Ethereum’s Comeback, PumpFun’s ICO, and Crypto’s Regulatory Shift | Roundup

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Year to date, they've bought about 1% of the Bitcoin supply and ETH is a much more reflexive asset. It's much less liquid. Uh I would I would actually think that there's there's a lot more of it that's just actively going to be offered. And so if you have anything like those types of inflows, I think, you know, 10K or higher is is definitely on the table. And you know, a few months ago, I I probably would say 10K was was pretty irrational slash very optimistic. And now that could be low. >> This episode is brought to you by Arkham. Arkham allows crypto traders and investors to look inside the wallets of the best traders, largest funds, and most influential players in the crypto markets today. We'll hear more about

Arkham later in today's episode. Hey everyone, quick disclaimer before we get into today's episode. Nothing said on Bell Curve is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Our guests and I may hold positions in the companies, funds or projects discussed. All right, everyone. Welcome back to another bell curve. Just me and Vance this week holding down the fort. Uh Michael one or two is What is he do? He's on an excursion uh this week.

Where's he at? He's doing some sort of climb, hike, run. It's like a It's, you know, he's in his David Gogggins era. He's He's lost a bunch of weight. He's looking really good. And I think this is the uh you know, the final the final countdown here for the full glow up. So, good luck to him. I think he's uh in a tent right now of some sort. That's uh I don't do that type of stuff. So, I I'll be in the office. >> Me either, man. I need a nice access to a nice warm shower. I will you will not catch me in a tent on a mountain. But uh but uh power to Michael, >> but it's just you and me for a full hour and and however long we decide to go. So >> hour and two, baby. That'll be great.

>> Let's see it. >> Um all right, let's talk about uh uh Tom Lee's decision to CTO ETH out of nowhere. Uh, this has been really have this on the bingo card for 2025, but yeah, it feels like there's a full-on sentiment shift here. And I'll pull up the E dominance chart in a little bit, but that's been I mean, ETH BTC and Bitcoin dominance are basically one in the same chart. They've been trending in um, you know, down to the right direction for a long time. And it feels like there's a real bonafideed sentiment shift. And between Tom Lee and Joe Luben um and some of the ETH treasury companies uh there's been a massive shift and I think there was uh 725 million of inflows into the ETH ETFs which is you know by far the largest

single day inflow in history. So yeah, what's behind the ETH nissa uance? I mean looking back I I think if you compare this to 2021 it's it's actually pretty similar. Uh you know the ratio bled for a long long time. Then there was this you know new use case in this cycle. People were excited about stable coins RWAS tokenization which are just indisputably happening on Ethereum. uh you have people like Robin Hood, you know, and I was in con for the ETH con conference and it was an extremely extremely bullish conference in a way that ETH Denver and and probably the

other ETH global events have not been and I would say the defining feature of it, it was just much more commercial. Um where you had real businesses opting into the L2 roadmap and I think it was a vindication of that approach in the sense that all these corporations want their own thing. they don't really want to be built on a monolith L1. Um, and then you know you had the before that it like just the Ethereum vibes were pretty bad despite all the progress and adoption. Um, and I think generally now it's turned around right on schedule. I actually watched uh I watched like some Gainzy video about him [ __ ] on Ethereum. It was like some hilarious live stream he did where he was, you

know, firstly talking about his net worth being like completely shelled and then he was talking about how much he hates ETH. And I think that's pretty indicative of a lot of people who have given up, moved on. Maybe they bought Salana, maybe they bought Hyperliquid. And you know, Tom Lee and Joe Luben CTOing ETH and putting and and by the way, yesterday was there were more or sorry, it was like within a million dollars of the Bitcoin ETF inflows. And so if that gets above and all these Treasury companies are buying, you know, this was not on my bingo card, but it is what's happening. And I think if you are not holding ETH, you're probably pretty panicked. Um, and yeah, I mean, like the thing about these treasury companies that's so

unique is that year to date, they've bought about 1% of the Bitcoin supply, and ETH is a much more reflexive asset. It's much less liquid. Uh, I would I would actually think that there's there's a lot more of it that's just actively going to be offered. And so, if you have anything like those types of inflows, I think, you know, 10K or higher is is definitely on the table. And I, you know, a few months ago, I I probably would say 10K was was pretty irrational slash very optimistic. And now that could be low.

You know what is a hallmark of uh a crypto run is there was I saw an article that the ETH or the um Winterbute OTC desk had run out of ETH sellers. uh which is that's a that's another classic uh you know uh crypto Twitter um trope that recurs again and again. You always love to see that. But you know what? You know what? Uh I also loved the way that Tom Lee described this and you know, we've talked before about this kind of discussion around um just whatever the narrative was uh like on crypto Twitter not really mattering that much. But if you look at how Tom Lee is describing ETH, it's not

ultrasound money, it's not world computer, it's not any of these things. It's uh it's the stable coin chain. And then if you scroll down to what he describes here is yeah basically small caps and like basically IWM the small cap index and ETH are moving in sync. So Wall Street loves a chart of you know two correlated assets both going up right. Um and what he's basically said like this is kind of in my to summarize like Wall Street speak for yeah people are looking for the next thing after Bitcoin. Um and you can't just say it like that on Wall Street. you have to, you know, demonstrate it with charts and correlations and all that stuff. But I think that's, you know, the simple

message that's going to resonate with people. Um, and especially, we'll talk later about, uh, the Clarity Act just passed the House. It looks like Genius might pass. So, it's already gone House, Senate, and then back to the House. So, it might get signed into law, um, even by tomorrow. But, yeah, I think people kind of slept on stable coins and the importance there and how much that was going to be embraced by the establishment. And this is all happening on ETH and people aren't going to overthink it. So, stable coin chain. Uh >> we we were talking with a uh a large family that has they run it's a single family office. They run probably five or 10 billion dollars. Uh it's pretty well-known uh tech founder. But I was talking to the guy and and what he said

was, you know, I've always really liked ETH. It's um it's like the most you can kind of bet your reputation on it. it is kind of like this version of cyberpunk optimism with a lot of TVL, a lot of deep capital markets, a lot of natural advantages. And his kind of he was like, "Yeah, just been frustrating over the past couple years where there's been nobody to tell the story, and it's just been really shitty because like we want to see ETH win, uh, but it just didn't really seem to have its uh messaging and branding and priorities straight." And now with Tom Lee and Joe Luben, you have the messaging and the narrative and frankly like the mechanical inflows. You have the ETF inflows picking up as well, which you know, I I personally think that the ETFs and uh

