Building The Perfect Portfolio In 2026 | Tushar Jain & Pranav Kanade

Transcript

Yeah, I think the market is just wrong. They're wrong. What you just said, Santi, of applications capture 60% of the value but have a minority of the market cap. Uh that to me looks like an an opportunity. That that is very clearly an opportunity. Uh and I think it's setting up for the pair trade of the next cycle. Is that nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Block Works. Our hosts, guests, and the Blockworks team may hold positions in the companies, funds or

projects discussed. All right, gents. This is Monday, March the 2nd. We had a pretty eventful weekend. Uh even last week uh as we record oil is up, Iran situation is blowing up. Um we're going to talk about macro, we're going to talk about crypto, we're going to talk about AI. Uh too sharp for now. You guys are not new to the show. You guys have been around here for for a few times. Excited to have you guys here and make it a really good discussion. >> It's great to be back.

Um, Tushar, I always like the phoenix, uh, which is the emblem of multicoin, which is, you know, Phoenix rising from the ashes. Where exactly are in that evolution in terms of the markets? Seems like a lot of stuff is on fire, but I'm curious what's um what's a house view and macro and where we are in the cycle. So, I think we're at the point where the phoenix has already burnt down and is about to hatch and the new little hatchling is is emerging. >> You mean we can't go down more another 50% from here?

>> You can you possibly can, right? Um I I can't call the local bottoms but look let me zoom out and tell you like how I think about these market cycles is to think about what has changed and what hasn't changed. Uh why don't I start with what hasn't changed. The things that haven't changed are human nature. Um people let price lead sentiment. When prices are up everyone feels like a genius and when prices are down they feel like morons. Um, and human nature is to capitulate at the bottom and to buy in at the top. That that hasn't changed. That's not going anywhere. Animal spirits and markets not

going anywhere. Uh, and we're very clearly on the lower end of that um that cycle right now. We're seeing a number of large bull capitulations. Uh, we are seeing prices uh capitulate. We're seeing apathy. Uh you have to remember the opposite of love is not hate. It's apathy. And we are starting to see apathy in the market which is a good sign. It shows you that um a lot of people have just kind of given up or or washed out of it. Uh but we've seen this before. We've seen this movie before.

This is my fourth cycle. Um for some people, you know, they've been around even longer. They've probably seen it five, maybe even six times. I think there've been six total since Bitcoin started. And there's a few things that are really different this time. The past cycles in the bare markets, I will say I was had some deep fear that the industry was not going to make it. I was worried that man the the industry is like maybe over. And now this time around, I'm not worried about that at all. Like they're just there's basically a 0% chance that the industry is over.

Yeah. prices aren't great right now and um you know that affects sentiment but we have engagement at with the largest asset managers with the regulators with the politicians with the biggest tech companies like everyone has underwritten this technology and we are going to see all of them deploy using blockchains as financial rails and so that's really changed um and I think it's important to zoom out and remember what has changed and what hasn't changed. Prenav, I want to get your opinion, but in reaction to that first before I go, there's a lot to unpack there but

>> yeah, I think I was going to kind of maybe approach that question from sort of two angles. And and by the way, Tushar has seen more cycles than I have. So, um, and I think I think he's I think Tushar, you're right that we're closer to the end of this bare market than the beginning. Uh, we're closer to let's just say the bottom than the top. But the two questions I I generally ask myself here is like have we had capitulation yet? And and I think to give you an anecdotal perspective on that. Um I was at eye connections last week and the last time I did I connections was in 2023 and um just comparing the two experiences, we had a ton of more meetings with let's just say allocators across the board than we did in 23. Um,

and the general sentiment and I think I would almost say even more qualified meetings. So like the 23 meetings were people just kind of like do I yolo into this or not? And it was like you know 20% of the people I met wanted to yolo into the asset class and then 80% were just outright dismissive. This time around, I want to say 70% of the people had some framework for understanding what blockchains were about and they were genuinely interested in asking is this a time they should start to deploy capital because they're underexposed or have no exposure. So, I feel like there's capital on the sidelines that is waiting to come in. Now, I can make the bullish case around that and say that must mean that we're closer to the bottom. But then again, I've seen the

last cycle where people who wanted to buy the dip um ultimately all went away and said this asset class was dead and that was the bottom. Like that sentiment of like this asset class is dead is the bottom, you know. Um and that was probably right after FTX because it was so bad. The sentiment was so bad. And the question I asked myself is like do we need one of those? Like do we need like that like this asset class is dead type feeling? And I think you would probably say 2018 or 19 even felt like that. So I don't feel like just anecdotally I don't feel like we haven't hit that ne like that negative sentiment yet. Doesn't mean we have to. Maybe this time we don't have to. Well, that's I I think that my perspective is there's a very big

wider dispersion in and historically there's been a lot of correlation within crypto and and when you think about the investable universe in the early days is just Bitcoin and then it was Ethereum and smart contracting platforms and then applications on top of that and and now you're at a point where you have other products and ways to get exposure as an allocator. Um when people go to Davos and they hear uh Larry Frink talk about tokenization. question for you Jensen is where is that incremental buyer going to come from and what are they going to express the thesis for for blockchain and for me like last year I really restructured my book and said okay tokens are very broken across a wide variety of reasons because

we haven't really been able to structure them as equity compounding instruments the only things that resem the only things that have done well closely resemble equities like hyperlquid of the Uh but like am I better off investing in Ethereum at 300 billion or Stripe at 100 or 150 billion? Um and really who's going to capture and compound using this technology? Is it a Black Rockck? Is it Stripe? Is it uh figure- like businesses where you're sitting there and saying I I think no one discounts now the demand side of the house which is stable cocoins are going to continue to grow. It has very positive tailwinds with agentic commerce and you know just businesses and

crossber and what have you. Tokenization is going to continue to be a thing like wall street is going to continue to push the technology forward. Question is like on the supply side block space is infinite and easy to replicate. Tar you guys were early investors in Salana. The innovation between Ethereum and Salana 0 to1 Ethereum and all the high throughput blockchains I would argue not as meaningful but we have like this plethora of blockchains. How do you guys position your portfolio to be playing like yeah I think everyone in the room agrees like crypto is going to continue to grow but that doesn't mean that like Ethereum is going to be worth a trillion.

Yeah, maybe I'll I'll I'll give you a framework and this kind of was maybe segus to like the the when question and then the where question, right? So, let's just say you do think we're kind of close to the bottom and you want to start to express directional risk. Um, we both Tushar and I both obviously do tokens, equities, kind of all the above. Um the way we at least break up the wear question is if you're going to look at the top 10 tokens then you want to compare it against like large tech equity opportunity set and say am I better off expressing the same view in a public equity or buying this top 10 token because for the top 10 tokens you need a lot of flows to drive meaningful price performance and I could I just have a hard time seeing a lot of flows

coming into like you know some of the top 10 um relative to like sort of you know the public equities. Now, if you look at like things outside of top 10, like you go down from like say token number 10 to token number 200, there's really interesting pockets of value there. So, if you're finding a project that's like sub 5 billion, like it's very easy to imagine how that thing reprices from that sub 5 billion to like tens of billions. Uh because all you need is marginal capital flows within crypto. You don't actually need like, you know, XYZ pension fund or whatever trying to step in and allocate to that.

