DAS Recap | Roundup

Transcript

by the numbers quantitatively like 50% larger than any D in history um qu qualitatively it was the first time death as an event has ever broken into like the crypto native sphere which is a really cool feeling Hey Ron if you have been listening to Empire you know that Santi and I are fed up with unaffordable fees and frustrating transaction speeds that make the onchain experience basically unusable so the arbitrum team reached out and they showed us the platform they showed us what you can do on arbitrum whatever you're doing you can experience frictionless transactions at lightning speed on arbitrum so head over to portal. arbitrum doio and check it out what's up everyone before we jump

into today's episode I'm excited to share Empire's first ever security partner Harpy is the best tool to prevent your wallet from theft in real time Harpy is not just a security solution they are a peace of mind solution but don't just take our word for it Harpy is the only wallet security solution that protected 100% of its users from attacks like The Ledger 1 and Q4 which was an offchain signature attack to learn more about Harpy click the link in the show notes or visit Harpy doio Empire this episode is brought to you by Supra an oracle provider across more than 50 different blockchains if you are building anything in crypto you likely need verifiable Randomness and you need oracles well for

Empire listeners Supra is now offering a limited deal it is 12 months of supra free for any Empire listener you can go to supra.com that's s.com blockworks limited time only go check it out thanks Supra for sponsoring Empire what's up everybody uh we are doing the Roundup today but it's really just a d recap because Santi my uh schedule got all screwed up because of Das which we want to recap here for you guys if you if you missed it we want to recap it if you made it it was awesome meeting a lot of you um was really one of the highlights of the year I think for me was was meeting a lot of you guys at the at the Empire Meetup which we can

talk about but Santi my friend how we doing doing right a bit tanned I guess dude you look like [ __ ] I am blushing I was overwhelmed by you know we've been doing this for what is it almost two years over two years Yeah March actually oh we man we totally missed our anniversary March of uh 2021 oh no three wait three years three years three years three years yeah yeah so we've know three years it took us a while to like get in the flow and swing um but I think this is the first time we really got connected to the people that have listened and honestly it's it's the most rewarding thing for me at least and I think you you also came to me first day right before my panel and we like like it's amazing to see like just

people really enjoying it and um yeah it's uh it's for me it's more more wholesome more fulfilling than anything else uh in what I do professionally I knew that people enjoyed the podcast I didn't realize the it was cool man yeah I mean I don't know I'm not going to share anyone's personal stories here but like there was this one episode we did with Joe maccan and I didn't realize how impactful that episode like that episode I think got several people who came up to me like that changed the course of their financial life as they told me um because they bought Bonk and it went up and you know into mecoin season like uh I don't know but it was really cool meeting everyone so what maybe let's

zoom out like what what were your thoughts on I want because we can talk about the Meetup in a little bit but like this was so you've been to permission list what were your thoughts on Das as an I don't think you've attended Das before no uh really really good crowd I mean obviously it skews institutional um investors Regulators companies so you know of course I don't have H you know the benefit of having attended other desk but other conferences in this moment I made an effort to go because we are like the ETF just got approved and it's in the sight guys right particularly for institutions and so uh it was useful to to attend the event and like get a feeling for that um

and of course we're in a bull market so conferences are always more chaotic but I think it was very the panels the caliber of the speakers was was very impact like in a couple days you could sort of for me I wanted to go out there to also from as an investor to understand the state of the market the sentiment out there um and to validate or invalidate certain ideas that I've had um and so I can get into a little bit more of what I mean by that but I think it was a very well organized event um someone did comment like there's too many suits I'm like well yeah that's like d you know right point of the event friend that's the point of the event so uh but it was it was also London in and

of itself is a good epicenter for just it is a very thriving crypto Hub it has been for a while so you did have a lot of the local companies or european based companies even kind of Eastern Co like come to to the event which is also pretty cool so yeah um I don't know what you felt about it but overall very um do you know we originally had this D in DC which was just a horrendous call and then you know we we were talking to all these sponsors actually and people were uh you know because basically early 2023 regulation was at the heart of the industry and so we were like oh let's put it in DC like that'd be cool go to the belly of the Beast all these sponsors like you know talk to all these all the crypto Brands they're like yeah

that's great you're doing it in DC I won't be there I'm not going there so then we finally we we called like three or four people we called I think it was Constantine from block Damon Jeremy from Jeremy air from Circle uh stonnie from a and we said if we do it in London will you guys like what do you what do you think they're like yes that is that is where you need to go so can you hear the sirens by the way no but you if you're recording in New York there's always Sirens or having a call it's like blasting outside by the way I'm sorry folks I'm uh I'm sick as a dog right now so I've uh not so I got back Thursday from l i I'll tell you about D in a second my thoughts on it I got back

