Hivemind: Bitcoin Decoupling, US Trade Deficits & Worldcoin

Transcript

The whole point with this Bitcoin decoupling thing that I'm talking about is like on the margin I could see foreign capital going towards, you know, things like gold, things like Bitcoin, the onuses on Bitcoin to prove that it's actually decoupling because like there's been so many like false signals in the past. The biggest driver is still probably going to be NASDAQ for the time being, but on the margins, I think it's it's shifting away from that a bit. Nothing said on the hive mind is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is strictly forformational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our own opinions, not financial [Music]

advice. Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Hivemind podcast. goal of the podcast as always is to provide an inside look into what we like to call the deli hive mind bringing together some of our brightest minds from each of the divisions to share insights alpha and [ __ ] posts today with us we have the usual crew set parabus from institutional research arm Jan who's managing partners on our ventures arm um Duncan shitcoin scavenger and investor and I lead deli labs our protocol R&D arm so it's I mean, last time we talked, we pretty much had a had a like a counseling session live on air about the tariffs that were happening

and and destroying our bags. Two weeks later, not too much more clarity on that, but I don't think we want to spend 45 minutes crying about tariffs again. The thing a lot of people seem to be talking about is is this Bitcoin decorrelation? Talking about slash hoping for um is the moment finally here, right? mostly Bitcoin trades correlated to the to the S&P. Um if it if it's to fulfill its promise as digital gold, this this uncorrelated hedge asset, then eventually it it should uncorrelate. Um and recently there's been some evidence that it is, although this has happened before and people always get over excited. It's kind of like every ETH pump this cycle.

But um yeah, curious what what do you guys think about this is I mean one yeah one issue I have with this is that and I'm just gonna jump in talking because there's drilling today. Um is like soul's been up like 30% over that period too and so it's like I don't know if it hasn't been like specifically Bitcoin Bitcoin. Yeah. Well, no, but there's a lot of assets that are not um like I mean Fartcoin was has been like very strong recently too. I think that crypto just when crypto sells off first, but it also gets bid first, right? And so I don't know if the fact that Bitcoin looks like if if stocks puke, Bitcoin is puking 100%.

Um, and gold might honestly do okay in that scenario. I It's like I think it's just Yeah, it's there's no evidence that it's acting anything like gold. And I think the decorrelation right now is kind of just like people waiting for I think like the the market it it does not believe that these tariffs are still like sticking because if they did it like the market would be down so much lower lower right like spot S&P would be like 4500 or something and so there's still a lot of like disbelief or just not believing that this is still a long-term thing and so I think everyone is still kind of waiting for a kind of like you know pivot or something and

Bitcoin is obviously going to rip in that scenario and so that's why I think it's kind of decorrelating a little bit recently. Yeah, it's no it's been trading decently well. I mean yeah I think that the the the disbelief is just a function of um Trump crying uncle or the Fed stepping in if if things get too bad. And so, you know, markets bottom like 6 to 12 months before um recessions end. And and so, you know, as forward-looking mechanisms, it makes sense to to try and price that in.

Bitcoin was was definitely catching a bid before JPAL's uh speech yesterday. Mark in general was, but but Bitcoin in particular. Um and and so yeah, that that kind of hammered things completely and and yeah, but then when it sold off, it it was pretty strong. Like anyways, this is obviously like daytoday PA, but I think I agree with like set like Jose is like the onus is on Bitcoin to prove that it's actually decoupling because like there's been so many like false signals in the past. But I still think like the drivers of Bitcoin could be shifting towards, you know, less away from from

the NASDAQ to these other factors over time. Because if you think about it like fundamentally, if the US and China are getting into a massive trade war and the US is, you know, trying to eliminate its deficits, it trade deficits with the rest of the world and, you know, increase protectionism, kick out foreign investment in some critical industries, reshore um reshore investment. It's like, okay, does it necessarily want or at least does this administration necessarily want like the pattern of the past 20 years where everyone just takes their dollars that they make from these trade surpluses and individuals just buy US assets. And if that's changing, if

that's the goal of the administration, then maybe, you know, on the margin, Bitcoin does get a bit of a bid. you know, it's it's at the levels it was pre-liberation day where tech stocks and uh S&P are down like five ten percent. So, and it held up pretty well on Friday. A good go like wanting foreigners to stop buying US denominated assets. I think that it's kind of the problem with the reserve currency is everyone or like the problem with the reserve currency if you want to have manufacturing. It's like everyone wants US dollar stuff. So they bit up the dollar. It's really uncompetitive to make anything in the US, right? Like you