I personally think that the ETFs and the treasury strategy companies can buy 10 to 30% of ETH within a year. Like a billion dollar inflow pace on a $300 billion asset, you know, you can buy 100% of it this year unless the price goes up. And so you have the confidence of these inflows and these treasury companies. You have the narrative of Tom Lee and Joe Luben of stable coins. Um and then you have just kind of this perfect storm with Bitcoin stalling out as these older whales start to really sell, you know, between, you know, eight or between 10 and 11 figures of BTC. And so it's kind of this perfect storm of the ETH BTC catch-up trade. And um I was thinking about, you know, a prior fund that we run and and how we potentially should kind of add a bit more risk. And

we own Bitcoin. We own ETH. We own a lot of different ecosystem tokens. And for me, you know, Bitcoin's above the all-time high of the previous cycle by 2x. ETH is still below it. XRP is above it. Like, if XRP can hit an all-time high, why can't ETH? And I think, you know, you pull CT and everyone hates it. But that's even more so of a hated rally and a reason why it's going to happen instead of, you know, evidence against it. And I think CT is just losing relevance and also kind of losing its mind as ETH starts to rally. I could not agree more that uh CT relevance is the lowest it's ever been.

I mean my you know I feel like at one point when all of this stuff was just much lower liquidity and the space was much smaller CT was distribution and maybe it still is in the beginning stage of a project. It helps you get mind get mind share get your first customer whatever um but it's completely irrelevant now to the price action of something like Bitcoin or Ethereum. And I but where I do think CT is still relevant is it's kind of this pressure cooker for where narrative formation happens, right? You a bunch of ideas get tossed out, people get told they're idiots, and you kind of coales around one thing, one line or idea, and then that >> finds its way to the Tom Lees of the world, the Michael Sailors of the world,

and that gets broadcast out around the CNBC's and, you know, into the RAAS and the trading offices and all of that stuff. And uh so that's the way that I kind of think about it like narrative formation and then distribution are two different things and I feel like we are beginning to see um you know ETH distribution really take hold here. Also it's just a cl this is just a classic markets thing right like Bitcoin you know the this I you know I know you've seen this a million times right the Bitcoin maxes were just riding a little bit too high. Uh it's never going to be all only Bitcoin. I've just never believed in that future. I love Bitcoin as an asset. I think it's great. Uh, but it's ne it was never going to be the only thing and the only coin and I think

it's just ETH's turn to run and it's just as simple as that honestly. >> Yeah. And um it's funny like I'm in all of these group chats with professional fund managers and and some just like crypto deens and it's the universal punching bag is Ethereum. Like somebody posted a picture of a giant butt plug in this group chat that I'm in and was like this is what ETH feels like. It's like, okay, like, do you like do you really care that much or should you just buy some of this asset and and just be chill about it? >> Um, doesn't feel like they'll buy it yet, but they will. And I think it's just this over >> overdone sentiment of ETH is the soy cuck chain, whatever. Um, but I found that in most cycles, the arc of this

technology is super long and generally it bends towards Ethereum. And and why does it bend there? I think it's a mixture of you know taste and culture and first mover advantage and frankly like the market moving more towards ETHS in terms of this L L2 road map but I think if you look at the you know the Salonas of the world it's like the pump and and we we did pump we allocated to the ICO and we're happy we we think pump is awesome um but Salana is kind of like the meme chain and for better for worse that's the branding that it has today just like ETH had like the the soy cuck branding a year ago. Um, Bitcoin has the kind of like bronze age mindset branding and I think that has less mileage than

than people on CT expect within Wall Street crowds. But Ethereum is this tech, you know, product and it's being pitched by Tom Lee who is like the godfather of tech retail. And I think there's people who will say, you know, you're lucky you got you got bailed out by Tom Lee, you know, being super bullish. And I don't know, maybe maybe that's true, maybe it's not. Again, it doesn't really matter. Like it's path dependent and this is the path we're on. So, um you can kind of cope about it or you can buy it, but like you can't really do both. >> Well, you can't really say that ETH got bailed out by Tom Lee and not acknowledge that the enormous impact that Michael Sailor has had on Bitcoin, right? I mean, >> totally.

>> It's the same thing, >> right? >> And and and look, there's also been real work done by the Ethereum Foundation and reorienting their priorities, restaffing the organization. like even the ZK proving, you know, going all in on that is a reflection of the concerns that have been voiced over the past two years have been heard. And now that you have that, I I think you're going to see a lot of things additionally come out around what the new priorities are for the Ethereum Foundation and for these treasury strategy companies. On top of that, how they interact, you know, the Ethereum Foundation selling ETH to ESBET.

uh like it's a very it's a much more commercial focus than it has been in the past where you know we're trying to save Guatemala and sea turtles with you know ETH donations. Um I I think that everyone being up in arms and pissed uh was good like we we did have to kill Ethereum so that it could live it again. Um but I think I think it's very much alive and and just I don't know we've talked about a lot about if you really hate a certain asset you should probably just buy some. I think there's some wisdom here that that definitely applies. Arkham was created to make blockchains human readable and simplify blockchain data so that it is meaningful and useful to the average crypto user.