Thursday landed at like 3 p.m. uh and I had to race back home because I was babysitting my niece and she's 15 months old and uh uh my wife's sister and her husband basically dropped this kid off with us and they left the kid for three days wow which is the first time in my life I have ever taken care of a baby and uh my wife and I are both sick are you more are you more now to have a baby after that uh this episode is dedicated to every parent in crypto out there like also any single parents like I don't I I truly don't understand how you do it I by by Sunday I was like take

this it was remarkable how hard it was yeah yeah yeah I I bought a when I was living in New York I got a French Bulldog and yeah I bought a baby I just I no no you adopt a baby Jason not buy a baby uh but I I bought a dog and yeah it's a it's a full-time job so what what happened to the French Bulldog French Bulldog is vacation imp permanently with my parents I was traveling so much he's living in a better life he is living a good life so anyways my thoughts on death I so for some context so blockworks launched we so Mike and I founded the business December 2017 we quit our jobs May of 2018 the first D

was the was May of 2019 um and it was the biggest thing we'd ever done we bet the whole company we bet every dollar in the bank account on this on the first Das if it if it worked we would have a business if it didn't work there would be no block works today we bet the entire company um and there's actually a funny story of that which I'll which I'll share which is that we hired this this woman Julie mirov who's currently runs still runs all of our events and it's just a an absolute stud and um she or before before the first Das we were hosting these little happy hours there were 6:00 to 10: p.m. and there would we would spend like 5,000 bucks pull in 15 to 20 and we'd net like 10 to 15 or 15 yeah around 10 to 15K and Mike and I were

stoked right we're only you know only employees of the business like you know it's like good money to be making and so we hired Julie to help us with the vent operations and she proposed a budget to Mike and I and the budget she proposed I think was 350k and at the time we had 300K in our bank account but Julie was like the first real employee that we hired and we were so nervous that she would quit if we uh her budget say yes or if we were like oh what like this budget's crazy so we just approved the budget on the spot and we basically Mike Mike looked at me went out for beers after he's like you better [ __ ] sell this thing uh he's like

I'll figure out everything else vent Ops with Julie ticketing go sell some sponsorships so ask anyway so I want to ask you a question around to give listeners perspective on how the industry is evolved I think it's useful to like look at it through a lens of like someone like you that has organized these conferences like what is like the first conference the first ass and that experience of going out talking to sponsors talking to large institutions the feedback the reception that you got then and how has it changed over the years particularly and especially now I'm kind of curious because you have to organize these well in advance we were not in the stateof the market we are today when you started planning D for this year so yeah maybe just give us a good inside view into how

how this all works yeah I mean I'm trying to pull up like you know the keynote the two Keynotes at D 2019 it was I've got our 2019 page pulled up it was the CTO of the dtcc and DJ Chan from a company in China called Fusion like it was like I mean yeah it was a the sponsors were dealbox Founders Bank Harbor hadera token IQ tokensoft seedcx total and a law and a law firm like we you know compies don't no longer exist by the way most of the companies no

longer exist um uh a lot some of them rebranded some of them got acquired most of them went under um but you know I remember sitting down with uh copper right copper huge multi you know unicorn company they've raised I think 500 million to date and we were trying to sell them on a sponsorship and their CEO basically said look we like we have six employees we just raised like our first million dollars like we can give you maybe 7K we're like 7K done and now you know now they've raised 500 million but yeah so that Das that first Das was a one day event it had 500 people this was our eth digital asset Summit uh so we've hosted seven dases in the past and both New York and London the biggest desk so

usually they have about 500 to 800 people very B2B very institutional the biggest ass in history before this was New York in 2022 that was like standing room only like really crazy was a two-day event this D for context again biggest one ever 1,200 people this was I think 1,700 or 1800 I haven't got the final report from the team I think between 17 and 1800 registrants uh three-day event and we yeah the the so the hotel made us stop selling these tickets we we capped out registration so it was easily I mean by the numbers quantitatively like 50% larger than any D in history um qu qualitatively it was the first time Das as an event has ever

broken into like the crypto native sphere which is a really cool feeling so for us like I've always felt like there's crypto Twitter there's permission list there's ECC there's Devcon there's you know there's all these events happening over here and then like blockworks has this like suit and tie event happening over here and it's been both fun and cool but also kind of annoying I'm like hey guys like you know pay attention to us over here and uh this was the first time in history that I think D broke through the kind of Rubicon into the Crypton native sphere um it the first time we've ever been able to get some of the huge names like Black Rock and Goldman and Marshall was and some of the largest allocators in the world and largest financial institutions but also we got most of the tier one D5 protocols there as well

which was which was really cool yeah yeah definitely I it was useful for me because I I got a chance to meet with a lot of the portfolio companies that I haven't caught up in a while I was able to have dinner with folks like stny and um others so it was really it's actually quite quite nice I would agree with you it's it's a good treat to mix both yeah um it was cool I mean we've also started like a lot of the first panels of the the opening panel at a lot of these events in the past for das was are the institutions coming or when are the institutions coming and we made a point I think Mike might have said this in his opening talk there's no longer for for for what five years since May of 2019 there's a question mark at the end of