need to kind of export dollars. That's your biggest export to the rest of the world versus like building these these critical things. Like I think we we can look it up called like the Triffin dilemma. Yeah, definitely. We wrote about this in our co macro piece, but like I don't know. Do you think on net being the reserve currency is a bad thing? I think that we're seeing I think that the the hollowing out of of the manufacturing has been pretty bad. If things were to turn into a war, like in a world where everything's perfect and globalization works and like everyone's friends, probably a good thing. But in a world where like you might be fighting like

your biggest adversary also makes all of your stuff probably not great. It's it's also not binary though. You don't necessarily have to choose like reserve currency or total shitcoin, right? There there's a a spectrum where the as you gradually devalue, you become more competitive on a on a global exporting scale. reserve currency though you could use the you could use the surplus to reinvest into building up US manufacturing right I don't know I and like it's also a very useful tool in a war to be able to sanction like both treasury surplus isn't from the the

government necessarily it's no I mean I mean the sur I mean the the like surplus of demand for your currency that that comes from like you you can you can print more dollars you don't have to necessarily buy Chinese gizmos with it. Like you can just reinvest them into the into the US economy if you wanted to. I feel like it's more a question of what the US has been doing to satisfy the surplus demand versus that always being a bad thing. Like I don't know being being the reserve currency. I I I agree there's some there's some drawbacks to overall it's like a just an amazing how they how they've managed it so far is pretty [ __ ] Yeah. Well, if they had spent up a ton of time building a

sovereign wealth fund and like having critical industries in the US, yeah, that would have been great. But they didn't. So now they're in like a tricky situation where if they're escalating this kind of economic trade war with China, you know, China makes a lot of important things and has a lot of important exports. But anyways, the whole point with this Bitcoin decoupling thing that I'm talking about is like on the margin I could see foreign capital going towards, you know, things like gold, things like Bitcoin, which like we're seeing gold and maybe like a little bit of Bitcoin. The biggest driver is still probably going to be NASDAQ for the time being, but on the margins, I think it's it's shifting away from that a bit. At least it makes sense fundamentally. It it basically like it

it trades as a percentage, right? It's like a certain percentage of its exposure is is NASDAQ, a certain percentage is gold, a certain percentage is liquidity, but that that kind of overlaps with with gold and and NASDAQ. But um it's it's always it's usually just a price driving the narrative thing where the second it starts doing well in a certain environment, then it's now it's trading with this and people start to pile in. And so you kind of it's a combination of of what's driving the narrative and just the the kind of liquidity and demand dynamics at the time where right now you you kind of have gotten to a point where you know there's a decent amount of seller exhaustion but we're still pretty rangebound, right? like we sell off at

high 80s pretty consistently and then in no man's land there's not a lot of speculative interest because of the macro uncertainty and then you know it's bounced off the high7s twice now and so that that's proven to be decent support so um I would just have expected Bitcoin to be way lower if you had told me that like the S&P was going to get five days negative 5% and like all this stuff was going happen. Historically, I feel like as a risk on asset, it's traded really well.

If you chart Bitcoin versus QQQ, it's like 10% off the highs, right? It's like really hanging in relative to stocks. So, I think on the margin, this is definitely happening. Um, and I also think a lot of like if if you a lot of the like 109K top was kind of this like SPR speculation. Like if if you take that out then I think we're down kind of even less relatively. I mean clearly gold going up I think is good for Bitcoin as digital gold. I think that like when whenever people used to refer to gold it was like stuck at this 10 trillion asset right it's now like a 22 trillion asset. So, I think like Bitcoin at the market cap of gold is a

million-dollar Bitcoin, which, you know, is is kind of pretty pretty crazy to to think about. I feel like um and I do think the move to gold I don't know. Yeah. Go ahead, Sus. No, I was just going to say I think like yeah, the value of hard money assets getting going up is like pretty bullish for crypto in general because I think a lot of crypto assets kind of exhibit some of that to different extents. Obviously, Bitcoin the main one, but I just think like non-s sovereign like even something like some like weird AI stuff for instance too.

Um that people that kind of just sits outside the system. Um it will be interesting to see like if there is this mass like the rest of the world's been outperforming US pretty strongly over the past month or so. Um, and if if the US really wants to reduce trade deficit, then it's just like the math is just less dollars going to foreigners and so they have less dollars to buy US assets, right? And so it will be interesting to see how Bitcoin trades versus like US equities, European equities, Chinese equities, right? I think that trend reverses um violently at some point, right? like the reason it's been happening is because the whole world was just massively overweight um US assets

and so the the outflow just kind of creates a lot of knock-on pain and and people having to reposition and reconsider. Um but I mean in the grand scheme of things no other there's very few other places building compelling companies to invest in like the Europors have nothing interesting going on in their market and that's why it trades at such a discount like the best companies are still being built here and and and the assets will still flow in. I mean US definitely has the best capital markets assets like entrepreneurs in the world but um I don't know I I do think I mean first of all Trump's like instability I think uncertainty I think is the is the worst for for this stuff is much worse

than actual tariffs. The worst is just not knowing what's going to happen next like stuff all all the time. Um, and then like on the on on the rest of the stuff, I do think people are still like I don't know who said it on the podcast, sort of hoping that this reverses like uh that that the tariffs are reversed that we come to some kind of uh agreement that these deals get made, which I mean hopefully they hopefully they do and I don't know how to put probabilities on that at this point. I think that's kind of the issue.

