ETH BREAKOUT. CPI Comes In HOT, Markets WHIPSAW!

Transcript

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It's just it's next level. This industry is going to the next level. And guys, I I don't know what else to say. >> I'm bullish. >> He said it. He finally said it. So bullish. >> It is bullish. I'm bullish. We're bullish. [music] >> [music] [music]

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[applause and cheering] >> Generational run continues. Generational run continues. You know what I got to say about your CPI rating? I don't give a Hire now. Get long. Stay long. Stay strong. Welcome back to the rollup. Happy Friday. It is 911. I just want to say a word for all the fallen firefighters and people who are affected. Hearts out to your families. Um I'm here in New York. You can feel the energy shift a little bit today. Hearts out to everybody was affected. We're here at the the financial capital of the world, the nest. Um, Empire State Building. It's a beautiful

Friday. Um, wow. I mean, what a what a morning, Rob. I mean, Hunter Biden just can't stay off my off my ex feed. >> Scott Bessett can't can't stay off my ex feed. >> Yo, >> I've become a full I've I think I've gone full >> You've gone full macro. >> Never go full macro. I think full macro macro. Look at >> What's up, Favin? Nice to see you, bro. Good morning. >> I feel pretty good about my macro headsp space. >> Okay. >> I um I I think I went two for three, so obviously it was a huge week. Next week is uh no different.

>> Yeah, next week's huge. >> Um you know, we had buybacks on Wednesday. We had CPI on to we had PPI yesterday and CPI today and then obviously FOMC next Wednesday. So, >> it's going to be a big week next week as well, but um I was bullish going into buybacks. Uh and then we flipped bearish. So I got those two right. >> Yeah, it was a rough couple days. >> I was able to trim a little bit um just as buybacks were getting announced, >> which I feel good about. I sold Zcash. I mean, I didn't sell it significant Zcash. I mean, >> I trimmed a tiny little bit >> of my long, but I >> at 1283, so we're still we're lower than we are

>> at that point, but I still I'm I'm still giga long. So, I just took a little bit of risk off the table because I was expecting some volatility with PPI, CPI, and FOMC. Um, I did not anticipate the reaction to the CPI today. Um, I anticipated that we would dump if inflation came in hot, which it did slightly, and I anticipated us dumping all the way into FOMC, but I gotta say the coins have more momentum than I originally thought, which is fantastic for uh for our longs. Um, so CPI came in a smidge hot. Uh, the headline number was right at expected. Uh the

year-over-year numbers were right at expected, but the core month-over-month numbers came in a basis point high, and that is signaling that we are probably going to get a hike. It's not a sure thing. Uh I was watching CNBC and the boomer macro heads this morning were saying that uh 85% chance that we get a hike in September. That's next week. The new revelation with this inflation data was that 82% chance that we get a hike in December. A hike in October [clears throat] is pretty much off the table because it's so close to midterms.

So, I think we're in the clear on that front. But the fact that we are ripping off of a hot CPI print >> is pretty immaculate. It means that we have more momentum than we originally thought. I gotta give it up to FAO. You guys did a fantastic fantastic episode. He called it. >> I mean he basically said look you know one of the questions that we asked him was what does the he he said one you know the number to pay attention to is the core month over month >> right >> that was the only number that was not exactly at estimated it was.3 instead of estimated was 02 and the the question was hey how high does it have to be in order to justify a hike and he said point4 it came in at three

>> I know and we'll get to his tweet which is This is the This is the best reading to cause market participants to have mental illness. >> And guess what mental illness means for your crypto bags? >> It means they don't really know. They don't really know if it's bearish or bullish. So guess what? We fly because why not? And so >> that but I don't think you I don't think that you said enough there. I think the important point is that we are in a different paradigm. The fact that we don't know but we're ripping higher fundamentally different from where we were a month ago which is confusion uncertainty. We don't know what's happening negative headlines.

>> Yeah. >> But we were chopping down. We flipped. The market the market conditions are flipped. We are now in sideways chop mode equals bullish which is a fundamentally new paradigm that only began in the last few weeks. If you rub the penguin snow globe three times, it's good luck. And it means that your chop will continue to be bullish for months ahead. We had some weird astrology predictions going on over the last couple of days. >> I tweeted I tweeted, "Hear me out. >> Uranus is in retrograde and there's the fall equinox coming up and if you times >> and I tweeted and I asked him and I said, you know, what is the read going into the weekend?" And this was

pre-market open. So bear in mind, guys, I wake up this morning. I had 11 hours of sleep. Tired as Like, I've been on a run. The US Open went till 2 a.m. These leverage longs been keeping me up. This market's been keeping me up. This is not an easy market. This is like not an easy market. Like, yes, we're printing. We're printing today. Like, I mean, just great, great, great day. But, um, you know, it's tiring. And so I wake up this morning, take a little um a little extra pick me up and I get right to the right to the computer just like you know people take Addie and these types of things. I don't do any of that hardcore Just like smaller stuff and so I'm on the computer. I'm locked in because I know we're going to get CPI

and it's like 7:45 a.m. and I get 11 hours of sleep, dude. And I got kind of shaken out of my E-longs. Like I had a I had about I had a pretty big size on Ethlong and I was kind of scared. was ke I kept getting shaken out but I was farming points on variational so I'm I'm happy to kind of just churn volume on that platform because I guess you know you know points but anyway dude so this this CPI comes in and the market dumps instantly and I'm like wait the numbers are are they didn't the only thing that changed was core I'm like wait am I missing something I slam eongs this morning like I still had some left but I slam slammed it and then now we're

ripping. So that was my morning. Um and we had a little pullback. Actually just added more on the pullback. Sherpa thinks we hold. We'll see. I know you have some limits set on ETH. I think we're good. I mean, I would hate to see this be a deviation on ETH, but we got the we got the 4hour close breakout level. We had a nearly a month in this range. Nearly a month going sideways, guys. A month sideways on ETH before the biggest SEC tokenization exemption and you're not long on a breakout, man. You're not a bull market trader. Couldn't be me, dog. Let's get long. So, Andy, we uh we

had a pre-recording this morning with uh our friend Dan at CMS Holdings. And got I got to say, I mean, you know, we've been just preaching this barbell thesis. This hard money does well because of macro environment and then onchain businesses revenue meta does well because it's getting legitimized regulation and fundamentals >> and it feels like ETH >> most most specifically has been caught in the middle of that. It's not really hard money. It's not really revenue. >> And so I was kind of you know I had this like inkling and I think you did too like ETH looks bullish. It seems bullish, but you can't really put your finger on why. And I got I mean, just to

give you guys a little bit of a tidbit into this recording with CMS, which was an absolute banger. >> Yeah. >> Made me so bullish, ETH, because he said, "Look, the barbell is crowded. Hard money is a crowded trade. Revenue Meta is a crowded trade. Doesn't mean it's not going to go up, but the thing that's not crow, if I had this inkling, I can't really put my finger on why it's bullish. just feels like it's going to go up. It's not crowded. You don't really have a reason, but you have this hunch, this intuition. And that's ETH right now, man. I got to say that's ET, >> dude. Nobody owns ETH. Nobody owns Ethereum.

>> Embarrassing. >> Nobody owns Ethereum. They left it to die. It is about to go to 3,000. >> I think it's >> or 3500. >> And it's and it's going to catch a lot of people by surprise and a ton of liquidity supply Ethereum. So, I don't know how deep I >> how we got here. How did we get here? >> I mean, it didn't hit an all-time high in 2024, and it doesn't charge enough for its data availability, and it doesn't really fulfill the ETH's money thesis because it's still inflationary.

And so, it doesn't it's trying to do a lot of a lot of narrative. It kind of does each of them a little bit well, but it doesn't hit any one of them particularly hard. So, when you're putting together a hard money thesis or portfolio, you leave out ETH. When you're putting together a revenuebased onchain business bucket for your portfolio, you leave out ETH. when you're putting together a tokenization bucket that benefits from tokenized equities and the rerating of tokenized assets onchain. Yeah. You buy a and chain link and morpho and unis swap and aer drrome and lighter and hyperlquid but you leave out ETH. Yeah.

>> And so ETH doesn't really make it into any of those portfolios, but it doesn't mean it's not going to go up. I don't think it really needs one reason, one hard tangible reason for it to go up. I think it can kind of have this like amorphice. It fits into everything once the animal spirits are back and I think they're back. The fact that we're pumping on a hot CPI and the FOMC has an 85 pretty much it's guaranteed. I look they might surprise everyone at hold rate study and we absolutely gigafly. But I think the most likely outcome >> the most insurance hike it's a hike for credibility a bullish hike. And I think 85% chance that happens. There's a 15%

political doesn't happen. It's a hike to ensure political credibility and independence of the Fed. And I think it's pretty much priced in and I think now we're going to absorb that. I think there is going to be some headwinds. We're going to make our way through FOMC hikes. I think that is the most likely outcome. We're going to basically just bullish chop for the next week or two and then the fall equinox is going to come and we're going to send it so much higher. >> All right, guys. One last thing before we really get the show started. Um, so I'm on FOMO. I mean, do not copy trade me. Do not buy anything I'm about to say. It is total garbage and I don't recommend it, Andy.

>> I don't recommend it at all. However, there is a token called Zcat that is at $88 million market cap. It's called Zcat. I'm in. I'm in. It pays me in Zcash. I think this is like the easiest Zcash beta play in the entire market right now. Not financial advice. Don't buy it. But it literally just pays you in Zcash to hold it. It's at 85 88 million. I think it's going to be a billion dollar meme. So, I'm in. And with that being said, do not copy trade me. Do not follow my takes. This is not financial advice.

Let's get the show started. We got a great show today. We got a great show today. We got a great show today. Look at that haircut from Rob, guys. Dialed. >> All right. Um, let's get into it. Before we do, let me tell you about Plume. Let's get cam 2 here. Show you guys the nest. It is a beautiful day in the nest powered by Plume. >> Beautiful day in the Empire State Building. Um, let's get into it. >> Beautiful sign. >> So, today we got Markets and Weather live from New York City. Uh, we've got the Milk Roads head of or one of the Milk Road host joining us in the tower. I'm about to interview him in about half hour. Uh, and then we've got a stabled up episode with Fracks and Cast. Um, that is uh going to be a good one. As

always guys, we're here in the Empire State Building. It's beautiful day. Um, and you and you got to love it. You got to love it. Let's get into the show. Before I do, let me tell you about dinari, our tokenized US equities partner of the show, bringing real world stocks on chain. Trade SpaceX on Hyperlid today in spa and more. Visit dinari.com to learn more about their S&P 500 on chain. Rob, it's 82. It's overcast. Feels like 78. I'm going to the US Open tonight. I don't have tickets yet. I'm going to buy them while we're on the show at some point or after the show. Uh we got the semifinals tonight. I'm gonna go by myself. Um because none of my friends want to go and Alex and Anton are out of town. So I'm gonna go I'm gonna get a sick seat and just go solo. Be fun. Chill Friday

night. >> Um and yeah, it's 82. It's a beautiful day. Let's keep it rolling. >> Before we do, let me tell you about Fracks. >> Building infrastructure, future digital money. Open, stable, borderless. For more information, visit net.frs.com/rollup to start using future digital money today. Here we are in the markets, guys. This is what Rob's talking about. Equities got a bit of a softer tape. They're up a little bit. S&P's up. QQQ's up. Um, oil's still up. >> Bond yields are still up. People are scared. Crypto [snorts] >> higher.

>> So much momentum. >> Higher. >> Incredible momentum on the coins. >> Higher. So, as always guys, our markets are powered by our friends at Zama. >> Can you imagine? >> To learn more about Zama, hit zama.org. >> Steady >> and learn more. I can't imagine what would happen if he did. >> So C C >> Stop >> CNBC this morning had a hike at 85%. Uh the um the prediction markets have it at 81%.