that panel when are the institutions coming how will the institutions come in for the first time ever we felt pretty confident not adding a question mark at the end of that panel it said the institutions are here and uh that was just like a very symbolic moment I think for us so and it was just cool seeing yeah that was exciting it was cool seeing the different I mean the quality of new products in the industry is insane um I'm sure we'll see it you know 10x that at permission list in October but just the number of new products is insanely high it was cool seeing the themes I think there were a few like really clear themes there's always a few clear themes at every event that are talked about um like I think it at eth Denver is like modularity AI Bitcoin l2s

and reaking and at this I mean I'd be curious to ask you like did were there any like things that you like takeaways or topics or things that you think everyone was discussing um I think a lot of people are asking like where are we in the cycle the panel that I was I was at uh that was the bulk of the conversation centered around that because people really want to understand kind of that timing which is a very interesting but also not interesting question um by the way there are two panels that are there's a there's a there's a contest going on right now so we send out this uh we always send out a post event

survey day the event ends send this survey out and there's a contest happening I think between two panels for for panel of the event and it's down to you and uh who else was on your panel um Prav from Alexander and what's it Jordy yeah there's a debate happening or there's a contest happening it's that panel people are voting on his panel of the event verse the the live THX podcast with AI and Jonah and Mike so it's a he it's a heated battle I I I pinged you after I said hey we oughtta we we we missed the shot to do a live podcast and if oh that was such a botch that was a botch I would have I would have liked it

because who doesn't like to talk for more no I'm kidding because um I think it would be nice to have a there were a lot of fund managers there a lot of them when we think about observations most of them are still predominantly skewed to allocating to ethereum I continue to believe the most funds in the space don't have or are under allocated to salana and other ecosystems but specifically salana and it would have been nice to have a for instance a debate uh with I know Vance from framewor or someone else in I'll take the alternative and have kind of like those you see these type of debates in like SE conferences and other type of

conferences like all hedone managers show up and like you have these debates uh or Venture Capital show up but I feel like that's an opportunity I'm kind of jumping ahead here but I left the event with ideas of how to make this podcast better also really grateful for listeners we have we have a really engaged audience but I think we can take it further for for the the Northstar for this podcast has always been how do we for me how can we make this industry better because we felt at the time and still do that we can push the raise the bar for educational content be of course we both invest we have biases we try to be upfront about

them but we like to bring in people that are doing interesting things primarily Founders and other investors to to challenge our views to have this healthy debate and discussion right and so I think uh there's an opportunity to carve out that like you know I would ask people hey would you like to see a our best episodes historically have been where we bring Like A vicho and H for instance now those guys historically tend to agree on a lot of things but make a point of bringing you know uh maybe more of a debate format um where we can have one discussion topic just one right and I think there are two or three that are as you say like hot narratives

hey is reaking going to introduce more risk existential one perhaps to ethereum hey let's have a debate about that let's have the ion guys let's have people that take the opposite um uh you know the scaling or the salana versus ethereum kind of let's have a debate about that um I was uh having an in I guess the last point on I'll mention is it a part of what the reason why I like going to conference is to understand the state of kind of just generally the market and PE Market participants I came away I had this thesis and I came

away confirming validating some of that thesis that like most people don't put in the work including Founders there's a lot of superficiality in the industry I'm not the most technical person I understand that but I I think part of doing this podcast allows us to constantly like we we can't go on limb and say dumb [ __ ] because we're gonna be chewed up by everyone and so part of being public about it is you sort of maintain a level of intellectual honesty and you get called on [ __ ] really quickly but I was a bit shocked but also not shocked because I've had it like lurking as an idea is that most people like for

instance um someone was very critical of salana I'm like okay when's the last time you like tried uh when's the last all right hold on I'm gonna change these dude what is this what is this man doing in the background like on a treadmill like library at this Lodge you can yeah I'm yeah I so go ahead go ahead go ahead yes so it's this idea of like how much work do people put in and look clearly not everyone puts in the work and there's a lot of luck there's skill and there's luck right when you think about like why are you successful well someone might have listened to the podcast of Joe Bon chose to you know and that was you know you could

argue that that's a bit of luck that's you know timing whatever but um you know for instance someone comes out and says hey I think salana is sort of like a whatever all VC coin there's a lot of meme coin activity there it's going to subside and as soon as it subsides Sal go going to go now I'm like all right well how many apps have you trying to S crickets I'm like okay great so another one comes out and says oh bear chain is uh super risky I'm like why I'm interested of course I don't tell them I heard it from two people two prominent fman I'm like why enlighten me without telling that I was a c investor or asking did you uh tune in

the podcast that we recorded with uh smokey no I'm like okay so what what don't you like about it well proof of liquidity is uh so and so I'm like can you articulate to me what proof of liquidity is couldn't and then they're like his whole argument was like it's an a non team I'm like okay you might all you probably also hate Bitcoin right he's like what do you mean I'm like well Satoshi is it not I like well it's different I'm like okay well but is it like I don't know so like it just fun to deconstruct all these like logical fallacies of like people just like go on the L and say dumb [ __ ] and I think there's a lot of that in the space so I came out really invigorated to to be more of that and I think last year we both you and I felt