It's it's very hard thing to to put probabilities on. But I do think there's also a world where it it's actually like the beginnings of war, you know, like you you have like a trade war is is normally how wars begin. Um you have these like very high tariff hikes. You have China uh stop shipping rare earths to the US or like limited the rare earths that are being shipped to the US and I think makes up 70% of the US imports of those. You have the US telling countries that they have to choose between China and and and the US.

Like there's there's a lot of signs which you know historically if you if you start a second world war or whatever like you could easily tell the story of how this was actually the beginning of this of this cold war like the the a lot of people say it's already started but and if that's the case it's like a pretty drastically different regime even for even for assets right I think like my point though with the bid for US assets is not even the whole like political all this pissing off everybody it's just the pure mechanics of if you're going to reduce the trade deficit then you just have less dollars going to these other countries and so they literally just have less there's just a less of a bid because all these countries do is like they they export

products to the US the US prints dollars and gives them it and then they just put that into US dollar assets basically for the most part right and so if you're taking away that whole mechanical flow like the biggest US export the biggest US export is like US treasuries Right. Um, and so like if you're kind of like taking away that flow, then that's just kind of like a big change long term in like it has nothing to do with fundamentals or the companies involved in everything. There's just been this massive passive bid from the rest of the world for US assets just due to the nature of running trade deficits, right?

So that's like the part that could honestly be like pretty materially changed if they're hellbent. It seems like Yeah. I like it seems like they're pretty hellbent on lowering these trade deficits that aren't I don't know. I feel like eventually they're going to come to this point where it's just the critical industries and the critical manufacturing they really want to get back. That seems like the most rational kind of end here and they'll be okay with running trade deficits with like um Cambodia, right? Um but I guess we'll see. It's still it's more so just uh moving uh opening up the door for

other manufacturers to eat into China's manufacturing market share, right? That way you're less dependent on China specifically, but you're still doing a majority of your exporting for all these non-critical goods. I think that's the goal with the non-critical stuff. And then the critical stuff, I agree, is to move it on shore. Yeah, I feel like sir, what's the goal with the nonritical stuff? uh basically like the Vietnams of the world to to allow them to it opens the door for them to expand their manufacturing capacity and it it you know allows you to be less dependent on one producer but rather a handful and so from your side it it gives you better leverage and and better security and

then from their side it opens up the door for them to kind of run China's playbook to some extent and and leads to a lot of you know domestic prosperity so the goal so to keep tariffs on China but take them off Vietnam is in other countries like that is what you're saying right and allow that production to move there yeah I think you wanted more back in North America right for for everything for like gizmos and well no for for the critical stuff as much North America as possible it's just tricky I do think that this is kind of the beginnings of like the Cold

War. I kind of subscribe to that view, although that's like pretty scary. It sucks, but like just the actions that they've both taken. It's just like I don't know how this was not going to eventually come to a head if like you have two you have like one incumbent power, another rising power, but then the incumbent makes all of their critical stuff in the rising powers country. like that just feels like inevitably it was going to come to some sort of, you know, some sort of conflict or change up. I don't know how that continues forever.

Yeah. And then we hear these whispers in these times of like Russia settling oil contracts and Bitcoin and stuff. It'll be dope to start seeing because we're definitely moving to this multipolar world. Like this is kind of the world Bitcoin was built for. I just haven't haven't seen that much that many signs of like fundamental like adoption of Bitcoin as a as a neutral asset other than people sort of buying it on the speculation that it'll become one. Yeah, there was that headline that that uh countries reaching out to Binance to set up sovereign wealth funds or Bitcoin reserves. Yeah. like it makes sense that it's going to happen I think and this these forces are pushing it a little bit

more because also like as an individual investor right like this actually does start to go like we're at the point now where like Bitcoin's accepted enough where I think you can start to like really give some weight to to the fundamentals of you know if you're a really wealthy person in China or Russia and you're scared about capital controls you know gold is like a difficult thing to put all your wealth in and move around, but like Bitcoin on the margin is like super easy to buy and store and, you know, hold globally. I think those those sort of things actually start to to matter. Now, should we start with this neutral thing? This is pretty interesting. basically a more um basically this this neutral is is a a