Um I I agree with that. I think you have to do some uh segmentation across both the market participants like Prennav is suggesting and then also segmentation across the assets. I think it is inappropriate to look at crypto as just like one blob of things. I think that it's actually separating and we're seeing more dispersion now than ever before. So uh first why don't I hit on uh Prenab's point of dispersion of uh the market participants the sophistication of these participants has increased dramatically over this last cycle. We are seeing

professional investors as opposed to amateur investors come into the industry and professional investors understand that the thing that matters is cash flows. It's the discounted value of cash flows and then the terminal value, you know, discounted back to today. And that's what uh you know, we've all been taught this all. We studied this in school. Uh and it's not a uh theory in the sense of like, oh, I think this is true. It's kind of like the theory of gravity in my opinion. Like I I believe it is a fundamental truth of finance that assets are worth the discounted value of their cash flows. And you can get distorted away from that for short

periods of time, but gravity always comes back. And I think that is what has driven a huge repricing in these tokens is we've seen the unsophisticated retail actors kind of get washed out. Uh we've seen the people who are betting on narratives and momentum and using lots of leverage uh get wrecked this last cycle. not the first time that this has happened before. Um, but we are now seeing that things that have cash flow and potential for cash flow are doing really well and are holding up. And no, are they at all-time highs? Like maybe not, but they're holding up really well.

Uh, >> yeah. Look at to I mean I I got cooked on the timeline because you know I I came out with this idea of price to sales ratio and P ratios and everyone's like look man you're you're you're really overthinking this like you got to focus on network effects and metaf's law and new paradigm um and you know future like you know fat protocol thesis new fundamental like you're I again like I do I maybe want to double click on that a bit in terms of where you're seeing there there was a really good report by um uh 1KX that talked about value acrruel flowing up to applications whether it's DeFi or deep end and you

you know you guys have both invested across the stack for better or for worse like most of the concentration in market cap continues to be at the L1 is that just telling you that like when you think about what gives value to these things it's not because like from a cash flow perspective applications now I command like are capturing 60% of the value and L1's are not capturing as much but the valuations from a market cap perspective L1's continue to be the line share of it and so there's some goodwill mimemetic social component that L1's are really good at doing that deepen protocols and DeFi protocols are just not. So I wanted to just get your

thoughts on like like how you think about that. Yeah, I I'll respond to that. And also the IQ chart meme, which by the way is my favorite meme of like internet culture in the last decade, uh, at least. Uh, and yeah, I think the market is just wrong. They're wrong. Uh, they're valuing the wrong thing. Uh, and yeah, like what you just said, Santi, of applications capture 60% of the value but have a minority of the market cap. uh that to me looks like an an opportunity that that is very clearly an opportunity uh and I think it's setting up for the pair trade of the next cycle is that because we are seeing the market

participants change and evolve and we're seeing the mature investors come in to the industry. Uh we are seeing um the cash flows start to really develop, right? Like you look at some of these protocols like uh these DeFi protocols specifically and Deepin protocols as well. These have real sustainable cash flows. You know, Helium has AT&T paying to offload data onto their network and they're paying tens of thousands of dollars a day um to do that. Uh you have Hyperlid making, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars a year in annualized cash flow. Um, and you're seeing things like a make, you know, tens of millions of dollars a year

in cash flow. Uh, and that cash flow will be useful to drive token value. Uh, you know, one of the other things I'll push back on is there's been this common sentiment that uh, cash flow being used to buy back tokens is inefficient because it didn't work. And I think that's just a load of crap. like you have no counterfactual at all when you're making that claim. You have no idea what it would look like if those those cash uh assets were not used to buy back tokens. Uh and second, the purpose of a buyback from a company or a protocol is not for the company to make the best trading decisions and make the most money off of it. Of course, that's

better if they buy cheap and then the price goes up, but that's not the point. The point is to return capital to its investors. That is the point. >> And so if it returns capital at a higher price versus a lower price, either way it returned that capital to investors, >> uh, and so it did its job. So I think that narrative is just, uh, it's just a bunch of, uh, crap, basically. >> Yeah. >> Coinbase cryptobacked loans powered by Morpho empower users to borrow up to $5 million using Bitcoin or $1 million using ETH as collateral. Loans originate in seconds with no additional credit checks and competitive rates typically between 4 to 8%. Use USDC for down

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today's show notes to buy tickets and make sure to use code Empire 200 for $200 off at checkout. Let's talk about before I go to you Pren like look you guys have been investors in Helium since kind of the early days. Um and so like when you look at like cash from operating activities, I'm looking at Blockworks dashboard here. I I find pretty reliable like they they've broken a profit now like from operating activities in in in this year or they're set to they're burning now. Um and so they're offset so they're making more money now than the emissions. So that that's fairly positive dynamic. Um there's like a lot of discussions in the community around like this value leakage

between like what is like the protocol and what is like Nova Labs the entity and I feel like they've done some work around that. Uh what is interesting to your point of the market you know being wrong like H&T's actually been an outperformer as of late over the last 30 days. Uh and maybe it's that the market is really appreciating it but you know H&T is still like way down from its all-time high. I'm curious as you guys like re constantly I I know you're the kind of guy that constantly rewrites his thesis like when it comes to Helium is it just that that like it's the the MVNO is growing like the network is really strong like they're offloading like these things are like these networks are churning

um but what is the disconnect because like Helium you could argue that the like if you look at the MVNO and it has I think over a million customers and you comp it against like a traditional MVNO like Mint Mobile should be worth probably a bit more when you look at the network and like it should probably be worth a bit more but you know it's sort of stuck in that even though it's outperformed the last 30 days but like what is what is the is there some truth in like the value leakage and this disconnect between the entity and the token and or what is the causing like the network to be undervalued in your opinion or maybe you don't agree with

that. Uh I do agree and I think it comes down to one major thing which is that markets hate uncertainty and with the two cap table structure right now markets perceive some uncertainty on value capture uh and they're not sure what should I buy and so instead of saying oh I'll buy a little bit of both they say I'm going to buy nothing because this is too complicated and it's not like you know this is some you $50 billion asset or company that it's, you know, you're going to do all of the work to figure it out. It's still pretty small. And so people put it in the too hard bucket and then they move on and they just don't

pay attention to it. Uh the reason why there's a separate token and equity cap table is a regulatory hangover. It's because of when Helium launched, you couldn't have those things be combined. You had to keep them separated. Obviously, we had all the regulatory battles. You know, Helium got sued by the SEC um with the SEC finally settling and saying, "No, H&T is not a security." Uh so, you know, that hangover still persists. I do believe that Nova Labs and Helium will figure out a way to correct this and figure out a way to align all the value. We've seen a number of examples