I would put it closer to like 6040, maybe 7030. It's definitely more likely we get a hike, but if you look at, you know, I mean, you could just dive into the CPI and look at it every which way. There's still an argument to be made that they're going to hold [laughter] rates steady. There's >> if they hold rates steady, guys, you are going to make generational returns that before the voodoo magic of September 22nd, September 23rd. Guys, watch that date. those early 20s of September. I'm telling you, Bitcoin Jack is a OG trader. He's not an idiot. I'm telling you. I'm telling you, he knows what he's doing. Let me quickly tell you about

near.com and the rollup. Our new front end, which you guys have been absolutely cracking on, and we've got a $1,000 USDC giveaway today to five lucky winners of our near.com. >> Guys, I don't I don't think we gave that enough attention. Can we get a breaking news? I think we have a thousand USDC giveaway campaign, [music] >> guys. So, we have >> I just got word from the Need team. We have 36 accounts in so far and they can't share wallet addresses

because it's confidential. So, what we need you to do is we need you and I'm going to put out a tweet about this. I'm going to extend the campaign a little bit so just to make sure it's fair. I need everyone to DM me their near.com USDC address. So, I'm going to put it in my Telegram um real quick. And Rob, maybe you can um show the people what we're talking about. Let me pull it up on my screen first. >> I can here. I'll pull it up on my screen so you can put that up. >> Here you go. >> The rollup. Leo, let's pull it up. $1,000 USDC giveaway. Guys, this is confidential.

So, we need you to send us your wallet address. But here it is. This is what it looks like. I'm going to pull it up on the screen so you guys know what to do. You go to the rollup.nneer.com. You guys see this page. Trade where the liquidity is. Hedge where your assets are. Invest where you learn. Invest where you learn. The rollup.nneer.com. Go here, create an account. It's fully confidential, fully private, and it has hyperlquid in the back end. It is the best place to trade, the best place to follow the takes that you hear from the best and brightest in the business. You guys know we've had an absolutely

starstudded lineup on the show this week, last week, next week, and beyond. >> These guys are giving you their takes. They're telling you what they think about the barbell thesis. I'm telling you, I'm balls deep in ETH. [laughter] >> Don't follow me, guys. I mean, ETH needs to hold the line here, >> guys. Either really needs to hold the line. >> You can fade Andy on the rollup. And potentially get paid. We have this $1,000 USDC giveaway. Okay, breaking news. $1,000 USDC giveaway. You can make money just by going here, creating an account, and sending Andy your wallet address.

>> 100%. It's that simple. It's that simple. >> Andy, where do they send it to you? >> Just DM me on X. I will get back to you guys imminently. Um, maybe tonight, but at this point, it's probably going to be looking like more like tomorrow or the weekend. But either way, I'll get it done. We'll get we'll send out five people who have signed up to rollup. With their USDC address in my DMs, uh, we will make sure And there's still time. So if you're watching the show, um, guys, there's still time. There's like 80 or 90 of you guys watching live right now across all platforms. There's still time. And yeah, nobody owns Celestia. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Go on the rollup.

Celestia today and send Andy your wallet address for a $1,000 USD civ giveaway. And we're going to do $200 to the top five people. That's correct. That gave us their wallet address. >> All right, let's get to it. Let's get it. That's nearer.com. Much love, guys. Let's get to the news. Uh, 1 in is now live on Hyper EVM. Everything from the start intentbased swaps with no gas fees and me protection crushing in. The house of finance just got a new wing. Welcome to the hyperlquid era for 1 in. Just makes sense. Just makes sense. You want to be where the activity is going to be.

Hyper core is going to keep blowing up. We think Hyper EVM has yet to achieve its kinetic energy state. Still in its potential energy state. So we think that that HyperVM has a chance to be a a fruitful D5 playground. One in is part of the show. Great great product. So don't have much to add here other than congrats to 1 in and I think this is an um a must do. I mean in this world. Let's go ahead and play the video. There it is. There it is. Hyperlid baby. Love that logo man. I got to get I got to get one of those hats. Got to get one of those hats.

So, I mean, don't have much else to add here, but One in is doing great work and love them as a partner of the show. Let's keep it rolling. Love it. Here we go. Macro time. If I wanted to have the FOMC meeting be a coin toss 5050 next week. Don't think I could have cooked a better CPI print than that. LMAO. The mental illness shall continue. Mental illness of course here meaning uncertainty about what Worsh is going to do hike or hold rates steady. Fiaho came on the show earlier this week. He said 0.4 core month overmonth CPI would mean a guaranteed hike.

>> Core month-over-month CPI came in at.3 which is above estimated but below the threshold for a guaranteed hike. Puts us right there. Just right there on the line about I don't know that that drop of the voice just really fired me up >> right there on the line between a hike and a hold steady. I mean the fact that we are basically pricing in a guaranteed hike and markets are going higher. We will of course have to absorb such hike in which case things might get a little dump. I don't even know if we're I mean, we might go higher and then we hike and then we dump to levels not seen since

today, right? So, there's obviously a little bit of that going on, but I think the point is that once we get past this macro event, no matter what happens, once we get past it, there's really no more negative headwinds in front of us. And before again a month ago, if we didn't have any tailwinds, we were going to dump. The fact that now sentiment and momentum has flipped bullish means that all we need is for nothing to happen.

And once we get past this hike, hold rates FOMC decision, no matter what happens, once we're past it, then we have nothing more to look forward to, which means that there's no more headwinds. And the underlying latent momentum in the system is going to push us higher. That is fundamentally different of a regime and a market landscape [snorts] than we were in a month ago. Whereas if before the underlying momentum is lower and if nothing was happening it was going to drag us lower. Now underlying momentum is positive. If nothing happens we go higher and that is fundamentally different. I think all we have to do is get past this event. If it is a hold rate steady, it is a cataclysmic jump higher.

If it is a rate hike, the market is going to be like, "Okay, I told you so." Little speed bump and then we push higher in a nice easy, you know, choppy move up. But >> yeah, >> I mean, I don't I don't see what is going to take us lower at this point. >> Oh my god, guys. If you guys remember yesterday, Rob was like, "I'm bearish. I'm bearish going into CPI." Like, "Bro, I'm bullish." >> Guys, if you saw my Purps account, you would not consider me bearish.

>> Damn. Let's get a little bing binging bing on that one. All right, let's keep it rolling here. Um, in the depths of darkness, a new copium emerge. Bullish rate hike as long bonds crater. Rob, what does this mean? >> I mean, it means that the macro regime is working as intended. Everyone who is hunting Besson and hunting Worsh are basically like okay cool everyone can win. Um FAO is saying this because you know everyone was so concerned about the long bond the 10 years and the 30 years. Oh my god you know 10 years tapping on 5% 30 years five and a half%.

>> Okay. So that means we need a hike. Sure. And then it's going to cool off the bond market and then and then what? >> Like there's no more things to worry about. So we go higher. >> I I think you know people always have a reason to be worried about something but we have levers and gears in place in order to react to those things satisfy those concerns and then once there's no more concerns the momentum takes us higher. So look, I mean, you know, typically the Fed fund rate don't even matter for the long bond, but people need Fed and Wors to have credibility and independence. And so, you know, they are treating this as that.

>> Yeah. >> And so, sure, um, you know, this new CO copium is, uh, look, long bonds, 30-year bonds are the thing that is putting us in a in a tizzy. And so, all right, sure. one rate hike, bring them into back to reality, >> and then we go higher. No problem there. >> I like it. >> So, that's uh that's >> I like the bullish hike narrative. I'll tell you that. It's kind of like the same thing that I was trying to do with the clarity thing where it's like, "All right, clarity is not coming." Like, if it comes, green candles everywhere, but if it doesn't come, all right, well, we're getting the tokenization exemption, so we're good. This is like, all right, we might hike rates. If they don't, green candles everywhere. If they

do, well, it was the last one and it was the insurance hike. It's kind of like the same thing, right? It's like the market is so bulled up that it's literally taking events that would be bearish and adding things on to them that would make them a bullish narrative spin. And it's working. >> Like it's working. >> So, and so let's keep it rolling here. Well, I think this is actually an evolution of like uh the market conditions that we saw, you know, two or three months ago where it was like negative news but the market doesn't go down.

>> Yeah. >> We are getting into a narrative regime which we don't think about actually this concept there is like a narrative regime. >> The narrative regime now >> is like any news is up. So like before I [snorts] I mean I just all a lot of this is bias confirmation but I mean how apathetic were we a month and a half ago >> where >> sailor coming down wars getting in yields going berserk nothing brought us down but we didn't really react up now we're in evolving into animal spirits take us higher

>> I'm getting $500 a day on FOMO referral trophies and just sending them to all my friends, just loading their FOMO up just like it's like a free money faucet. I wake up every morning, my FOMO's got 500 bucks in it, and I just send it to my buddies. It's hilarious. >> Oh my goodness. I want to get filled on ETH. >> Yeah, good luck. All right, guys. Let's get to the next one. Um, so I don't know if you guys saw my tweet about the viral um or not the tweet. It didn't really go that viral, but it was like a take on um >> it was a good >> take it was it was a good take on like the boomers making a ton of money and then like >> Yeah.

>> Yeah. >> And so what I my take on this is that so the surging cell phone prices are thanks to memory where the deciding factor between core CPI printing 2 and.3%. So my take is that the zoom so so boomers are responsible for pumping the out of AI stocks leading to expensive iPhones then leading to elevated CPI which is affecting my onchain memes. This is a cinema total cinema. >> I have one uh I have one macro point here which is that you know CPI uh core CPI month over month printing 2 and.3.

>> Yeah. It's not like it they just truncate the the number at the first decimal point like there is more after that. So the bullish case here is that it wasn't.3 >> it was like 271 or something after the decimal point which is actually closer to 0 2 than it is to.3 which makes it an even stronger case that they might hold rates steady. So it was high enough that it got rounded to.3 and not rounded down to 0.2. But again there is an argument here like this is not the hottest CPI print ever.

>> Yeah. >> There is an argument here that they hold rates which would be an absolutely >> bonkers development next week. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. That would be crazy. And then there's also the case that, you know, the uh clarity vote on Tuesday is just a closure vote. It's not actually to put the thing into law. It's just to open up like the discussion of it on the floor of the Senate. >> And so they'd actually vote that in. >> Who knows what happens after that, but there is a reality that you could get like a conditional probability. I would put it at maybe 15 to 20%. that you get both the Clarity Act closure vote passing and Fed Worsh holding rates steady. And if you get both of those, and I probably put the combined

probability at around 15 to 20%. People are going to probably be way more pessimistic than that. I think if you get both of those, I mean, what we're at like 90K on Bitcoin, ETH is 3K, Hyperlid's $100, and Zcash is probably tapping $2,000 by the end of the week. I almost just threw up. [laughter] All right, let's keep it rolling, guys. Um, I think we're going to tell you about 1 in here. Uh, you may have approved or you may have heard of this concept of shared liquidity flying around. Products like 1in Aqua let you approve one wallet balance to back multiple positions at one time across ranges, pairs, chains. You're not splitting your tokens, you're depositing them, but you're not leveraging them

either. It's a totally different way to keep your liquidity active in more markets. If you want to learn more, 1inch.com/aqua. So, here we go, Rob. Here's your probability thesis here. S scoop. Senate Republicans are circulating a new version of the Clarity Act, and they obtained a 630page draft. The Senate is yet to vote on the Clarity Act, which is coming September 15th. And the text is not bipartisan yet. Latest changes include new DeFi requirements and a credit union fix. Go ahead and scroll down um on this here. You can see the text message. I think this is like this is kind of what you want to, you know, look at.

