Ethereum versus Solana and the bull market nobody believes

Transcript

GM, good morning. Welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show where every chart is going up, your bags are starting to feel heavy again, and I know you are starting to feel like a genius. I'm your host, Jay Hamilton. It's Monday, May the 12th, and everything is pumping. What a week it's been. Green charts all around. ETH is up almost 50% on the week. Bitcoin back above 100K, touching around that 103K. Lots of top meme coins. blue chip meme coins are pumping. Some alt bunch of altcoins are pumping. We're going to dive into all of that. What's happening? Why is it happening? What are our thoughts? Where do we think it's going? Also, sentiment continues to be down though. That is for

sure. There's still not the vibes are not back yet. Why is crypto sentiment down? We're going to talk about that. And we got to touch on last week Warren Buffett announced that he's retiring at the end of 2025. What that means is one of the greatest investors of all time is retiring. So going to do a little walk down memory lane of some history lessons from Warren Buffett on what you can learn from one of the best best common sense investors of our generation. To break it all down with us, we're joined today by Byron Gilliam, market strategist and newsletter writer at our friend Block Works. Before we jump in and hear from Byron, if you guys are swapping right now, make sure you check out Milkroad Swap. It is our swap where you can swap on ETH and on Salana for

some of the lowest fees in the space. We set this up not to make money, but just have a cheap place for our community to swap. So, if you're making trades and you're swapping, check it out. Visit milkroad.com and hit the swap to swap today. Today's episode is brought to you by Letin get cash without selling your Bitcoin. It's also brought to you by Coin Shift, powering top crypto treasuries with their yield bearing stable coin CSUSDL. Without further ado, Byron, welcome to the Milk Road Show. Hey, Jay. Thanks for having me on. Absolute pleasure, my man. Okay, let's start with the uh just getting your what's your take on on the current market and and let me let me set this up for you a little bit. Let's talk about the past week and the green charts, but then

let's zoom out a little bit further. We got a lot of macro noise happening right now and I'm curious how you frame the current the past week within basically the past few months ever since Trump took office and all of the macro stuff that's happening right now and whether you think this this past week is sustained bullishness or maybe a little bit of a fake out right now. Yeah, that's a tough one. I've I'm I've been well I started trading equities in 1994 like tra trading them professionally. So I've seen like LTCM and uh the dot boom and bust and the great financial crisis and the pandemic

and this this tariff market has been I think the most confusing one that I've seen. Like it just just has not made a lot of sense to me. I guess maybe until yesterday. I guess like if we're really not going to have a trade war with China, then maybe maybe like nothing has happened, right? And you know, the markets are a little bit above where they were on liberation day, which before this weekend just completely baffled me. It just did not make sense to me. And I was kind of rethinking like, you know, how to understand markets, whether, you know, I'm a big believer in the efficient markets hypothesis. Like I think the markets are very good at pricing things in. But then

it was like, you know, when when we were rallying the last few weeks, I just thought that the markets are just failing to price in tariffs. But now, as of yesterday, maybe there are no tariffs or, you know, maybe they're just, you know, so so small that they don't matter. So now I think I'm backing I'm back to thinking that markets are super efficient and they had just figured out that Trump didn't really mean it with the tariffs and we can just just go back to normal now I guess is my my big picture take when when when you bring for for everybody listening you're mentioning yesterday what happened yesterday that made you change your view just the the outcome of the the Switzerland talks with Bessant and his China counterparty which it's kind of like no real news are just talking about

talking, I guess. Um, well, no, I guess it did actually lower the tariffs, didn't they? So, I don't know. It feels like it feels like the markets had that priced in the entire time. The markets are up a little bit today, but not like that dramatically. Uh, so I guess the markets just just figured it out. You know, the hive mind of markets figured out again that the that the that the tariffs were not going to stick around very long. Uh, and if that's the case, then, you know, why not just go back to the all-time highs, I guess. Mhm. I mean, it's it's certainly we started off the year. It it's very it's very hard as a as an investor, and I'm sure you appreciate this, to to not get caught up in the moment, right? It's very easy to get caught up in like the dailies and