of this recently. uh you know I thought unis swap doing that recently was a good example. A just uh the vote to do that passed this weekend for uh basically folding down a DAO and a labs into a single entity. Uh at least I I know I'm overly simplifying it but I think that's like the simple interpretation of it. And I think you're going to see this as a mega trend across all of these crypto businesses that have this regulatory hangover and have real revenues. And just like the markets hate uncertainty, they love clarity. Uh and that could be a catalyst for repricing all these things where you're seeing, you know,

like positive yields off of helium burn mint emissions, right? where you're seeing the cash flows from an a get redirected uh and just don't see any sort of leakage and everything is uh just like certain now uh I think that can be the catalyst to get this class of professional investors to be excited about these >> pr I know you take more of a macro view like what is the incremental flow coming from like how do you see the world >> yeah I was going to say like there's a different I a slightly different lens you can kind of think about all this from which is people want to buy assets that go up in price and they can make

money on it and um and I think the reason people gravitate towards L1's is you have this anchor which is Ethereum that you know has made people money in the past and that has this big market cap and then any like people can very simply say this blockchain that I'm looking at has like better properties than Ethereum and so and it's relative value I think this is cheaper so I'm going to buy it and it I think it's going to flip Ethereum one day or whatever. That's like an easier sort of rationale you can use to buy something and that is what has worked in the past. Now, this kind of concept around cash flows and all that. I think cash by themselves aren't a good enough narrative for people to run out there and buy some token. But I do think tokens get to an inflection point where

their market caps and floats gets small enough and the buyback becomes large enough such that the buyback itself can start to drive the price. And that's what's going to probably get people interested again. Now, like most tokens of the past that had some sort of buyback mechanism, they also had this other problem, which was their market caps were just too big. So, if all you had to rely on was your buyback to only drive your price and no incremental net new buyers, then you're looking at something that needs to be trading at like five times cash flow for that to be the driver. And I use that as a proxy because that's what worked in the public equity market. So go find any value investor and see when their portfolios did well. It's when like those holdings were like trading like five times cash

flow. Um until then it was all all dead money, right? Um so I think in general outside of the L1's I think either two things need to happen. one is these market caps need to get down to a point where it's like at five times cash flow or what they're building needs to be so exciting for people that um and and when I say exciting I I use that term relative to what's most exciting in the world today which is all things AI um such that they want to go out there and buy that token and so I think I think that second part is most interesting right it's like getting net new people to buy your token is more interesting and is going to drive crisis more than like the buyback stuff. But I see a path with the buyback stuff which

is generally if buybacks tend to drive token performance which will happen at some point then maybe that drives incremental net youub buyers but we live in a world today where people want you know returns in two weeks not you know two years and for that you just have to have an exciting story and most tokens don't have an exciting story at the moment. Yeah, I mean let's just like I want to maybe round out this chapter discussion around like this idea of valuations in general like what drives the incremental buyer here. We've talked about cash flows like look we're looking at a dashboard here block works again like the highest revenue generating protocol is here hyperlquid at like 800 million over last year then Salana

closely there around 720 million then Tron then pumpf fun then ethereum um these when you look at in a price of sales and then you know fully diluted or circulating it's hard to really make sense of these valuations relative to the opportunity cost and the opportunity of just going and buying stuff in the public markets that has come down a lot. You're looking at SAS total repricing from 15 times price to recurring contracted revenue down to four.

And so who when you go to Eyesshares or you're talking to LPS, sophisticated guys that invest across asset classes, I mean, do they like like what's the bullcase for investing in an asset that that's already worth 30 billion or 50 billion and is only cranking out like less than a billion in in revenue. Like I mean you really have to bake in some pretty optimistic scenarios here of value really coming on chain and maybe you're sitting there in the weekend saying look look at Hyperlid like the per on oil like you know got some really interesting traction like maybe that's a hyperbull case but like you got to discount that future state to

today and the world's really uncertain right now like people are just not willing to pay for rosy projections. Uh like how do you make sense of this like I I'll kind of frame how I sh sort of talk about it with you know the allocator types and and then maybe two shark and shark's perspective on that as well. So uh I okay so if I take a step back active management only works if you can like destroy the market net of fees right and for lack of a better proxy let's just say the S&P 500 and NASDAQ are like your market proxies um and if you can't substantially beat that benchmark net of fees obviously adjusted from all then you shouldn't be running a fund anyway. So then um the question

then an allocator should ask is like can this manager being able to invest in both public equities and tokens over a long enough time horizon meaningfully beat the market such that it adds like torque to my portfolio. It's not a diversifier. It's just really this asset class needs to be something that can add torque to someone's portfolio. Um, and what I tell people is like I think a bulk of the future opportunities will likely come from finding great businesses which are likely in the public equity markets that can leverage parts of the blockchain stack to just make their business better. And that might end up enhancing the enterprise value by 5%, 10%, 50%, who knows? But ultimately, you just want to own great businesses regardless of how much impact it will have for how much benefit they'll get from using a blockchain. And

then the other part of it is that there's going to be a ton of opportunities in the top 200 tokens where you can find asymmetric trades in any given year. It'll probably be three to five tokens that have outsized performance for whatever set of reasons. And if you can capture one or two of those, then that's where you're going to get a lot of upside torque to that overall book. and do those two things really really well and then sort of generally managing the direction of the book can give you potentially much better performance than the indices. If you if you believe those things are possible, then you should I don't try to tell people about like XYZ token and cash flows it can do or whatever right?

>> Um I I have a slightly different perspective on uh some of those multiples and how to think about them. Uh clearly if you're investing in this industry, you're betting on growth. You're not buying any of these things uh you know this is a private equity style buyout. it's gonna have this huge cash flow yield and you know um I'm gonna make my money back in cash flow in the next five years. Like those investors are not here nor should they be here. It's not appropriate for them. Uh so you are betting on growth and you're betting that stable coin growth will continue.

You're betting that DeFi growth will continue. You are betting that deep growth will continue. You're betting that blockchains are fundamentally useful and are the right way to track transactions and assets and trades and capital formation across borders uh and across uh different cultures. It's just the most neutral way to do this. Um so that's what you're betting on. Then the question is how do you express that bet? And I think the thing that you need to do is underwrite where will there be sustainable margins. We just saw this with the SAS example that you gave where SAS sustainability just went through the floor because AI uh has scared people

into thinking like okay well these SAS companies are not going to be able to charge as much as they do uh and the value has gone down. So you need to apply that frame over to crypto investing and look at okay let's use the AI example. AI makes it very easy to code up a new competitor for any of these. It makes it easy to route between them. Uh it makes it easy to um incorporate you know all of the underlying DeFi protocols into your fintech um business that faces the end customer.

