Why Crypto Is Losing to AI in the Capital Wars

Transcript

The reason crypto is doing so poorly overall is just because of the macro condition and capital rotation to AI instead of crypto and and DeFi and all this stuff. SpaceX, Anthropic, [music] uh, OpenAI. One of them by itself is almost the entire market cap of like the [music] entire crypto industry. That's insane. >> What do you think are the reasons that FRA has lasted and survived? Anything you can share with us about your upcoming web 2 or Trafy integrations? We have some a lot of stuff in stealth unlike before which was all all all public. I think that the stable coin market cap is going to go to like 700 billion. It's going to double in a matter of like couple months rather than a couple years.

Welcome back to the fully vested podcast. I'm one of your co-hosts Patrick here with Defi Dave. >> Hello. >> Today our what's up Dave? And today our guest is Sam Casmian, founder and CEO of Fracks. How's it going, Sam? >> Hey. Hey guys, it's uh great to be here. >> Awesome. So, I think people have been around DeFi for a while, probably familiar with you and FRA, but why don't you uh give us an introduction? >> Yeah, for sure. Uh well um FRA is a stable coin issuure and uh DeFi platform and most recently a payment platform and uh Neo Bank. Um a lot of people probably

know Fracks. We kind of invented the hybrid uh algorithmic and and crypto uh stabilized stable coin. Um a lot of curve strategies things like that. Um we have deprecated that uh stable coin and we actually launched uh FRAUSD um which is a genius compliant stable coin backed by compliant RWAS and we have uh an ecosystem around that flagship stable coin um savings vault uh SRAXUSD um a lot of new payment systems uh neo bank features um call it fraet it's uh basically full um system for uh streaming t will yield to uh users or uh institutional accounts. Um fiat on

offramping, branded stable coin issuance. Um and it's been good. We we've uh issued branded stable coins that are backed by FRAUSD streaming uh T bill rates for Sonic uh Somnia. We're talking to a lot of people and then FRAUSD itself. we can get into the strategy there. But we've kind of grown up a lot since the days of um you know this kind of risky novel um stable coin that uh was very successful. Um and now we're basically growing in a lot of different places and avenues in the stable coin space. I like to call it the kind of stable coin operating system full stacks.

>> Yeah. I I had this as the last question but now that you mentioned it because FRA has been around for a long time, five and a half years. uh you've gone through multiple market cycles, lots of ups and downs and a lot of different iterations. What do you think are the reasons that FRA has lasted and survived as compared to a lot of these other stable coins that you know that may have like had their time in the sun but now they're either gone or not even an impacted player in the space anymore? Yeah, I mean well the honestly the first thing the foundation of it is is based on the the team the organization um and and how we've structured everything and the fact that you know I'm uh super bullish continue to be this like career uh to make this a huge huge

thing um for me for the team for uh everyone there and I think kind of gets into kind of the recent token equity stuff and like how these things work And also just like needing to um adjust to realities in terms of products, right? Like uh one of the things is is that you know stable coins as a as an asset class are uh different structurally, right? So if you don't have the right product and you want to be in the stable coin issuance or payments or these kind of games, um you kind of have to understand that the base asset that everyone's going to be using as payment or quoting or liquidity or on lending markets, it essentially has to be a quasi riskless

stable coin. Um and then you can have yieldbearing uh either vaults or tokens, whatever you want to call them, right? But they can actually take uh risk for uh good riskadjusted yields, right? Like so so when you think about something like um Athena, the places that use USDE, they they usually get streamed the the uh you know the carry trade or the underlying whether it's on centralized exchanges or other places. So it's quasi SUSD, right? it's just that the the token is uh slightly just called something else, right? Or in or in like uh lending leverage places, it's just SUSD cuz the accounting is easier,

right? So there's just these two stable coin views where if you have a risky stable coin, you must pay interest for it uh or some kind of reward because it does not make sense for banks, institutions, payment processors, merchants, all of these things that are now finally because of the Genius Act, right? that that legalizes some form of stable coins, right? They're not going to take a really risky stable coin and hold it on their balance sheet uh without getting paid some some risk, right? Uh interest riskadjusted yield. And so that's one of the main things is adapting to the current market structure uh is important and actually being able to build in the new realities and kind of um you know think about where the