the weeklies and forget the the bigger picture. And we came into this year with a bigger picture and we still have that bigger picture, which is very bullish for crypto, right? We have so much shift happening, so many tailwinds, the regulation, regulatory shifts, the uh the adoption that is happening in meaningful ways with stable coins and so much product market fit. And then we had tariffs take over the headlines and it was like we all thought, oh, it's it's over. It's all doom and gloom. But you can forget that bigger picture and it it it can warp your mind and allow and and make you focus too much on the on the short term. But as you said, the the the

long term is is I mean in my mind is still incredibly bullish. And I think you know if we if we do good chance we make it past tariffs with oh wow that was nothing and something that we all forget about and never think about again. I hope that's the case. Although there is there is a lot of data saying that there might be definitely a lot of the survey data coming out right now is quite concerning in the in the way that tariffs will could impact the economy. Do you what's your view on what's your base case? Are you are you worried about tariffs and the the long-term effect and do you think that we could go towards a recession or do you think that it's all going to be much about do about nothing?

Yeah. Before this weekend, I probably would have like personally put like a 100% probability on recession, which is silly. You never put 100% probability on anything. But after this weekend, I have no idea. Like it's so it's just so hard to it's just so hard to know. I was kind of curious to see like if we got some version of tariffs that were, you know, kind of smoot smoothe tariffs like if the economy could avoid the US economy could avoid a recession even in the face of that. I was starting to wonder like are we are there ever going to be recessions? Like maybe not. Yeah. The last two recessions that we had was was the pandemic and the recession lasted for like five minutes. And before that it was the financial crisis which was a

long time ago, right? And before that it was the dot bubble which was just kind of a tech recession. So it kind of feels like there just aren't recessions anymore unless something really weird happens like a pandemic or a strange financial crisis. Um and if like even even these if these if if tariffs you know if a if a giant trade war also cannot you know throw the economy off then just maybe there are no recessions anymore. Uh which makes equities look like a risk-free asset which I think is is something to something that might make people rethink how they should be priced. Um, you know, people are always

saying that equities are expensive and, you know, versus history, they are expensive. But if we're if we don't have recessions anymore, then they should probably be even more expensive. And I But I guess you I guess your question was more about crypto. Crypto is like I I struggle to think about crypto in those terms because 50% of crypto is Bitcoin, right? And and is Bitcoin a risk on asset or a risk risk off asset? Like I depend like depends on the day or the week. It's kind of it's kind of hard to think about it like uh you know I hold a little bit of Bitcoin not a huge amount but the way you know the way I look at it is I look at it as like a credit default swap against hyperinflation. So you know I view Bitcoin as insurance against the very

worst outcome for the US dollar and the and the US government. So that for me is a riskoff asset, right? But even recently it's been trading as a risk-on asset. Like you know this it's up again this morning because the news is good. Like I I own Bitcoin as a hedge against bad news, but it goes up when both ways sometimes which doesn't totally make sense to me. Um I mean it's certainly it's certainly in a like if we were to put it on a spectrum, right, from like it being a purely riskon asset to it being a riskoff asset, right? It it definitely is headed in the direction of being a riskoff asset, but I think it is still in the middle or maybe a little

bit towards being a ris riskoff asset. Yeah. Yeah. It's somewhere it's somewhere in between, which which is interesting. Um I think a lot of that is just because uh you know on weekends and and evenings when the market is closed that's all you've got to trade, right? if you want to, you know, if you want to take some risk off on a Saturday night, then the like Bitcoin is the only thing trading, so that's what you sell. But I think it might get interesting if if equities start to trade onchain. Um like Robin Hood announced last week that they're going to offer blockchain based equities to European European customers.