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Uh speaking about uh hated assets or hated rallies depending on which corner of crypto you live in. Uh we should talk about Pump and the Pump ICO. So uh Pump did an ICO uh over the over this last weekend. Um I'm not sure. I know. Yeah, you guys have mentioned that you were you participated in the ICO. So I don't know if you have any information here, but I thought it was interesting they decided to do it on a Saturday um and a Sunday. So it went live. It sold out in 12 minutes which is super super impressive. Um some of it I think it was spread out. There was inventory on some of the centralized exchanges. You could also uh purchase directly from pump on chain. Um infrastructure was very smooth. I didn't hear about any hiccups

happening. Um and I saw you know post day one trading like 500 million maybe 530 million in change of that volume happened on Salana. another 135 140 happened on Hyperlid and then there was an enormous drop off to the centralized exchanges which was cool. We like to see, you know, no matter what uh Ethereum, Bitcoin, Salana camp you're in, I'm assuming that you're voting for uh decentral like DEX volumes over anything else. So, that's great to see. Um uh it was a $4 billion uh valuation. Um they raised I think I think it was uh 750 million was it was the number that >> I thought it was 1.4. I thought it was >> Oh, 1.4. Okay. 1.4. Um 1.4 into the platform. a certain percentage of that

or a certain amount of that was for institutional investors. So initially we heard 100 million 200 million I think it came in closer to 700 million. It was overs subscribed um is kind of the TLDDR and it was a mix of retail and institutional buyers. Uh we put together some research on on this but actually like the median uh buyer price for retail was like 400 bucks or something like that. So retail loves Pump and retail bought into Pump which is really cool to see. Um, and then yeah, it's been trading. It's trading now. I'll pull the chart up, but it's around uh what it ICOed at. So, I think it's about 52 cents. Yeah, 52 cents and change. So, about a $5.2 billion FTV and $1.8 million of uh market cap. But, um, yeah,

I'm curious to get your take here on anything just like how how it went. Um, you know, what pump's prospects are, memecoin market, like whatever, however you want to take it. Yeah. So maybe starting with the asset uh and then pump itself and then and then talking about uh kind of the launch and and what that might mean. So uh I would say we're we're like pretty bullish on the memecoin economy. I don't think it's going anywhere. I think there was a long time where I probably wish that it would just die uh and it didn't. And so I think the testament of strength made us bullish on Pump's prospects in terms of you know if you're thinking about Salana as like the memecoin chain uh but 90% of the activity is driven by

pump and then pump monetizes at you know roughly probably I would say 500 to 700 million of run rate fees with all of their kind of DEX primitives vertically integrated. you know, pump is doing as much uh revenue or more than Salana and yet it's valued at, you know, two to 5% of Salana. So, I think there's a valuation discrepancy between the two where for us, Pump is just a much cleaner bet on Salana uh adoption than Salana itself. And so, like I think there's people who are like, well, betting on pump is anti-SA or vice versa. Like, look, this is just the world that we live in. I didn't create it. So, uh, we allocated to Pump.

I'm quite bullish on what Pump is building on the consumer side, the streaming, the mobile app. The ability to combine, you know, news with memecoins with ephemeral assets, I think, is really interesting and they're the best to do it. Um, we saw that, you know, the bonk, I think Launchpad, flips, pump at some point, you know, for the two weeks prior. I I would say about that, you know, when something like that happens, it's not like there was this organic ground swell of activity that just decided to go to Bonk and like, you know, oh, they they flipped it and it's like way different now. No, like Pump has the brand, it has the users, it has the mobile app, it has the knowhow, and now it has 1.4 billion of cash. And I think the thing about the Pump team is that they're growing quickly, but

they're also not scared to try things. And so, if you're shorting this asset, you should know that they have a billion four on the sidelines that they're willing to use against you. Um, so that'll be pretty interesting on the launch itself. I mean, the biggest winner was Hyperlquid by far and it's a testament to the coordination of the ecosystem, but also the execution capabilities of the uh, Pers exchange that they are able to dwarf the spot volumes of Binance and OKX and Bybit. Um, and so I I think you know the centralized exchanges continue to lose relevance. They continue to lose share of the highest margin profit products that they sell, which are these new coin launches. And really all they have left is Bitcoin and ETH that are,

you know, Hyperlid has 30 to 35% of the OI of both of those coins. So it feels like the Binance and Bets of the world are just stuck in 2021 while everyone else speeds ahead. And you know, there's there's people in these group chats I'm in that are, you know, so prohyp that they're [ __ ] all over pump and and and vice versa. I I think my approach is is why not both? I think they're very different. I think they're very uh different ecosystems and and we think both are are the future and and so yeah, I mean I'm I'm pretty positive on Pump and the like people have said, you know, Noah and Alon are very wild and you know, all this stuff, but I met them in 2019. They've they've always been like this. Um so like it's it's more of the same and it's worked so far. So I

don't I don't see why I would stop now. So I think that there's a couple of I was actually just talking to uh just did a podcast with Austin Adams um on this. Austin is one of the lead researchers on um uh Uni V4. He's been in the world of dexes and unis swap for a very long time is now doing uh something called Doppler uh which is really interesting a UN v4 hook. Uh but we were talking about this whole world and landscape of so I think part of the story here is so Axiom is a successful trading platform which has taken up a bunch of um you know trading activity on Salana and memecoins in general and is now responsible for here I'll full screen here uh but you can see they're responsible for about half the volume on pump and uh bonk.f fun. Um,

and you could view this in one of two ways, right? You could either view this as um uh bonk or pump getting disintermediated and losing access to their like kind of the customer or Austin's take was kind of the opposite and you know he's been at unis swap for a long time and noted that you know the unis swap has these proprietary distribution methods right they've got the wallet and the front end and the share uh basically the the share of flow that the front end and the wallet are directing to the underlying protocol has gone down over time but volumes are up and actually the idea is kind of okay these are two separate things right there's like kind of a brokerage what platforms are people going to use to trade and then the

underlying protocol um and that was his view on bump is that it actually doesn't really matter uh that much where it's coming from it's actually good you want to see a diversity of different platforms directing flow to you um so yeah I thought that was an interesting take um and yeah I think uh very much pump could be like it's the only one that has any kind of brand in this space at all. Um and historically winners have kind of stayed winning here. So yeah, I think it would be tough for Bonk to compete here, you know sustainably.