Makes all those things easy. who still makes money in that world, right? When ev when all the friction is gone, who still makes money? And I think there are two places that make money. The first is whoever owns the customer relationship because what I expect to see is due to proliferation of AI, we're going to see a lot more micro focused companies that have just much deeper understanding of a niche set of customers than these broader companies because it's just easier to create them. And then the second place that makes money is a place where there's a huge network effect. And there is a huge network effect to liquidity. It doesn't matter how easy it

is for me to code up a new exchange and matching engine. It's damn hard to displace Binance, right? Like that's that's an incredibly difficult thing to do. It doesn't matter that I can build Binance using Claude in two weeks. That that doesn't solve the problem. Binance is still going to make a ton of money. I mean, the same thing is true on DeFi, right? If I want to go take out, you know, a billion dollar loan on DeFi, there's like one option, right? it's just off a like there's nowhere else that you can really go that has that scale. Uh there's others who are you know at the next scale down at the $und00 million level. Uh but it doesn't matter how easy it is for me to code up a borrow lend protocol. uh if there's one place to go to match borrowers with lenders and you know with

that liquidity and actually like the plethora of MU people plugging into it because AI tools make it easy for them they don't have to underwrite like oh you know should I go to a or should I go to Morpho should I go to Camino like what should I do they just tell the agent like borrow for me at the best rate at the you know uh best risk terms for and then the agent just does it. Uh then what makes money is the thing that I'm talking to which owns the flow and then also the back end which owns the liquidity. And I think you don't want to be anywhere in the middle. I don't think you want to be at the base layer either.

And so that's why I think you know the big pair trade of this cycle is going to be apps versus L1's. >> I I I promise I won't keep pulling this up, but this is this is ranked by like lowest price of sales. What's interesting here is when you look at the, you know, 20 of these names, there's not a single one in here that is an L1 except hyperlquid. And I think I think look, I I've written about this. I do agree with you. It's a pair trade of the century in many ways. Um, but like talking about like as it relates to your portfolio, like give me a reason like why should you be holding any L1 when you can go by pump. You could talk about meme coins are here to stay. Um it has established itself as a

venue to as a launchpad. Uh you know it's it's sitting at a 1 billion market cap and it's cranking out 530 million in revenue. I mean it's it's it's less you know price of sales is 2.2 3.7 fully diluted less than SAS. Like you know when you think about what AI comes in displace it doesn't displace this affordability crisis and doesn't displace the casino element. Um like I is is the answer here like don't own LA like short the L1 and just buy pump or buy you know Banana Gun or uh you know radium um um you know Athena sitting interesting at four times like you know you talk about like stable coins um you know it actually environment rates go

down Athena benefits as well like I'm just kind of curious like um you know Camino for instance the difference between Camino and a like you know Camino I know you and I both are investors in it like four four and a half times price to revenue and a is at 16 like help me make sense of the disconnect between a and chamino for instance like like what is it is it just brand power is it like like a has way more liquidity right but but but is or is the answer here like just crypto markets are incredibly inefficient just you know be patient enough to survive and don't get liquidated.

>> Uh that is absolutely the answer is that the markets are really inefficient and they're emotional and you see emotional market participants go and drive prices to completely irrational levels. Some of these assets that you just named have idiosyncratic reasons why they're valued where they are. For example, Pump Fun, great revenue. Uh I do think memecoins as a concept are here to stay, but they have a huge unlock coming. uh and a lot of people are are up like massively on that investment and so the market is just you know getting ahead of that and saying hey look I don't want to buy this if I think there's going to be a huge amount of selling pressure coming in the

next few months that's pretty reasonable and I think it's unfair to um like say it should be trading at a higher multiple because there is an idiosyncratic reason for it the other thing to look at is like you know on that dashboard you pulled up it's showing trailing 12 months But really what you should be thinking about is projected next 12 months, which in crypto is very different based on where you are in the market cycle. Pump funds projected revenue is probably going to be lower than the trailing 12-month revenue because in a bull market uh those type of gambling memecoin things make way more money than they do in a bare market. Uh and so you have to project it forward. we just don't have the sellside research analyst coverage to have those types of

estimates on a go forward basis. Um for something like you know Camino I think that there's idiosyncratic things there too. Um it's I think it's criminally undervalued right now. I own a bunch of it as you noted. Um and I think it's just criminally undervalued uh where it's at and they've shown great real world asset adoption. uh they are the leading bartend on Salana. Uh and so I think um that just is another example of the market inefficiency.

Uh with hype, it feels actually relatively fair where it's valued based on its cash flow. I think it has a great growth potential. We own hype. Um I I do find myself very impressed with the business that they have built. uh and they are the first real derivatives decks that I think is a real threat to the centralized exchanges. Uh no one else has gotten to that level of scale before and then sustained it. Um so I think it's really impressive but also you know trading at about 40 times uh feels right in an in a place where uh new competitors can pop up and uh there is regulatory uncertainty and all this stuff. So like I think that's actually

kind of fair. uh where it's at. Um, and so a lot of these stories like you have to peel them apart and look at each one and understand why is the market valuing it at this level and then do I think the market is wrong and if so why right like with Camino I think the market is wrong with pump I think it's actually very rational to not want to go and buy this thing before a big unlock with hype I think the market's probably right I think it feels about right uh here uh you know give or take some number of multiple um uh on the revenue. Uh so you have to you have to separate it out. In a bull market, correlations are high and like you should be thinking about things

kind of as like a trend and oh I want to buy this thing because it's a play on X and that's what matters and narrative stuff really matters in a bare market. You need to do the idiosyncratic underwriting. You need to try and peel it apart and understand the asset very specifically and then understand where you disagree with the market. I wanted to like I hate to use the word double click because people overuse that. Um but uh there were a couple things you guys were both saying that I thought was interesting. So I'm curious, have you or anyone on your team played around with Open Claw in the past like 30 60 days.

>> Yeah. >> Um so I haven't done that myself, but have team members who have and have kind of gone down that rabbit hole. I'm just too afraid that it's going to somehow steal my stuff. But uh I have a member on my team who's very actively using it helping it develop skills. And I think one of the takeaways generally was that specialized agents on on Open Claw are better than sort of generalized agents. So, if you have one agent that you're like doing all this that's doing all the stuff for you, maybe that's worse off or worse agent than an agent where you say your your focus or job is to be the best YouTube content creator and I'm going to add skills for you that will do that one very specific task really really well

and then you create multiple sort of agents that can do different things for you. Um, so I was thinking about that and then I was thinking about the fact that basically the person on my team that is, you know, using openclaw is not really using any user interface. It's just like a pure chat interface on like Telegram. He's like chatting it saying book me an appointment for this and it'll go do it, right? Um, I think we have an entire world today that is overindexed to user experience. So people will use worse products if the UX wrapper is really really good. Um, and so if I think about, you know, what this looks like 12 or 24 months from now, again, as it brings pertains to crypto, maybe the answer is like the UX that everyone's used to or that is everyone

that everyone's using, but might not be the most efficient product will ultimately end up losing. So the most efficient product that an AI agent will use for a very specific task will be the winning instrument or platform to bet on. That's one thing I've been I've been thinking about. But I think one of the things we did as an exercise and this is like a really dumb exercise is you know I think the future looks like that movie her um in in the distant future cuz like yes I don't want to run open claw on my Mac Mini but some company will productize it make it really secure for me to use that experience of it and you're going to probably have something that's like an agent app store rather than pure app store and and then the world end state looks like her. If

that's what the end state looks like what are the bets you're going to make today? How would you construct a portfolio today that would win in that end state? So rather than get too caught up in like the metrics of different tokens, I think I almost have to work work backwards from that end state. >> Yeah, I I like that. Uh and I would just say like in the Catrini research thing that made the rounds and uh caused quite the stir uh last week. Was that last week? Yeah. Um, and they talk about this exact thing with regards to payments and they say, you know, right now the user experience of swiping your Visa credit card is the

best user experience. But in a world where agents lubricate all of the friction out of commerce, they're going to find the most efficient way to do that just like you're saying. And the most efficient way to do that is going to be a stable coin on Salana paying, you know, zero gas fees basically. Like that's going to be the most efficient way to pay. um or on you know ETH or something but more expensive there um right so you're gonna see the agents prefer crypto rails because crypto rails are the most efficient even if they're not always the most UXfriendly >> but that doesn't mean the blockchains themselves where these stable coin transactions happen are valuable as investments