And you know, people like Robert Lesner and Kyle Smani think that every single asset is going to trade onchain. And if everything's on chain and everything is trading 24/7, then you won't need to sell Bitcoin when you're feeling nervous on a Saturday night. Uh, and then that that would help. Did Did Robin Hood say when they are going to start that and like how many assets it'll be? Like No, I don't think so. I think they just said they're they're working on it. It's just a it's an announcement right now, right? It's not a Yeah, I don't really understand how it works exactly either or how how it doesn't work at all at the moment. I don't really understand how it would work. Like, can you just put equities on a on a blockchain and trade them? Are they going to be wrapped

equities or are they going to be the real thing? And like, but surely you still need to be KYC surely you still have to have a brokerage account and stuff like that. And then and then who's providing liquidity on Saturday night? So, I don't I All good questions to ask. I think I think I think it is very clear that equities are coming on chain. You know, one of the one of the one of the best use cases that crypto has that we have not taken advantage of yet is 247 trading, right? And we we sorry I shouldn't say we have we've taken advantage of that for crypto, but for the rest of the world. I mean, we we spoke to um to Vlad, the founder of of Robin Hood maybe a month ago. he came on the show and he talked about how when

they went they went from they went to 2475 trading and that that lift was absolutely massive for them to do that you know to get to five days a week right and now that they can go to seven days a week and allow that on potentially a lot of different equities maybe all equities that they offer I'm not sure as you said I also don't know the technical components of this nor do I know the exact launch plan and when the dates of when this is going to come out or which equities it'll include but that will when that happens that's why all this stuff it's it's really it's really directional right it will happen and when it happens it is going to allow better trading more efficient markets

right I don't I think I I think I would take the other side of that I think I don't I I think 247 trading is a flaw and not a not a feature um like just personally I have half of my savings basically in real estate. Not because I think real estate is that amazing versus equities or whatever, but because I can't sell it. You know, I can't I can't panic out of it when the market goes down on tariffs or whatever, right? And you know, I've I like I been a trader for 30 years and I still do this stupid that I do when I then 25 years ago.

Like I um you know, I still sell when I should be buying and buy when I should be selling. It's just, you know, human nature and behavioral finance. And I can't do that with real estate, which is why I love it. Uh, but I'm not the only one. Like, you know, private private equity, I think, gets a premium over public equities because people love that it's not marked to market. They can't see when they're losing money. They'd rather just get a quarterly statement from their from their private equity fund or saying, "Hey, you were unchanged this quarter, even though, you know, the stock market was down 30%, but you were magically unchanged." And they love that. So um so I think like ill liquidity and not being able to trade it is is the feature and should and should get a premium and uh and crypto is the

absolute worst for me. Like one of the reasons I don't own a lot of crypto is because you can change your mind any second of the day all you know. So like for me to buy a crypto and then to hold it for a long time is just like really hard because any time that I've you know any time of day or night or a weekend that I have you know a momentary loss of confidence I can just open my phone and sell it. It's an interesting point. It requires a a different it's a new type of of investor and a new type of trader, a new type of discipline, a new type of focus. You can't you can you can you can use and we're going to talk about like Buffett a little bit later in the show.

You can still use a lot of the investor knowledge and and investor learnings from the many decades, you know, in Buffett's case, seven decades of his trading and investing experience. But as you said, there is some new there's some new parts of of markets, some new parts of tech are allowing us to do things which put investors in maybe too much flexibility, too much opportunity. Uh which makes and there's also just the more practical issue of liquidity like I used to trade um European equities in London when they changed the trading hours can't even what the actual hours are. I think maybe

they that they they o they they started opening UK equities an hour earlier so that they would open the same time as European equities and you did not want to trade UK equities in that first hour of trading. There was you could never ever be right. Whatever you did, it was wrong because the liquidity was not there and the bid offer spreads were a mile wide and you were going to trade with a market maker and the market maker was going to win every single time. And that was in UK equities. uh at like 8:30 in the morning on a Tuesday. So if you start try trying to trade uh you know whatever US equities at Saturday night on at 1:00 in the morning, it's you're going to be wrong every single time.