>> Yeah, I mean for us though, these are the shots that we have to take where something's working. You know, sure there's going to be hair on it. There's always some sort of hair on it in crypto. It's very divisive. People hate it. People love Same thing with Hyperlid, honestly. Um, but you know, these are the swings we take. And do I think that uh Pump has a chance of unseeding someone like a Robin Hood long term? I think it's a slightly different market, but it's certainly possible. And and the outcome for that is just multiples of of four billion, you know, where where it ICOed.

>> How do you think about Pump's business model long term? I mean, do you do you slot it as like a because on the one hand you could look at it as this is very similar to a hyperlquid or Robin Hood and they're going to compete as an exchange brokerage kind of hybrid or I mean one way that I've been thinking about it a little bit is like they very much view themselves as being in the creator business and I've spoken to Alain too and you know he kind of describes their business as competing on the exchange front but also with social media platforms right like they brought live streaming back recently um and it talks about competing with like the YouTubes of the And one way you could also view their business is almost like almost like an only fans kind of business, right? Where you have it's a

little bit elicit, right? There'll be some people that kind of look down their nose at it, but it's still obviously a phenomenal business and business model and the business model there is you're bringing in creators uh and creators monetize in the way that they're going to monetize and you take a slice of that like not that it really matters, right? uh but you know which in a sort of bucket do you kind of if you were to look at their business through one lens you know how would you describe it? I mean, they have the proprietary flow from their mobile app and the streaming. And I think they're going to take a real shot at incentivizing creators who maybe are not, you know, streaming on Only Fans, but they're certainly, you know, deplatformed for this, that, or the other reason from like Rumble or Kick or

YouTube. And there's a lot of those people. And there's a lot of them that can generate serious economics. And so, you know, like you you think about Robin Hood, you think about Coinbase, but there's also like E Toro, there's Kraken, there's Public.com, there's so many of these things. Um, there's going to be more than just one exchange slash consumer play within crypto. And like to date, there's like Hyperlquid and there's not even another one. So, the TAM here is is pretty unlimited. And I think a four billion price for the ICO is pretty fair. Um and I think the other hits that we see on hyperlquid are or sorry on pump is that uh only 25% of you know uh cash is going to be used to give

back to the token holders. In our discussions with the team you know they've said that 75% is going to be used to reinvest with the platform and pay creators and aggressively growth market and grow the team and make acquisitions. So um I think you know the crypton natives sometimes view the revenue and earnings or protocol as either like go to pump token directly or go for team lambos. I I think the truth is it's much more nuanced where a lot of these protocols that are built are not going to just you build it and they will come. You have to reinvest on the growth side which doesn't go directly to token holders but maybe indirectly. And so, you know, I think it's just about being patient. And what I've seen that I've kind of been surprised by is just how

impatient the uh airdrop community has been around why aren't they buying back today all this stuff. Why aren't they It's like, man, it's been it's been a week or it been a week. It's been like six days since this happened. Um I think everyone needs to just, you know, be a little bit more patient. I think the 25% number feels quite fair. I I've been a um for for pro for protocols and businesses that aren't mature. I it hasn't really made sense to me. Why would you like especially using the proceeds from a raise to buy back the token is just insane to me. Uh now Pump's actually generating a lot of revenue, right? Like so that actually does make some amount of sense, but I've always been more in the camp of reinvest into growth. Uh I do think, you know, I

was going to ask you about this too. Uh 1.4 4 billion plus. I don't know how much of that [ __ ] I think cumulative they've done some 750 million in revenue um in the last 18 months or so. Uh that's I don't know how much they spent on either creators or their team or development or whatever. But that's a lot of capital to allocate uh you know for a pretty small and definitely very talented but very new team. Um so I actually don't hate you know returning some of that to investors as long as it's coming out of cash flows. uh just from a pure capital allocation standpoint that's a challenge to allocate that much for anyone for any new or right um I was gonna kind of wanted to get your take on uh bless you uh on on that side of things um but yeah

25% seems reasonable and I agree people are super impatient in crypto on the block >> right I you know I I think eoro is worth 12 billion >> you think pump should be worth more than eoro >> like there's so many of these small businesses that don't really make a ton of sense in public markets and the token ones are are kind of being shunned. But as we know today, you know, your token is only one treasury or treasury company away from being uh revalued. So there's just so many things they can do to create value here. I in my mind, you know, just passing back money from from the treasury to token holders is probably the last idea I would have. Um, I think you got to keep the token, you

know, at least IPOs want to keep it above the IPO price. That seems to mean something. Maybe there's a kind of an idea there from Pump, but I'm content to just wait and and watch this grow. Uh, we certainly are not, you know, intending to sell this at any any point in the immediate future. >> Yeah. Well, I'm uh, you know, I always root for people that are taking big swings and uh, yeah, I rooting for the pump team. Think it's super interesting uh, where they end up going. I I think there's a lot of lessons to be had in terms of there are in the same way there are launchpad wars today there are also streaming wars and you know kick executed a pretty successful coup of a marketing campaign right against Twitch streamers that kind of just went around to the top you know 10 or 15 and paid

them a boatload of money and switched them over and it actually seemed to do pretty well. So, you know, I don't know what I would do if I were I mean, having thought a little bit about creators and onboarding uh creator talent and things like that, you might do a barbell strategy here where you try to bring in and homegrow your next, you know, PewDiePie and Mr. Beast and whatever. Uh but also, you know, don't be afraid of you've got a war chest, you know, throw it around a little bit and bring some of these streamers, >> right? and and you know somebody a lot of people have thrown that idea around and nobody's seriously allocated a lot of capital and and good execution towards it. Would I be surprised if they got someone like I show speed, you know, and they paid him a boatload of money