market is going um what the market wants right like I I totally respect you know liquidity and and bold and like the decentralized stable coin thesis um it's not the largest stable coin thesis right like the there is not going to be um merchants and things quoting in decentralized stable coin just cuz structurally they can't and they they don't uh they don't want to right um so I I think the main part of your question is it's team and and structure and and leadership um a lot of these projects they launch a token uh team either sold or they just went off to do other things or it was just a you know one uh I call

it one cycle goal projects. Um, and then the the second part is after you've figured out how to keep the organization long-term oriented, which is a very big thing with Fracks, like we're not going anywhere, right? We're going to continue to build. Um, is to actually build the right thing, right? Which is step two, but most of the projects fall off at at step one. Um, but you you see stuff like a, right? Like people forget it was a 2017 18 ICO project. It was called Ethalin originally, right? And they've they've had this resurgence since I think about like two years ago, right?

Two two and a half two years ago where they've really solidified themselves as uh the lending market. And so, um I think it's just making sure that you continue to build when when the time is right. Build the right thing. Uh it's kind of like also what we talked about with poly market, right? Like we we talked about this Dave where uh you know prediction markets for the longest time uh was basically something everyone continued to try and and fail at right like Augur was the first um ICO in in ETH. It was like I think 2016 that's like that's a decade ago right and then they they launched like their uh protocol and then they did the V2 like

forking prediction market thing in like 2018 or 19 or something like that. There was like Omen, other ones just like I you know I forget all their names and then they all pivoted out right and and Poly Market was started in 2020 right by by our friend Shane um and uh he credit to him for the first couple years there there wasn't really significant you know traction or or like volume or TVL or anything to put that on the map right it it was it was a cool project it was something that that he was working on if he had pivoted, if he was a single cycle uh project, right? Uh it it would if if he was like, "Hey, look, this doesn't

seem like it's going anywhere after 2 to 3 years. Uh you know, um everyone's tried this. Why did I try it? Like, I tried it and it didn't go anywhere." But he kept at it. He had the conviction to be long-term oriented. And then when the market structure was correct, when everyone uh wanted to use these prediction markets with stable coins, no complicated like weird cryptoeconomic forking or like using a utility token. It was just like here's your dollars, put it in here there from your non-custodial wallet, right? And and the and the contracts are onchain smart contracts. They're they're by uh each market individually. Right structure, right time, right place. uh and he kept at it and and look look you know the

rest is history right and so I think the important thing is knowing that you're building for the the the right things uh at the right time with the right people th those three things are very important >> yeah and I can speak on the team part because we've worked together in the past um and a lot of people that have worked on Fracks and other projects they've been around uh they stayed uh I think FRA and all the other projects you've worked on has like the highest highest retention rate I've seen out of any place uh in crypto. Um honestly, and that says a lot about you and everything you've built.

>> Yeah, thanks, man. I mean, it Yeah, like you said, it speaks for itself. We're very selective of who we want to work full-time with us. Um we're only 11 uh people full-time. And so, uh I think it's it's really important where each individual person that comes on is literally 10%, you know, of of the organization. So they have a a really really big impact. So you should be very very selective. So I think that that's a that's a very important thing. >> Yeah, absolutely. Uh something you mentioned uh in your answer there are token equity splits uh which has been a topic of conversation again uh recently and you know Patrick and I were talking about this earlier and we're curious

your thoughts on this especially how it relates to the frack token and um basically this new generation of projects that are coming and how they should think about this. Yeah, I mean I this is a huge huge thing in in the industry and most recently with with Venice, but I I want to make my answer pretty general. I I don't actually uh have a specific view on on like Venice, I like the project. Eric is an an incredible founder. So actually this probably uh if there's one team or a person uh that that will make good on these promises is like Eric Borhees.

Like I think the first thing actually to uh part of this answer is to give some uh background or history lessons for people that might or might not remember. The first biggest issue uh was block one and EOS. I don't know you you remember this really well. >> Oh yeah. >> Yeah. Right. I don't know Patrick if if if you do, but in the ICO era in 2017 and 18 uh EOS did the first uh ICO uh there was $4 billion where they credit to them. I'm not no value judgement.

