Hivemind: Finding Crypto's Top, AI Selloff, and Navigating SOL's Unlock

Transcript

there's the one side of me that is saying maybe it's all over maybe this is really the top right but there's still just that feeling that so many people have not made money and so many people are depressed yeah but there's also probably a subset of like the extractors that have gotten ridiculously rich I think this is where the whole dilution element comes into play right like there has been last time a lot of money came into the system everyone made money and that was an obvious sign of of a top here because of the wide amount of assets that have existed there's just been a lot of money sunk in and then market caps evaporated right and the president's just extracting billions nothing said on the hive mind is a recommendation to buy or sell Securities or tokens this podcast is strictly for

informational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our own opinions not Financial advice [Music] hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the high of Mind podcast the goal of the podcast 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 cedis from institutional research arm uh Yan liberman who heads up Deli Ventures and Duncan our prodigious shitcoin scavenger and

investor um and I'm Jose Marie masedu I the deli Labs um our protocol are& drr so been a pretty intense week and generally an intense start to the year in in uh in in crypto um probably worth starting with just deep seek and the effect on the markets just given that's pretty much top of mind and by the way we're recording this on Tuesday the 28th of January um at about 7pm UTC uh markets are bad currently in it's over phase yeah we're dumping pretty hard right now ai coins do not look good deep four coins look

good do you want to introduce deep seek or who who wants to introduce deep seek I guess people everyone's heard about it right um I mean the tldr on it is that it can you can run models like way more efficiently and so you you it's like way cheaper and so that's like a big hit to nvidia's profit margins and Nvidia is such a big part of the cues and like the overall Market um and so it's selling off kind of just affects everything there's the there's the perspective that like this is bullish for AI in general uh because it like you know whenever you make something cheaper more people are going to use it which uh definitely makes sense to me I know pondering who's like

our AI expert his his Bas his take was basically you just reality from like infra to further up the stack right this is bullish for like uh apps application development all that um so I generally agree with all that the thing is even if that's true if this still causes Nvidia to sell off so much it doesn't matter that that stuff is true in like the short term even if it could be like bullish in the long term I think it'll still have like a big effect on everything right the counter though is that um you know if you wanted to point at that as the reason for the continued selloff it's harder to do that today yesterday it made sense right Nvidia

dragged everything down today equities are bouncing and if anything you know crypto should be least negatively impacted by uh deep seek in you know in theory like the cost of of gpus is a bit of a tax on the growth of AI and so while this comes at the expense of nvidia's Top Line it it should be a benefit to everyone else because they're you know you can reallocate capex or just require less of it potentially um so you know you're getting way higher efficiency on your on yourex spend right on your training SP yeah but so but like the point being that everything is bouncing but crypto is not so it's hard to point at Deep

seek as a reason for why crypto is doing poorly yeah well I feel like for the I don't know anything about this AI stuff but if it's better like if deep seek is like a better model and like smarter isn't that just going to like encourage like more investment in the space like what if you did the Deep SE thing with like better gpus or more gpus like isn't it just like kind of like a further validation that these models can get a lot smarter than we think and it's going be like more investment or is that not the right way to look at it or is it all a CCP scam and they're actually using a bunch of models which you've had some prominent figure heads in the in the AI space come out and suggest that really have you uh scale AI guy did oh he said that they

had more gpus than they said yeah but I mean the their breakthoughs have been like independently validated by a bunch of people um yeah I was mostly being fous yeah I don't know it seems like they really they really did have some some big breakthroughs I think the main thing is China's better at Ai and further ahead than than we thought which probably puts everone into a bit of fear right um they're seen as like a geopolitical enemy and so it kind of it's value destroying to some extent um yeah Nvidia I think it's it's probably bad for for NVIDIA overall um even though yeah like you said there's this jeans Paradox

where people just use more compute um but this moves it moves models more towards inference um and like there's also an interesting point that the the Deep seek trained like for inference they're running on the on the the Chinese Chips the Huawei 910c chips which is also like pretty bearish Nvidia like it's it's apparently like a pretty big strategic priority for China to become chip independent which you know obviously it is for everyone and easier said than done but that's kind of where are all the chips made right now in Taiwan well yeah Taiwan they're assembled and the the supply chain goes like all over the world um yeah there's a Dutch company asml that's a pretty big

part of it too but yeah Taiwan is the and like when when you read about when you read about that as well like how just it's it's crazy like apparently the Chinese have had like pretty much the full designs like they've had spies deep in tsmc for like 10 plus years and even with the full designs they just can't recreate the chips because apparently it's like just really badly documented it's just like a bunch of like it's very much like an apprenticeship system so you have like one guy in one Department that knows everything about you know Wafers or whatever and then someone else that knows everything about something else and they just like have this apprenticeship model so it's just like very uh like no one knows how how they actually like put it together so it's