Right. Right. Yeah. There's certainly I mean this is the same is is true in crypto today. There is better times to trade crypto because there's more liquidity and there's worse times to trade crypto on a weekly basis. Right? So uh and those are those are simple hacks, right? Those are simple tricks that a lot of people would not know. So u may maybe we should uh we should make a uh a newsletter about these uh these timings. Byron, that's what we got to do. Let's go to sentiment. Sentiment in crypto, you know, is is still still struggling. I mean definitely came back last week. Do you think that sentiment should be this low in crypto as it is right now in crypto Twitter or do you

think it's come back actually just in the past week and we're back to where we were before? Uh it's starting to come back just because you know sentiment is of a lagging indicator. You know sentiment just lags prices, right? And and you know prices of Bitcoin and finally ETH are good. Um so sentiment's getting a little bit better. But yeah, it's depend I think it depends how you look at it. So on the one hand like you know crypto is is doing much better than you would have ever guessed, right? Uh like the you know the crypto market pack market cap is back over three trillion.

Um regulators are not just sympathetic but but also uh you know encouraging it. We've got all kinds of institutional adoption by Visa and Mastercard and Stripe and Black Rockck. So, you know, on on on the surface, there's just a lot of things that are are going well and better than expected, but then, you know, there's like two other things in my mind or well, three other things maybe. One is that there's just a lot of grifting going on and I find it find it pretty dispiriting. Um, you know, the the people that have made a lot of money over the last year or so are not really people that are that are creating value

for the world. They're just, you know, creating meme coins and then and then buying them a minute before they get publicly launched and then selling them two hours after they've been publicly launched. So, I think that's that's dispiriting. to stuff about like, you know, the Trump memecoin and the the Trump dinner, uh, is just very grifty and doesn't, you know, make anybody feel good about crypto, I don't think. And then also, it's just, uh, you know, we're still struggling for utility. Like, you know, the industry is, you know, the industry is still mostly downstream of memecoin volumes. you know, if we didn't have uh meme coins creating however much revenue they do on

Salana or something, there just wouldn't be a lot going on. Uh so I think that's that's part of the sentiment as well. It's uh it's it's interesting to to bring up the question of, you know, is the is are memecoins good or bad? You know, it's kind of where my my mind goes to when you when you talk about memecoins. uh which is a which is a great debate because there is there is no debate that memecoins have extracted a lot of value and extractive tech is not what we are here to build. Uh but there's also memecoins have allowed us to test a lot of the tech and test it at scale and prove that it works and prove

that it is ready for things like 247 onchain trading. Uh, so it it is a what what's your if if I had if I asked you the direct question, memecoins good or bad for crypto? What would you say? Yes. Yeah. I mean, yes, they're bad because they're extractive like you say. I mean, they are a negative sum activity and I am fine with negative sum activities. Like I enjoy betting on sports once in a while. Uh, I enjoy which I, you know, I know that over time I'm going to lose money. Uh, I enjoy playing poker even though I'm bad at it. I, you know, I enjoy trading meme coins occasionally, but one that's just entertainment, which

is not like not a super high value use case. I don't think like, you know, casino business is pretty big in the world, but it's not like a growing exciting industry. Um, and two, meme coins are just way more extractive than Vegas or sports betting. And also they're more uh um opaque about it. Like if you go to Vegas, you know exactly what your odds are. If you're playing blackjack, you know how to play blackjack. You probably have, you know, the odds are probably 1% your favor. If you're playing roulette, then you know that you're the odds are 6% against you or whatever. If you're playing slots, you know, you're just paying, you know, a 7% fee for the entertainment of playing slots. Um but in memecoins, you don't know what the odds are. And

chances are that that of, you know, some insider has sniped whatever meme coin right before it's going to be launched and then they're dumping it on your head when when you find out about it two weeks later. So yeah, it's a negative sum activity which in theory is fine as entertainment, but it's too negative some and and it's, you know, it's just it's just not that fun really. But also as you say like uh it's yeah it's it's stress tested the the systems um and it's uh you know it's funding a lot of the industry which I think is a good thing and hopefully it'll hopefully it will lead to more productive stuff but I think maybe to go back to the sentiment thing I think maybe part of the sentiment is that it's just kind of