They they were very very serious and and clear the EOS token is a token. It's a product. Block one is like the developer of the EOS software. Um, and you know, we're selling EOS tokens for the getting a distribution and then when the community launches the the blockchain, they will obviously coordinate around a genesis distribution that is uh, you know, firmly rooted in in the fact that it was um, it was through the ICO, right? And they uh obviously like I I think my personal opinion again like val value judgment aside I think EOS really had the chance of being the Solana of today. Um unfortunately it didn't pan

out that way and a part of the reason I think actually is this token equity split situation because there was a private company behind it. Um and then the obviously SEC and uh regulatory like um ambiguity there, right? They they had like a uh investigation, they paid a fairly small fine compared to the size of the ICO. I think it was like 267 million for a 4 billion ICO. Um and then in the agreement they it it was like to prove that that this was a decentralized thing and it was not related to the equity holders or the block one. they they said that they will not work on the EOS specification and software to to

prove that you know this is not uh like block one uh anything there right and that was the first kind of um kind of I I don't know if you want to call it drama or or like situation um and ever since then there's been like different basically situations where these things kind of creep up on you. That's my view. It's not that uh you know you think that oh you can you know navigate this and these things creep up on you in the sense that if you don't from from the very beginning lay a solid foundation against the uh conflicting

incentives then they will slowly slowly creep up on you. And um one of the things actually that um surprised me, so I will give credit to UniS Swap Labs and and Uni um they I I forget the year. I think it was like 2023 or or maybe it was like 2024. They raised a massive equity round for like Uniswap Labs, right? And it was like over 100 million or something like that. Um, and then from that moment on, uh, I said, "Okay, um, there's going to be kind of a block one EOS like situation where they're going to have to make the equity very valuable, right? when they launched like uni chain it was like uh the

incentives were in uni tokens but then the sequencer fees went like majority or like entirely I I forget the exact split but majority for sure to the token like unis swap labs cuz they they were the entity running the sequencer the front-end fees went to the equity holders the protocol fee switch which was like never really turned on right uh was the thing that was going to uh the equity uh sorry the token and then last Uh it was I think earlier this year actually they did a really respectable thing where they actually said you know what we're going to deprecate the equity uh even though we did the equity raise everything goes to the UNI token um that's very difficult to do after you've

built the actual incentives into it where you have investors of the equity um I don't know how they structured that I forgot if they like took UNI tokens from the foundation um which I think is the right call and then like distributed and then and then basically essentially deprecate the equity. Um, usually that doesn't happen. Usually the the EOS kind of situation where things diverge uh happens I think and and like actually related to like FRA FRA is only one token. It's it's the the FRA token. Uh ticker used to be FXS. Now we upgraded it to FR AX FRA just so it's like very clear now with the new stable coin and everything. Um, we have a bunch of products, right? And and like we

literally don't tokenize them. It's all the FRA token. Um, because our stable coin is uh genius compliant and we want to get it licensed and we have these deals with uh public companies that we're going to announce and other things. We need accounts. They they they don't open accounts for uh you know a DAO. So we have a US entity, right? US entity has to have equity. But from the very very beginning we made it very clear that this is a public benefit corporation and its bylaws. It's not going to acrue value. And in fact, we've constantly been thinking like and one of the ideas I've had and and you know legal innovation is slow but constantly

been thinking how can we further prove that not just say it but saying it is important right if you say it but how can we prove it and like one of the ideas that I had was uh one way to solve the token equity kind of situation is that uh you the the company the labs co always has in its bylaws a onetoone swap of equity for tokens. Um and so saying that if you have like 10% of the token supply for example, you you will you could give it to the company and earn uh get minted 10% shares outstanding, right? So you have 10% of the the company ownership and and vice versa,

right? If you have 10% of the company, uh you can come and get 10% of the tokens and essentially prove legally that anyone, you know, investor law is required in KYC, right? But but that's that's fine cuz uh other people can do this ARB if they really think that, you know, there's value occurring to the token, right? Uh or or the equity. Um anyone can come and do this and it's kind of like a curve pool, right? But it's like >> like like one to one. Um I think that something like that I'm not a lawyer obviously this is not like um advice to do this but but something like this architecturally where you actually say look if if you want equity come give us