>> Yeah. I mean, you know, 630 pages. Who do you think is reading all that >> AI? >> Well, it's Clinkers, right? I I was actually going to make a point that, you know, this is how these things go. Typically, it was like, you know, uh, secretary or something that would give the politicians like what the synopsis is. Now, you actually have AI that can actually digest what the changes are draft. So, I I I think this is actually a bullish development. The news that I saw was that there's been radio silence from the White House and ethics is still the thing that's holding this up and White House is the thing that needs to come to the table and make some concessions on ethics. And so, sure, it's great Senate Republicans uh circulating this new draft, but it

doesn't really move the needle. The thing that might move the needle is if the White House comes to the table and makes some moves on ethics. But again, I don't think it matters. I think, you know, the votes are in and people have made up their mind, but I actually think that it's going to pass the cloer vote. When it comes to whether or not this thing actually gets put into law, I could see this getting shut down. I could see Democrats basically saying like, look, we have midterm elections in November. You know, why is Trump offering $5,000 to everyone if they if the Republicans retain the House and the Senate? It's because there's a 0% chance that Republicans are going to retain the

House and the Senate, which means that there's a 0% chance that Trump is paying everyone $5,000. And so he can >> Dude, that was crazy. >> So he can make all the claims he wants because he knows that that outcome is impossible. >> And so if I'm the Democrats, I'm like, "Hey, I don't really care. I'm probably just gonna put this, you know, on the back burner because once we win the midterms, I'm going to like we're gonna shut this down anyway. >> Um, and so, you know, in the meantime, I could see them making this, you know, push to kind of like buy some political, you know, purchasing power before, you know, kind of give some concessions. All right, Republicans, you want to you want

to spin your wheels and talk about this thing for the next two months? Sure. You know, I'll give you some some uh some political goodwill and vote for this, you know, make a pass on this closure vote because I know in the end this thing ain't going to happen because the Democrats are going to take the midterms. >> Yep. Yep. I like it. I agree. I don't have much. I would be shocked. I'd be happy shocked and happy if it came through. That's all I got to say. So, >> I'm going to check whether there's separate >> Yeah, we can go ahead and move on. I'm going to check whether there's separate prediction markets on the closure vote and the thing actually going through.

>> Uh well, what a reaction. Um stocks and gold were crushed at 8:30 only to entirely erase their decline. So, this was when I got long on ETH. Uh was on this move here and or even, you know, more long ETH you could say. And 10-year notes surging, stocks surging. I think everything looks pretty good. I'm not really too pressed, honestly. Uh, you know, I just want to see ETH holders breakout. You know, we got six and a half hours till a daily close, and that's really what we need. We don't really need >> what we need is a Fed holding rates, dude.

>> Like, we need the daily close. The daily close is not going to make a damn bit of difference. >> No, but the daily close will allow breakout traders to get in, which is important because they will fuel us over the weekend. >> I'm so done. I'm so done with the technical analysis. >> I'm so done. the the fall equinox and the position of the moon with respect to my >> two-day indicator. I >> Let's keep it rolling. Do we have daily equity here? >> Let's keep it rolling. Let's keep it rolling. >> Sorry. [music] Exposure tokenized stocks, but do you have a protected claim to backing

securities? Anna gave the breakdown behind dinari's custodial model with DShares. Obviously, Dinari is the partner of the show and they are in our opinion the leader in terms of the way that these things are actually being done on chain. Um there's that's obviously a hot take, but they are the leader in our opinion. So, let's go ahead and play this video. I think I I think this is important. >> Yeah, for sure. So, DJs are our tokenized stocks product. Um, >> like I said, we we pioneered this custodial approach to tokenization. And so >> when you own a Dshare, uh, you actually have a claim to the security that's not like an IOU from dinari or um, you know, some kind of uh, share or something in

an SPV, uh, you actually have a regulated and protected claim to backing securities. And functionally what that means is that you know if something were to happen to dinari we stop answering the phone or you know we the business falls apart or something like that um you can still get access to your shares and uh we we thought that was kind of a really important foundational element and that's kind of the the core of everything else that we do is grounded in that approach to you know if you if you have a token it should be as good as having a security, right? So, we can I think, you know, we'll probably get into, you know, more about minting and burning and custody and all that other

stuff that people are interested in. >> Yeah, love it. Absolutely love it. Anna's a G knows what she's talking about when it comes to these kinds of things and she's absolutely right. Uh, you know, Dinari Dshares is actually doing this in the more uh true to tokenized equities way. You know, we had Taylor Lynman come on basically explain that there's a difference between stock tokens, which are debt instruments. Technically, they are equity linked securities. They are still securities, but they're not equities because equities give you shareholder rights, governing rights, solo voting rights.

And so, what that is is that we have this bifurcation in the tokenized equities market. We've got actual tokenized equities that give you all of those shareholder rights. And then on the other hand, we've got stock tokens which are still securities. They are still debt instruments and they are still securities, but they are equity linked, not actually issued by the equity corporation themselves. And that I think is an important difference uh that we're going to see play out in the market as we see the proliferation of these these securities, tokens. Um, and there's going to be fragmentation. And I think we're seeing that because these

are two different models. They are not composable with one another. I think this is going to present a user experience issue as they become more popular. And you know, from everyone that we talked to, I think we're at a tune of like$2 billion dollars of tokenized equities. So far, this is just going to hockey stick up. This is just going to be a straight line vertical and these tokenized equities or stock tokens are going to flood the market. There's going to be all kinds of things that we're going to see as a result of these things coming on chain. And so it is important that we solve the fragmentation now before these things really really catch on. And I think that's the the sort of thing that we're seeing play out in the market right now.

The other thing here is that you know these issuer sponsored tokens are coming online. We saw Taylor Lynman talk about the transfer agent updates to the regulation that is coming online. We're seeing all kinds of things become regulatory possible that previously were not available to us. Um, and so dinari has their structure. We're seeing different structures play out which I think is phenomenal for the sake of financial experimentation. And we're going to see these things catch on. The important thing that I think is, you know, important to recognize here is that it doesn't seem important to the stock token holders to have governance rights. Like remember

a big big value proposition of stock tokens, these debt instruments, these equity linked securities is an export outside of the United States into emerging markets to get exposure to the US equities market. They don't really care about voting. They don't really care about stock splits. Like they want exposure to these companies because the US has the best performing stock market in the world. And if you just look at something like the Chinese, you know, version of the S&P 500, it's pretty much flat. Whereas the S&P 500 is going bonkers. So people people want exposure to US equities, but they don't necessarily want or need the

corporate voting rights or governance rights that typically come with a traditional equity held in a brokerage account. which means that stock tokens or equity linked notes or debt instruments whatever you want to call them that don't have those rights that is sufficient that is a sufficient structure for the broad swath of people outside the US that are looking to get exposure to the US equities market and I think those structures are okay and we're going to see those get minted in in in just magnitudes I think we're going to see flood of these tokens onto the market and uh we already know the implications of this. You know, we we

are now starting to see a tick down in Robin Hood volume which I think is interesting. Uh does it mean that the memecoin pairs with stock tokens is you know that narrative that meta is over? Not necessarily. I think we could still see a couple of winners in that in that meta but I think we're going to evolve into what is more sustainable. uh use cases for these tokenized equities and I think that is the tried andrue slow and steady proliferation of the US equities markets into the hands of holders abroad and the US equities market being one of the major financial exports of the United States and it's happening onchain.

>> Yep. I love it man. I'm so bullish on tokenized equities. I'm bullish on all the players and >> but who do you pie? Thank you for the explanation. >> Who do you who do you buy to express your bullishness? >> Hoodto. >> Hoodtock. >> Hoodto. Yeah. >> All right, let's keep it rolling. Outside of daily equity here, um get into um >> near protocol >> chain signatures, which was a big big technological innovation a few months ago. >> Yep. uh and it is a near account with a quantum safe uh MLDDSA key that can hold and protect assets from other chains including chains that have not yet upgraded to postquantum signing. Look, I am extremely bowled up on Near as a

result of our virtual near day yesterday. One of the things that gets me the most bold up, not only are they postquantum, uh, not only are they at the convergence point between AI, quantum, and blockchain digital assets, but also they have the right economic model for the near token. They are doing their best to make it the base denomination asset for AI intelligence. Meaning that if you're looking to get access to private and confidential AI, you're going through the near token. Why did Ethereum have even the semblance of a narrative around it being money?

Because it was the vehicle of choice. It was the denomination currency first for ICOs, but then for DeFi as DeFi summer took place on Ethereum. Near is now taking that monetary premium thesis and running it on AI intelligence. And so they've got the Near AI product. They've implemented staking for AI, meaning you can stake near. You don't have to sell anything. You can just stake it. And that stake is going to buy you credits for near AI, which is a powerful enough model to compete with the frontier models and open source. And did we mention it's private and confidential?

So, if you're using AI, which you probably are, do you want to pay for it? You don't have to. you can just stake near and use the credits that you get from staking near to to buy yourself AI. And then when it comes to, you know, the appreciation or depreciation of the near token, well, what how do you how do you create monetary premium or moneyiness? You make it a currency. And I I want to just, you know, I think this is a difficult concept for people to grasp because it really hasn't been done very well. There's three cases that you can kind of make each with, you know, kind of a different level of uh product market fit when it comes to the

moneyiness of this. First, look at Bitcoin. Are people actually using Bitcoin to buy things? Well, the Silk Road existed. People were using Bitcoin now, albeit for nefarious purposes, but people were using Bitcoin to actively buy goods and services. Not a very sustainable use case to use it for the black market illicit goods and services but nevertheless people were using it actually as a form of money that got Bitcoin moneyiness. Gold is also moneyiness for a different reason store of value and so you know Bitcoin does have another form of moneyiness in that regard. Okay, next one. ETH. We already talked about it a little bit. ETH was able to become the

de facto denomination of ICOs. In order for you to participate in these crowdfunding mechanisms, you had to have ETH and you had to contribute that to these ICOs. Okay. So ETH kind of sort of got a form of moneyiness as some some you know characteristic of moneyiness through being the de facto currency for not only ICOs in 2017 but also DeFi in 2020 2021 and then the advent of stable coins kind of took a little bit of the wind out of Ethereum's moneyiness sales. Okay, a little bit further but you know if you squint your eyes you can kind of see it.

Look at Chain Link. Chainlink for a long time, you know, people were kind of curious as to when or how or why Chainlink, you know, had a, you know, a large market cap. You know, they they have a good business, but why do they have a token? Why is, you know, is their value acrruel to their token? And Chainlink, you know, albeit maybe, you know, not as decentralized as Bitcoin or ETH, but still a very, you know, distributed product set. was able to create a product that garnered product market fit, generate a sustainable business with real customers, and then lo and behold, how

did they create moneyiness for the link token? They charged people for Oracle services and just general data blockchain services. They charged them in link and they helped people out behind the scenes. Sure, if you want if you aren't familiar, you want the the data product, but you don't necessarily want exposure to the link token, that's okay. Pay us in dollars, we'll handle it behind the scenes. We'll swap your dollars for link, and that's how you're going to you're going to pay for these services. And so, the point is that, you know, people spent link as a form of money, as a denomination currency for blockchain services. And therefore, link drew upon this characteristic of moneyiness. They

were able to create a form of moneyiness for the link token. All of that is to say that near is now creating moneyiness for the near token. And they are attempting to do this by making it the denomination currency for AI credits, for tokens, for AI tokens, input tokens, output to tokens, compute credits. whatever you want to call it, near AI, private, confidential AI, they are making it the denomination currency for AI intelligence.

That is how you create moneyness. You make it the denomination, the de facto currency in order to buy a good or service. You must spend this currency and they are doing that with the NER token. And I think they know what they're doing. I think they know what they're doing. So I'm incredibly bullish near uh for incorporating moneyness into their tokens value proposition. Obviously we know how large the TAM is for AI intelligence. If Near is able to accomplish this with even a small bit of market share, I think they will do incredibly well. So I'm bullish and uh I'm excited.

I believe we've got our first guest of the show, Milk Rope. Our friend John from Milk Road is going to join the show. Uh John Gillan is uh live in the tokenization tower. He's got the suit on and uh we're going to make it happen. So, let's hit a quick standby getting up tokenization tower animation because we are going to get John live in the tokenization tower very shortly and uh we're going to hear from Milk Road.

Let's do it. >> [music] >> Going 70. >> All righty, guys. We're here ination Tower with John Gillan. John, great to have you. I love the suit. looks great.

Uh, for those of you guys who don't know, John is one of the hosts of Milkro Daily Show. Uh, it's one of my favorite crypto pods. They get some of the best guests in the industry. Um, I love their thumbnails. I love the whole vibe. John is ex Blackrock. Uh, very smart guy, very bullish ETH. Um, and yeah, I mean, we I was a big fan of your pieces that you put out. You put out um the pieces about wartime Ethereum situational awareness and now about this this uh short squeeze. So talk to us about what is going on in the land of Ethereum.