and he brought a ton of investment and platform attention and you know price appreciation to the token? No, I wouldn't be surprised at that. And um I think you do have to kind of put that into your underwriting of a project like this. It's obvious that they're not just going to let the metrics and the KPIs and everything else bleed out. So then you have to ask yourself, what are they going to do? >> Agreed. I don't know if you've looked too much into this, but I still like Zora in terms of their tokconomics here. What they've done, they have a very night like neat way of having like they've tokenized every post, right? So all the the uh trading fees from all the posts uh in an AMM gets paired with the creator coins. Then all the creator coins pair with Zora. So it's a very

neat value across stack from you bring creators on who do banger posts that generate a lot of fees that occurs to their creator coins and as the creator coins goes up the Zorocoin should go up as well. Um, and I even though they might not have that construction impump, I would guess it's going to be similar sort of thing, right? It's you bring a lot of eyeballs, talent, people create good content, good coins. I actually wonder if I mean sort of a joke comparing it to Only Fans, but not really. And >> no, I I think they would be like, yeah, like I don't think they would be offended by that. I think Only Fans is an amazing business. If only if only fans didn't have the stigma attached to it, it would be one of the most successful tech outcomes in the last, you know, 5 to 10 years. I mean, just in

terms of cash flow that that business is generating and uh mind share, it's completely dominant um in their category. But I actually wonder I've heard that, you know, like the OAF models are like a good recession indicator kind of thing. I I've heard that, you know, anecdotally that that slowed down. I actually wonder if they would be a good fit for this. And do you remember there was there's a guy Amin Solommani who's kind of like a one of these heart and soulum kind of devs right >> um and what his original project that he gained uh gain steam for was something called spank chain and the idea was that coin stores are typically very uh challenged in getting banking relationships and I do wonder if yeah I feel like if you know

>> I don't know advice for you know free idea for the pump team that you can feel free to ignore but if probably if you onboarded uh porn stars and had them make start making coins like people would trade that stuff definitely. Um you might get some >> who who who are we to cast dispersions? You know, we've been in crypto for so long and we've seen the stigma firsthand, you know, obviously manifest and then when that stigma removes, the price appreciation can be pretty substantial. So, I'm all for betting on people that are are taking big swings. And there's a certain camp of this industry that has written books like read, write, own. And that, you know, it's so, you know, it's so prescriptive that it can only play out in one way.

And I think the reality of of life is that, you know, things kind of like play out kind of how you think, but like there's a slight twist. And can you get comfortable with it? And, you know, I don't know if Andre allocated to pump fund, but um this is consumer crypto whether you like it or not. So either uh either take the swing or or write the thesis off entirely. >> And you know, I think that there's uh you need I mean it's the name of this podcast, but a right and a left curve.

And anything in crypto that's felt overly lofty or prescriptive around like kind of utopian in its ideals and like it would be perfect and kind of like it's someone's imagination in their head. uh that stuff just really tends not to work super well. Whereas you need, you know, something that's going to change the world and impact things in a positive way, but it also has to, you know, have a base. You know, it's got to get the whatever not, you know, the lyic systems, uh, part of your brain activated, right? You need your base. Uh, and I don't know, I feel like that the first iteration of that is trading and speculation. Like people want to do that. It's not something you're going to write a book about or change the world, but it's real. It's a real desire. same the way it was porn was for the internet

and >> I don't know then you can build better things on top of that. Um but you need both and >> look at look at what Grock is shipping you know they shipped AI companions waifuss you know I'm sure everyone is not super excited about that as the future of of of AGI but that's where we're at. Um, also, yeah, I think that was actually really Did I thought that the pump marketing video that they did was the first genuine like Gen Zcoded marketing that I've seen in crypto. You know, people have not been for this like [ __ ] like the you know what uh >> I don't the 90s kind of >> Zoomer's there's kind of a resurgence here of like 90s even like the style

like baggy like the style is back. Um, a lot of the pop culture today. It looks like it could gotten ripped out of like shitty late 80s and early 90s music videos. And yeah, I I actually thought that Pump didn't get enough love for this. Like it was very Zoomercoded. Um, and >> throw out your skinny jeans. We're back. >> Over the years, we have seen a multitude of hacks, rugs, and bundled launches. The number one way that crypto traders can protect themselves and the wider community is through onchain analysis. Knowing who is moving funds and where those funds are going. Paired with their new exchange, users can see what the top traders are buying and selling with Arkham Intel and then trade on that information with Arkham Exchange.

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>> All right. Should we talk a little I would love to get your, you know, take on what's going on from a regulatory perspective here. So, we had the Clarity bill passed or the Clarity Act passed the House, right? So, it's going to go to Senate. Um, where I've kind of heard anecdotally it's going to be a little bit trickier maybe and there might need to be more concessions. So, as a reminder, this is what happened with the Genius Act, which is a stable coin bill. Passed the House, got rejected in the Senate, had to go back. You know, there's a bunch of back and forth that needs to happen. Um but we got through the first major bill for clarity which is the updated fit market structure bill. So do you want to talk a little bit about that about just you know what

the latest of I don't know to your to your knowledge of what's in that bill um you know why it's important and you know what do you think the odds are that this thing gets passed um relatively soon. Um, so I think you know I understand the high level. I haven't kept up with the various drafts because the way these things work is you know it passes the house or passes the senate then it goes to the house or vice versa then the other chamber of or congress comes up with their version then they make all these trade-offs and then they meet in the middle. And so I try not to spin my wheels too much with the drafts. But what is coming is a uh robust disclosure regime about who owns tokens, what the decentralization status of a network is, if it can be considered can if it can be

considered a commodity versus the security. There's grandfathering for blockchains that pre-exist um this act. There is a compliance period of I think three years for people to come into uh compliance with the new bill. And then there's also retail fundraising conduits where you can raise up to I think it was $75 million in the last draft uh from retail each year as long as you're uh registered. Um for token insiders, it also comes with disclosures about buying and selling. So if you own more than X percentage of a token, you actually have to register with the SEC and make public filings at any point you want to sell.