tokens we'll give you equity right once once you have uh equity if you want tokens come come give the equity uh you know burn it you know give it to the company again and then uh we'll give you tokens I think until something like this or like a standard like this maybe clarity will uh you know allow something like this um to to happen. It's always going to be kind of um weird, right? Like for the Venice situation, um I think it's interesting because I I saw Hib and and Rob's comments about it. Um, I think that the the interesting thing is they're very clear and I know I know Eric and

and Venice and stuff have been very clear that the token is not like equity like or something like that. It's it's compute uh like compute time uh credits essentially or or something like that. And um and then they it's like basically a debt denominated in like uh GPU tokens. It's not equity, right? Um, I think it's kind of um weird though that part of their answer was that they can't do the thing that they want to do because like clarity is not passed or or or like the law. So, they were kind of saying that if in an ideal world if it

wasn't for the laws, they agree that there's a problem and they would just do it all in in tokens. So if I understand what what like they they were saying correctly. Um, and that kind of is the point, right? The kind of the point is uh there's this thrust where people want this to be and and sounds like they also want this to be ideally equity like, but because the laws don't allow it, it's like structured as this kind of senior debt kind of credit for uh some kind of liability of like AI uh output tokens or inference, right? Um, that's kind of interesting because in in an ideal

world, you you would just actually figure out how to do the right thing as best as you can even given the uh unknowns. Um, and there is another point I think that not enough people have like talked about, which is even if clarity fixes all of this stuff and then tokens are uh, you know, perfectly fine to be equity like or or whatever, it's a two-way street. some some buyers like institutional buyers or like uh partners that that want equity exposure even if clarity is passed a lot of these like public companies uh are

like I I don't know what a token is like like we can be equity investors like we we know what a a security is we we can we can buy equity and even if you're like no no no this is this is equity there was a law passed like LA like last year and and like it has the but but you have to like hold it in like only these special like sites Coinbase or Kraken or or whatever not like Schwab or or whatever. Uh that doesn't really work. you you become uh there there's a disadvantage there, right? And so we know this for a fact because as we sign deals with large uh enterprises or corporations for FRAUSD, the the like stable coin and and our products, some

of them are potentially interested in being uh equity like holders or like like exposure to Fracks, but we can't tell them buy the token because they don't actually know how to do it. So, we have to actually solve this problem for them. We either have to buy them the tokens that hold it, which is what we're currently like uh exploring because again, we we don't really have equity in terms of like we can't just give them the equity of the uh company for the exact cuz like the the burns go to the the token, right? Um, and I think the final end goal again is there's got to there's going to have to be some kind of

oneto oneness of like the the the security certificate and the and the digital uh token. Um, unless the token is just a tokenized security. This sounds like the stable coinization of equity >> with the the funny thing is like is is that I think like either either the tokens will become like securitize like you know their their public equity or there's going to have to be some kind of like equity to token kind of like mechanic so that people or entities that want to hold equity can physically hold the

certificate and then most majority people globally can hold the token. But anyway, the the the thing is it's been it's been something that's been a huge huge constant issue, but I think we're close to solving it. Um and and for FRA, it's it's always the token. It's 100% only the token. Um we stand by that. Um we are going to figure out a way to prove that um that's regulatory compliant. I kind of lean to this kind of onetoone kind of uh token, you know, kind of uh equity curve pool, so to speak. [laughter] >> It's interesting how it seems like um huge amount of the legal engineering surrounding crypto companies and the

financial engineering with tokconomics basically came about because couldn't have that equity-like tokens in the past and all these protocols had to figure out like how are we going to make this token valuable if we can't make it equity? >> Yeah. Like it it's also like it's like everyone kind of knows that governance rights means some kind of some kind of rights that are not like necessarily equity rights, right? But uh burns or or fees are some kind of uh dividend or or like buyback and uh stock like repurchase. But it's it's been a constant issue. Um, but one of the

things that's important is I do think that there has to be some way for like a securities certificate of like a labco or something or or or just tokenizing that that that's your token, right? Um, but then the issue is it's it's whitelisted I think, right? Like um so the the issue is you have to figure that out and how you're going to do it. >> Yeah. No, absolutely. Um, it's funny when it comes to equity, uh, there's a reason why equity exists, um, and has existed for so long and it's been able to acrue value for a number of reasons.