What's got you so bold up? >> Uh well, a lot's going on. It's great to be here, Andy. Thanks for having me. Uh big fan of your show, too. Um so this all started uh >> switch please. >> For a long time, I have been uh a follower of a lot of different content outlets and media outlets in digital assets. Banklist has always been one of my favorite. Uh and one of the co-hosts of Banklist, David Hoffman, uh publicly sold his ETH and wrote an essay called Why I Sold My ETH. And there wasn't like anything like specific to David about this, but it was a bare market. The vibes were down and everybody was just kind of like rage quitting. And uh in general, I don't know, it just felt like uh a time for a rallying cry and like a call to action. Um so wartime Ethereum

was uh an article that I wrote in response to to David's article about why I sold my ETH. And I was basically just saying that I think it's too early to call on this. He was saying that Ethereum has kind of reached this sort of like vague middle ground where it's going to like stay in this area for a while and not really rerate in price higher or lower. And I think Ethereum is either worth like 20 bucks or it's one of the most valuable assets in the world. So I wrote an essay saying like it's too soon to call on this. It's just bare market rage and frustration because it's been in a downtrend against Bitcoin for like nine years. And um you know I don't know just it's somebody had to like pound the table and say I still believe in this. I believe in something.

I believe in ETH. Um and so that's how it started. And then like I kept having um more every like couple of months I would have like more to say or like you know things would happen in the market that I felt beared additional commentary. And so the most recent one I wrote wartime Ethereum Blitzkrieg was about this massive short squeeze that we saw in Bitcoin and Ethereum and across the digital asset space that seems to have catalyzed us out of the bare market. It's been almost a month since that happened and the price action is holding. So the the momentum is going in a good direction. And it's nice to see this kind of turn around and it's been nice to see the community really respond to those articles because I think there's a lot of people who are feeling these things and um articulating them. I

think it resonates with a lot of people and I was just happy to see that. >> Man, I put out a tweet today that was like >> nobody owns Ethereum. H how did we get here? H how did we get to a place where the number two crypto asset is not owned by people in the industry themselves? And I've been kind of working a scoop, John. That is whether the Clarity Act passes or not. I I don't really have specific intel there. I'm hearing that it's been dead since July is what it is, right? There's, you know, Poly Market's got it at 15% chance this year. But what I do have scoop on is that there's an innovation exemption for tokenization coming imminently. Like I think clarity, my thesis is clarity fails. This exemption comes immediately after. In my

view, there is not a single better asset to be bullish on the tokenization thesis to express that bullishness than Ethereum. What are we missing? What is the market missing? John, >> I think that everybody has gotten a lot of things wrong about a lot of things. So, I want to correct a couple things here. Just I see this a little bit differently, right? Bitcoin's market cap is or rather Ethereum's market cap is like over $300 billion now. It's bigger than Coca-Cola. It's bigger than Bank of America. It's bigger than Chevron. It's the estimates that I've seen is that there's something like 190 million holders of Ethereum globally. It is a global asset. It is a censorship resistant open secure permissionless asset ecosystem network. And you're right, it does stand to benefit the most from some of the largest um momentum um let's say narratives or just like

changes that we're seeing to global monetary, financial, and economic systems, namely tokenization and agentic finance. I talked about this a lot in this episode, this interview I did with Tom Lee a couple of weeks ago where I talked about he talks about Ethereum as the solution to the uncanny valley of wealth. And so what he's talking about is this this double narrative that's happening where you know Vlad Tennov has talked about the the tokenization super cycle. All assets are migrating on chain and in addition to that we're able to tokenize things that previously we didn't have a way to trade in a fungeible way in markets and like like make these um assets that can be commoditized and sold. So you're going to be able to swap Twitter clout for a Rimbrandt painting and stuff like that and like fractions of these things. So there's a huge amount of um things that

are unlocked for capital markets by tokenization. This is just the early days of that combined with the rise of agent commerce and you're going to need some kind of a way through smart contract technology or or leveraging um the solutions that blockchain technology unlocks and makes possible to maintain human supervision of uh this new rising economy of trillions of agentic actors trading you know hundreds of trillions of dollars of value. Uh and so that is kind of the the the thesis that Tom has and there's always been this like third thing which is just the rise of stable coins which is just in my view another um iteration instantiation of the tokenization thesis of tokenizing the dollar and other assets. Revolute is tokenizing the euro also on Ethereum on

the Ethereum blockchain. So all these things are converging on ETH. They have been for a long time and I think that there's just been an impatience right like Ethereum's initial pump. We've been in this like sideways channel ranging here. Yeah. For like five years on Ethereum on the USD chart and I think the initial pump that got us up here was the best performance from any asset in history and it was pricing in over overexuberantly this reality that is now starting to manifest. So now we've had a long time for people to like rage quit capitulate because of the frustration. But now these things are actually starting to plan out. I agree with you. I don't really care if the Fed hikes or holds. I don't care if the security or if the clarity act um passes or fails.

>> All these things cannot be stopped. This is all >> a broader secular right >> trend >> and it all benefits it converges on Ethereum and benefits the asset >> 100%. And that was always the thing that Tom Lee haters had in their arsenal was kind of like well sure we're going to tokenize all these assets. We're going to have all these stable coins all this is happening but like how does it benefit ETH? And the second that we get animal spheres back enthused into this market, that was a very bare market take. That was a very bare market take cuz Hyperlick was dominating. Why? Made a bunch of money, bought back the token.

That's not the only way. It's certainly not the only way for the world's largest decentralized permissionless censorship resistant smart contract layer. They don't have to play by the same rules as Hyperlquid. Right. >> Right. And there's a different game here. And so this tokenization thesis, the beautiful thing about it is that it's permeating Wall Street and global finance and Vlad is going to war for it. And I think that Ethereum is going to be Wall Street's new favorite shitcoin and I love it and I love it. >> I don't think that term applies to Ethereum anymore. Uh but I I think that it's it's going to become one of the most popular and most respected assets on Wall Street very quickly. I think you're right that and Tom himself said this at the time that a lot of this is just bare market frustration. And I said

this to David too, >> you know, just to defend David like as well, like he rotated his capital into a lot of other assets that are performing very strongly, but they're higher risk because they have much less adoption, much le much much less like lendy effects. You know, like lighter is a great asset. It's only a billion dollar slightly over a billion dollar market cap. Hyperlid you mentioned is been on a generational run, right? It's a like a 20 22 billion market cap and Ethereum is well over 300 billion and growing. So I think that you have to have that network effect, that Lindy effect, the um the the momentum and the the liquidity in order for major institutions to be able to consider building or deploying capital into some of these ecosystems.

There's a lot of great projects that are technically very advanced and sophisticated, but if they only have like a billion or$2 billion dollar market cap, we can't migrate 700 trillion dollars of assets into that ecosystem because it doesn't have the track record, the trust um and the credible um neutrality and censorship resistance um and the zero downtime that Ethereum can offer those institutions. All these things matter a lot because they think in terms of the language of risk and counterparty risk is a major thing that you have to consider if you're deploying capital into an ecosystem that is very small and only run by a few people. Um but yeah, I agree with you. There's a lot of of things that are converging on ETH here.

I think as far as the the price action goes, this narrative will flip once that price action flips, that may have started today because $2,500 has been a key resistance level on Ethereum >> that we've tested I don't know how many times at this point throughout ETH's history over not just this recent like month of the last five years, right? And you know, last I checked my phone, we're we're we're over 200. We're holding there. We'll see what happens. I'm not really like going to make a short-term price prediction here, but I think if we can get over 200 and hold it, the next target is 3,000 pretty quickly. And I think that brings back animal spirits.

It brings back this hot ball of capital. This is why for months I've been saying um if you're an AI pivot to crypto because although I think that trade will continue to work out, those AI stocks are are going to continue to perform well. Everybody had been max bearish crypto and digital assets, particularly ETH for a really, really long time. This is why ETH outperformed when that short squeeze happened because there were so many people who were short that they got wrecked really bad. Yeah. And so ETH went up higher even than Bitcoin or anything else. So um yeah, there's a lot of things. >> I'll make a price prediction. This thing's going to hit 4,000 before the end of the year. I think I mean look, I mean it looks fantastic. I think it could double quickly. This tokenization exemption comes through. Um you know, we

get a a little bit more Tom Lee getting to his 5% target. I mean, you just spoke to him and he's a couple I mean, he's a couple more buys away from being there. I think he's got half a billion in cash ready to go. It might be him hitting the market today. I you know, who knows? We'll know next week what he did this week. And I mean, it's the most hated asset in crypto and it's very reflexive because Ethereum's narrative is terrible when it's going down because it has no value acrruel. It has it it's not like Bitcoin. It's not a store of value asset. It's it it doesn't really compete against Salana. But when it's going up, it's like, well, duh. The world needs a permissionless decentralized credibly neutral base layer for the future of finance. It's always been Ethereum. What the hell are what, you

know, what were we thinking? And so, crypto is very reflexive in that way, right? And I think we're kind of going through that immediate short-term reflexivity across the board. Currently, >> I think all markets are reflective reflexive in that way. I think that a lot of these things are working out in Ethereum's favor right now. I don't agree that Ethereum doesn't capture these narratives, though. I think that their strategy is different. So on the fee generation thing, they are deliberately allowing themselves to um benefit things like arbitum, like Robin Hood chain, like base, like Coinbase in order to create the network effects that are necessary to sustain the long-term dominance of Ethereum and the EVM ecosystem. That's a trade-off in the moment. In the long term, that generates an enormous amount of fee demand for ETH, for Ethereum. All these things are

denominated in and settled down in Ethereum that will pan out. the the the gas on Ethereum is at all-time highs in terms of like how much volume is going through ETH right now. Unis swap is seeing all-time highs in volume. So that the thesis is playing out. It just needs time to actually metriculate into burning ETH which will come. It's just it's a process of development. >> Let me just add something in there. So uh Paul Frambot the CEO of Morpho came out on our show and said look I'm not doing buybacks. I'm not playing for the 5 10% you know you know kind of like a dividend. I'm playing for the 100x. And so people have been criticizing Ethereum for Robin Hood chain because Robin Hood chain has been making $2 to $3 million of revenue per day from their single sequencer Arbitum chain. Arbitum's

getting 10% and Ethereum is making like 150 bucks a day. >> Y >> that doesn't concern you at all. You're just like this is a pure bootstrapping Amazon selling books. Now we're selling this. Now we're selling this. Now we're selling this. All of a sudden Amazon's one of the biggest companies in the world. That's how you see this. >> I think that it's totally legitimate to be concerned about that and a lot of people are and I think that they should ask those questions and make noise about that. However, the response from the Ethereum community and the strategy that Ethereum has taken, which Joe Luben talked about this on the show. I did I asked him this question. I've asked the ETH labs guys this. I've asked Ethereum institutional this. The strategy that they are taking is exactly that that Walmart Amazon strategy of like offer

the best solution at the lowest cost. Get the whole market and then once you've got all that market share, it's much easier to maintain and defend it rather than trying to have it compete in other ways that you can say that's not an effective strategy, but it is the one that they're going with. We'll see if it works or not, right? that there's a risk to all these things and you can have criticism of them. All right. Like so I don't think that anybody should not be able to make that point of view. I do too. I I ask these questions a lot of course as you should. >> Right. Exactly. But so on the other side of this, right? Like as all of this capital and user adoption comes to Ethereum that drives the store value thesis on Ethereum. It makes it a more

compelling collateral asset, capital asset, and store value asset. And that's I think what the market is pricing in as well. Um, so it, you know, I think one of the things that people struggle with with Ethereum is that there's not a clean, simple, one-s sentence digital gold thesis on Ethereum. It is a complex, complicated, and uh, evolving asset. And the thesis of it is unlike any we've ever seen because we've never seen an asset like ETH and a network like Ethereum before. So, I think that that's something where you just have to be able to expand your imagination and understand that there are multiple things that drive value to this network and to this asset. the strategy that they're deploying seems to be working.

Now, if something else beats it and finds product market fit that the market will tell us that too. But right now, Ethereum is winning. The way Joe Shalom of Sharp Link likes to say it is that Ethereum has the license to win. Yeah, they are currently winning. You can look at the scoreboard on almost any metric you want in terms of stable coins, tokenization of real world assets, uh volume, users, market cap, all these things. Um, and price action will resolve to the upside as well to follow that. But it's just a really interesting time in digital assets. I'm not by any means an ETH maxi, by the way. Sure. I' I'd like to mention that. Um because I don't think that you should be loyal to one asset or one idea, one organization.