synthetic dollar that's backed by an even more DGEN version of the Athena trade where uh they're trying to close this this ARB on on the funding rate of these like or basically you can get paid to short a lot of these lowflat high FTV tokens that we've talked about over and over while at the same time there's secondary transactions happening at like 50 to 60% below the the market price, right? Which doesn't really makes much sense from a market structure perspective. Um, and we I think talked about this on an episode and kind of talked about a lot of reasons why this could be the case that, you know, VCs aren't set up to to short and the team doesn't have collateral to do this and

then, you know, there's not really a healthy market for secondaries, etc. These guys are trying to close that that loop. As far as I understand, most of the capital is going to sit in like Athena basically in like yield yield bearing stable coins and then a small portion is going to be used to run this trade where they're buying secondaries at a discount and then shorting the perp. What do you guys think of this? This seems pretty dangerous to me. I don't know. I think it's unfortunate that uh Athena has kind of opened the the Pandora's box in terms of calling things synthetic dollars that are that are sort of like just vault hedge fund strategies. Um this one in particular

seems like there's a lot that can go wrong. I haven't looked into it, but uh who's so they have centralized exchanges that are that are valuing this locked collateral? So basically token A trading no I don't think it's delta neutral. I don't know how they make it. Well I think yeah I actually don't know um because like the most elegant way would be somehow getting these exchanges to value the locked assets at par, right? But I don't know which would do that because you can't liquidate them at par. Yeah. Does anyone actually know the answer to that? I haven't I looked

briefly at what they're saying. They didn't mention many details. I don't know if there's documentation or whatever on their site, but could look out on this. I mean, I very much doubt exchanges are going to be letting you take out leverage against these secondaries, which means they have to acquire, if they're going to be [Music] delic. Yeah, I think they'll have to use leverage for sure to which is again something that Athena doesn't do to to be able to recreate the exposure here in

a in an efficient way. Anyway, just seems like a lot of stuff can go can go wrong here. Probably have to understand the details better. Cedar, you unmuted briefly. Do you want to? No, I was just going to say if there was a way to like long synthetic robot labor and short human labor, that would be a more interesting stable coin. That was a bad [ __ ] post. But uh yeah, I think we should talk about like um Pump Fun versus Radium. No, I'm like curious if you guys think that Radium I think the the first my first reaction to like Radium uh Pump launching an AMM and then obviously Radium was going to come back and launch their own Launchpad was that Pump had all the all the leverage here because they kind of like have just owned the

user from day one. When Pumpcoins uh finished bonding, they like go to Radium, but then users go to Jupiter. So users basically go from Pump Fun front front end to Jupiter front front end, right? outside of like snipers and bots too if they're using those front ends, but nobody ever like would go to Radium, right? And so I always felt like Pump had all the leverage here to just kind of like cut out Radium. Uh but Radium now is has launched their launchpad and I think the Radium token actually responded pretty well to this. Um so yeah, I don't know. I'm curious like if you guys have takes on this. I also saw that AI6Z is also launched like a launchpad.

It seems like everybody's launching launchpads these days. Like Bass has a ton as well. Um, but yeah, I get the Euthan Asia roller coaster. Users win because now these guys have to compete on UX and and fees. So, at least there's that element. But um it's just like you're you're getting a smaller slice of a shrinking pie now too with with just the amount of activity in these launchpad platforms. And I've always been a believer in this aggregation theory, right? That if you own the user, you can vertically aggregate upwards. And I think the person who owns the user here is is

pump. I would imagine they have like an AMM is just naturally more infra, right? like most people who use radium probably use it through Jupiter or through you know backpack or whatever other other services integrate them. Um whereas with pump people are going to the front end and and minting a coin on it right and now live streaming themselves threatening their their kids or whatever. So I I think if you if you own the user, it's just way more likely like for for users won't even know that they're that their tokens being traded on on the pump AMM rather than the rather than radium, right? Uh I think they'll But wouldn't that be like uh Jupiter and Moonshot kind of how like

they really are the ones who own the user could launch but I mean if you you own it's the user who's launching the memecoins, right? Like I feel like the user who's launching the memecoins goes to pump at least right now rather than radium or or or anywhere else. Oh, they're going to go liquidity sits. So they go where it launches and like the liquidity just sits idle. That's like radium was cleaning up because everyone would just be trading all that stuff. Yeah, but if you launch on pump your liquidity was automatically like migrating to Radium whereas now it'll migrate to pump. That's what I'm saying. No, I'm I'm I'm I agree with you on this. No, I think that it's they're going to launch where the traders are. And if like Moonshot and Jupiter have all the eyeballs of the traders, that's where they're going to

launch, but Moonshot doesn't have its own AMM. I I just think that that's like an easy thing for like if you're talking about verticalizing the stack, I think it's easy for Jupiter. Well, they doesn't Jupiter kind of have like Mteora, isn't aren't they relationship? No, I mean teams. Yeah, but it's like some of their tokens and entity all that. Yeah. So anyways, Meteora, Jupiter, Moonshot, something launch could do a a launchpad, but um Jupiter I saw something yesterday. They've acquired like eight different protocols.