And one of them, I mentioned this in the last pod, is because the entities that can buy and hold equity, whether they're ETFs, endowments, pension funds, you have this like constant bid on these equities. Um, tokens are a relatively new asset class and other than retail and like a few institutions that are on the risk curve, uh, there's not really a bid on them. There's indirectly a bid from these endowments and pension funds that allocate into LPS, but it isn't like a direct bid and there's only so much uh, capital out there. Uh, crypto and tokens have been fantastic and revolutionary for capital formation. Uh but when it comes to retaining value, uh only a few tokens have made it out. Uh

you have like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Salana, Hyperlquid, but the rest haven't yet. And a reason for that is we're still trying to figure out um kind of legally and regulatory wise how that can happen. Uh whether it's with the G with with the Clarity Act or without the Clarity Act. Uh we'll see how that happens. I know right now it's still up in the air. Uh, and you mentioned it in your last question. Do you think it matters that the Clarity Act passes or not? Uh, I've been asking this question to like a few of our guests and a few people. I've been getting mixed results depending on whether they're a builder or, you know, an investor or not, but I'm curious your thoughts. Do you think it matters if the Clarity Act passes?

>> Yeah, I mean, it would be huge if it if it does. And I was hoping it it would uh like by now before the August recess, but I think the the Iran war kind of took a backseat to every kind of like legislative priority that that they had, which is kind of unfortunate. Um it can still pass before midterms. Um I think if it doesn't pass by midterms, uh you know, the the chances of it are pretty low. One thing I I think which is my macro thesis is that I think people are forgetting that the reason crypto is doing so poorly overall even the tokens that you know you're like has has made

it out is just because of the macro condition and capital rotation to defy uh to to AI instead of crypto and and DeFi and all this stuff right like if you think about it one of the three IPOs right of this year. SpaceX, Anthropic, uh, Open AI, one of them by itself is almost the entire market cap of like the crypto industry. I think SpaceX is even larger, right? Like the other ones are like a trillion or something. They're very close, right? Crypto is like two trillion right now. That's insane. That's insane for like one company, right, to have a higher market cap uh for like the the entire crypto industry.

I think that until that capital rotates a little bit out uh just just think of the size of the capital, right? The size of the capital is is unbelievably large. Um I think that people forget that those thing that rotation will will move literally the the market cap of the industry from like two to four trillion, right? Like two to five trillion. Um the other thing on on stable coins that a lot of people ask uh is you know when will there be a lot of like growth because of the genius act um I personally my thesis is is a step function uh kind of growth where it's not always just going to be linear like

slow like like like this. It's it's going to be like up and then and then like this and then up and then and and so the the reason I say that is we're talking to a lot of these public firms, institutions, I'm sure everyone is people saw the OpenUSD stuff and once all of those things are out they're rolled out our partnerships this consortium for OpenUSD all of these things one of these companies can literally mint like 2 three billion of like a stable coin whether it's like fra USD O USD I don't know like the the way that uh the Emirates minted 2 billion USD1 right if we forget [laughter] backtory of it right but these kind of

mints like even just one of them right would put a stable coin in like the top five or like top seven or something right and I think we're going to see that on like a weekly basis when like JP Morgan decides to actually test stable coins for its like crossber payments or part of its internal banking uh when Visa itself instead of using just the USDC like card program right they they actually mint uh even.5% of their like balance sheet right on OSD or whatever they they they decide to do right these mints are huge right like one mint would be like a top five stable

coin top 10 stable coin market cap And when we get that happening, uh, which I I think probably, um, we're about like 9 to 12 months away for that to become like a somewhat regular occurrence. We haven't even really had one to be honest. Well, well, maybe maybe you could say the USD1 thing was one. Um, I think that the stable coin market cap is going to go to like 700 billion instead of like 300 something, right? it's going to double in a matter of like uh a couple months rather than a couple years. Um >> and then everyone will try to build a stable coin again. It's like, oh, stable coins are hot, blah, blah, blah.

>> Exactly. [laughter] Exactly. Like even more so than than they would say right now, right? And I think the same thing with like token prices. I think it's like a step function. When things rotate back, there's there's some regulatory clarity hopefully. But even if there's not, honestly, uh it's just it's just going to be a very fast rip, right? It it's not like uh oh, we're just like slowly growing, come back in a year, the price will like be like 30% every year for like 5 years straight. No, no, no. It it'll it'll be like 10x like in a 6 to9 month period and then it'll be like 5x in like the next 6-month period, right?