taking a little bit longer than people would have hoped for the more productive stuff to come around. I mean the it always takes longer to build the the real use cases and the real products. The speculative stuff is always easier to build. That's why we had the dot bubble, right? Like you can build speculation very quickly because everybody can, you know, speculate just with a guess and with some money in their hand. So, uh it's no surprise that that stuff came along first. It has certainly had its fair share of damage, but I think we're coming out the other side. you know, we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I want to talk about uh Ethereum and uh its pump right now. It's up 40% in the past week. And

then I want to chat about uh Buffett retiring and your thoughts on some looking back on some of his wisdom. Before we do, we just need to take a quick moment to hear from our sponsors who make this show possible. Selling your Bitcoin should be a last resort when you need cash. That's why there's Leen, the trusted platform for Bitcoin backed loans. You can unlock cash in as little as 18 hours with no monthly interest payments and no prepayment penalties. They've issued over 9 billion in loans and never lost a single Satoshi of client funds, even during the chaos of 2022. If you're a long-term hodler, this is the move. Get liquidity without selling at milkroad.com/letin spelled L E DN.

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CYCSUSDL is gaining traction at milkroad.com/coinshift. Uh, okay. ETH ETH is just catching a bid right now. Up 40% in the last se 14 days. Up 40% in the last seven days, actually. Thoughts? Why why is why is ETH catching a bid right now? I was very surprised by that. Not not what I was expecting. I would guess just because it got oversold and people got got too negative on it. Um and now maybe because things generally risk assets generally are looking better, people are scrambling to catch up. I'm not I'm not really sure. I mean the only thing the the rally seemed to

be coincident with uh with with Vitalic's post about simplifying Ethereum. I struggle to imagine that that was causal to the to the rally. Um, but coincident is usually the best we can do for explaining moves in markets anyway. So, I guess we can go with that. But yeah, I don't know. Maybe otherwise I guess maybe there's, you know, more of a consensus within Ethereum that uh that that they need to prioritize the L1. So maybe people are getting excited about that. I'm not really sure. U yeah, I've I've found the rally very very surprising.

Yeah, certainly. I mean, it's great to see ETH rally like this. Obviously, when such a major asset rallies in the space, you know, it gets everybody excited uh because so many people have exposure to ETH and uh ETH has struggled so much. So, it definitely brings a lot of enthusiasm. The the natural comparison is to compare ETH to Salana and to see, you know, how how are those two doing against each other? And in the same period, Salana's only up 20% in the last like 22% in the last seven days. So it is that's the standout, right? Is when you see when you see ETH outperform Salana or Salana outperform ETH, you think, okay, like what's going on here?

Why is one outperforming the other? Um, and I think to me what stands out is yeah, you're you you nailed it. There is not there's not a fundamental change in ETH that would drive this, right? There is nothing that's happened in the past week on the fundamental level. Sure, Vitalic made that post. Sure, there's new executive directors at the Ethereum Foundation. Yes, they're going on tour right now and they're speaking on lots of podcast. Blockworks just announced rec or did I think you said Yano said you guys are going to start an Ethereum podcast. So, there's Banklist is getting real back into the Ethereum world and they're put pumping out all Ethereum content again. So there's there's a lot

of of marketing stuff happening around ETH. Um, which could could lead it to catch a little bit of the narrative. I tend to agree with what you're saying though that like I think ETH got down so bad. I don't think there was any other sellers. I think it it hit its bottom. There was nobody. Everybody had capitulated. And when things came back, it kind of makes sense that it would be one of the ones that has the potential for a bigger bounce back because when the narrative switched back, when everyone gets more bullish, when we go more risk on something that had been down so bad can can catch that bid on the way back up. I would say uh does it doesn't lead me to say, oh, Ethereum is going to outperform from here, right? I'm still bullish on