that there was an opportunity to do that I was next to you in one of those conversations You Came Out Swinging I'll Che I'll choose someone out if you haven't done the work I'm now going to make a point of yeah I was um I no problem seen that part yeah that was interesting usually I don't because like when you interview found or I think there there's I couldn't tell how frustrated you were like I I actually sensed like a bit of frustration from you and I was like is this because you have big bags in this thing or because you're frustrated they haven't done the work but they're kind of talking like they've done the work like I was like where's this coming from Santi I ultim no I'm actually like really I know the

exact conversation you're talking about so I'm actually really as an investor I get really excited about that because that's why you make money when people don't do the work and they dismiss something it's sort of like that tell me something you believe in today that is going to be obvious you know of course I have my views on on Barrow but I wasn't do I know everything about Barrow no uh but it is interesting to observe how people just come to conclusions really quickly and I think that that doesn't happen in crypto just in crypto but I do think that there were in the state where like people it's hard to put it in perspective like I just generally think that most people don't do the work and come to conclusions really quickly

whereas I don't allow yourself to process more information like this guy just kind of went on and K swinging I'm like barah is super risky I'm like okay well let's deconstruct that and like within two questions his whole argument fell apart I'm like well I'm supposed to just doing that maybe just ask the question right and like if you can delay as a general framework in let me know if you disagree with this if you can delay coming to a conclusion about a person or an idea or a project it's probably useful because why would you like just no one's like forcing no one's putting a gun in your hand saying bear chain bullish or bearish it's like no D

like you can take your time to form an opinion um and most people just don't take that like don't allow themselves to process more information so um it was an interesting conversation for sure historically I would have just like let it slip but I just was like all right I'm going to try a different tactic here I think there's a um all right here's one thing I noticed talking I caught up with a lot of founder friends in London who I just hadn't seen in a long time a lot of people who started companies around the same time as block works like 2017 2018 I think there's a real sense of um first off there's a real sense of exhaustion with most Founders I would say in the industry um with most most people in general like we're hitting that part of

this of the bull market where it's just like you wake up you've got 70 telegrams you've got 400 slack messages you went to bed with inbox zero now you've got like you know 350 email like it it's just like a re and you know and then meanwhile like you open Twitter you're trying to do the hard work at the company you open Twitter and like everyone's making millions of dollars on bom or whatever it is right so like I think there's a sense of um exhaustion with a lot of folks that first first off just ex exhaustion second thing I think that there is is um a frustration with where we've entered the part of the cycle where there's new people in crypto coming in and a lot of that is great because we want to onboard new

people but then there's some people who I think start companies in crypto for all the wrong reasons it's I've actually shifted the questions I ask when Angel Investing now I used to ask what's the valuation who do you think of as the competitors what's the unique strategy the first question I now ask is what what are you doing why are you in crypto what are you doing why didn't you come in in 2017 why didn't you come in in 2021 what's your end game like why why now and um it's been I think behind the scenes what's happening with a lot of Founders is there's actually a lot of frustration by people who see people in it for the wrong reasons who then take off on Twitter um by the way not be chain I was I will say I was wrong on be

chain uh and I ended up spending a lot of time with both you and the framework guys Michael and Vance and you guys all convince me um otherwise on on bear chain stuff but like there are some companies I think that are taking off on Twitter and like catching a narrative that like behind the scenes if you talk to the founder like they're really in it for the wrong reason um so I do think there's some of that it is I mean the the frustrations I've heard over the years are here I am trying to like reinvent the financial system and in comes a meme coin that is worth like more than all of defi and it's like I was critical of meme coins in the past for that reason I felt that there were a distraction I felt

that they were making a mockery of the space and now you know a lot in my panel I was I've actually shifted my opinion on it quite a bit a lot and I think you need to pay attention to things that are catching on and I sort of who cares what I think it's like why am I imposing I sort of at one point I said why am I imposing my worldview what has value like if people clearly find entertainment value well who am I to say that that's good or bad I think ultimately like I don't know we we have a lot of I would encourage people to have less opinions about stuff I think constantly you get put in

the spot whether you're in a dinner conversation or you're with friends or whatever and it's always like okay what do you think about this or that or the elections or it's like like it's okay to say I don't know and I've started to do that more and more and so like you know I think it just comes from a place where you're not supposed to know most things and it's actually just better to ask more questions the more important thing that I think I agree with you is so what do you do about it there's all you can't really change that right it happens in every cycle not just in crypto in crypto I think you see it more visibly right because crypto t and you see you know C the wrong projects get attention or or you know there was a

time where B&B had more transaction like pancake Swap all sudden had more transactions than Unis Swap and is that good or bad like I don't know I'm neutral like all I care about is more on boarding what I think is different now is that I think we have really useful projects and prot like so anyways um yeah one other thing that I I kept getting asked is how can we be relevant this cycle I think there is a sense of lack of relevance from certain Founders that have been it for a while is sort of trying to navigate um the space uh especially some of the older def5 Founders I would say yeah and you