The idea of what we're trying to build in digital assets of this global decentralized, credibly neutral, um open permissionless secure scalable ecosystem, um for economic, monetary, and financial activity. That is what I'm loyal to. That's what I'm bullish on. That's what I want to invest in and and move my capital towards. Uh, and right now Ethereum is just like the best and the the the leader in that um category. So that's why I I focus my concentration of energy and capital on this asset for right now. >> Yeah. Okay. And so when you're thinking about this whole issuance conversation that came out that's kind of came and went, you were I assume you were just on the side of that's not going to happen and there's no need for that to happen and it's just a silly proposal or what was

your take on that? Yeah, I never really like pounded the table too hard one way or the other on this because I think that the Ethereum community had that dialogue and conversation amongst themselves and made sure that that decision. Salana and a lot of other ecosystems have had this dialogue amongst themselves and come to different decisions, but they all are starting from a different place in terms of their issuance. Um, and they're all like got different competing objectives, different situations in the market. So, you know, I'm I'm happy, let's say, with the outcome of that, but I don't think that it's a settled closed thing. I think that there are um there are legitimate ways to say that different aspects of Ethereum and its issuance could be more optimized. However, I think it's a little bit like uh not the right time and tinkering with something

that >> isn't there's not enough pain from the problem of it frankly in order to make it something that the community all like desperately needs to solve. And I, you know, I've told this to people before, but I think that if that problem ever gets painful enough for ETH for Ethereum, then I do believe that there will be a solution implemented. But, you know, that that optimized issuance curve is going to kind of vary based on a lot of circumstances and dynamics around the asset and in the market. And so it's a little bit hard to like fine-tune that right now when we should be focused on other things such as increasing the demand for Ethereum and the use cases for Ethereum and the adoption of Ethereum as opposed to tinkering with some minor minutia of of supply dynamics. Not that it's trivial. I mean

there is a discussion to be had there, but I just to me it wasn't uh I'm happy with the outcome, let's just say. >> Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Um, when you think about the kind of ETH Bitcoin ratio and just kind of how you anticipate capital flowing into Ethereum from other areas, right? Whether it be the AI trade, Bitcoin, institutional allocation. Who do you think is the next marginal buyer of Ethereum from this point forward? Like, we need something. Tom Lee's almost tapped out. Shalom hasn't been buying that much as of late. uh some of these dats are kind of like, you know, they're they're as happy as a man could be having this bounce back and I think they're going to have a roaring comeback and I think there's an interesting trade to be put on be

looking at Bit Mine and Sharp and Sharp Link as kind of like premium beta plays to Ethereum if if you you know if that's your style. Um what is the next who's the next marginal buyer? >> So I'm going to answer this in a way that you may not expect, but I think this is something that's very important to me. Every episode of Milk Road that I do, I end by saying stay safe, stay educated, and stay bullish. It is very important to me to try to contribute something. This is why I took this job. I left I was at Black Rockck for six years on the Aladdin platform. I worked a little bit with the digital assets team there. I wanted to move my career in the direction of digital assets for a long time. I was writing for some crypto YouTube channels. Um, I got this

opportunity to host this podcast and I took this because I think this is one of the most important moments in uh the history of financial and capital markets and trying to participate in sharing good information with people and just like being a resource for people as they try to navigate this I think is really important right now. >> The answer to your question there's a a person named Samira Cohen who is I think like global executive committee level at BlackRock. She's been there for like over 20 30 years something like that. She's the leader of their ETF business. She said that the struggle that investors on Wall Street had in prior generations was converting savers to investors. Meaning the people that survived who had survived the Great Depression were very reluctant to put their capital back into investments because they didn't trust banks. They

didn't trust the financial system. The problem now is converting what people would say are politely self-directed speculators but are really more closer to gamblers. Converting them into investors. So, what I want to try to do is help this community, this community of digital asset native investors, self-directed investors who I have a lot of respect for, to develop respect for themselves and for their capital, and to develop a longer term hope and faith-based strategy of deploying their capital into something that has a long-term value thesis like an Ethereum, like a Bitcoin, as opposed to treating their capital like a lottery ticket or um a poker chip and uh gambling with it just for short-term funding gratification. You know, a lot of these things I know you're quite bullish on. I

don't I don't want to like tell anybody what to do with their their capital, but a lot of people lose money. It's like 90 95% of people who speculate on these meme coins in >> I'm not bullish on meme coins. >> Well, no, I'm not trying on people's stopping sports gambling and learning what a portfolio allocation looks like, even if it starts with memecoins. Sure. >> Because when you sports bet, there is no portfolio, right? there is just a number for the day and that number is usually gone by the next day and you need a restart at least when they open their memecoin portfolio the next day they can see green or red. I mean, hey, it's not much better, but it's a start. Sure.

Okay. >> I think you're you're right that it's a way to onboard people, but I also don't want that onboarding to experience to just be they lost all their money and they left, right? I want to um try to convert that that the the the general >> thesis for me though is just like move people move people with capital away from speculation and gambling and more towards a longerterm mindset and investing mindset and basing that on respect for themselves and for their capital and trust that there is a possibility of a better way to have monetary and financial systems set up in this world and that Ethereum and digital assets can offer the way to that. Um so who's the next marginal buyer? The answer to this really institutions, Wall Street, everybody's coming to this slowly. It seems like they've all gotten here, but they're still coming around to

this. They're still trying to compete with Ethereum. They're I think we're just now getting to the then they fight you phase of Ethereum's adoption and growth. Um eventually institutional capital will with size and conviction rotate towards Ethereum. Um, but I think for right now the opportunity is for retail, for self-directed investors to position themselves uh to be ahead of that and to to ride the next 5 10 years of of growth of Ethereum, of digital assets, and of ETH. So, I don't know. It's not so much that I'm like an ETH maxi or telling everybody to fullport ETH by any means, but that's the general way I think about this and that's who I I would hope the next marginal buyer would be would be just self-directed investors who understand how important they and their capital are and to treat it with the respect of of investing with

it rather than speculating with it. >> Yep. I like it. I like it and I agree. Um, you know, when it comes to thinking about ETH, it's just something that you can put money in and just kind of forget about it. That's like the that's like the beautiful thing about kind of store value assets, gold, Bitcoin, even though it's quantum thing, you can still kind of just put money in Bitcoin and be like it'll be there in five years. I mean, unless Qday comes and you got to like change your wallet and things. I mean, there's a whole kind of conversation there. One thing that I like to ask about though is I saw some news that I didn't really understand, which was Ethereum is going to allow users to pay gas fees in USDC instead of ETH on the main chain. I believe um this to me

sounds like a way that is going to reduce the moneyiness of ETH in favor of user experience. Am I wrong? >> I agree very much actually with David Hoffman's take on this, which is that he said this is a little bit of like small-minded thinking because I agree with you that in the short term, in a myopic view, it does harm ETH's moneyiness, but only so far as in so far as ETH stays in the tiny little tide pool of crypto only native uh investors. But allowing for people to pay in for gas in other things radically expands the addressable market that Ethereum can service and the moneyiness proposition of ETH as an asset by bringing in that capital those users that economic activity is far far outweighs um the the tiny benefit we get from forcing

everybody to hold $300 of ETH in their wallet so that they can pay gas fees. Um so to me I think it's a a really much needed and uh great great thing to see a great change to see. Um, it'll bring a lot more adoption to Ethereum to a lot of more users to ETH Ethereum. It's good. I think it's it's a bullish thing and it's going to totally increase uh the the addressable market for ETH and the value drivers for ETH the asset. >> Love it. Love it. Uh, we're going to take a quick standby, guys, and we'll be right back. [music] [music] [music] >> [music]

>> We get deep. We get deep know >> already. And so I mean I agree with the stable coin take like it's it's minuscule capital onchain anyway holding ETH. I mean, gas fees are so low on chain right now on ETH that, you know, we're talking like cents and dollars of holdings. I still think, you know, you you look at the um Binance coin era where where you needed to hold B&B

to get a part of these launches on on Binance. You look at the, you know, ETH ICO era, you needed to hold ETH to, you know, to be a part of these raises, you know, in Salana in 2024. You need to be have soul paired to meme pairs in the LP pools. You need to hold soul to basically trade and gamble. So there is like a part of of moneyiness [snorts] in the onching world. But again like where ETH is going the the marginal user holding 36 cents of ETH in their Rabby wallet isn't really like moving the needle for ETH's properties of moneyiness.

>> I agree. Yeah, I think we're aligned on that. But yeah, we've got around like 4550 trillion or 50 billion rather um dollars worth of tokenized real world assets on chain. The bulk of that is in Ethereum. It's only going to continue to expand and accelerate and the people who are going to be uh bringing that capital and those assets on chain are going to want to be able to pay have a little bit more flexibility in what they pay their gas fees with. So I think it's just part of the growth of Ethereum. Um and I think it's just going to continue the the narrative and um the demand for ETH and for the Ethereum network. So, >> and then as far as performance against Bitcoin goes, just max bullish, like what's your take here?

>> You know, a lot of people are are very closely watching the the ETH BTC chart and saying like, oh, maybe we're breaking out of this downtrend here. Maybe it'll hold. I think it's a little early to say for sure one way or the other, but I think that there are fundamentally different value drivers for a lot of different digital assets in the ecosystem. They're not all created equal. they aren't all, you know, driven by the same thesis or the ESI or what whatever word it would be. Um, and I think that Ethereums right now are particularly strong. It's particularly well positioned and I think that there's reason to expect that we'd see some strength relative to BTC from Ethereum here. Um, so I yeah, I'm bullish and I think it'll it'll be interesting to see how that plays out, but I'm not like pounding the table calling for a

specific target on that. I think that they both can and should continue to grow together. So, I'm bullish on both of those assets. Is there a catalyst for Ethereum you're looking for? One of these upgrades that's coming um something with quantum. Is there anything specifically to the end of the year or early next year that you see as a catalyst for Ethereum? >> I think that there'll be a lot of things unlocked with Glamsterdam. There's a big commitment and focus in the Ethereum community right now and the EF and ETH Labs and the developers and the researchers on making Ethereum faster. So lean Ethereum, fast Ethereum, these are the things that they're focused on.

Um and they're also, you know, ETH systems and and other players are working on coming up with um solutions for rational privacy that are compatible with Ethereum to be able to bring additional um additional institutional activity on chain. It's very important to them. So all these things are in progress and there's a lot of different actors in the ETH ecosystem that are actively working on these things. All of those are value drivers. All of them are scoring big wins across the board. Like bringing Revolute with their tokenized euro uh on onto Ethereum is a big win. There's a lot of tokenized things happening um at Coinbase, at Robin Hood, and various other players. A lot happening at the same time.

>> Yeah, there's this regulatory >> tailwind, right? >> Tailwind too of >> which ETH benefits the most from. I think >> I agree with that. I mean, I think if ETH if clarity goes through, it's mega bullish. I don't think it will, but it's tokenization exemption mega bullish ETH. Look, if it if it's if it surprises, hell yeah. But like just basic expectation is there are regulatory tailwinds for Ethereum specifically in the next six to 12 months. >> I give you actually I think this might be the most bullish outcome because the Clarity Act had become less of a bill for crypto and more of a bill to protect institutions and uh >> banks basically and to like kind of like DeFi a little bit. And I think now if we get regulators to push through a lot of regulatory clarity and allow a

lot of things to come into the US, it's very hard to like put that genie back in the bottle and we might be able to get a much more crypto friendly environment than we might otherwise have gotten if the clar had gone through because that that could be a Trojan horse of just bureaucratic red tape that would just tie up the industry even though it looked like they gave us a bill to help us. Y so I think this might actually be the max bullish outcome here. >> And there's more there's going to be more nuanced acts or bills or law that will benefit specific sectors is my understanding. >> I would hope so. >> Right. We we have genius that's very clearly for stable coins and and we'll have tokenization rules. We'll have prediction market rules, DeFi rules, vault rules. You know what I mean?