Um, and obviously this all has a has a grandfathering uh component and then a adoption, you know, time lag component, but the game is going to change and it's going to become much more institutionalized. And I think it plays to the favor of frankly like decentralized chains. And it really enshrines the importance and the benchmarking of what is decentralization. And it really plays against things that are um frankly like just more scammy in nature. Whether it be lowflat high FTV founders that have bad intentions or it be you know memecoin launchpads that are selling unregistered securities like that will get very very much harder. Uh but for the rest of the field it will institutionalize it and and the goal here is to allow a pathway for new

applications from traditional financial institutions and startups to flourish. But there's going to be significant changes to rules of the road. And so I think you know people like venture balloonists uh or cisphus that just [ __ ] on you know a lot of the bad behavior from VCs and founders and and and that stuff. I do feel that uh at a certain level their concerns have been heard and are being addressed uh by these bills which is a good thing. >> I agree with that. Um, also, you know, I think it's I kind of knew this in the back of my head, but it's been surprising to see all of these different uh points of anecdotal data support it

is that institutions weren't going to, you know, move and deploy and get interested on, oh, I think that there's going to be clarity eventually. as we've gotten closer and closer to the Genius Act, like it's been really apparent that they're going to wait until there's actually, you know, something signed into law before they make their move. But, and as we've gotten closer and closer on the stable coin front, I think everyone in this audience can feel the anticipation building, right? It feels like we're on the doorstep of massive um growth in that sector. And I think the same thing is going to happen. This is what we've been missing on the token side of things. So, >> Yep.

>> Yeah. Um, >> and I think it comes at a good time too. It feels like we have >> uh, you know, we did ICOs that were unregistered. We did NFTTS. We did meme coins. We did lowflat high FTV professor coins. We did VC [ __ ] We did all this stuff. And now we're finally getting to a point where people are most interested in fundamentally driven businesses earnings power, buying back your token >> and and tech optimism that is rooted in reality and regulation. And so I think this is very positive. I think it will call a lot of the bad behavior or push it you know offshore to the extent that even maybe a Binance doesn't want to deal with it. So that universe will shrink and the legitimate universe will grow. I think you know retail will have

to change with it. There is no more you know probably free airdrops uh to a certain extent just like traditional equity companies don't give out shares for free. That's part and parcel of how this goes. And so the game will always change, but to to maintain the dynamism and interestingness of crypto and and the up only nature, you do need to change the rules for the better, especially now when we've kind of speedrun all these metas and people are showing signs of exhaustion with just the same old [ __ ] from the same founders and the same VCs. So I'm I'm glad to see it happen.

>> I agree. I completely agree. It's We need some amount of revitalization here. Um and >> totally >> I think Yeah, we need revitalization, right? It's been so this like lopsided or just this barbell of it's either Bitcoin or you know complete degenerate uh trading that's working and we just need like some healthy middle ground here. You know >> you need you need meat in a sandwich. I think I think it's it's going to happen. Um but some people will be left behind and I think those are the people who are more rooted in the you know in-n-out tourists using crypto to make money and then never coming back. uh that that's just probably not going to happen as much going forward.

>> I agree. Um I wanted to uh share here or actually talk about something a little bit different which was it went a little bit under the radar this week but uh Coinbase is rebranding their wallet um to uh base app. So, it's I mean, I'll read the the TLDDR here, but Coinbase Global is rebranding its Coinbase wallet app as base app to consolidate social, chat, payment, and trading functions. The company launched the base blockchain about two years ago. It has generated millions in revenue, becoming central to its payments push. Base app features uh include base pay, an express checkout option, and a sign-in with base feature for quick signins into online apps. And I think the way that at least I read

this story is everyone is chasing there's this kind of somewhat old idea in crypto that um I think the exchanges are all now pursuing which is the everything app and there's you know people have talked for a long time about there's wechathat um and Alip pay over in China and there hasn't really been that in the United States for reasons x y and z maybe because the you know the incumbents have a little bit more of a you know regulatory advantage here in the US uh and payment rails are a little bit more uh you know outdated. But yeah, I think a lot of crypto exchanges see the opportunity to create this for crypto and we talked about this a little bit in actually the live um Empire bell curve crossover that we did. Uh but

yeah, I'm curious what you think about this. uh because it feels like Coinbase and Robin Hood and a lot of the Asian exchanges are actively pursuing this vision and I'm just curious about the likelihood that you see it working or not. >> I think I mean look my perspective on renaming your app from Coinbase to the base app is that that is a dumb decision because you have enormous brand equity with Coinbase and nobody knows what Bass is. So you don't get points for difficulty in consumer applications. I used to work at Netflix. Michael was at Snapchat.

>> So we've done a lot of testing around, you know, retail funnels and how they come through or fall out. I I would expect this would add, you know, 20 or 30% to people who just look at the base app in the app store and just say no. Um but I do think, you know, >> at the end of the day, each of these companies is going to have their own wallet to interact on chain. Robin Hood will have theirs, Coinbase will have theirs, Kraken will have theirs. I think it's a question of uh a wallet is a really unfamiliar concept to consumers in the sense that when you go on Instagram, you click on Instagram and Instagram is your navigation for Instagram. Uh wallets are more akin to web browsers in the sense that like

you're accessing the open internet through uh a browser and you're doing the same with a wallet on chain. But you know most of these things will look very very similar and where a browser is like very very light and you're mostly looking at the web page in a wallet you know your front end is is that wallet and so I think there is probably more real estate there and it's really important to do better as a result versus a browser but um you know I do think uh like why would somebody use base versus metamask versus Robin Hood wallet? um it probably has something to do with where their actual account originates from. And so like as an exchange, you probably can't afford to