>> I agree with that yeah definitely I actually don't think stable coin transfers deliver almost any value to a blockchain. Uh because they have to be essentially free. And so why does the blockchain make money off of that? I I'm not bullish on transfers as a source of revenue. I'm bullish on trading as a source of revenue. I'm bullish on DeFi borrow as a source of revenue. I'm bullish on derivatives as a source of revenue. I'm bullish on asset issuance and therefore trading uh as a source of revenue. But really, it comes down to those handful of activities and nothing else, which, you know, I think is uh contra to what a lot of people were

excited about last cycle, right? They were excited about stable coin transfers. Uh I'm, you know, I'm pretty bearish tempo. For example, the the Stripe chain, like I think it's going to be a bunch of stable coin transfers. Fantastic. Good for you, Stripe. I don't think that token makes any money because who's paying for stable coin transfers? No one. No one's going to pay for that stuff. Um, right. Uh, also we saw all this experimentation around web 3 social and um, like we're going to reinvent social media and stuff like that. Obviously didn't work out. Uh, because no one's going to pay to click like on my post. That that's just not a thing that's going to happen. Um, so >> sure you're a I know you love history

and you know anytime I see obviously is not going to work I I I pay attention to that because you almost like I think being contrarian is is overrated. Uh I do think in crypto it pays to reanderite again your thesis like prediction markets you could have invested in augur and and nosis and just missed poly market and and koshi. You guys invested in koshi. I was a first investor in poly market but you had to rewrite that thesis against a different technology which is a stable coin like you needed a stable coin to settle that bet otherwise the user experience is absolutely broken and you need to have like a very determined founder to do that. Um, talk to me about like when you say obviously tempo is not going to work or

obviously social is not going to work. Like give me why it would work under what circumst and it doesn't have to be those two examples. Maybe you're totally convicted that those are totally wrong and faster just returned money and we've had lens also shut down. So like maybe social is again network effects in social are very strong. you have Tik Tok, Facebook and like you know everyone else is kind of burn and Instagram but everything else is just kind of dead including Snapchat. But like what is it that are there any sectors that you are particularly excited about that the market is kind of leaving for dead or is it more of the same like DeFi is

just going to continue to grow and invest in DeFi? >> Yeah. So I I want to clarify something. I'm not saying tempo is not going to work. I think they're going to deliver something that does work. Uh I just don't think stable coin transfers make a bunch of revenue. And so the business opportunity there is going to be in all of the ancillary stuff around the stable coins. Uh and that will likely be captured by Stripe, not by Tempo. Uh because Tempo is an asset ledger that tracks transactions and I don't think people are paying a huge amount of fees for those transactions. So it's going to work. it's going to function. It'll probably create a ton of consumer surplus. Its value capture is just really challenged. Um, and then with web

3 social, my view is actually different. It I think it does not function. I think it fundamentally misunderstands the customer. And the problem is it's inserting financial incentives in an area where people don't want that. Financial incentives work in an area with scarcity and social media is not an area with scarcity and it's not an area that humans have demonstrated that they want scarcity. We want abundance. And so you don't really see blockchains do well in a place or in an industry where the goal is abundance. You see blockchains do well where their job is to track scarcity. which is why I'm excited about two things primarily and then you can

zoom in and there's a lot of you know smaller themes of it which is capital formation. So think of this as asset issuance. DPIN I think falls into this category. DPIN is capital formation in an internet native way but I group that together with um other types of capital formation. And then the other is DeFi. Uh and I think those things just continue to compound. And that's another fact pattern that shows the changing of the market here is uh the market in crypto historically has been people looking at what's going to be new, what's going to be new, what's going to be the new exciting thing. And I think this time what's different is it's not about finding the new exciting thing.

It's about underwriting the thing that is working and compounding. We've moved beyond the phase of oh, there's going to be new exciting ideas. And we are now in the phase of build a real business that makes money off of ideas that actually work and compound and grow that business into a sustainable long-term uh going concern, not just uh a hype machine. >> Yeah. Bernard, before I go to you, can I can I just double click to on on a for instance? It's trying to move up market like be a neo bank. Um gun your head you can buy one asset. Would you rather buy revolute or would you rather buy a mean both have execution risks but similar valuations? I guess like in in a perfect

world where a is worth the same as I don't know exactly where secondary is but like in a world where a is worth the same as you know a revolute which one would you buy? Um I I believe there's a pretty significant valuation difference between those two. Uh >> no no there is. I think Revolute is like worth 100 plus billion now and a is what sitting at eight. >> No not even two bill now >> I forget. >> But say say you >> a today is is two billion. Yes.

>> Two billion. Two billion. Okay. Well, the the stand out on Revolute doesn't doesn't uh but the the question still remains like would you rather invest in a in a a Revolute like that may utilize stable coins for subsidizing transfer like like a new bank, right? That there's these companies that are entering the market and reaping the benefits of a stable coin and tokenization including Robin Hood. Like is that a better asset to own versus like an a that is trying to move up market and acquire these customers? It's a good question and the question as I interpret it is is it better to be lower in the stack moving up the stack or higher in the stack moving down in the stack. Um and I think both are valid. It's hard to say one definitely

works. If I had to bet, right, like the strength that Revolute has is that they understand their customer and they own the customer relationship. The customers go to Revolute. That's who they interact with and Revolute can change things on the back end. they can verticalize and therefore capture more of the value that they create with their customers. Uh so that piece is really clear. Actually my partner Spencer gave a presentation about this. It's on our blog um from our last summit talking about specialized stable coin fintexs and I think all these fintexs are going to adopt stable coins to capture more margin. So I think that opportunity is really clear. The opportunity for a to move up market I think is harder. It is harder to get

customers to pay attention to you and to care. But I think the opportunity for a to be a clearing layer for global liquidity around assets and borrowing against those assets in a secured way is much easier. Revolute can't go do that. Revolute is not going to be the money market layer for tokenized equities, bonds, deep dens, and defy tokens against cash like that. they actually don't even have that opportunity really. No one's going to trust them to do that. That is going to be done by a protocol like a so which opportunity is bigger?