Yeah, they even acquired a Cosmos team. Yeah, like they they've done a ton of like they've also acquired I think like an Explorer, Salon FM, uh Sonar Watch, which is like Portfolio Dashboard, Moon Moonshot right? Um they they're kind of just on like this acquisition spree. They really are like the front end of Salana. Um and yeah, they could absolutely do some token launchpad thing, right? Uh yeah, I mean they're well positioned to do it by the same theory, but I think between Radium and and Pump, I think Pump wins this. I mean, and obviously Pump started it and Radium kind of responded, which is the right thing to do, and I I I hope they succeed for user

sakes, but I think Pump is is kind of crushing it. Do you think that whole meta comes back to the same degree? To the same degree is hard to say. Um, I do think the meta comes back like, but I don't know if it can from these deaths. Yeah, I could I mean people were launching a ton of tokens. I mean the thing is live streaming really enables like a completely new level of like meaning I think for these for these for these meme coins like the lore around some of these memes that will be launched on ridiculous live streams is probably going to be like pretty absurd.

So yeah, I don't know. I think I think the live streaming feature is super super interesting. I think the it it's actually like the closest thing to web3 social we've we've we've had I think is is pump fun which you know uh don't know that's for better or for worse but I think that's the that's the case. So I'm interested in I think there it will come back and there'll be some really interesting um meta happening but it's hard to imagine it come back to the extent. Yeah, the tricky thing is just the sustainability of the of the ecosystem, right? If it's if it's people are just trading around a handful of tokens back and forth, then it's kind of the same money. It's money slloshing around across less assets and when you

lose, you don't get go to zero more or less. But the problem with like the dilution is just so many things go to zero and that's just money that can't come back. You kind of need to fix the launch mechanism too, right? like people it it became too overt how much was being extracted like that feel like the Kelsier on Coffeezilla was like the the peak of that where people realized like oh [ __ ] there's this whole industry just extracting tens or hundreds of millions from from these launches. I think you need a like a launch method that's resistant to to sniping and it's not that hard. There's been like loads loads of those done, but it just I think all the solutions have some like UX trade-offs and and stuff like that, but

I think they need to they need to fix that before people before retail can really come back in a in a big way. Yeah. Unfortunately, like retail onboarding means trading [ __ ] coins, right? And that's like like whenever people talk about onboarding people, it's always about becoming a trader. And it's just like that's not if that's all crypto is ever going to be is onboarding people to become traders. It's never going to be like anything too interesting. Um so I don't know. I'm still pretty bowled up on that. Uh Nikita joining Salana as an adviser. Like I think that's a good move. Um I don't know what consumer crypto looks like that doesn't involve

gambling. Like I really don't. But maybe WorldCoin. WorldCin seems payments. I I'm not going to scan my eyeball, but like it does seem uh I scanned my eyeball. It was I also I also think that there's like Open Eye announced that they're going to make this X competitor, right? Like is WorldCoin going to be integrated into that to like have the civil resistance? I could totally see that being a thing, right? I think that I think I do think worldcoin and like the world coin eco I haven't looked too in deeply into it recently but there are things like happening and they have they do have this like civil resistance mechanism that is pretty powerful if like actually used properly.

It does feel like that's where things are going like pretty damn good. I met with the uh Worldcoin team and and CEO when we were in SF and came away pretty bullish. I think the the main thing that that stuck with me that that he said was that identity used to be like a compliance thing, right, that you just that you just had to do. Um and it's going to become actually like a business need because for for social networks and and and anything where you're talking to people, you want to make sure that you're not talking to a bot, right? And really like I think the only compelling solution to that at scale is is is WorldCoin or at least the best one right now. Um I think they have

like 25 million users or something that have that have scanned their eyeballs. Um which is actual unique users, not like wallets, right? Um and and their their goal is to reach like 100 million. Um it's kind of telling that that Sam founded this. I think is pretty long-sighted and I can see it starting to be integrated across a bunch of different things on the internet like especially as bots become a worse and worse issue and more and more indistinguishable from from just humans like I don't know I I can kind of see it uh the ecosystem as far as I could tell I've done like a little bit just did a little bit of research doesn't seem like

there's too much interesting happening there they have integrated like SI on the wallet So users have like a savings account on on their Worldcon wallet, which is pretty cool. Um, and I think payments work work pretty well, too, as in like paying someone. But yeah. Yeah, I need to look at I mean, because Worldcoin, it's just under seven bill now, FTV. I need to I need to relook at the FTV because I uh for some reason I think that the vesting goes out to like 2040 or something. Uh, but I might be wrong. That might be a different project. It's just a constant drip of emissions though. No, it's a long bust for sure. Yeah, I guess it depends.

