you think of crypto today it's mostly been this circular Capital uh that has grown as we've you know built New Primitives and so you know Bitcoin was the first and then we had ethereum and then enabled to set up defi applications you know then we got dexes we got lending protocols that has all enabled the you know

onchain economy but the next leg of growth is probably going to come from Real World assets coming onchain even if you look at ethereum today it's probably like 15 to 25% of ethereum's tvl is real world assets and so 25% of yeah I mean if you do yeah if you do like rough numbers from uhcl stable coins in that that's excluding stable coins stable coins be stable coins would be uh then then even much if you included stable coins much more of ethereum tvl would be real world assets I'm glad you're I'm glad you're excluding T stable coins so we're we're seeing and and to most like that number blows my mind like to most of us we don't pay attention to our waas right

right so and I'll bet you that's growing Lightning Fast yeah and if you go to uh rwa doxyz you can kind of see some of the data it's mostly us bills uh from you know players like Black Rock and Ando it's credit from uh people like players like figure and it's to your point like a a less sexy investment vehicle uh especially to your typical like crypto investor and so it gets much less attention but I think we're at the point where now that you've issued kind of us bills is kind of this like fundamental asset on chain that really just opens the Overton window to bring more assets on chain and so over you know the next decade I very much agree

that the you know amount of of assets on chain is is going to grow significantly and the question is like what comes next and uh I think that there's probably a few things uh one is uh tokenize US Stocks I think this is probably the most near- term there's like Ando dinari backed that are all enabling for US Stocks to come on chain I think we're going to see uh you know greater access to people outside of the US and if you think about it from like a crypto investor pers perspective like do you really want to bridge your assets like back to your bank account and then to Robin Hood like no you'd rather just have one application where you can have like your entire portfolio of uh stocks and then the last part of like why stocks on chain is is interesting is

because you can just increase the liquidity profile I think NASDAQ announced today that they're going to go uh 245 so they're going to do it 24 hours 5 days a week which is still just like uh significantly MDA announced that today I'm pretty sure I saw that in the news uh but it's like even if you think about what and that's awesome that they're going to do that like that's like a massive like step function increase but it's still nothing compared to crypto which is 247 365 and so if you can build that liquidity on chain then that uh just opens you know the the doors for you know bringing that those entire financial markets on chain the other two I think potential interesting uh assets that are maybe more near-term are probably Commodities and credit you know we see a lot of new types of like

credit applications being built on existing players like you know Moro and then additionally like Commodities is just like another relatively like homogeneous asset similar to us treasuries where like uh it's not as like complicated as as some other assets to to potentially bring on chain yeah the the interesting thing is so uh stocks on chain everybody listening can wrap their their head around I think um but I'm guessing that most of our listeners do not invest in Commodities or credit definitely not credit maybe Commodities right um but why is Commodities and credit coming on chain such a big deal because professional and institutional investors invest a lot in that stuff a lot a lot

and there is obviously a lot of instit I mean as you said it yourself Black Rock right Black Rock gets it right and if Black Rock gets it then you know and even Fidelity gets it frankco Templeton gets it like and and even the fact that they get it they're still what they're doing they're just still dipping their toes can you can you predict or do you have any predictions of like how quickly this will happen the scale of the growth that could happen here with rwa flowing on chain I mean I think the answer is probably going to take longer than we would all wish no come on Mason I don't want that answer but I I think you know it's something that happens you know slowly and then all at once because a lot of these institutional players you know

they in part are looking for more regulatory Clarity and so I think like as we get more regulatory Clarity in the market that uh expedites the process in which they can bring these assets on chain and then it's also just a need for the maturation continued maturation of defi which is happening but you know that is like a prerequisite to you know bringing some more assets on chain and then the the last thing is just like the liquidity profile the US bills are a little easier to bring on change because it's like a very homogeneous asset it's something that people understand there's also this massive like pent up demand for yield bearing stable coins you know which further Spurs that type of adoption I think figuring out you know what is the correct vehicle uh and use case offering uh is going to be

important but I'm I'm positive it's going to happen it's just a matter of when yeah well we did an episode with Jake travinski uh earlier this week on Monday and he had a he had a similar sentiment to you in the timing here which was that uh stable coin legislation we could see sooner he believes that that could happen this year next year uh the market structure legislation he was like that's probably more like two plus years out which I didn't necessarily want to hear that but uh but Congress and government move slow and we need we need legislation and then we need regulation from the regulator

and this stuff does definitely take time um but but let's just I just want to come back to stocks on chain do you think stocks on chain happen soon like do you think that happens this year in a significant meaningful way I mean I think it depends on how you define significant or meaningful uh but I do think uh the way most these will start is you'll get a subset of US stocks that you can trade on chain I think it you know again in part depends on what is the demand from consumers like how much uh do people actually want this product I have a sense that it's going to be you know a welld desired product in particular when you can start to combine it with uh existing crypto applications uh and so yeah I I'm very optimistic