Instead of just like this broad like paintbrush, you know, all green, all red across the, you know, canvas. It's like very much more specific drawings. Yeah, I would hope that that would be the case. It would be nice to have some nuance in government. Um, it would be nice to know if a Pokemon card is a security. Uh, you know, there would be a lot of a lot of answers I'd like to get from our regulators and some specific nuance to to the regulation that actually makes sense for what they're regulating. >> Yeah, John, absolute pleasure, man. Thanks for coming by. Beautiful view. Beautiful day New York. I'm going to go to the US Open tonight. I need ETH to keep pumping, guys, so I can go to the US Open. Beautiful day here in New York.

Thanks for coming out, John. Absolute pleasure, man. Guys, we'll be right back with our next guest. More markets, charts, news, positions, takes into the weekend. Don't go anywhere. Be right back. [music] [music] >> [music] >> We get

know we get we get We get deep know we get deep know we get deep we get deep know we get deep [music] know we get deep we get deep know we get deep we get we get deep we get deep we get we get [music] we Get, you know, we get [music]

we get deep. [music] We get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. >> [music] >> We get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. [music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music]

[music] >> We get deep. We get deep. [music] You know, we get deep. We get deep. We [music] get deep. You know, we get deep. You know we get deep. We get deep know we get deep [music] know we get deep we get deep know we get deep know we get deep we get deep [music] know we get deep we get we get deep we get [music] deep >> yo yo yo what's going on guys this is itan with the rollup we're going to be

patrolling the streets of New York City getting answers to the questions that you guys have knows what are people trading, what are people investing in, how much do people actually budget. We're going to have people from all over, all different investment classes, people who are dead broke, people who are dead whales, people who are just loaded. There won't be a mayor or politician to stop us on the streets. We're going to go everywhere. All five burrows. We're taking over the 212. >> [music] [music]

>> All right, guys. We are back live. I mean, fantastic episode there with uh good friend John from Milk Road. Like you guys heard, he's ex [clears throat] BlackRock, which uh is pretty special these days. Very, very cool to see. um as well as bullish ETH. Uh very few people out there still bullish ETH, but it does seem like there's something going on inside Black Rockck. You guys know Joseph Shalom, uh also friend of the show on several times, co-founder of Sharplink, uh as also very bullish ETH. Um and so there is a big big ETH resurgence. You guys have heard us talking about it a lot. uh what you guys see on the screen here, ZAMO, there are two use cases in crypto, store value and

onchain finance. We're seeing that uh that is exactly the barbell thesis. Store of value, hard money, scarce assets. On the other side, you got onchain businesses, onchain finance benefiting from legitimization of the industry. Zcash is encrypted store value. Zama is encrypted onchain finance. Couldn't have said it better myself. Rand obviously is speaking on the Zama front. Both are trillion dollar markets. What I think as well is that Zama can be applied confidentiality across the entire Ethereum ecosystem.

You guys have obviously seen how important privacy and confidentiality is to the onchain thesis right now. Uh and that's not slowing down. I mean, it's pretty incredible that we're seeing this on multiple fronts. Uh obviously, you know, with AI, surveillance, everything ticking up on that front, it's caused for Zcash uh to do incredibly well, but I think, you know, people somewhat lose sight of how privacy will be applied across the stack.

Obviously, Zcash at the asset level has confident confidentiality baked in at the base layer. You can shield your assets. What I like to say here, look, Zcash is to Bitcoin like Zama is to Ethereum. Zama is programmable privacy. Uh whereas Zcash is kind of just the store of value. It is privacy by default, but Zama is where you can actually apply this to everything else. And so, uh that is how I like to think about Zama. It is programmable privacy at the smart contract layer, whereas Zcash is private at the asset layer. So, um, yeah, we're friends of the show with Zama. Rand is

great. I think he's gonna be coming on very soon. And, uh, we're big, big believers in what Zama is doing. Also, uh, they've been a great partner with us on the privacy front. We wouldn't be preaching them if we didn't believe their technology and the vision that they have for Zama. Let's go ahead. We've got one more tweet and it's going to tee up our next guest very nicely. uh because it is with fracks and so uh the United Founders Group is building a DeFi innovation platform on Robin Hood. This is extremely exciting.

They've selected uh stakes staked FRA ETH as the core asset for their treasury. Uh building on top of our highest performing ETH LST. FRA is coming to Robin Hood crypto. guys. I mean, I couldn't think of a more relevant announcement uh from Fracks because uh not only are they bullish ETH in this regard, but also Robin Hood chain and I think that is going to be an increasingly powerful narrative that will continue to accelerate. You guys have heard us talk about the barbell portfolio thesis. The funny thing is, you know, ETH doesn't really fall into uh one side of those categories, but and also isn't particularly crowded. And so I think we will see a rerating of ETH as

well. Uh FRA has been core DeFi infrastructure from the very beginning of Ethereum benefiting from stable coins as a national economic priority as well. So uh I mean this is exciting uh because uh this FRA product staked FRA ETH is coming to Robin Hood chain uh and United Founders Group is selecting this as the core yieldbearing asset for its treasury. Uh it means that the treasury is going to start earning on this stake yield uh staked ETH uh the yield from stake ETH. It's proven collateral. You guys already know this. Uh it has 61,000 ETH backing and deep liquidity. And obviously this is bullish for FRA because it expands distribution to the Robin Hood chain.

And so we're going to bring up uh Sam from Fracks, local friend of the show, Stabled Up episode. And uh we're going to hear from him about this. Uh, also we're going to hear uh from Ragulan uh around tokenized fonts and so we're going to bring them up in just a moment. Uh, then we're going to hit a quick standby to get them all set up and then we're going to bring them on the show for our last guest segment of the week and we're going to uh say three inshallah for a weekend pump. Let's go ahead hit a quick [music] Heat. Heat.

[music] [music] >> [music] >> We get we get know we get deep know we get deep

know we get deep we get know we get deep know [music] we get deep know we get deep [music] we get we get deep we get deep we get [music] Welcome back to another episode of Stabled Up, our premier weekly show covering the ins and outs of digital dollars, stable coins, and the future of decentralized finance.

>> Show is made possible by FRA [music] and FRA is powering the financial engine of the internet, powering FRXUSD and genius compliant stable coins. This is the stable coin super cycle made possible by FRA. Now enjoy stabled up, our [music] weekly stable coin show. All righty, guys. Welcome back to Stabled Up, our premier weekly stablecoin show powered by our friends at FR. Sam's here with us today, the CEO of Fra. And we've got Ragulan Pathy of Cast, the CEO of CAST. Um, amazing show today. Neo Bank Supercycle, tokenization super cycle. People are spending stable coins on credit cards. I'll tell you that much. Gentlemen, great to have you, Sam. Good to have you back. And Rags, welcome to the show for the first time.

>> Good to be here. >> Yeah, it's great to be here, guys. >> Happy Friday. >> Absolutely. Happy Friday. How uh I mean things have gotten rerated here in the last month. Are you are you guys seeing that reflected in uh activity in business as well or we just seeing it on the on the price charts on Twitter? >> I mean yes we've seen definitely a little bit of an uptick but um during the last year whilst we've had a bare market we've grown 34x anyway. So um I think there is um a lot of users that we have who are independent of crypto prices now. I think people just think about crypto cards, but actually they're like stable coin cards. It's people just trying to move money and do, you know, everyday banking stuff and the demand for that is exploding. So >> yeah, I I think uh we've we've seen the

same excitement honestly uh every month increase since Genius. We work with uh a lot of both companies but also you know web 3 teams but even web 2 and the the price excitement is is obviously makes everything uh even more interesting but on on the back end on business deals and stuff like uh like Ragalon said I we we've seen the same excitement just month over month growing regardless of the exact price. >> Yeah. Um, look, I think a a good place to start here because it's relevant and I think stable coins naturally flow into NEO banks and these stable coin cards kind of as as you alluded to, Rags. Um, but where I think, you know, it's important to start is look, stable coins

are becoming a national priority here in the US. Like I I read this article the other day. You know, they're talking about buybacks. They're talking about this Treasury Fed Accord 2.0. The point is that, you know, they're trying to unleash liquidity and deregulate banks and, uh, in order to finance, you know, uh, Scott Bess's bills, they need people to be buying these bills. And it seems like stable coin companies and issuers are, uh, potentially going to step in and be the buyers of these short-term bills. And then, obviously, you can extrapolate this in a few different ways. Uh the meme on this show has been look, it's a national economic priority to to pump crypto because when crypto goes up, we issue more stables and then those stable coin issuers buy more

bills. Uh that's kind of just a fun little extrapolation that we've been we've been playing around with here. And so Sam, maybe we could start. I just want your general reaction to how deep you think this goes. Have you personally gone full macro? And then rags, we'll kind of get into, you know, what the stable coin buildout means for the NEO bank and the stable coin card. uh part of the ecosystem. >> Yeah, for sure. Uh I think honestly um the the main thing is before we've always said, oh, as as the crypto price go up, more stable coins are minted.

That's one part of the flywheel. But honestly, all of the the neo bankanking I've even heard the term neoor brokerages now because of of Robin Hood's uh you know big rise, right? Where people can integrate just direct stock buys, sells and and everything um into the stable coin supply going up, right? Like one of the things I actually I think it was Rob Hadock from Dragonfly uh and our friends there, he actually said it really well. He said banking is being unbundled, right? Every part. So we we usually talk about the the stable coin stuff, the settlement and everything. Before Genius, right, banks essentially had to participate in some capacity in the settlement process, whether it was a fintech like Venmo or PayPal. When you move money into your

like Venmo account, you're actually just wiring the the deposit your deposit into the the Venmo Inc. bank accounts deposits, right? With stable coins, you don't actually have to do that, right? You can hold a stable coin. Like you guys said, it's it's a treasury. It increases the demand for short-term treasuries. uh and and money market fund securities. But as more and more banking features and and like like brokerages and other financial features get unbundled and then essentially rebundled in different places like in in Cast in Fracket in in Etherfy, right? And in all of these new platforms, you essentially have new demand for places that can hold stable coins, right? And other places

that we're seeing is the the companies that we're working with that will, you know, announce in in the coming quarter uh is that they want to just hold a treasury of regulated stable coins for running their business for both payins and payouts, right? And so that's actually really powerful, too. It doesn't just have to be when crypto goes up. So, it's really exciting and interesting to see what the features that are being unbundled are and who are the teams that are actually rebundling them in the web 3 capacity, right? Is is it the stock, brokerages, stablecoin, payments, all of these things. And uh that's that's what I'm really interested in is how they're being rebundled with web 3 features, right? Whether it's like

earn with with like Morpho, a uh stock buy and sells and things like that. Yeah Rex anything to add there? >> No, I mean I what we see I mean we have a very global platform, right? So we use we're actually pretty evenly split across the world >> and what we just see is that people need to it's people just discovered it's a more efficient way to move money and so they just do it. I mean I I I think of it from very simple terms. It's like, you know, in the '9s you had online shopping and um, you know, there was a big boom around it and everyone's like, everything is going to go online and it didn't all go online and still people go go to normal shops. But what you knew

was that that growth was just once once it was out of the bag, then people were going to get shopped more and more online and every year like retail might go up 2% but online shopping was going up 20%. You know, it's just eating away in that broader ecosystem. And that's the simplest way I think about stable coins as well. like they're just going to continuously grow eat in they're going to digitize dollars. they're going to move from moving from banks to moving through stable coins. And that's what we're there to sort of capture because the traditional fintexs and banks don't really offer um stable coins within their platform so easily. And um a lot of people want to move money much more efficiently around the world and we're there to provide a a neo bankank style service, not just card, but the full

stack of services so people can get that with us because the current bank doesn't offer it. >> Yeah, man. >> Yeah. Do do you also agree with this framing that Sam mentioned I think from Rob Hadock that the banking system is being unbundled and how do you reconcile so this unbundling you know and and teams that are hypers specializing on one part of that stack versus kind of verticalizing and being the full stack Neo bank neo brokerage offering for your customers. Yeah, I mean look, I think onshore here in the US there, you know, I think the unbundling is is correct.

And you know, there's, you know, I mean, to be honest with you, there's just so many layers here, right? Like there's everything from the GIPS to the community banks that now these like stablecoin only fully reserved banks. Um, all the new OC charters and so much innovation happening that layer um but ultimately like these are sort of larger infrastructure plays, right? I mean, what is really happening with the end customer is they're just like, "All right, that's really nice, but I just want to move money. [laughter] I just want to store money, move money, pay people, collect money if I'm a business."