ever have someone use their own wallet on your, you know, financial ecosystem, even it if it is onchain. So all of these people will build their own. But I mean, I would I would probably not rename it from Coinbase. I think that's pretty silly. >> Yeah. I wonder uh I wonder what their plan eventually is around Coinbase versus Bass. Um you know, it's hard to understand what their long-term vision is here. And you know, I'm I don't know if you've been following uh on like DEX uh trading volumes here, but you know, Binance like BMBB is pushing a lot of volume towards uh you know, Pancake Swap and uh there've been like um you know, Kraken has launched Inc. which feels

like they're kind of copying to be honest it feels like they're a little rudderless and following Coinbase here. Um but also what was the other the Bybit is launching on Salana here and and if you look at that there's a great chart that I feel like everyone that's rooting for crypto no matter where you sit in this stack should be excited about. It's just the uh sextock ratio chart. >> Oh yeah. Where's that at? I haven't looked at that recently. >> I'm going to pull it up. Um it's in a good place. It's basically up and to the right here. Um, so yeah, this is I mean it's doing quite well. Um, and a huge part of this is hyperlquid, right? Uh, it's fun. You can kind of filter and actually see the percentage of Binance

volume, but uh, Dex is flipped. >> Uh, yeah. Yeah, Binance volume um, >> back in June. >> Wait, did this go to 100%. >> Yeah. Yeah, this was of all sex volume here. Uh so this was uh you know we peaked at around 62%. Um and we exclude by the way we can get into the meth but we exclude some of the shadier sexes here which are definitely just doing wash trading. Um and then you can toggle it to see what percentage of uh of Binance volume. So it it flipped Binance volume uh back in the beginning of June.

And you can do the same for Coinbase. It's way more than Coinbase's volume. But >> man, that's so crazy. So I wonder I wonder yeah >> this chart makes me think of two things. Number one >> um >> I mean we we started our first one in late 2018 to invest in DeFi and we thought DeFi was right around the corner in terms of flipping centralized exchanges and I think the thing that I've learned investing is just these things take forever to play out. Forever forever. Forever. Forever. Forever. And usually you will get the idea right, but you'll get the time scale wrong. And then you'll probably get the company wrong as well in terms of, you know, is it GMX, is it DYDX, is is that going to

be the decentralized B? And then it's Hyperlquid, you know, like six years later. >> And I think, you know, it's kind of like the search engine wars where Google was like the 800th search engine. It just happened to win. And then there were people that were so traumatized by those wars that when the Google IPO came out, they just said, you know, no. And there's a very famous John Dora quote who led the I think series A in Google where he said, you know, right as Google was about to IPO, you know, that we've never paid I think they got 15% of Google for $10 million. They said, you know, he said, we've never paid as much for such a little amount of economic value. And that was his like synopsis of where Google was at the time. But then like the market grew, the search engines

grew, they won the search engine war, and then like you had like I'm sure like a similar chart to this where obviously there's no onchain versus off-chain analogy for for uh search engines, but um you know maybe the analogy is like the yellow pages versus Google and you know it's it started at 2% then it went to 10 and then it went to 100% and then >> you know it went to 10,000% and then yellow pages ceases to exist. And I I do get the sense that the centralized exchanges of this world today are are kind of yellow pages. Maybe Coinbase is the exception, but um the ones that seem really challenged right now are the overseas centralized exchanges. I don't know what the future of of buy bit or Binance is. I think a lot of their traditional advantages have been eroded

and they've probably reached some sort of ceiling in terms of onboardable customers that are willing to play their game and I think that's a net good for the space overall. Yeah. And you know, one of the things that's just been so challenging for them is it's their listing process, right? Like Binance kind of takes its pound of flesh. Um, so do a lot of the other sexes. But in addition to that, it's just the the sheer amount uh of assets that come online that people want to trade. I mean, this is the advantage of a DEX, right? You can just spin it up. It's non-custodial. Trade from day one.

Um I think we I think we talked about it at the top of the episode but yeah more trading uh happened on chain uh right for pump than centralized exchanges by a pretty wide margin at least in you know the opening salvo and you know part of that is too right like why did it take these uh sexes so long to list hypo liquid they view it as a competitor um >> they still haven't >> yeah so yeah I think that uh I completely agree with you by the way on the time scale thing um and I also think that yeah, people will probably be exhausted.

They'll be like, "Oh, I tried. I invested in this C." Same thing with L1's too, right? Um like it's funny like still 10 or 15 years later, however long we are into this experiment. It's like L1's and exchanges are kind of still the big category winners, right? >> Right. Then like there will be a point where you know it feels that there's no new innovations and you feel tired and you feel that you know maybe you're you're not investing in the right things but like you just have to keep like if you have the conviction if you have thesis like the power of staying put of staying with the same thesis of investing in you know if you if you whiffed on dydx and that didn't work out like do you have the the stones to then go allocate size to hyperlquid because it looks like it's finally playing out.

Um, it's really like a mentally tough game and and I I think even like with Ethereum too, like CMS Holdings tweeted, I it's it's uh you know, if you've been in crypto for more than a decade, it's three years of head trauma in the NFL. Like like there's there's people who I think have lost their minds holding Ethereum, like not even being in crypto, just like holding one of the single assets. >> And so yeah, it's um it's a war of attrition. It's a it's a psycho psychological game. >> Yeah, you just got to not give up. I I think someone wrote I've probably talked about it on this podcast, but um you know they mention crypto, you know, the concept of a winner and a losers game and tennis is the famous example here

where uh you know people studied tennis and there are two games that are being played and in if you're really good at tennis, you win by hitting the best shots, right? are like doing spin moves and like very, you know, professional kind of moves to best your opponent. But most people actually play a losers game, which is a war of attrition, right? Which you're just trying to bop it over the net until your opponent [ __ ] up and hits it out, right? Winners and losers game. And uh this person was talking about crypto transitioning from a winners to a losers game. But I think it's always been a loser game, right? Like just stick it out. I mean, there's there's so much alpha and just surviving and lasting longer than other people. uh whatever you can do mentally to get yourself to that point is huge. But I I

also think there's some wisdom too in just yeah not overthinking it and doing there's so much you want to do more than you should, right? Um and I do think >> it feels like work, >> right? Yeah. But sometimes the right move is to just do nothing. And I do think that we're about to see consolidation in some categories that haven't seen consolidation for a long time. like it's new L1's are yeah it's gonna be very tough to break in um at this point I do think there are a couple that I'm excited about but yeah it's really tough to break in at this point um exchanges you're probably going to see consolidation I think you're in like the winners stay winning kind of phase of of crypto >> um