that we'll we'll see more uh demand for US stocks on chain over the you know rest of this year very exciting I mean I think just even be able to buy coin on chain would be so exciting because so many so many crypto are probably investing in coin through through the stock market and so if I could now get chain and that feels like it's coming soon I uh I don't mean the front run but I think it might have happened I think it might have been announced today too Twitter at least I I think I I'm pretty sure I was seeing this no way very very briefly on Bas but I think this coin is like a perfect example of a you know it's going to be like an interesting

example of a stock that is showcases the demand for for what people want and yeah so so backed I think uh tokenized coinbase uh stock uh on on their chain on base chain today uh now yeah you can you can officially buy it that'll be a really interesting proxy for for how much demand there is for this tokenized stock asset it's uh this uh the crypto Summit today is just creating a wealth of news and announcements for us everybody is hyped up uh GG never thrown that one out in the show I Gotta Throw got to use that more that takes me back to the 90s uh okay let's um let's chat a little bit about um

let's take a step back for a second so uh Finch was a massive uh accelerant for financial markets uh and what we all want to see is we all want to see crypto in fi all Financial assets and all financial markets we all believe it's going to happen because it's just it's it's just that much better as we talked about at the beginning um now what stripe really did and I really like using stripe as an example and you've used an example as well is stripe really allowed like they made online payments dead simple and then they allowed developers to very easily make apps or make websites that made online

payments very simple right and so it led to this explosion of e-commerce right um that is starting to happen within defi with this the platform or you you would call defi platform moment explain that to us yeah so just in the same way that you know strip's initial product made it really easy for uh any online Merchant to accept payments it wasn't until they launched stripe connect which allowed you know for this platform moment of stripe where they could have like you know multiple process multiple payments process payments from like multiple you know services and I think we're seeing something happen in def5 that is very similar where if you take Unis swap as an example like a start start as is like

Standalone application that allowed uh anyone to you know LP or trade from you know a pool and that that's a great service but it's also like hard to build on top of that and so what we've seen now is this transition from Unis swop in unisoft V4 to uh this platform moment where rather than uh you know build this like Standalone application they have this single tin liquidity protocol that has all the you know liquidity and they allow anyone to build a DEX on top of Unis Swap and like why is that valuable it's because now you can build more applications on top of you know uniso as kind of this like fundamental permitted layer and so that leads to you know un difference in like unisoft hooks that

can like build dexes that are you know more specific or targeted uh we start to see a lot of innovation around the types of you know like custom logic and use cases that you can and build and this isn't something that's only happening in unisoft we're seeing this happen in the broader defi ecosystem as well uh fluid uh you know formerly known as instap has built a similar shared liquidity primitive layer that you know its lending and decks are built on top of uh we've seen Morpho adopt a similar strategy that has enabled you know more applications to really plug into the Morpho protocol and so what what I think this really enables like why does this matter is because you get to this moment where def5 is matured such that it can now support like large applications on

these massive platforms uh and so I think that that broadly expands like you know both the the ways in which you know the existing platforms can grow but also brings a lot of new opportunities to the market yeah this um this modular architecture this stack that is being created and as you said where you you have Unis swap or Moro or fluid as the platform layer that provides this liquidity and then anybody can come in and easily build an app on top that is more Niche more focused on a particular use case like that's the that's the the level that we're at and you kind of need to be at in order to really bring the

the masses on chain because you need we need a lot more apps that offer things that people actually want solve real problems when like we we kind of haven't really had had that yet right we haven't really had that moment yet um when you think about time here uh what do you how how quickly do you see these platforms accelerating and these apps coming out on top of these platforms and any particular ideas or things that you think that you have in mind or maybe some Alpha you can give us from some deals you've got going on I don't know how much you can share of what might be coming in the future yeah I mean I would say this I think that we're already starting to see a ton of applications being built on top of these protocols

and that comes in a combination of ways like one is like the kind of like consumer defi moment that I'm talking about is also you know enabled by this platform moment where like now a consumer application can like build its own decks on top of Unis swap uh you know plug into moros like lending protocol more effectively so I think that's like one subset of opportunities we're saying I think the other is just like a we're kind of at this like new place where we can start to see more defi Innovation and I think one place in particular we started to see that is with hooks on top of unisoft you can just think of a hook as like an app built on top of un4 and uh there's a variety of hooks that are building in the market univ V4 uh launched uh over

the past I think like month or so and so it's still early but we're already starting to see a lot of applications uh building there um and so yeah that's definitely something that I'm I'm watching closely and very excited about so there could be there could be an acceleration coming then because these platforms are I mean as you said univ V4 just launched right like these platforms are still relatively new Moro isn't had hasn't been around that long either so they're they should be accelerating the these apps as they come out when when we step back for a second so we've talked about we've talked about consumer defi we've talked about rwa we've talked about these platforms um not Financial advice everybody listening but if you