There's definitely a point though where it becomes interesting. Like I do think World Coin, we talked about this when we did the year ahead uh AI pod um back in like December. I do think Worldcoin is one of the protocols that actually does have pretty big theoretical upside. So I have I could if I scan my eyeballs I could claim 40 world coins. It's pretty good. That's like 25 bucks. It used to be like trafficking stuff that's happening that that's pretty awful.

That's the thing. There's a lot of bad stuff with it too. Well, the the you basically have cartels and militias, uh, human trafficking just, uh, I'll give you $2 or I won't break your leg. Come scan your eyeball and then they just collect the distribution. What the hell? That's That's actually I mean, that's an obvious that's an obvious thing. That's an obvious thing that would happen. But it's like the the claim now if you said if you said it's 40 world coin, then the claim now is like 25 bucks. I mean, yeah, that's a lot in That's a lot in some countries. Yeah, I'm just looking at the different games on here. That's crazy, though. That doesn't seem good. They have So, they have their

own world app, a mobile thing. You download You download Okay, so you download the apps like into the app, right? It's like apps and apps. Um, I guess $27. There you go. Look at that. What are you gonna get? Well, I don't want to scan my eyeballs. Oh, why don't you want to scan your eyeballs? I don't know. No, it's like realistically it's fine. It's just uh um I don't know. I feel like I had a really good tweet meme a few years ago about eyeball scan bad. Now I feel like I can't scan it out of like principle of staying true to to that meme. I just don't feel like jumping through any

hoops for 40 bucks. If somebody came, if somebody like came, I don't if it was super convenient. I was just there or whatever. Feels a little weird. It feels weird. That's the thing. It feels weird. Like, as much as they delete all the data and all this other stuff like do uh I don't know. I don't know. I mean, it's it's just like I I don't I don't that argument is kind of whatever. I think it's it's it's just pure entertainment. I mean, you know, like if you're doing anything like 23 and me or any of the other stuff, then you can't really die on this no eyeball hill because it's bit hypocritical. I think the main thing is there's just not enough utility for it, right? If games start demanding it or having special lobbies or social networks

start like demoting your posts if if if you're not scanned, like that's really how you see this thing get adopted. And I think that's all you have to believe really believe in Worldcoin is is that bots are going to be such an issue online um for these social networks, for games, for stuff like this that you'll need uh something to be able to filter them out. And the best thing is is WorldC. I think um to to kind of change topic a little bit, we're talking about consumer apps. I think the one one new consumer app I saw that looks kind of interesting is this thing subs.f fun I think it's called. It's kind of like a a new Reddit, but every

uh community has, I guess, like a token attached to it, and then the moderation of it is actually kind of done through I think it it also trains an AI on all of the content. And so each subreddit essentially has like their own AI that is learning based on what everybody's saying. And then I think they end up kind of like being the moderators and stuff. I don't know if any of you guys have looked into it, but it actually seems like a somewhat maybe potentially useful like consumer application. I know I kind of just sprung that up, so if you guys haven't looked into it, it's fine. But I think it's one for people to like check out.

It seems kind of interesting. Yeah. I mean, my my I think I still think the most interesting one is is definitely payments. I think we're starting to see like we've seen enough stable coin stuff that I think they'll happen this this cycle. I don't mean like payments at the point of sale. I mean more so just like people and businesses paying each other. Like I think that's going to going to happen with stables in the back pretty pretty soon. I think people really underestimate the adoption of stables in in some of these countries too. Like people already kind of see this stuff as their 400 million tether holders I believe something like that. Yeah, it's a lot of people. It is so crazy how Tether just became super

legit after all these years and USDC and USDC is seen as like the more unsafe one. The Fedcoin. Yeah. It's just I think I think US hostility towards crypto screwed USDC because then you just didn't feel safe in it. whether it's the assets they were holding that were like the the assets in those banks or just the ability to freeze whereas I think if US if US was a lot more cooperative USDC could have thrived and it's funny tether had to share zero of of their yield. Yeah, Tether the Tether business model is just insane how ridiculous it is. U what do you guys Hey, here's a question. What do you guys