It's really hard to say. Uh I think the global backend opportunity is absolutely massive. Uh because without antitrust enforcement ability to break up the scale of these protocols, I do think these are natural monopolies. the these are absolutely natural global monopolies where all liquidity ends up coming together into one thing. Um, and the front ends I feel like are lower risk to own because they already have revenue. They own their customers. Uh, those customers are sticky. But that's not a global monopoly. Revolute is never going to be a global monopoly. They don't have a shot at that. There's no there's no world that I can imagine

where Robin Hood owns every customer in the world. There is a world that I can imagine where a DeFi borrow protocol is powering the vast majority of borrow transactions in the entire world. Uh and so last thing I'll say on this uh I know I haven't actually given you a straight answer because it's really hard and you asked a very difficult question is it comes down to the valuation of these two things. Would I rather own a at two billion or Revolute at 100? Uh, I think I'd rather own a at two uh than Revolute at 100. >> Pernav over to you. You've been quiet for a while.

>> No, I was going to touch on the social the web 3 social thing only to play contrarian because I I would agree with with with Tushar that um like there's no product market fit there in the sense that customers don't want to be like looking at you know trading stuff on their social media feed. I think the approach had been had been generally just wrong. Now, I in December, I did rethink my my thesis a little bit on this because um so so I was looking at Zora as an example and I was like, man, this thing's such a missed opportunity because I saw um you know, this guy Nick Shirley and the thing he was doing in Minnesota really go viral and he was on some podcast talking about how he's never he hasn't really raised any capital and there's all this interest

from his followers for him to go this do this investigative journalism thing but do it in LA and there's always been that opportunity in crypto where you can find interesting creators you like and you want to support them economically and have the ability to participate in the upside. Now, I don't know if that's like a regulatory thing that wouldn't allow it, but there's just this white space to create something like that where you can, you know, support creators and participate in their upside and and ultimately you don't need to like own every piece of content, which is what I think what Zora has created where you can like trade every little content. I don't think people want to do that but there is something there. Uh I would love to see someone create a platform

that captures that. I was um I think every so months we converge on a narrative in crypto. Now I'm seeing the forget about humans using crypto like crypto is made for robots and you know latching on to the AI momentum trade. Um, so curious what you guys like just zooming out a little bit. I mean, I think before we started recording, we talked about a certain research piece. I mean, it's it's pretty thoughtprovoking.

Um, maybe walk me through kind of you read that letter and you said, "Okay, feels like the world is going to blow up. Maybe um maybe not." But what was your immediate reaction to that? and and did it force you to really recalibrate how you think about investing where the opportunity set is or you know yeah just just kind of curious I think I'll I'll pair that with some of just the things I'm noticing in the market right so if you look year to date the hyperscaler stocks are all down despite the fact that they all kind of came out and boosted their capital expenditures by making the argument that um the capital commitments they have from like

the labs companies and whatnot are are so enormous they have to go spend all this capex um so I think the public equity markets at least momentarily has stopped rewarding the biggest spenders from building out these data centers and you know then then you kind of peel it peel that onion a little bit and you say then what's happening I think the market is also saying that the the the second derivative of growth so the rate of change for capital expenditures is going to slow down. So, so yes, capex from hyperscaler spend is going to continue to grow, but it's maybe not going to be the same extent because nobody's getting rewarded for doing that. And the winners in the equity markets right now have been concentrated in maybe two areas.

One is like these memory stocks and the other one are these photonix stocks because you know in a world where um you know capex is what it is the areas of scarcity where this where there's a supply demand imbalance has ultimately pricing power and that's where kind of the marginal dollars are going. And so anyways the the returns have been concentrated in a very small group of equities. And so that gives me some pause on how quickly we're going to get to let's just say 10% unemployment or whatever that article was trying to say by 2028 because again ultimately the the formula seems to be more comput and more data equals like smarter and smarter models and intelligence. Well, there are some things that are happening

in the market that tells you that that might be a little slower than you would have anticipated. Um, so anyways, I read that article and I said and I paired that with what what's happened to markets and and my takeaway was directionally right, but the magnitudes might be totally off, which can yield very different outcomes on how you set up a book because if you read that article and say this is like where we're going to end up, then there's very few things in the world you can actually own and you might, you know, end up with a very concentrated portfolio of like some very specific things versus if you say directionally right, but this is going to take a longer time to play out then you can bet on the path of that of how that plays out.

>> I completely agree with that last thing you said of you have to bet on the path on how it's going to play out. I think everyone who is looking at AI sees this is going to change like basically the entire economy. There's you know maybe a handful of things that don't change but almost everything gets changed by this. The question is how what time frame and and you know what is the path that we take. Um I thought the Catrini report was like well written and it pulled on heartstrings and you know it like made you like really visualize like those people who have these jobs that get automated away and I think that that created a huge reaction. However, it

ignored a lot. Um, it ignored two major things. I think the first that it ignored is just the scale of monetary and fiscal policy response that we would see to something like this happening. Uh, you're going to see a lot of the surplus that is created by AI get redistributed back to people through monetary and fiscal stimulus. Uh because AI is a net deflationary force. It's one of the most deflationary things to ever happen. And that means that that opens up the opportunity for tons of stimulus without spiking inflation. And I think

that's what that's my base case. That's what we're going to see is we're going to in an ideal soft landing type scenario see stimulus ratchet up now ahead of big job losses such that it's very smooth. Uh, and by the way, as an aside, I think that'll be very good for asset prices, especially high beta assets because you remember what sty checks looked like last time. Like imagine that, but way bigger and as a continued program, right? So, so I think that's one major thing that it that it did not really give enough credit to. And the second major thing that I didn't give enough credit to, and it's going to be somewhat controversial, is you can't automate away fake jobs.

How many of these jobs are basically made up where it's like we came up as a society with this rule that uh you know, you have to have these people supervising this type of task, right? Like you've seen the meme of the construction worker where there's one guy digging and there's like 10 guys watching, right? You can't automate away those 10 guys because that's a fake job. It was made up by some regulatory regime in order to create more union labor, right? And like it doesn't matter how good the technology gets, you're not going to automate away fake labor. And I think that's also underexplored or ignored in this report is so many of the jobs that they're saying are going to go

away are fake jobs. They're not they're not real jobs in that they don't actually need to exist to do something productive. They exist because they're politically necessary. Like do you think the dock workers that threaten to go on strike every 5 years are that essential? Or could we automate our ports like China has done? Like we could automate them. We've still got the fake jobs. That technology has existed for a long time. Why does that not apply to the white collar work that uh you know they talk about in this report? >> I think that's an excellent point like uh like some things just don't change even though technology can theoretically change them. Uh and you know human psychology doesn't change. U regulatory capture doesn't necessarily change. Um I guess I guess are there I know you

guys spend all your time most of your time thinking about crypto but in in your PA um you know h how do you position against that because look my house view is like VA is only going to continue to go up because the world just sort of became more uncertain and uh it whether whether it actually becomes in practice more uncertain or the market perceives it to be more uncertain it doesn't matter it just will be more uncertain. Um, and so go long V and you know there's I think a couple of things that you want to own if that's the case. Um, but obviously like you know the the more simplistic assessment when it comes to framing it under the crypto lens is that crypto is just one of those industries

that is hyper sensitive to everything else that's going on in the world. And then so good or bad going up and what you saw in you know the SAS apocalypse of a massive rerating and then it's like every week we go through a particular sector where AI is going to kill it. Um I think like Howard Marx describes it's like the market pendulum swings to extremes and we see that time and time again in crypto. I mean Tar I think you guys have a really steady hand when it comes to investing in this asset class.