Ethereum, but the big question in my mind, and I don't know if you have a take on this, but is the the natural question that I can't help but avoid when I think about Ethereum, is how underpriced if you if you were to say that Salana and Ethereum have very similar fundamentals and very similar uh product market fit, and we don't yet know which one of those is going to be the runaway L L1 chain, is going to be the one that wins. It's not clear. It's still way way too early. Uh then you would say, "Oh, well, it makes sense that Ethereum and Salana could trade around the same, right? That they would be similar market cap." But Salana is still three times lower than Ethereum

even less. Now, actually, that Ethereum has had this pump. Like today, Ethereum's market cap sitting just over 300 billion. And what's Salana at? Salana is at 91 billion. So, it's even slightly below uh where it was before. Do you think that they that they should trade similar? Do you have do you have thoughts on that? Yeah, it's it's that's you know an interesting question and one of the big questions in in crypto. I'm a traditional finance guy. So, you know, I believe that the intrinsic value of any productive asset is the present value of its future cash flows. Like I think that's as simple as it is. It's like I don't I don't know why else an asset

would be worth anything other than the present value of its of its future cash flows. Um and I think that ETH and Salana are both productive assets. So to me it makes sense to look at them in that in that um you know framework that traditional framework and if you do then Salana looks like very cheap relative to ETH. Salana on its own is not very cheap. If you just like, you know, if you annualize the current revenue that it generates, it trades on something like 150 times earnings or something like that, which is, you know, that's maybe not the way to do it because maybe crypto is just different, but for a traditional guy like myself, like I

don't really see how else to do it. Um, so Salana trades on like 150 times uh earnings and ETH trades on like 800 times or something like that. Uh so you know from my traditional perspective yeah they should they should they're both overvalued from your both overvalued and Ethereum is more overvalued. Uh but that's not necessarily the way to look at it. You know it might be that uh Salana's revenues that they're making now are just very low quality because they're all based on meme coins and maybe you know maybe memecoin volumes just just dry up in the next you know couple of years and then you know Salana will look much more expensive than it does now.

And maybe even though Ethereum has lower revenue, maybe maybe the revenue is higher quality, you know, maybe it's more institutional based. Uh so maybe it deserves to have a higher multiple. Yeah, if you just look at it, you know, in terms of productive assets, then Ethereum seems expensive to me. And then, you know, you don't have to look at it that way. You can also look at it as money or something, but it's a $300 billion asset. So that's like you're, you know, that's a lot of monetary premium if that's what that's what you're banking on. Uh so to me it seems expensive however you look at it unless you take the view that you know absolutely everything is going to be traded on chain and and Ethereum is going to capture a large mark you know a large market share of that which is

totally possible and I guess maybe that's that's what the market's telling you. Did did Robin Hood say where they're going to build which chain they're going to build on? I I think they said they were gonna build their own blockchain and I would guess it would be a layer two on Ethereum L2 on ETH maybe. Um but I don't know now I I don't remember exactly and and I'm not sure. I I would be shocked if they just did it straight on Ethereum or I'd be surprised even if they did it on somebody else's blockchain. I feel like they'd want to do it on their own. Mhm. This brings up an interesting question which is you know you you write for one of the leading crypto media companies and obviously uh you are surrounded by

crypto all day every day. Uh but you you don't invest tons in crypto. You still invest mostly in equities and real estate as you've said. Why why don't you allocate more to crypto? Yeah, there's a lot of reasons. I'm not I'm not even sure not even sure where to start. One is that I'm still uncomfortable with self custody. Like self custody just gives me the heebie-jebies. I'm just just scared I'm going to lose my seed phrase and and uh or I'm going to get fished. I'm not very good on on uh cyber opsseack. Um I just feel more comfortable with my money in a Vanguard account because I know it's not going to disappear. But then like you know when