think about everybody launching [ __ ] stable coins? Like it doesn't seem it seems like that's the legit thing to do, you know, like the serious investors are this is the new this is the new private blockchain thing, right? Ser serious quoteunquote serious investors always will come into crypto. And it's basically the opposite of of zero interest rate phenomenon. It's like, oh, yields came up. Let's all try and farm. Yeah. Yeah. It's just I don't know. It all seems a bit ridiculous to me. I think that's literally what it is, though. It's a high interest rates phenomena. Yeah. I I don't think it's stable. You're not going to have thousands of stable coins. People have talked about this at various points in crypto like everything can have its own

token. Now it's everything can have its own stable coin. Like there's nothing that has more network effects than a than a stable coin as a as a product in crypto like integrations, liquidity. Um yeah, it's so liquidity brand. unless you're redeeming directly then then you are a subject to liquidity and and that meaningfully eats away into whatever yield you're trying to get. Yeah, exactly. Um and like also trust like you don't want like it's a it's a pretty hard thing to to manage a a stable coin properly especially if people are doing stuff in the back like which is what is is the reason people want to have stable coins, right? Is to

have is to be doing some stuff in the back with it. whether right now it's treasuries, but when yields go lower, you best believe they'll get creative with their with their floats. And you you don't really want to be I don't know. I think I do think there's a lot of interesting stable coin infra startups being built. I'm not too interested in like more stable coin projects. Yeah, at least Tether keeps buying Bitcoin with some of their proceeds. I think they did like 800 mil last quarter or something like that. I forget the exact amount. Yeah, I saw a tweet the other day. Hey was like Tether owns Bitcoin and gold and circle owns.

They also have their gold product, right? Which is I think so I'm pretty bullish on here. Um so one thing we've seen recently on L2s is like rap bitcoins are actually starting to get a decent amount of adoption on L2s which is something that I mean it's kind of interesting because they like rap bitcoin never got too much adoption on ETH L1. And I think part of that is just ETH was like a pretty bullish asset in the past and so that was just the major that people wanted to do all these major farming things with. But Bitcoin is really becoming more of a stable like Bear Chain made it a big focus of it. Uh Rabbit Bitcoin on Arbitrum is going up a decent amount like SU has these has like a few Bitcoin versions on SUI. Uh I saw

yesterday Frag Soul which is like restaking on Salana wants to do like Frag Bitcoin. So you really are seeing Bitcoin across all chains. um really becoming like actually becoming a real collateral asset now in DeFi whereas it never really was that way and you are seeing a little bit of gold stuff too right not to the same level that Bitcoin is but I think like I think there guys it's happening it's [ __ ] happening it kind of is happening uh like let's get some Bitcoin gold uh digital is happening gold on chain is happening thing. I guess the problem with the gold onchain thing is even though is that now digital gold

if you now like like I guess you can trust Heather because they have so much money but this whole paper gold this whole paper gold. But isn't Paxos's like Paxos is fully redeemable, right? Like they'll actually ship it to you. Yeah. I want to see like a live cam on the vault. I want to see a live cam on the vault. I want to see a live cam in Fort Knox. Yeah. Did they come out with that audit? I don't think they did it cuz it's not [ __ ] there, boys. Gold to 10,000 announce digital gold to follow. If gold goes up, it's just bullish for Bitcoin because it just makes our ceiling higher. I saw a chart yesterday, gold versus silver. Silver's

been flat. Like silver has not gone any bit from gold going up. Yeah, Litecoin. I mean, it's it's literally the Bitcoin versus ETH. Like, it's literally the exact same thing. Yeah. I don't know. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. No. Anyways, I don't know. There's some crazy people about silver on Twitter, so I don't want to say anything bad about I don't really know much about silver, but it feels like it's it is Litecoin or Bitcoin. Yeah. I remember when I first got into like I bought Yeah. gold. There was there are there is a crazy silver conspiracy theory on on Twitter, but that I briefly subscribed to and bought some silver and then I was like, "Man, these people are insane." And after a year, I've followed these like really

like gold bug accounts and sometimes like I'll I'll I'll venture over into the silver Twitter and this guy's like, "I just bought like I don't know like five tons of silver." And the guy comments he's like, "You [ __ ] idiot. That's like $200 million worth of silver." He just like responds with like a photo of like just these literal like crates of s like these like pallets of silver. He's like, "Look up my name." And he's like some like mega rich dude. Literally just ate like 50 million worth of silver. Yeah, the silver guys. I feel like you don't want to. The silver guys got a few screws loose. I don't know if you want to piss those guys off. They should start a cryptocurrency. Honestly,

they're like the perfect community to to have like an XRP type cryptocurrency. But I might have to look at like this guy literally bought like $35 million of the silver or something and he posted a photo of it. I'm like maybe there is something here. Maybe they do know something. Dude, we we don't want to touch on on M full 90%. Well, I think like I I think okay, so we've talked about high FTV, low float to death, but I think what it seems like what might be changing is an actual like re like risk adjustment from exchanges or something. Um I don't know cuz you saw it on three tokens recently.