>> yeah yeah and no so I think on the you know the psychological losers game just popping it over the net staying in the game whatever I think that's why uh the framing of a cycle is important where you just have this thing where you're like, man, this is really bad and maybe ETH doesn't come back this time and then and then you just please refer to the rainbow chart. You know, we're right on track. We're at the bottom end of the rainbow, but like we can get to the top end. >> So, I think that's, you know, useful for that. And then on the winners versus losers game, >> I I think it is a winners's game right now just because some of them have revenue and earnings and that's a really powerful story to tell in a sea of things without revenue or earnings. But

um my sense is that you're going to see some sort of broaderbased alt rally. Obviously won't be everything, but there's a lot of stories that have yet to be told. And these treasury strategy dynamics give you a financial lever to pull if you want to force that. You don't need to go doortodoor to retail asking them buy my coin for this that or the other reason. You can kind of concentrate the buying power into one entity uh funded by the convertible note universe and other ATM and equity participants. So there there's just more there's more levers to pull. I would say it's still a winner's game, but the losers can turn into winners faster than people think per our discussion about Ethereum. Like the most hated assets are are hated because they are oversold.

They are kind of maligned from a narrative perspective and they haven't pulled the levers that they can. But when they do pull those levers, things can change very quickly. So you know, I wouldn't be surprised to see that be the case for a lot of different assets as well. Yeah. Uh just a note here as well. I just saw the Genius Act uh officially passed as well. So we talked about Clarity, which is, you know, the market structure bill at the top of this episode, but Genius Pact uh Genius Act passed 307 to 122 votes. So it's pretty wide margin. Um so yeah, I'm reading from Jake Travinsky here. Uh president's going to sign it into law tomorrow. We have stable coin regulation in the USA.

So, >> boom. >> Pretty freaking cool. Should be bullish for ETH. >> So, uh, load up on the I mean, not financial advice, but yeah, this should be good for >> for the bluecoin. >> The Eric Trump quote. Yeah, for the bluecoin. >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm just at the stage of my life where, you know, Bitcoin's doing well, East doing well, maybe Salana's down a little bit, but like I'm not, you know, trying to like drop the people's elbow on things that are dying. I I probably am a buyer of those things at some level just because I think they will come back and I think there's so many people who are stuck in the like the mycoin dynamic where it's like it's my thing and only I can you know have this coin and it's

just really not how you do it these days at least in my mind. >> I agree man. I completely agree. Um on the shoot what was I gonna h I had one more point on like the consolidation something around that but it's not important. I feel like those >> Wait, wait. Can we can we talk about this Robert Lesner treasury company thing? >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, uh so Robert Lesner went out and purchased a um a little uh liquor company that was I think at the time, so it was trading.

It's a publicly traded company. Um but at the time, I think it was for just over $2 million of market cap. Okay, so yeah, here we go. Okay. So, uh yeah, Rob Lesna acquired um you know, basically a controlling stake in LQR House, which is a struggling, uh liquor company. So, I'm just going to read this tweet thread that he did, which is, "I bought a controlling stake in YHC, a low market cap liquor company with a somewhat shady history. My plan is to replace the board and help the company explore new strategy. I've not done extensive diligence. There are signs the company's up to no good. I will sort them out, etc., etc." Uh, personally, investing in YHC was an experiment with an uncertain outcome. My original plan was to buy the

company outright and to put it on track to build a crypto treasury strategy under new leadership. I was partially successful. Uh, he relied on public disclosures of how many shares the company were outstanding and their shelf issuance capabilities. Uh, the numbers reported in brokerage jobs became increasingly out of date as these shares entered market entered the market and diluted shareholders to the point where my stake no longer has meaningful control. So, um, basically, you know, Robert, uh, Rob also has this company, um, Superstate, uh, and they've recently announced the ability to essentially go public on Salana. So, I'm, you know, making some assumptions here, but, it seems like the idea would be to he had he tried to control uh, basically outright acquire this liquor company for

$2 million, make some changes, turn it around, yada yada. it didn't work because these challenges with um yeah, the amount of outstanding shares weren't clear. Uh and presumably this is something that Superstate fixes, but this thing has done like a 5x or something like that since I think it's at $10 million or something like that today, but I don't know. What do you think about I think it's kind of cool. I actually sent it to Jason. I was like, I feel like this is a screaming buy, right? But I didn't buy. So, >> pull up the tweet I just I just posted in chat. I mean code is not law in tradi and then he just gets like ATM to death.

So what happened here? Robert Leser gives up trying to take control of NASDAQ listed LQR house after the original 56.9% stake gets delted to 8.7. That's so funny. Uh >> when you strap in the uh when you play in the Trafi universe it's just a different game. Yeah, put a helmet on because they don't [ __ ] around. They will just ATM you to death >> on a moment's notice. >> They willough to see. Um, tough to see. >> Well, hope hopefully it was still successful for you a little bit there, Robert. Uh, obviously always rooting for fellow crypto people, but >> yeah, it's a funny funny little thing, but anyway, fans was a fun one. Michael, hope you are um

>> completing your fitness journey. Uh, >> yeah, smile somewhere. >> Yeah, >> hopefully. >> All right, we'll see you. Sorry, man. >> Bye.