were an investor where where do you think there's an edge and an opportunity are you looking at the onos on the Raba side are you looking at the platforms Moro Unis swap are you trying to look more for the consumer apps I mean obviously you can't invest in moonshot I don't think they have a token but um where do you think the opportunity is in in this cycle yeah I mean this is probably the answer that you want here and obviously this is not Financial advice but I think there's opportunity in a lot of places uh I think from the liquid perspective yeah you know there's this idea of Compounders continuing to compound I think that you know we see players like Unis swap who are trying to verticalized

uh and figure out more ways that they can uh both like capture more value but also like provide their platform with greater Edge and so uh something like uni chain is like a perfect example of that where you know univ V4 you know on uni chain you could imagine that uh as un chain offers stuff like me rebates uh or is their you know sequencer Network goes live there's a lot of potential synergies that you you could imagine happening and then from the private side of the markets I think that uh there's a time of innovation we're seeing both at like the Primitive layers of people building on top of these platforms people building like New Primitives and then also just from the the consumer application standpoint like moonshot did a really good job I think that there's

uh a large opportunity for you know similar but different types of consumer applications whether that's offering for you know stocks whether that's offering for yield or you know combining a lot of those to to provide the best-in-class experience yeah it just shows you how early we are like it's so time is such a funny thing it feels like it's been a lifetime in crypto if you and even like a month can feel like a lifetime and and we're still so so early there's just so there's so much exciting things happening and so much coming um when when you guys at at panta when you look at Investments and your thesis is is

defi your focus what is what's your investment thesis shortterm long term so at pant we're focused on investing uh across the range of applications and infrastructure built on uh you know built on blockchain I think defi continues to be a focal point point of the crypto ecosystem but we're also seeing a ton of adoption in other uh use cases that are just earlier I think given where we are you know with the greater financial markets like finally coming to a a greater adoption of defi it gets really interesting uh you have players like and which we've invested in

that uh are really pushing the needle to bring like more rwas on chain I think that like that Trend continues and and opens up like a lot sub a subset of like opportunities so I mean yeah we continue to be really excited about defi but as well as just like the broader ecosystem at large do you do you think the you've talked about the the fat app thesis where do you think value accurs in the in the long run here does value acre to the protocols or does it accre to the apps does it Ur to both yeah this is always like a fun debate because um you know joelan negro who initially authored the the fat protocol thesis I think largely if you were investing across

that thesis over the past like decade uh directionally like you probably did very well uh I think we're now at the point in time where uh block space is commoditizing and every sufficiently large application will launch its own chain and there's really like a few reasons that you want to do that uh the first is because like you get greater control over your block space that means you can like customize things uh like what uni chain is doing with like their flash blocks which is really cool and just you know adding like faster block times uh you can capture your own sequence of Revenue uh which can be like incredibly profitable as I've been from players like coinbase and then the final thing uh it just comes back down to like you know the the value crew of like l1s that we see today like you know crypto

uh assets are playing for this very like longtail Market opportunity of you know building these like non-sovereign blockchain networks and that opportunity continues to be uh the opportunity that exists and so that that's kind of like the third and final reason that you see a lot of applications start to uh you know build their own block space yeah it's going to be very interesting to see how it plays out it feels it feels to me like as you said the the L1 trade the protocol trade over the past decade has done really well feels like it still could do well in this cycle but as you said it's becoming commoditized and we got too much block

space right now we don't need it all so I don't know how long that trade can go for anymore I I think it just evolves so like I do think that the time to build a general purpose blockchain is probably over uh and that that go to market strategy is going to be fairly difficult for chains today versus if you take a more specialized approach that uh has I think greater opportunities and the most specialized approach that you can take is by building an application that bootstraps your own your own uh blockchain I think that will be the most effective a great example that recently yeah hyper liquid's a great example of that I think that um that has obviously like done a very good job at like

bootstrapping their initial chain and I so I expect like us to see more uh at least L1 and L2 blockchains in the future take a more specialized approach rather than a generalized approach and I mean for like maybe some context on like what what's example of some type of L1 that maybe makes sense today like one example on this is related to RW is bringing FX on chain right now most uh you know FX is in stable coins in particular USD Peg stable coins it's like 99% 99 as we get yeah it's it's the vast vast vast majority uh but as we get more localized stable coins whether it's like uh braz real Mexican pesos and develop deep liquidity on chain that opens up this

unique opportunity to FX chain and uh FX in the traditional markets like you're fighting for basis points like individual basis points and so having a optimized chain uh for that makes sense there's potentially features around permissioning in terms of like What actors can and can't do on that type of chain uh and so I think we're going to see more types of l1s l2s enter the market that take these like specialized approaches yeah that makes a ton of sense Mason this has been a fantastic conversation thank you so much for joining us to today thank you for having me it's been a yeah really appreciate we'll have to get you back on the show again soon everybody thanks for listening in hope you enjoy the news of the day from the crypto Summit it's

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