That that's my thesis. That's how I uh think about it. And that's why it's so important to uh like the the poly market example that that we were talking about earlier to not leave too quickly and and have conviction about it, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I feel like you people love to forget that we just had a step function in stable coins over the past couple years, right? Like we had it went from what 150 billion to 300 in in a year and a half. Um before we wrap it up, I want to make sure we get a chance to talk about Fracks and some of the stuff you've been working on. Um you mentioned some of these partnerships a few times in this uh interview. Anything you can share with us about your

upcoming web 2 or Trafy integrations. >> Uh yeah. Uh actually it's a it's a good segue to say like on the topic of kind of bringing it all together um of token equity all this stuff. One of the things is that we're going to start doing like end of quarter uh token holder kind of in investor uh like relations. There's a lot of tokens that have been pretty um uh you know uh trailblazing in this area like Ether like uh Sky is another one. they they do this call. We're going to professionalize it um even more in the sense that we're going to make these uh announcements of what what the what the revenue is, what what the deals are. Um

we have to get like permission on on like the the release of like the actual names and everything. So, we're going to try to do that for like the end of Q3. Um but basically the important thing is we have to professionalize both like the the value proposition of like FRA the token right for for token holders saying exactly uh what we're doing what the products are what uh the companies are right um and I think that that's really really important on the actual like products a lot of these are specific like public companies I think that that people have uh most likely heard about um and they want to do like a full

payment stack where their payins and payouts and their treasury is denominated in stable coins particularly fra USD cuz they're they're working with us right have uh deep integration in out uh at either point of sale or their customers and they're not just um like merchants they have unique specific uh industry needs right like a payment flow for a specific industry Whether it's like uh you know crossber shipping and container shipping, casinos and eye gaming or like let's say large real international real estate transactions.

These are all very different payment flows and they have different compliance needs and they have different types of ways of uh it's not like you could just put like a point of sale like uh little thing um and then be like oh this thing takes stable coins or something. they need it deeply integrated into their uh accounting workflows, compliance workflows uh and and their safe ways of holding hundreds of millions of of like FRAUSD or stable coins in general. Um those that's what we're building. And so we'll we'll announce the the names uh hopefully the the end of this quarter is is what our uh goal is in this um big kind of investor call. And uh I will say that that's kind of the advantage of

having uh a stable coin that is both you know genius compliant but also has DeFi features a savings vault so we can integrate with uh really good uh DeFi integrations. But if we just were a synthetic like digital dollar, right? Um we couldn't even be in this space, right? We we can't be like, "Hey, use our use our decentralized digital dollar." Oh, it's it's not actually redeemable for like uh fiat, right? Like you you have to like sell it into the curve pool, right, at N987 or whatever or like uh we can't give you fixed fees for like fiat rails because we we don't know the exact uh amount, right? Um so that doesn't work. So there there's a reason we structured

everything like this and uh I think people will see soon like the the people that we're working with um and everything is actually only possible because the Genius Act passed otherwise they wouldn't um all be exploring this. So uh yeah >> right on you mentioned the investor relations thing is that something you're doing for Fracks or something that you're launching as like a template that other people can use? >> Um so that's a great question. I hadn't thought about it for as like a template, but there is a structure to it. There is actually um I think the current ones which are really good by the way. They inspired us like Ether Fi Sky and stuff.

I think they're a little bit um you know informal which I think they will become more formalized but we're actually modeling it very similarly to like a quarterly uh investor call for public companies. Um and there's there's like there's a document that we'll publish like you know 2026 Q3 or or Q4 or whatever uh you know FRA token holder report uh directly by the the the FRA uh team right and it is a structure people can can follow um but we're building it specifically to our needs and hopefully uh it it becomes an industry standard you know with standards you you can't