know what my response to that was um is well what is your strategy to go on you know salano what is your strategy to go on move based language like def is likely going to live and be very successful in um a move based chain whether it's hdos or suie or SE or something like movement just because it's I believe it's a safer thing so yeah I think it's a it's a very interesting time in the market forget about the cycle part it's more of and I've a lot of my salon thesis is distilled in this idea that finally we're going to start seeing a lot of traction in certain applications and for the first time it's going to become more

apparent of which chains can actually support credible adoption versus not and and that flywheel is just going to make it more and more apparent I don't think I don't know I don't think a lot of people are prepared or positioned for that eventuality I think it happen sooner and you know because we're a lot of so in the panel and I'll stop talking I think I've talked enough someone in the YouTube comments say I anyways um uh someone in the if there's not a YouTube comment that says like Santi you're rambling then like yeah then you haven't talked enough there's always like that there's always that guy shout out to that guy I love you please keep me honest so in the panel someone's like you know there's no products in crypto some institutions right are like so what

is crypto used for I'm like you I honestly like historically I've struggled with that and I've tried to made up ideas of like how it's going to be used I'm like listen guys we've already figured it out it's like financialization is I'm massive Market stable coins ma even if we didn't innovate the the amount of growth that this industry can have on that use case alone I don't know if you would agree with this it's like orders magnitude I completely agree with that all right I mentioned them in the pre-roll now I'm going to bring them up again it's arbitrum Santi and I are really fed up with these high fees and we're really excited to have teamed up with arbitrum for the next couple of

months on Empire as the leading ethereum scaling soltion ution arbitrum now Powers hundreds of decentralized apps across defi hers nfts gaming and a whole lot more the team has showed us everything in the ecosystem both now and what's to come and we're really really excited about it arbitrum allows both daily users and developers to interact with ethereum at scale with low fees and faster transactions the way the team got me excited was through portal. arbitrum doio so my call to action to you is to get started by visiting portal. arbit .io go experience on chain like it was meant to be for a lot of Empire listeners your crypto is not just another number on a screen it's part of

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free for 12 months at supra.com blockworks for a limited time only so you're going to want a bank on this 12-month free offer as soon as possible and if you're just listening and you know any Builders you can earn $1,500 that's $1,500 that you can go throw into Bonk or whiff or whatever M coin you like by letting them know about this deal they can get fast oracles today free for $12 months and you get $1,500 for the referral you can visit supra.com blockworks to learn more go check them out tell them Santi sent you tell them Jason sent you we got you back thanks super for sponsoring I shared something the other day there's this there's this really well-written multi-coin post um did you

read this thing on the financialization of of you know quote everything anyways here here's this tweet here's this tweet that I sent out which a bunch of people sent me this one thing called the attention theory of value that someone named Cheyenne at multi end up writing uh but I but I wrote I I I tweeted a couple weeks ago I said it's now clear that anything that commands attention online will get financialized social accounts micro bets platform points Creator content memes music all of it I have no idea if this will be I think the next question is will this be good or bad for society people like pontificate no no clue no idea and it's I don't think it's my role to discern that no

idea if it's good or bad for society but I have strong conviction that it happens and I have strong conviction that it happens on chain um and so by the way Byron um do you read our daily newsletter I do Byron had this great piece on Meme coins and I just want to read it it's like it really ties into what you were just talking about with mem coins so I'm going to read like 30 seconds it says some mcoin Believers are trying to Rebrand them as culture or Community coins others rationalize that buying meme coins is akin to investing in a brand or more generally the attention economy I even saw one commentary asserting that mcoins are as legitimate as Social Security because they're both ponies they're all overthinking it everything you need to

know about mem coins is right in the name meme coins are coins that let you trade memes and in this they are the purest possible distillation of ke's beauty contest the only reason to buy a meme coin is because you think others will buy it after you and that's an entertaining thing to do and generally harmless as long as everyone knows that what game they're playing which I think they're do more so at least than with the rest of crypto when there's a lot of room for confusion it's harder to explain why someone would want to buy a pure governance token than why someone would buy a meme coin and I would even go so far as to argue this is his closer that Meme coins are now one of the most honest things in all of crypto and also more honest than large parts of trafi

and at least as honest as a Vegas casino um I just thought it was like really well put I don't know don't overthink at meme coins or coins that let you trade memes they are kan's beauty contest right I think that beauty contest references judges voting on who they think that the other judges are GNA think is the you know has the most beautiful face not who they actually think is the most beautiful face yeah beautifully said people forget but the the key novelty of crypto is digital scarcity and property and you've now been able to encapsulate a meme in a form of a token and you know yeah that's a pure Expression A lot of these mem coins have all the circulating Supply there's no single holder that owns you

know more than five seven greater than 10% you know it's uh it's out there it's on the Wild and you know it's uh crypto is sort of a pure capitalist expression open market that's open 247 365 it's actually really interesting it is actually also applicable to something like prediction markets like what you see with Bodin and Trump fascinating yeah really fascinating as I would go as far you know it's going to be quite interesting in the elections in terms of how do these things actually trade um of course you have like some like a poly Market uh Market on the elections which is commanding a lot of liquidity like 92 million or so last yesterday that I checked but like contrast that to just a mem coin that represents Trump or bin I

guess Biden and how that traits and as a I think if you're a political pundit or statistician I think it's more accurate than a survey yeah it's just looking at number holders and and it's people voter turnout is low has been always has been but when you introduce when people have a stake in the game they have a vested interest and so that's I think a very pure expression of information yeah um I botched it I forgot to tell people at the top of this speak of newsletter and Byron uh Empires launching a newsletter ver said yeah we are doing that we are launching a newsletter so uh you will be listening to this episode on Tuesday