st when stable coin yields were like 25% a few months ago like I was like like it's like you know I'm making 4% in Vanguard or I can make 20% in a stable coin in a wallet. Like okay I'll have to put a little bit in. So so like I moved some over but I still can't like I can't put a lot because I just I just I'm just worried it's going to disappear. That's one reason. Another reason is that I am a traditional guy and I like productive assets. like I I like Bitcoin as as uh you know credit default insurance against hyperinflation, but I don't expect hyperinflation, so I don't feel like I need a lot of it. And then beyond Bitcoin, like I I want something that's productive and there's not that much of

it in crypto, especially if you if you don't want exposure to memecoins like uh you know more there are more protocols that are aiming to earn revenue and then aiming to return it to token holders, which I think is great. Like that's the kind of thing that I'm looking for. But most of them that are making revenues are, you know, making it from memecoin trading. Basically, I'm oversimplifying. And I'm not like I'm not super bullish on memecoin trading because I don't think it's that fun. Like I said, like it's not as fun as sports betting. So, I don't like I don't really want exposure just to memecoin trading. And it's difficult to find cryptos to invest in that doesn't give you mostly exposure to

memecoin trading. Interesting. It's in the the the the self- custody point is a very interesting point because I agree uh that self- custody is scary and dangerous and that self-c there I don't think that most of the world will want self-custody which is why I think that when most of the world uses crypto they or when they buy sell crypto they won't do it in self-custody ways they're going to do it in you know their Robin Hood account or Coinbase or wherever on some centralized exchange And we can have a different discussion of whether that's good or bad and the outcomes of that.

But I do think that like the general self custody is a it's not convenient and most people want convenience. That's what most people crave, right? Uh the the other point around the lack of of real utility and real revenues in order to value that point is is the the one that stands out the most to me is that there is there's only a handful of crypto companies that are making meaningful revenue and that you can value in a traditional finance way where you would say yeah this actually makes sense right you could look at some of the DeFi protocols right the aves the makers ers, uh, GETO, these types of protocols, you could look at them and

you could say, okay, they actually they make sense. They're what they're trading at in their valuation, but there's like 10 to 20 of those. And most of those a lot of those have buyback programs, which also furthers their value, but as you said, there's not a lot of those. And so I think that what's what's so interesting to me is crypto is such a high risk space right now that we still we do not yet have the the rest of the investment world and the rest of the $900 trillion in assets that are all around the world. We do not have them moving their money into crypto. Why?

Because it's a not understood. It's way too high risk. But we are seeing a graduation moment where what's happening right now is we're having more crypto companies are going to IPO and go public, you can bet that those companies when they do IPO, they're not going to trade at the volatility of crypto tokens. I doubt I mean we'll see, but I doubt it. I think a lot of those companies are going to be more stable like something like I think of something like a Circle Coinbase already public. It's volatile but it's not as volatile as a lot of the crypto assets. So, we're going to have this shift into more of the traditional markets, which I think will bring more money to crypto. So, it's exciting. Let's talk about Buffett.

You've you've learned a lot from Buffett over your career. He announced his retirement last week. Uh will be retiring at the end of this year. What did you what have you learned from Buffett? What words of wisdom from one of the best value investors of our time can you share with us? Like my favorite is probably uh price is what you pay, value is what you get. um which is just you know a timeless reminder that the prices that things trade at are not necessarily indicative of the value of what they are. I like Buffett for a lot of reasons. One I just admire his accomplishments. Um like from 1965 I think uh Bergkshire Hathway is up 5.5 million%.

and and the S&P in that time is up 39,000%. Uh so he did 20% a year for 35 so that's like 60 years basically 20% a year for 60 years is just incredible. Um, so you know, I admire that. And then the main thing I think is that because I spend so much time in crypto and on crypto Twitter and stuff. Um, I get, you know, I'm very exposed to, uh, the line of thought that valuation is a meme. Uh, and that even, you know, the dollar is a memecoin and Bergkshire Hathaway is a memecoin and that stuff just it just really annoys me. And, and, uh,