The M thing obviously was terrible. Went down like 95%. Um which is just like an insane chart. Uh but then you also saw it on uh another token I forget and you also saw it on like story protocol dropped 20 20% in like a minute. I think that went back and then it ended up going back up. It ended up going back up but um I don't know maybe people are coming more cautious with like I don't know there's not Yeah, I don't know if there's much to say about it actually. I think it was just people trying to find the next ohm and then the reflexivity kicking in. I think the analysis by that guy, what was his name?

Yeah, it was a good I forget. Yeah, it was good. I mean, I heard that there was someone got liquidated basically on OKX that was borrowing against their own pretty heavily. Uh it's it seems like based on the analysis it on the analysis this guy did, which who's I'll find his name. Um, yeah, it was like like a big staker from like a year ago or something, right? Yeah, it's Trader View 2 on Twitter. His name's dumb. Like apparently it happened on Yeah, that but also that that it happened on Binance Per first and then OKX spot basically.

So, I don't know. People are speculating that this this person had like was borrowing against a bunch of stuff on OKX and like slowly moved the the good assets away and just left the M there and then like liquidated themselves. or two. Yeah. On Binance cuz like it's hard to take cuz it was like people someone was slamming shorts on on Binance like I think it was a million every 5 seconds or something he said in his post which is which is pretty wild uh to do with that level of conviction uh if you didn't know that there was some position on the line. Problem is these centralized exchange lending things are completely opaque so that there's no way to know what's next. But I did look at some of the other tokens that are

accepted as collateral for lending on on OKX. Um I'm not going to mention them, but but yeah, there's there's there's a few. Huh. But they must have lost so like OKX must have got taken to the cleaners on that. So they're definitely going to be tightening up. Like everyone freaked out. HP lost $3 million. Like OKX probably just got absolutely rinsed on that. Yeah, I agree. um these these exchanges were cash cows like I I think uh the stat where it's like by bit made a boatload of money on their short uh on ETH like after all all but they borrowed but they they borrowed ETH from

counterparties just to like service withdrawals I think I don't think they actually like just sold it for USD or whatever like they never I don't think they made money on the their exploit and like boring the ETH after. Well, no, they didn't make money on that, but they probably got off not as bad as it it was going to be. That feels like not that long ago. Wasn't ETH like 2600. ETH was like 30. I swear ETH was just 30. I remember ETH was 033 on the ETH Bitcoin Bitcoin ratio. And I remember capitulating on most of what I had left of it and I was like, "Oh, [ __ ] This probably the bottom." That was only like a month ago.

Straight to zero. Do you think uh EPTC hits uh 01 or 03 next 01? Probably some sort of bounce potentially. Yeah. Without new info. Yeah. I just feel like do we think like literally it's so like if it's overvalued it doesn't matter if it's consensus but it is so insanely consensus that he's just like worthless it's still the number two asset it's probably going to be like a big billion dollar asset right I know very expensive and it's priced at the margin right and so like I just don't see there being a

lot of bid for it I know but I'm saying like potentially a squeeze it just seems like everyone one like just so bearishy. Well people [Music] definitely like there's definitely a lot of people shorting it more. Yeah, that's what I mean. I feel like there could be like a bad squeeze at some point. Yeah, so many people. It's hard to squeeze because it's so big. There's still like a lot of naked longs, right, via Athena. So it doesn't necessarily like I looked at Athena's breakdown. I looked at Athena's breakdown the other day. It's like 90% just the treasury backing though. Oh yeah, funding rate turned the

[ __ ] tail up. Yeah. All right. All right, guys. Is that it? It's good. Is there anything else? Let's see. Markets are they don't look terrible right now. you know, we'll see how it goes. Yeah, there's just like uh you know, closet BTC biders, bro. It's literally It's literally digital gold, guys. Yeah, Bitcoin. It's h it's [ __ ] happening. That's my hopeium. I think it could be happening.

Yeah, I mean it it could be happening. That theor completely possible. Okay, fine. I think it is happening. I think it is happening. Recorrelate. I think it's going to break out versus stocks this year. New alltime high versus QQQ this year. Even if QQQ stays in like Well, we did a we did a we did a Deli um episode on the portal last week or something. We all thought that it hit a new high. We all thought that it would hit 150 this year.

Have you guys used Austium? No. Okay. But it's doing pretty well. Oh, you have? Yan. Is it? How is it? Kind of kind of cool. You can trade stocks. Yeah. With leverage. Woohoo. Use cases. Let's go. I mean, if there's no leverage, it's not really crypto, right? All right. All right, guys. Yeah. Thanks very much for tuning in and uh we'll see everyone in two weeks. Thank you.

Thanks, everyone. See you. [Music]