tell people to follow the standard it has to just be good enough and everyone uh follows it if if they like it. >> Yeah. No, absolutely. Uh you said something in an earlier interview where uh equity is becoming more like crypto and crypto is becoming more like equity and I think this is one of the ways that crypto is becoming more like equity and how they present themselves. I think gone are the days of discords and telegram groups uh and people just asking there and it's just going to be much more professionalized and as it should be because uh you are how you present yourselves and so >> however >> however have you seen some penny stocks now have started doing uh their quarterly calls on Twitter spaces like

penny stocks that didn't previously have calls are doing them on Twitter spaces >> that's actually smart no I didn't >> but that makes sense for the penny stocks. Honestly, >> I that's what Dave and I had talked about a long time ago too, right? Like there was a time where people in crypto were like, "Oh, one day like the tokens will stop being super like volatile and like mature to like real like equities and stuff. Uh it actually it turns out like equities become like like shitcoins and they go up and down like 20 30%. This was like in Unreal, right? like 10 10 15 years ago if it equity went up by like 25% it I think it would hit circuit breakers no matter what like it would just there would be like a investigation

what why why is it up or down this much uh now it's just like sometimes it's like a common occurrence like like Jensen Wong like says some crazy thing with his leather jacket and like the Nvidia stock adds like hundreds of billions of dollars of of of market cap and um it's also like Dave was saying the the other way too some of the stocks become like shitcoins uh and and they meet in the middle a little bit. >> Absolutely. Um Patrick, did you have uh anything else? >> Uh no, but um it was really great to have you, Sam. Any final words, things you wanted to cover that we didn't get to today?

>> Um no, just uh you know, just like good old times with uh Defi Llama. you know, FRA is really uh excited to work with you guys on kind of these transparency dashboards, especially like as it pertains to our uh you know, investor kind of communications and everything cuz DeFi Loma is a pretty big part of the industry. Um, and for everyone listening, uh we're we're still here. We're we're building shipping uh and it's going to be a really fun H2 of 2026. Uh reach out uh get involved. We have some a lot of stuff in stealth like unlike before which was all all all public um and that now it's a little bit

more corporate but uh come uh talk to us check it out we can uh work together and uh some exciting stuff. So thanks for having me. >> Awesome. Thanks for coming on. >> Uh in a second I'm going to want uh you to share where people can find you. Uh before we close out I want to tell you a quick fun story. I probably mentioned this when I interviewed you on my channel a while back, but in 2021 in the depths of that mini summer bare market. Um, I I had no Twitter followers at the time. I won a contest to pick the best FRA interview question and I got like $50 or something and that formed like the core of my Avalanche portfolio for the second half of 2021. I mean, thanks to some strategic uses of it. So, so

I've always I've always uh been a fan of Fracks ever since that happened. >> Hell yeah. [laughter] >> That's a great story actually. Hopefully uh hopefully you rotated into a lot of good stuff. Um and uh yeah, we should maybe we should do a competition like that. Ask >> question. >> Yeah, I have another 2021 frack story. Um, and I remember in June when you guys had the M pool, um, I was farming the M frack pool right when that launched. And that was like right before M had its like run up in like July, August. Um, and that was a lot of fun. So, thank you for that.

>> The days, man. those were the I you know >> I keep thinking maybe it's because of how my brain works but I keep thinking if those market structures can somehow be brought into more modern uh use cases like like for example you know everyone uses these crypto cards right and and uh you know the etherfy card is a big one um you know there's others and stuff I wonder if there's ways you could actually make it more than just like cash back. You can actually have it end to end where uh the people that like deposit in the cards can actually lend

to these businesses at certain rates, right? and then they can spend uh at the and my my whole view is like can you use crypto to create new market structures where like you can actually unlock new behavior like like the M days, right? The M days were were crazy. I don't know if we'll be able to get that that degenerate, right? But like there's probably stuff that can be done that is really interesting that that hasn't been tapped into. And uh you know my my mind like like yours Dave always tries to blend the past with the present to see uh see what can be done.

>> Yeah. History doesn't repeat it rhymes. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. Um and as Pat said, well, where could we uh find you and learn more about Fracks? >> Uh same as same as always on X. Uh just Sam Casmian, my name. Uh same thing with Fracks. It's uh frainance uh or atfra um and then on Telegram. Uh we've always been there uh always will uh OG style. So uh hopefully see you on X or or TG. >> Awesome. Thanks for coming on.

>> Pleasure. Take care, guys.