Berkshire is kind of the antithesis of of all of that. Uh Bergkshire is kind of, you know, and and Warren Buffett uh Warren Buffett is is the opposite of financial nihilism. You know, he he believes in value and he believes in in stock markets and he believes that capital allocation matters and that good capital allocation makes the world a better place. And I just, you know, I just really appreciate that and and agree with it and and find it uh uh, you know, a nice antidote to a lot of the silly stuff that gets said in crypto. To me, what's so interesting is that he did 20% per year compounding and as a result of doing that for six for 60 years or

even actually was it 60 years? I guess 60 years he was he was he was investing for like 20 years before he started Bergkshire. But so Bergkshire was 20% a year. He his returns before Bergkshire were even higher. So but just but that simple it points out to me as an investor what you should focus on, right? You know should you be focused on getting 100% on every trade, right? Like which is the crypto mindset, right? There's this crypto mindset which is that and also I think that's the mindset of our culture and of our of our youth today is like immediiacy, right? I need it now. I need it now. I need immediiacy. I need I need this return now. And so we shoot for the wrong goals, right? We don't shoot for

compounding. We don't I don't think if you looked if you talked to a lot of the cryp crypto traders and you said, "Hey, what's your goal for this year?" Right? And you said 20% returns, they'd laugh at you, right? Now, that's because they're putting in one year. But if you said, "Okay, how about if your goal is 20% per year for the next 10 years, right?" That feels that feels like a good mindset to be in. I think you would you would make much different investment decisions if that was your mindset versus if every year you're chasing 100, you know, 2x, 5x, 10x, 20x, 100x that a lot of people in crypto chase, right?

What that leads you to is it sort of leads you to a downro spiral where you don't get it right and then you take bigger risks and then you don't get it and your capital depreciates. You continue to take bigger risks and you just diminishing returns, right? and you just slowly slowly go dwindle to nothing. It's interesting to there's so much so much value in the simplicity of Buffett's trading investment philosophy and that's always been what stood out to me. Yeah. Yeah. I've lived that personally. Like I started trading in the 90s and like made a fair amount of money and then lost it all in stocks in in 2000. Uh which at the time was kind of like like you know well that's annoying but I'll make it back. But now 30 years later, I think, well, if that

had been compounding for 7% for 30 years, like I would have a lot more money than I do now, right? Uh but I was, you know, chasing the 100% and 200% that you could do in dotcoms in in 1999. And I think that's more true now than ever because uh when I was a trader in the 90s like trading was really fun because it was human versus human and you could make money by just being a little bit quicker than the next human trader. Like you could see you could see a headline before Bloomberg even. You could see a headline in Reuters and if it was a good headline you could like quick buy a stock before everybody else did and you could make money like now now you're competing against computers and you have no chance. So there are no

arbitrageages left in in risk assets really maybe in crypto but in equities at least there's no arbitragees left. The last arbitrage is time. The only way to uh to arbitrage markets is just to wait them out like to be invested longer than everybody else which is which is what what Buffett is has done. Byron thanks so much for joining us today. Appreciate your insights and shout out to you and the whole Blockworks team for everything that you're doing for the space. I appreciate that. Thanks for having me on. Before I let you go, I got to tell you guys quickly. We got a partnership with OKX happening right now. Why do we have a partnership with OKX? Few reasons. One, they've got one of the best centralized exchanges in the space, costefficient to trade on, secure

and trustworthy, and they got some really innovative tools that make it super simple for you to do your trades. And the other reason we partnered with them is because they're giving away $60,000 in USDT right now. And if you click the link in our show notes and go trade on OKX, you could get your chance to win 60K, which would be pretty nice. You could have bought a whole Bitcoin a few weeks ago. Not anymore. Maybe not quite a whole Bitcoin, but pretty close. Now, you could buy half a Bitcoin, so you might want to do that. Check it out. Thanks for listening in everybody. Have a wicked awesome day. We'll see you back again. As always, if you liked today's episode, please hit subscribe and make sure you follow us so you don't miss out on the next one. There's also a link in

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