>> Yeah. >> And so, if you can just make that simple for me, great. Like, that's all I want. And we're kind of at that layer, right? So, we're taking advantage of all the infrastructure work, the unbundling of the banks and all that stuff that's happening. And then we're trying to wrap it into something that's very clean and available globally, not just here in the US, right? But the thing is that the insight, you know, I was with the SEC yesterday and the insight I was giving them was that the world essentially wants to bank in America and traditionally very hard to do that, right? They want to have access to dollars. They want to have access to US dollar banks, bank accounts. They want to have like everyone in the world wants to have a bank account in America but they can't all come to a bank community

bank and open it. So stable coins and all that infrastructure we're providing is basically a way for them to do that and there is unlimited demand for that. There's massive massive demand for that. >> What's uh what were you doing with the SEC? Anything you can share? >> Uh nothing you can share was just a general catch up you know just to um with with some senior folks there. I won't mention the names. Um yeah >> but um you know we're pretty senior just to sort of just share perspectives on the work that we're doing and um you know just a global perspective as well being much more global company um we have very very supportive of what we see the the current administration doing um because like from a very simple

standpoint I know there's lots of domestic politics which I won't get involved with um but from a very you know simple point of view um you know opening Opening up the US economy, the US banking system, the US capital markets to the world is something that the rest of the world wants desperately. They want access to the capital markets. They want to be able to trade US stocks. They want to >> be able to bank in the US. They want to be able to hold uh, you know, regulated stable coins. And so all of that, you know, is a no-brainer, right? As I say, the world is pretty much dollarized. and um uh the US has won pretty much that the global global dollars banking tokenization and capital markets won the whole thing but now it you know the the barrier is that people don't evenly have

access in some countries they have great access and a lot of countries they don't have good access and so um it's really encouraging I think for the rest of the world to see you guys progressing the the [clears throat] legislation so it gets to the point where you know you know everyone gets even access you know from someone down uh Peru through to you know country in Africa through to Asia um even in Europe where they use euros that you know people still use dollars. >> Yeah. Yeah. I saw a chart of the Genius Act at uh um timestamped and following that there's just been this explosion of you know stable coins, treasuries um you know these types of funds on chain and so you know we're coming up on

the clarity we're coming up on a potential tokenization exemption and I mean we've seen just this rise of Robin Hood chain as of late with regards to their tokenized assets. You know, Sam, I'm curious from your perspective. We got Vlad on, you know, national TV in the morning show, which means that it's important. And he's talking about exactly what Rags is saying here about this global access to the US capital markets being like the biggest selling point for tokenization. You know, he's taking questions from [snorts] the host as to why the AMC CEO hates what he's doing, right? Why there's this divergence and where allocators are being able to buy equities. that it's not just in your brokerage account through the DTCC DTC anymore. And so you

kind of get in this world where there's this push back from tokenization, but it's also just happening and I know that you need to be positioned for it. Just curious kind of from the FRA perspective, what is what is the tokenization of equities and more asset classes coming on chain. What does that mean? Like what is how do you kind of wrap your head around this and execute on capturing some of that market? Yeah, it's a good question because I think there's a lot of new emergent behavior that this stuff will actually create. Like you see it on Robin Hood chain where uh there's like people that are now pairing trading against different equities. I'm actually really curious to see, you know, things like what if there's onchain activism, right? Like what if there's like Dows that try to

acquire a specific large amount of uh you know, like onchain Carlon, right? like there's a lot of questions that'll have to be answered about that, right? Cuz like the there's different structures to tokenization. There's like the the Robin Hood uh tokenized stocks are kind of like debt instruments, right? So Robin Hood is is like technically the on, you know, on ledger uh thing. Is is there going to be like a uh like the first time that happens, right? like where a DAO has a bunch of like uh assets and says like we we want to propose this um there will have to be some questions like well will Robin Hood be fine with representing uh them as like a proxy agent or something or how is this stuff going to work and so you know at at Frack the most important

thing with uh with like our Fraent Neoank platform is to basically create this uh platform where businesses whether they're web 3, web 2 or just people they can actually uh have this new new bank account. They can invest in equities. They can uh get, you know, credit against it, save, earn, all of this stuff. And one of the things I think that's going to be important because of how fast-paced everything will go is we're actually looking into essentially creating kind of a frack app store, so to speak, on this platform where essentially other people can actually add features and hook into the KYC identity, right? like the accounts be able to actually offer uh different kinds of like rewards or like you can have multiple cards. You can have a cast

card if if you want to import it into your like fraction account and in you know etherfy card for example and and we don't actually you know in our ethos like try to compete in zero sum in in terms of on layers where we don't really see uh a need to improve really really great products like cast or or etherfy or things like that. We actually want to add value in terms of being able to build on top of some of these the these products like we're not obviously going to tokenize like Nvidia or something like that. We want to give access to people accounts businesses that want to hold them and be able to do things with them, compose with them. And our view is how can we bring more value? How can we

bring more liquidity more credit? Uh one of the things is to allow people to actually build applications into this like Neoang bang fraet platform. So we're going to announce that a little bit later uh how it's going to work. You can just add like different applications or features that'll get added to the actual workspace, right? like your your actual uh platform uh will change in in terms of looks depending on whether you do like invoicing if you're a company or if you are a person you have like you want to have multiple cards you want to have uh these things and and it routes to the best rewards um we're not really digging deep on uh things that for example CAS is really great at right like they they have really really great relationships um and and and wide

coverage why should we reinvent that wheel right we we should give people access and then supercharge and and like superpower those kind of things. Um and so that that's essentially how we're thinking about it, right? Bringing value on top of these things and actually bringing a platform that can kind of act as the global uh identity layer essentially for neo bankanking, neo brokerages, you know, however you want to think about it. >> Yeah, global identity layer, which is interesting because, you know, that's something that we're continuing to hear like there is a lot of kind of disparit platforms. you know, we're going to have a DTC, we're going to have a Robin Hood, we're going to have Ethereum, we're going to have other brokerages. NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange are building out their alternative trading systems

that'll trade, you know, tokenized things 24/7. But all of those are going to need to share KYC in some way, shape, or form. And then there's going to be these allow lists and proper books and records of, you know, who's on these cap tables when these things are really tokenized equities and not just like you said debt, you know, equity linked instrument securities like actual tokenized equities. And so Sam, what I'm hearing you say is kind of like starting from that identity layer and building outwards. Are you building like one cohesive product that is going to apply to all of these different facets of onchain finance or are you building like these different hooks like these different apps that are going to be you know curated products that are going to

apply to like you'll have a different frack product that'll look a little bit different for tokenized equities than it will for serving neo banks like CAST. Like are you going to build different products for different facets of the industry? Are you focusing on building one thing that is then going to be portable and flexible to apply to different facets of the industry? >> Uh yeah, more more like the latter, right? Basically what we're doing is essentially all the features that you see in like FRANET. Like if you sign up right now, there's like earn right move money similar similar things to kind of you you'll see in a lot of them they're actually going to be structured like standalone applications. Even though they look like features and a tab, uh they all conform to a specific schema.

they all actually use the the fraetet identity which is like one single KYC. Um and then eventually like if you want to add cards or things like that, you just actually route the KYC that you've already done once, right? Into the same kind of KYC that some other product is asking for, right? We will essentially build tons of these applications, right? We're not going to like wait like kind of like the old school ecosystem kind of chain kind of uh idea, right? >> Give out a bunch of grants. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. we're we're we're not uh it's not 2022 any anymore, right? And and so the the idea is all of these are structured as like applications and then you can have a you know a cast application, right? And then it imports

your transactions, your things and then with that you essentially get built-in builder codes, right? Because each of these uh applications and calls underneath will have originators, right? like you you it'll be originating from the CRA Cast app or the or the you know Robin Hood equities app that we can build ourselves, right? That'll route to buying and selling uh Robin Hood stock. And so then you're able to actually create uh builder codes and and reward systems built in, right? Like if you use this more, then you'll get more from on the fraction layer. If you uh invest in equities during this month through during this campaign, you'll get, you know, 2% cash back, similar to kind of what Etherfi is doing with their campaign, but as like kind of they're

doing it as singular campaign in the app. We'll be able to do that in a higher layer, right? We'll be able to actually incentivize different kinds of behavior. >> I've got what one quick followup here, which is like, and we've got this written down. It's a question prepar I think it's a good one you know like cast frack even revolute coinbase venmo z like all of these things seem to be converging but we're also unbundling and so the question here is like where who are you guys all kind of are all these players in this in this general area competing for the same user to kind of hook them in and then get them in their product suite or is there a different

way to think about this? And if if it's more so the former like what is the moat? What is the moat? Because we hear a lot about distribution. I can understand how like if you own the relationship with the end customer, you're the one that does KYC on it. Then you're kind of like people have to go through you in order to, you know, sell something to that customer. But there's a lot of different ways that, you know, these customers can kind of get looped into a particular product. And so I guess that's my question. It's like are are are all these companies in this general banking un even though we're unbundling it is all the companies in the space competing for the same user and if so who owns the moat in that in that space

>> hey Robbie can I ask you a question man are you like NFL fan or like what's your favorite sport the one I like to play the most is ping pong but they don't really have professional like leagues for ping pong have >> I would probably go probably NBA Okay. >> He's a Miami Heat fan. He's a Miami Heat. >> Miami Heat. I love the I love the Heat. I grew up in South Florida. I like college football. >> Miami Heat fan. So, what's the moat the Miami Heat have on you? >> I grew up in the area. >> Yeah. But you you're not going to like go and support somebody else. You're still attached to them in some way, right?

>> Yeah. I grew up, you know, following them since I was a little kid and, you know, they were easiest to access and go watch. So, yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. [snorts] Look, I I have a thesis. I'm going to it's going to sound horrible the but like your point is somewhat correct. I mean I don't think financial services have that much of a moat as long as they build like we're very focused on product velocity and delivering as many products. So once you're on with us that you can do as many things as you can with us with the best experience. We're trying to not make it clumsy like some other apps have we're going to be the everything app but they're the nothing app because you do so much. It's such a horrible experience. You're like, "Fuck, just stop sending me like, you know, betting

on on the weather today. I'm just trying to do my banking like services." [laughter] >> Yeah. >> You know, >> I hear you. >> Coinbase, cash and strays. >> Yeah, I didn't mention a name, man. You know, so but what I'm saying is is that why I mentioned the sporting analogy is like our marketing and our ethos is to build a culture around our brand and around our service and the way that we deliver it. And that becomes the moat because people, you know, will go to someone and say like these guys just deliver service differently. They connect with people differently. They where they deliver their platform is different. The culture is different. You know, we're in the process of signing with a number of like celebrity partnerships as well with musicians and

others. We're, you know, unraveling a lot of experiences so people can have special experiences. I'm here in New York this week for fashion week because we're looking at a number of partnerships. And that's the difference. I think of us very similar to a sports team. We want to build the best sports team, like the best platform with the with the best players that it's a winning team, but we also want people who are fans of us to essentially be like, I just really only want to use this platform because I love it and I want to tell everyone else how good it is. Very similar to a sports team. And that's the mo. And the reality is is that you can go and vote. You can go and support someone else the next day if you want to, right? There's nothing really stopping you. But at the same time you

feel attached to a brand because you really really love it you know because of everything that they do you know and that that ultimately becomes the mo because if you in reality if you go and look at your forget about the fintech space or the brokerage or everything you talk about just look at your bank like most of people were attached to a single bank for a long time right um even though they've had the choice of a JP Morgan or Bank of America or City Bank or HSBC you've you know you probably had the choices but you end up with one and you send to stay with one. Most people do, right? And um I think the moat is just how they make you feel as a person and you know why you got there in the first place, you know, and that's that's