Um, but I'm curious, AI, I think, does introduce a little bit more uncertainty into the world. Is is there anything that you feel very good about in terms of having in your portfolio that weathers against that uncertainty? >> Uh, yeah. So, I think you asked PA because I I think that's a a better way to answer this question, right? Our mandate as a firm is to do crypto exposure. So like that's what we're going to do um in the fund. However, PA I think about it a little bit differently, right? I I think about one if AI is this hugely deflationary force

that means having some cash or longer duration fixed income is valuable. Uh because in a deflationary world that cash becomes way more valuable. So I I do have a bucket of that. Um, two, and this is the more exciting fun part, is I have uh a bucket of really moonshot type deep tech bets. Things that, you know, if um people pitched a few years ago, you'd say this is nuts. Uh like this requires like five compounding innovations in order for you to actually deliver a product to market. And now with AI, I think that the timeline to those innovations has decreased because

the most effective researchers and the most effective engineers have just gotten a hundred to a thousand times better and more productive because of this technology. And so I think those bets are underpriced right now. Uh and so I own a lot of those like deep tech type bets. Some are public biotech uh like you know protein unfolding kind of stuff like research new molecule discoveries. >> Yeah that that's a big category of it. Um you know another theory that I have is I think we're going to see AS6 everywhere uh because chip design has been one of the most human capital constrained things out there. So I think we're going to see A6 for every kind of

workload basically because you have AI designing the chips now and now a tape out goes from costing you know $50 million to I don't know a fraction of that. Um also nuclear I think nuclear has a ton of opportunity not just because of demand side because of AI but also I think the innovations to build safe nuclear reactors will be uh faster because of AI. Um I think longevity there there's a whole set of like super moonshotty uh kind of opportunities that I think are exciting. I think crypto is really exciting because once again I think it is the lowest friction way to trade or

have capital formation and I think AI is going to prefer the lowest friction way to do those things. It's not going to go through the high friction uh kind of easy UX way. Um it's going to go through the most efficient path. Uh and then the last part of my portfolio, the the last quarter is real estate because uh AI is not making any more land. But uh so >> wait a minute. You're telling me my Dententraland is not going to be worth more? >> [ __ ] man. I wouldn't bought.

Do >> you still own that stuff, >> man? If I told you how many wallets I discover from time to time and I, you know, metad and and no, what is it? A golem, man. Like, it's just relics of the past. But, um, anyways, they're NFTTS now >> for now. actually very similar to to how you described it. Um probably for the same set of reasons. I was going to point to a quote that I had I just tweeted last week after listening to that Dan Suntime podcast. He was talking about how this he has these conversations with some of his privates company founders where he says, "I have tons of cash flow and no terminal value. You have tons of you

have no cash flow and tons of terminal value." Um and I was just thinking about that and I was like that's a probably a good framework to think about for all of us in terms of our personal investing. Um, you know, I think having a ton of cash in this world, you know, park it in T bills or whatever personally makes sense because as you can see, there's a lot of dispersion in the market. And when I look at even the the SAS universe, I can make a case that you're looking at some companies that are deeply undervalued at this point. Uh, they're not going to like, you know, disappear over the next five years and they're generating so much cash. So anyways, point is there's a lot of dislocation and having liquidity allows you to potentially take advantage of some of that in the liquid side. And if

you're going to be illquid, I think you go out in duration and and make the moonshot bets. And the simplest simplest framing I have there is like, okay, let's assume we get to like this um world of AGI and everyone's got a ton of free time and ton of resources. What are the things humans would want to do? I don't know, space travel seems to be one. We want to go colonize other planets. We want to live longer. That seems to be one. Um, and we'll want to do sort of these in-person experiences. Um, you know, I don't have an investment in this, but I think it's interesting. This comedy, Colossal Biosciences, I think we'll want Jurassic Park maybe.

Right. So, um, I just think like I, you know, it's kind of like consuming sci-fi and then imagining that. Um, and then finding interesting bets to make there. >> Yeah. Everything in the middle is just kind of noise, you know, like private equity, like you know, all this stuff is just kind of noise for me at least. >> Yeah, I think the the there will always be an opportunity to have excess returns because humans um I think like human psychology is always very near-term focused and there's also some things that just never change like human humans will always want to differentiate and especially when you have more excess time. Um, and you know, like you can make the case like if you're going to

have hold one stock. I remember being asked that question time and time again when I would be interviewing at investment firms and I'd be like probably like Hermes kind of like company like it's just humans. That's like I can always bet on the fact that humans will will will always like a Vavlim good because it's it's the purest expression of like I'm different and humans want to differentiate. Like you know to your point I do think having cash is very useful because there's going to be continue to be dislocations where the market just treats everything in in SAS land the same. But like you know you remember when the Apple watch came out and like people were saying oh like luxury watches are dead like Geneva is dead as we know it. Switzerland craftsmanship. I think cra craftsmanship if anything it had the opposite effect.

Like there's just humans crave more of the nostalgia factor. Rav and I have talked about that a lot. Like just invest in those sectors that are really really AI resistant. Um versus like I don't know I don't know if I want to buy SAS at four times because the per seat model is going away. And like one thing is clear like credit cards don't work. If you want to pay like on a on a like an agentic workflow kind of style you'd probably use stable coins. So I think I think we're on the right side of the trade like go long stable coin adoption. How you express that may not be buying Pump or Salana. It might require rethinking how we like go along the stable coin thesis.

>> Yeah. In a lot of ways what you don't own is just as important as what you do own. Uh right. In this world of um extremely passive investing, people just own everything. And I think you can outperform by just not owning certain things you think are going to do poorly. You don't have to specifically own the biggest winners. I like to own the biggest winners. Like that's what I want to do. That's what I enjoy doing all day every day. But I do spend all day every day thinking about investing and thinking about markets.