March 26 is when it comes out and the week after next Tuesday April 2nd we are launching a newsletter so if you guys want to um read the inaugural newsletter that we send out you can subscribe you can link in show notes or you know whatever our producer wants you to wants you to do um yeah if you're I'm you know Joseph put a put a link somewhere in the show um basically the reason we're launching this is twofold one I still I I still don't feel like there's a newsletter that I so by so we have this daily newsletter Byron puts it out every day at seven it's his thoughts on like the market kind you know he's a Trader for many

years like very great thoughts kind of pontificating on what's going on there's no um morning newsletter that I read that I actually believe adds value a lot of them are like you know a lot of the other media companies put these things out in the morning that are like here's the news of the day doesn't give me anything though doesn't give me any insights it doesn't go a layer deeper on any of the news stories so Empire newsletter is gonna be every single morning Monday through Friday five days a week giving you the news of the day with an going one layer deeper and so that's going to be we've got a full team working on this thing so every single day 7 AM and Santi and I are going to use it if Santi wants I'm gonna be writing um I think there's a lot

of yeah sometimes yeah put you on the spot there sometimes I have things that I aren't right for a tweet and they're not right for a podcast and I end up maybe sometimes just doing these like long threads on them but then I kind of have to put it into Twitter format and I I I actually write a good amount but just kind of on my own I'm gonna be putting those thoughts into the newsletter I might write once a week I might write once every other week Santi might I don't know when santi's gonna do it but either way it's Monday through Friday five days a week with some guest posts from s and me so yeah go go subscribe go click that link Jason Jason uh like Jason so much because he he makes me do things and I've been punting this going back to reactivating my

substack and this is just going to be the way to do it so also I have to give a big shout out to uh composable Finance they um shout out Henry over there they uh they're they're taking a leap of faith on the Empire brand and on and on on us two they're actually the first sponsors of the Empire newsletter so big shout out to comp composable and what they're working on it's composable Finance yeah you guys should go check them out I had a chance to meet in London so that was great yeah I also had a great meeting with Henry so um I would okay so big themes of uh of Das so meme coins obviously I would say there's um uh like stable coins if you want to talk about that cryp crypto like cryptos

killer use case there there was a lot of talk about stable coins um tokenization OB actually tokenization rwa is for an Institutional event weren't as talked about I think everyone's kind of bored and sick of it um ETFs a lot of talk about ETFs they've kind of like I think they've people kind of understand what the ETFs are good for at this point they give institutions exposure to crypto they do it on terms that institutions can uh can understand they will drive huge growth in asset prices they will not be a major Catalyst for onchain participation that's there's kind of this consensus that I think they're going to drive I don't necessarily agree on

butting I think yeah I mean it's a sort of a law of large numbers like I If you believe stable coins reach a couple trillion then it's always that not stable coins ET ETFs oh the ETFs sorry thought you ETFs no no stable coins are all no no stable coins are the but but okay so even that right I mean it's sort of can you point to most people that like it's difficult because ETFs are not around but like they bot one thing and then kind of stop there um no I think that's a good point like Bitcoin is kind of the gateway drug so oh maybe let me rephrase it I don't

think there'll be a I think they will be a huge driver in growing asset prices this cycle I don't think they'll be a huge driver in growing onchain participation this cycle with okay star that that I agree with um I think a lot of talk about like eth ETF um yeah a lot of talk about that the uh staking staking was a big staking and reaking it was really interesting hearing from the financial like from the big players about how they think about staking and reaking I always think of these like ideas as like these crypto native ideas you had some of the world's largest asset managers saying quote staking and reaking will reshape Financial products forever

um and like that you know I I just thought it was like yeah there's kind of this consensus that institutions are going to do some sort of staking um I think like yeah was it black rock that updated or Fidel I forget which one updated their ETF application recently to include staking to include staking I forget which one um but you know someone had this quote staking they said staking we understand internally that staking is a core process for for securing blockchains um it we don't just think of it as a money-making activity we think of it as a core process for securing blockchains and we just like so we are doing the work and we are getting some

return for doing work and like that's staking at at simplest at its simplest like description um and I just thought it was cool to hear hear these folks understand it like this yeah that's I will say I mean as a general comment the the sophistication of instit understanding this s class has gone up dramatically dramatically part I mean a lot of them have done the work I think a there are there is a subset that has been lurking in the closet because they haven't felt comfortable saying that they believe in this or like it and all of a sudden with an ETF the career risk the reputation risk goes down dramatically um and that's very