in financial services that that's the mo. It's how you you know you're you're how much you resonate with that company effectively. >> As long as that >> as long as the company keeps shipping all the great products and everything that you need, you know, that's >> right. And so who does that really well? cast or rags from the cast like who can you point to that you're like Dan like they've done a damn good job. >> I think globally like obviously like this it's it's obvious why Revolute and New Bank have done well to win. >> Um but they're regional, right? They're in their regions like you're very dominant in Europe for for New Bank, very dominant in Latin America, sorry, very dominant in Europe for Revolute and very dominant in Latin America for New Bank. But I don't think the reason I

built cast and I wasn't afraid of these companies was because my thesis is that the dollar is global and people were moving money globally and there's a new audience of people who are global first. They're internet native. They're building solarreneurs and people building businesses online. They work uh freelance. They're creators. They're social and you know there wasn't like a brand a financial services brand built fintech built for them. you know, >> with stable coins and being able to be global, you know, almost from day one, >> there's an opportunity to do that and that's essentially what we're building, you know, but I think these two companies have from the digital bank perspective shown that they've done it well. There's probably smaller regional ones or country ones, you know, in other parts of the world who've delivered a

great experience as well. But these are probably the two larger sort of regional like Europewide, Latinwide ones. Maybe in the US it's Chime or Sofa. Robin Hood is obviously stand out here in the US. Um >> Sam, do you agree? Do you agree with the brand as a moat thesis or do you think >> how do you think how do you think of this? >> Well, I I think from from a retail perspective, I think rags is right. I I think that that it is it is really to do with like brand and and and trust Lindy, right? But from essentially just to define it, right? In in my opinion from coming from like a crypto mechanism design perspective, right? A motor like a network effect by definition means like if uh a million people are using it, the the millionth and one person

gets more value out of being in that like like a user or in that network than uh it just being the exact same thing for for 1 million people, right? Like if if the more people are using the platform uh if they are all better off, right? Essentially. And so there there's either things you can maybe offer them that are better off, but also if there's just a service that it doesn't matter if if there's like 10 people using it or like 50,000 or a million, it's pretty hard to justify that there's there's a mode at least in in in my opinion. So when when we think about it on like for example Fraxnet or like just looking at other kinds of neo bankanks I think the

most valuable thing is essentially the direct relationships in in the in the roots or in the businesses and things like that like we've we've signed some exclusive deals right for for things that we're going to announce uh in in the coming months. that you can't vibe code that or you can't someone else can't actually have that direct kind of uh resources like that kind of rewards that kind of exclusivity. So what I actually think is on the retail perspective rags is totally right. What I actually would love to ask and uh kind of know from their perspective at at CAST is how do you guys kind of uh negotiate these like cashbacks or these campaigns or these relationships on like a large level compared with like other NEO banks? Um,

I'd actually be curious like do you guys have direct relationships at Cast with um, you know, either either the hotels or the or the software companies, the large kind of cashbacks that that you guys provide. You just, you know, or do you subsidize them or how how does how does that work? >> Because I don't believe that the all these neo banks are going to survive. My my thesis is that it's a go big or go home, you know? So I I I believe that cast will be a hundred billion dollar company or we'll fail. I don't think there's any in between, right? And um so my thesis is just foot to the floor, capture as much market share as you can.

And um you know, we we try to run lean team as efficiently as possible, but you know, our job is to squeeze out absolutely everyone and win. You know, it's a it's a it's a market grab situation, right? And so luckily I've got supportive investors who also believe in that. Um but you know like we will accumulate losses to to get scale you know and uh >> and so when you say subsidize it's like the rewards that users are getting Sam is that kind of what you're asking about?

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. Like I I think like first of all I love it uh move fast and break things right like that that that is the the name of the game. Um but yeah, like what one thing I we can tell you is like when we announce uh some some of the things in in the coming uh quarter or two um you won't be able to get these things anywhere else other than having uh like a fraction account or like a fra mobile app account basically like that that is going to be kind of unique to us like uh everyone else will have to subsidize by buying those things for example or or going through uh so it's like a different philosophy right it some some of it takes a little bit longer right others Yeah, >> you can go and have a lot of

conversations, but it's like a catch 22, right? They're like, what scale do you have? So, we just go maximum for getting scale. So, once you get scale, so even though subsidizing now, then you can go to have a hotel partner or you know, now we're introducing airline miles, whatever, and you've got a certain scale by which they'll be like, okay, if you got that scale, then I'll cut you this deal, not that deal. Same thing with our card partner, same thing with our on offer partners, banking partners, everything. The most important thing is to get scale, right? And that's what we're absolutely pushing for is like how do we get maximum scale as fast as possible. Um because the people that have scale will have better economics and that better economics will allow them to do, you know, so we can afford to lose money on certain things because

we don't make money on other things, right? like overall we we're not actually burning that much money but like we can afford to take losses on certain things to bring people in because we can we can make it back in other things or we can we know that we're going to add more products which which will subsidize it in the future right and so um but yeah I think that's you know we we are negotiating with certain partners to give incentives like discounts and hotels and things like that but you kind of have you know once you got the scale I can be like hey like do you know how much we our users to spend on this one vendor. We can go to them like they spend us so much already like and by the way they also spend a lot on your competitor and so why don't

you give us a discount so we can offer it to them and then they'll come spend even more on you you know. So but that's not a conversation you can have if you've got like 5 or 10 mil a month on your card. You know you've got to get into the hundreds of millions a month you before and it shows some scale in your business. You got to get into the tens of billions, you know, a year in platform scale before this becomes a relevant conversation. >> Well, there there's your answer, Robbie. Uh the mode is economies of scale. >> Yeah, the mo sorry that that is actually very true as well. So the moat does become the economies of scale. There is like a flywheel that we see, right? um like the more users we have uh the more scale we have the more we can negotiate

better discounts the more we can give back in incentives that brings in more users and then you get this you know massive flywheel and I think that's why it's really hot like we were once that company but I think it's really we see this like proliferation of neo banks and but we're seeing also a ton of them shutting down recently and um every day my in I think I would average I reckon I'm not even lying to you probably two to five emails a day from companies asking for discussions on M&A like throwing their hands up saying hey you guys want to buy us you know >> really >> it's frantic right now right >> because we had this whole wave right like we had this whole like I mean neo bankanks were so hot call it 18 months

ago right and it was like everyone wants to be a neo bank >> but the market quickly realized that if you don't have a regional edge if you don't have a customer acquisition edge if you don't have a subsidy edge if you don't have a ton of cat like there's got to be an edge. It wasn't just like let me make an app. I mean they were going around in the VC circle was like crazy. It was like every it was a new neo bank on our desk every week. >> Yeah. Well, it's not only the neo banks, it's also uh orchestration companies. Um there is like >> yeah sure >> narrow smaller you know apps as well. Um there's people who've gone and acquired licenses but never actually built out you know there's just I can give you every variation of it. Like I haven't

even checked my email today. I'm sure if I opened it, I'd be like, you know, I give you I got this type of company that. But it's amazing like companies that I saw that were way more funded than us and way bigger, you know, but just didn't get the scale, you know, not everything else. They often got licenses, they got VC attention, but they just get the lift off and scale. Do do you think do do you think rags there's uh some critical things that separates like cast and others that did manage to get to scale in terms of like uh tough things to know in hindsight like like for example um a lot of people say in in like neo bankanking and the stuff your service providers are very important right like if you're trying to

for example onboard you know 100 new users you know per per day or something and like half of them don't you know pass KYC because the service provider for example is very risk a averse or or something like that or they just have too many um like extra fields that aren't necessary for example right are there any of these things that you guys >> we spend a lot of time making on boarding as smooth as possible and I constantly I used to do this thing where I would make everyone in the company like rip out their KYC so they have to read KYC into their cast account so they if they're so then they're going to feel it count so I used to make everyone like recyc you know every few months. So they're

like, "Oh fuck." Until eventually our provider is like, "You can't do this. Like you've got people who've KYC too many times. Like it looks like a board problem, you know." I was like, "No, no, I'm just meaningfully ripping the KYC out." So we just we just like cared a lot about that. We always try to have one minute response times for our concurge. We would hire heaps of people, unlimited amounts of people, so it would happen. So people just felt like, "Oh, I've got a problem. Someone's going to Now, we weren't always accurate on the one minute, but you wouldn't wait hours or days." Now sometimes people had problems of you know imperfect company there. Sometimes we go around for a few days and but you know then >> where we just you just got to care about the customers you know and then they

would trust you and then they will tell people that >> you know these guys will look after you and then that trust you know trust is the other mode as well to be frank Robbie like >> more you can more people see you out there you know um they know that you're a real company backed real people they know that they can get customer service you know you're going to get looked after if there's an issue um that that that becomes a massive mode as well. So I think like >> that you know the exper the user experience definitely on sign up and usage of product the follow-up customer service the transparency and knowing that there's real people behind the products these things all you know start compounding over time as well you know >> well gentlemen I think we're coming up

on time I appreciate you both uh great episode thanks for joining the show Sam great to have you and Rags pleasure to meet you as well I know we're trying to do this in in person but it's been I got another pre-recording really starting at now. Okay. >> So, I mean, it's just I mean, this is never ending here at the rollup. So, really appreciate both of your time and uh look forward to chatting soon and seeing you guys both grow. >> Thanks, guys. >> Thank you. >> Cheers, guys. >> Appreciate it, guys. See you soon. >> All righty, Rob. Quick standby and we'll close it out here. What do you say? >> Um, we're here. We're live. I mean, that's uh >> Let's do it.

>> Great episode. >> That's today's show, huh? >> We'll go to quick standby and we'll close it out here, guys. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music] Get

the air horn. [applause] Let's go, Rob. Let's go, Rob. What a show. What a week. Honestly, generational generational week on the rollup, to be honest. >> Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Oh my >> generational week. What a Friday. >> We can dump. We can pump or dump. >> What do you think, Andy? Make a call. We can pump. >> I think we pump. I don't really have a I don't really give a damn, but we're going to pump. I mean, Bitcoin looks kind of weak. If fully retrace that move, >> I think we dump. I think we chop. I think we dump. Chop. And >> whatever. It's fine. >> I think we get a weird week next week. I think we pump. Um, guys, the giveaway, we'll do this on Look, I saw I'm I'm sorry. We should have done it. We should have done it today, but we didn't

realize we couldn't do it. So, we're going to do it on Monday. So, you guys have the weekend to get in. So, you have till um like Monday's show. So, I'm gonna just send a send a note in the chat. You have till Monday to sign up. Uh, little bit of a delay. Left us hanging. See you guys Monday. Make sure to DM me. My DM is going to be slammed. Um Um, so yeah, Rob, so you're you're thinking a a weekend dump or just like basically sideways?

>> Um, yeah, basically sideways. I mean, I think we have incredible momentum, which is very cool. Um, I'm looking to hold 752500 uh,000 on Zcash >> and a couple of the other just like major numbers. But otherwise, yeah, I think if we can just hold up a little bit and chop until Wednesday, get past this speed bump of a rate hike, I think we fly. And there's a still a small chance clarity passes and they hold rates steady. And if that happens and we really fly, >> that'd be sick.

I'm adding to ETH here. Can't be can't be fussed. Small ad. Small ad. I'm in. >> Oh boy. >> Um, guys, what a show. W's in the chat. I mean, come on. I mean, come on. I mean, what a week. I mean, guys, come on. W's in the chat. I mean, come on. What a week. Wow. I mean some of the best shows rumor mill was cranking. We got crazy letters from lawyers >> jacked over there buddy. >> We get like we got going to the US so we went to the US Open twice going tonight.

Market's ripping alltime highs on views on the rollup. Our bags are flying. Memes are going crazy. Like just crazy momentum all around. I mean that's the word Rob. That's the word of the week right there. Momentum. >> Momentum. Yeah, >> I agree. >> I agree. >> Guys, you know where we'll be on Monday, live from the Financial Capital of the World. Same place, same time, up or down, green or red. We're going to we're going to be bullish, long, strong. Stay long, stay educated, stay smart, don't do anything stupid on leverage over the weekend before the FOMC. Save your bullets for after the FOMC. Honestly, just save your bullets.

>> I think that's play. There's no need to get crazy and just ride it. Ride out like, you know, just stomach this volatility of it and we'll be higher before you know it. Have a great weekend. >> Much love >> to all the to all the Jewish people. Happy holidays. >> Happy New Year. >> Happy New Year. Much love. Peace. [music] >> [music] [music]

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