Some of the listeners here may not do that. And you know the very simple um kind of heruristic I would offer them is sometimes not owning things that you think are going to do poorly is enough to generate outperformance. >> Hey TA you're inverting right there. I love it for now. I mean we've covered a lot. I mean I know coming into discussion we wanted to talk about sectors that we like AI in the conversation obviously stable coins the state of crypto I don't know if we've touched much on just as we think about rounding out the discussion like things we have learned um or things that perhaps you you really want to

continue to double click on as you say Prennav like hey I feel like I really need to level up and have a better understanding of or things you're really paying attention to u just kind of curious as we round out the discussion like just if we could focus on on that. >> Yeah, I'll just keep one simple one. Um I never used to pay attention to technicals. I always used to think the people that draw lines on charts are kind of silly. I still do think a lot of that is very silly. Draw drawing lines on charts to then say when you buy sell something. Um, but I was just, you know, spending some time over the holidays thinking just listening to a bunch of old Stanley Ducken Miller content and I heard him say something in one of his older interviews that I thought was interesting. Uh, he said he

never usually um looks at the fundamentals first. He always looks at the chart and if the chart makes sense, then he'll go look at the fundamentals. Now, I don't know if I'll go to that extreme, but I did build a bunch of tools for myself thanks to AI on what are the best kind of technicals to map out over if your investment time horizon is 12 months, right? So, if your investment time is in a day, then you're you're using a whole bunch of different things versus if your horizon's a year or two years. Um, and and and let the market essentially be the signal to you if something's working or not. So, you know, that way you don't end up with a completely contrarian portfolio where maybe one thing works and nine things

don't work and ultimately you make no money like that it avoids that outcome in in a world we're in today because the the world is telling you where capital wants to flow and and using that as a signal is often helpful. So anyways point is I've built a bunch of tools for myself to look at technical indicators over a 12-mon time horizon which I wouldn't have done you know a year ago. So, is this me reading into it saying you're long copper and just not not overthinking like the most crowded trade now? Like you're just long copper and call it a day. The same way you could have been long like that there's an element of like you want to be smart.

You want to feel like you're smart when you make money. >> Yeah. And some of this is it feels dirty when you're just it's like truly it can't be this easy buying Nvidia and holding it for the last three years. And yet that was a winning >> um feel like you know I've se I've seen a lot of family offices especially second third generation folks that they want to feel relevant you know they want to feel alive so they go and do and buy the [ __ ] that Goldman offloads to them that no one else wants you know and the reality is just dude just punt the NASDAQ and the S&P and just focus on like having more free time to live your life you know but very few people resist like just you know anyways um funny story on that Actually, this links back

to memecoins uh to me because both of those things that you're describing, memecoins and uh you know, third gen family office guy who who's buying structured products from Goldwin because he wants to feel smart and and how he makes money is both entertainment finance. And what we're seeing is the democratization of entertainment finance. Before you need to have like a nine figure family office in order to do entertainment finance and now you just need a Salana wallet and load up Pump Fun and you're off to the races or you load up a prediction market or something, right? Like it's kind of funny how that has now become way more accessible.

>> Yeah. >> The one thing I was going to say is I I you know we all use a lot of AI tools, right? and and I asked um one of those one of the models I use the most um like I've spent a lot of time with you tell me some areas of improvement for myself or like like you know blind spots for me uh and what it suggested actually was that because it knows all my background and how I analyze things and all these things. It said you're very analytical and you lean heavily on me for a lot of the analysis but you should trust your instinct because that's what got you here. So one of those lessons for me I need to trust my instinct more.

>> True. I mean I I I have resisted my like for writing. I do wonder in a world where like if I continue to I I've now used AI more in my writing and the benefit of all that is I've been able to write more and I stopped writing because it was like the editing process I dreaded and now it's actually really really useful. But I do think like is my skill actually going down? Like my my critical thinking and and am I now second-guessing myself? Like we all second guess ourselves. Like I I think people would say like with more money or success, you're always going to second guess yourself. Like Stan even talks about it in that like Morgan Stanley interview. But but now it's like AI is taking that to a whole new extreme that I want to stop myself from like

constantly prompting the AI like hey polish this or is this like am I it's like no sometimes you just just do it. You know it's you know it's human to make mistakes. Uh, too sharp. Same question to you that I asked Prrenav. Um, I can rehash it if it got lost in the train of thought, but it it was really more around stuff that you're really focusing on um on a personal learning basis or or maybe things that you've learned over the last six months um um that have been really instructive or where you're spending most of your time. just very open-ended question.

>> Um so I think AI is the been the driving force for all of us on learning over the last six months. Uh, one of the things that I've been really excited about and I've been doing uh, personally is uh, just focused on health fitness and using AI tools to help me construct experiments for myself, right? Like one of my beliefs and I used to be in the clinical research world before I was in crypto. So I had some background in this. One of my beliefs is like clinical research is uh, an industrial age process. It's designed to look at what works for everybody across a large set of people.

And I think you know running experiments on a one of one is really interesting and powerful like does this work for me and help me design that experiment. Um so been using a lot of tools for that. I've also then been using it not just for health but for other types of coaching, right? Uh where I can just get like the world's best expert uh in order to help me improve and get better. And I think that's what you're going to see with an AI world is you're going to see people who have motivation and desire to improve get get better way faster at a whole variety of things. Right? uh prrenov built these tools so you can

track charts. I've done a bunch of you know um professional related stuff with AI tools too to okay now I can basically build on the fly cellside research reports for any asset that I want based on a certain template uh and have you know separate agents checking each other right like that's really powerful and and uh really cool to be able to just like say oh give me the research report for XYZ and I just get that um but then I also think uh it's super valuable personally uh and uh you know I'll I'll end with this Santi you mentioned that we've been particularly stable hands at investing through all these market

cycles and I think a part of that really comes down to personal psychology and a big part for me at least is having a diversity of identities if your only identity is I'm an investor and then when the portfolio is going down and the market's going down, you're going to feel like [ __ ] and that's going to drive shitty decision-m. It's going to mess up your psychology. However, if you have a diversity of identities, that makes you much more secure and it allows you to zoom out and say, "Okay, well, this part is not going so well right now." That's okay. All right. I don't feel like my sense of my entire sense of identity is threatened because we're in

a bare market. I'm not going to make some overly emotional decision. I can zoom out and then I can be much more rational because of that. And so I think that's been a big part of our success. It's the most important thing I think we've touched on this pot. It's like know what your identity is and it's not tied to a number or a particular ind. I had to go to therapy in like one of the bare markets. I think it was 2017 and this psych like therapist in New York was like so tell me who you are and I started rambling like oh you know I used to work here and that and I do this and I'm an investor and he's like dude you've spent and he was quiet for 30 minutes and he said you've you've told

me nothing about who you are like go and actually write it down and you come back to me and tell me who you are and I had to do that in many ways to like just become better at everything otherwise you're just stuck in your what your identity is it's just not a number it's not like just what you do but you know unfortunately it's easy it's it's easier to identify yourself with a particular, you know, type of work or a number, but uh yeah, no, uh certainly very good advice. All right, gents. Well, um this has been a great discussion. Thanks for coming on. I hope we can do it again later this year. Um if if the world doesn't blow up, but uh but uh definitely appreciate you guys taking your time. I know you're guys super busy

and and I think this is a really good treat for our listeners. >> Thanks, man. >> Thanks for having us. And I don't think the world's going to blow up. So, >> you said the phoenix is rising now. So, that's we'll hold you to that. So, here we go. All right, everyone. Thanks. Thanks so much for listening. Um, we'll come back to you guys with a weekly roundup. Um, and see you next time.