refreshing because I I even heard it from one listener that works at a pretty prominent bank and he said listen everyone loves gypto everyone and I come to these events they all they all talking about it they'll love it they they like the meme coins they they they're constantly paying attention but there is still this tension right and you know like uh where you can you know the the career risk of there's still some of that I think it continues to go away as we have more ETFs and this becomes just uh in in the narrative I mean it just it's been in the Nar for a long time but it it's the career risk the reputation risk right that oh you're in crypto well oh God

like FTX you God you know gez all you guys were just a bunch of wild west Cowboys running around you know slinging it and I was like no um part of I think what this industry is challenge with is is the lack of media companies at scale like and I think there is a very subset of yeah why isn't anyone building that right you know well what I'm trying to what my frustration was like when I would have pitch crypto to uh you know my former colleagues at uh s or JP Morgan they're like they would very quickly point me to their PR their primary source of of knowledge or understanding what was

happening in the space like a podcast that was like not something that I would listen to or encourage people to listen to there was just Shilling a bunch bags and or I mean I think Bloomberg has gotten quite better over the years but in the early days it was just like the coverage that it got was like only reporting on negative stuff or the financial times right that you know it was largely just sensationalism and crypto has a lot of that so I get it I mean it drives attention but um you know I think uh we become better but I think there's still a huge opportunity to continue to grow and and and present crypto in a more objective way and not just the more

Sensational like headlines right that drive mean like attention yeah I think they'll be yeah I'm I'm optimistic they'll be better media so Bloomberg I think laid off most of their uh they're still they're still not not crypto reporters they laid off a lot of their crypto product team um at the absolute bottom or I think it was O I think it was September or October 2023 they laid off a lot of their like crypto terminal team like for the terminal uh and I was just like oh go just pure capitulation that's a costly mistake so M yeah Mike Mike and I used to this funny story about Bloomberg Mike and I used to go into

Bloomberg once every like six months and give a talk to their team um and we debated if we should do this and we were like ah they're kind of a competitor but no never mind the you know terminal's not a competitor we can work with them um so anyways we give go and give a talk about Bitcoin and crypto and what we're seeing and stuff and we would ask them what are you guys doing and I remember this talk by Bloomberg's head of product he goes yeah for the last two years Bitcoin this was 2020 and 2021 Bloomberg has been the most searched keyword on the terminal for the last two years bit yeah this was 20 maybe 2019 BL was the most searched ter it's Bitcoin that was the most searched term on the term what did I say bit Yeah Bitcoin is the most

searched Bitcoin is the most searched term on the terminal for sure so we're considering doing something with Bitcoin now I was like guys guys blocks block works I see something the next day we are doing it like yeah I guess now it's like Nvidia and AI but like I I would think that crypto is still top top three top five probably I mean our our site our site traffic like our it things are going bonkers right now it's crazy um what else we talking about no I mean I we wanted to record this pod to talk about the the conference takeaways from that um I think we've touched on a lot of those um I don't

know if there's anything else you'd want to add in terms of I mean my panel specifically was we could go into that I mean I think we covered some elements there but um I would just say like the Empire Meetup was the highlight and I would just like yeah I don't know I met all these big government people and big asset managers and you know which was cool like felt fun and stuff but like truly the Highlight was like that kind of grungy bar on Wednesday meeting a lot of folks or having people come up to me at the conference being like I listen to every episode of Empire on my runs um so I just give like yeah to all it was a I see numbers on a screen every day I see like downloads and streams and YouTube views and random comments saying Santi

sucks which I know obviously and s's ugly which I know guys stop wasting your time I already know that some but comment some but it was cool man it was really cool meeting a lot of you guys and just seeing what you do and you know a lot of trafy folks who like crypto by by night and on weekends and I was just it was just awesome so you guys gave me a lot of lot of energy to keep yeah for sure keep pushing with this yeah no absolutely and I I like you know of course it's great to hear people are enjoying it but I but ask most people hey what can we do better and some a lot a lot said go deeper on technicals so we're thinking

about that for sure I think we could add um um for instance the episode with monad do more of that format and bring on someone like John shout out to John which I think would be a nice addition to bring on those type of episodes uh I think people really liked me talking about my mist takes I certainly can keep talking more and more about that people like me talking rambling no people did like that people it was actually I think our most downloaded episode I actually I actually told people look as soon as we recorded that podcast I told Jason and Joseph the producer I said guys I hated this podcast we gotta redo it you oh yeah Santi didn't want to run it Santi didn't

want but hey look I think it was uh what people appreciated is u i feel more more comfortable uh part of the frustration at times with crypto is that and social media and everything but is that you just only see one side of a person or of a company of a Founder for instance once they're successful but tell me like how you got there tell me more about it's incredibly difficult like I want to hear specific stories and make it relatable I hope that we can make this podcast more relatable um because we all started from zero in crypto in our understanding of it we got so much help along the way we made so many mistakes so I'm all for making more of that type of content seems like people enjoy it so I'm excited to continue to go deeper and uh

call it stream of Consciousness therapy whatever it is there's a lot of uh lot of thoughts that I have there to continue to share and you open book you know I made a lot of mistakes and that's ultimately I do it because I will learn right open sourcing my process and and coming to conclusions faster a big part of my salon thesis with being more vocal about it help me understand things much much faster like I have less of a problem looking like an idiot and being wrong because ultimately it helps me be right in a meaningful way if I can correct if I can adjust and if we can do that in real time I think it' be great for people especially as this industry changes so much right I mean it's it's pretty shocking and daunting

that it's like it's incredibly hard to keep up it's hard not to feel constant sense of like uh anxiety around that but yeah it's it's a good thing I guess the industry's great it is all right let's call it go subscribe to the newsletter Link in the show not piece of content got two books because I was traveling Oh I have a book too I have a book London Airport the nice thing about London is you go to these bookstores wh what is it WS Smith or wh Smith uh on the airport and you see it's always like the buy one get free and so anyways I uh I bought this formula car I think it's a book about

Formula 1 really fun kind of like a really good inside story if you like drive to survive the book is pretty cool the second one um why don't you just ask the guys in person what was that and the second one was uh yeah well yes actually the second one is uh I actually for what I'm ashamed to to say this but I I hadn't read Chris Dixon's read uh write own and really really great I mean Chris has always been in my mind the person I've learned probably the most he just has a way of drawing from prior like the internet and the evolution of the internet just making analogies I know they're not perfect I know there's

a Subs people think an are stupid I think it's the way people learn and he if you could pick one voice one like voice of this industry a chief marketing officer like it would be in my mind Chris I agree with that I agree those really good and then continue watch Shogun honestly it keeps getting better and I'm a big fan of James clell Shogun good yeah I'm on I think I'm on F5 also three body problem which like be it's gonna be the it's it's the one Jason I mean may I remind you that you went on I'm saying that what was that other show no well okay three body okay so first off fir let first off let

me let me tell you of my best friends said three body problem was his this is like seven five years ago now now Trilogy WR you g to blame the friend Trilogy of all time then Mike Mike read it Mike I think Mike read the whole trilogy and he's like this is like the best best book like best books ever and then and then Mike said the shows are good which Mike is a ridiculous movie and TV nerd yeah so now I will watch it okay okay independent notes verified verified I will will take the time to watch it m Mike I I do I do agree Mike is is a huge content consumer and he's it's remarkable do you know that you

know he probably listens to four podcasts a day he listens to podcast while he works which is like a remarkable feat good goodness I I need to level up it's crazy hell it's I mean Mike shout out you if you're listening like he like he so okay rest is history came which we both like this History podcast called rest is history they came out with a Titanic series he had listened to all of those plus every crypto podcast that blockworks had put out that week and we were like three days into the week I was like my guy that's like 14 shows in three day yeah it's remarkable my book my book is what's our problem it's

um maybe the best one of the best blogs on the internet called wait but why um oh yeah the way but why writer put out a put out a book called what's our problem um it's kind of just like an analysis of modern times I would say of just like how the hell did we get into like it feels like the world's been flipped upside down like how the hell did we get here um I hate yeah you hate the times we live in or the analysis of the times that we live in no no the times like it's just the the the wokeness of it all here here here here's basically here like I think he puts his finger on the problem which is like there's this whole group of people who used to identify as really

left either like B basically there's this whole group of like 25 to 40y olds who no longer identify with either political party either they're Republic they grew up Republican but they don't like kind of agree with Trump and they don't like Trump's world or they grew up liberal and Democratic but they have like so far dis agree with like woke culture and like Bernie Bros and AOC and a lot of that kind of stuff and that's basically both of those buckets are like my friend group like either people grew up Republican and but they're like I really just don't like Trump or they grew up Democrat and they're like honestly like I'm just I just can't get behind voting for Biden or I can't you know I just can't get get behind like the woke liberals or what whatever you

want to say and he puts his finger on like what the hell happened here how did we get here and what should we we think about it it's a quick read I'm doing I'm doing it on I'm almost done with it on Audible uh I would recommend yeah nice I I'll definitely pick that up it's a subject that I am very interested in so we call that hopefully thanks for the invite to D I enjoyed it um a lot to learn and we gotta find something to promote now oh the newsletter obviously the newsletter yeah then we can start pumping permission list and then D New York in 2025 that's the Pod folks uh I gotta get some sleep I gotta feel better so s enjoy the slopes thank you everyone for listening sure thanks

everyone for listening I really appreciate everyone Jason here thank you so much for watching today's episode wanted to take a quick second to thank today's title sponsor arbitrum we know you are tired of onchain experiences that have unaffordable fees and frustrating transaction speeds and that's why we partnered with arbitrum you can experience frictionless trades lightning speed and LaGree transactions all for pennies per transaction explore arbitrum expanding ecosystem at portal. arbitrum doio that's portal. arbitrum doio see you for the next [Music] episode