like uh it's an interesting one doesn't that feel like a risk for for China Taiwan stuff like if the AI stuff heats up they might yeah I don't know anything about that but that's kind of like the people have been talking about that for a couple years now with didn't Trump just talk about tariffs on the Taiwan semis as well like today or yesterday or something they're gonna get CHS he's putting tariffs on us say secure the northern border like what the [ __ ] that's the other thing with the market too is that I think there's still there's a lot of uncertainty and there's a lot of uncertainty with like how hard these tariffs are going to go like Trump is Trump said a lot of stuff before he got

elected and he's literally doing exactly what he said and I think that maybe people did expect that no I mean I thought the the the the way it played out was everyone was expecting a lot of tariffs on day one so you saw yields ripping dollar ripping you know with the assumption that inflation would kind of come back as a result but that didn't end up being the case and then you know his plan was mostly use tariffs as like a a bargaining chip more or less which is you saw it on a on a smaller scale with Colombia but I think you know it's not just let's broadly Levy Tally's um what does he want to do with to Canada I heard that it was something

like secure the northern border which I don't know maybe that's a thing I haven't heard of that before and something about like not paying that for military did you hear what it was Canada big border we get I mean the the trade a trade war with Canada in the US will not really be good obviously can be worse off but like everyone just kind of like loses in that scenario so is do you know what it's what what he's saying we need to do he doesn't like he doesn't he doesn't like fent he doesn't like fentil coming over the border is it coming through Canada a lot of uh I think so yeah a lot of fenel comes I think it comes from like China to Chou yeah oh and then that's bad I

mean Vancouver is a problem um but yeah yeah I don't know with that being said with the Deep seek stuff it is not the reason for our AI Frameworks selling off if you look at uh maybe we can move into this I think the larger reason I was G to say just the larger reason is probably um digesting how far away uh a reserve is right you saw at one point kind of poly Market hit 40% of it happening in in 100 days I don't know where it is right now um but that's you know come down quite a bit when the EO was to put together a

council to figure out how to get a reserve like what how that what that would even look like which means you know it's still a few steps away the digital asset stockpile yeah um yeah it's like 15% right now I just just looked at it and yeah maybe we can ALS I think the stockpile thing is also pretty bearish um maybe I don't know if you want to touch yeah I saw some people were trying to spin it as like oh this is bullish for the industry because they're going to own a bunch of different assets and to me that is the wrong take like because it's becomes less serious a stockpile is very much less serious than a reserve of Bitcoin and so if they were

actually going out what basically what they're doing is they're keeping the crime coins right so anytime they confiscate coins they're just going to hold on to them and that's basically all there is to it that's very different from going out into the open market and running a twap on BTC right and so while the Strategic reserve it would send all the ratios like to haes um it would still be good for like USD prices overall right um You Gotta you got to imagine that if the US actually ran a strategic Reserve everybody else would kind of start flowing into this through the game theory kind of forces you to do it and Bitcoin is really unique as in a commodity in that nobody's like born on

bitcoin right like you're born on gold reserves or oil or something you the only way to really get it is you just have to buy right um and Mining is just another way to buy and so yeah like that would send if they actually did it in full force that would send BTC well over like 250k probably right and so yeah like eat BTC sold BTC all these ratios would be down in that scenario but the USD prices would be way up right versus the alternative of what we have now and so yeah that's why I think it's bearish that uh I don't know I wasn't expecting him to come in and actually do uh executive order on S spr day one to

do it yeah yeah it seems like people kind of expect I don't know bitcoin's still 102k it's like yeah bitcoin's hanging in it's not it's it's it's the same thing we've been talking about forever like this this this dispersion is never going away this is what it is now you're like when all season that is okay so there like all season is not a thing we had all season last year November December the all season was the AI stuff like that was all season and then like if you look at so we have this sector performance dashboard on the deli portal it's free uh if you go to the portal just go to uh the homepage and you can actually see a link right to it um but

I'm looking at these year- to-day returns right it is it is BTC is 9% Up eth Is Down 6% Soul's up 22% then you have a couple of the sold defi coins like jup and Ray are both up 40% and then literally everything else is just down so much uh like layer one average 9 gaming INF for - 255 modular -20 meme coins -24 e514 uh platforms Frameworks like -62 uh agents Jan one yeah since Jan one like you know ai6 Z 63 and a half% say

down Jan one down uh game 81% game 81% uh virtual confirm that one zerro 85% from Jan one like that is insane 85% in 28 28 days like the friend Tech experience yeah the only stuff that's really finding a bid is is something with fundamental value it's kind of like yeah trading none of them really fi is up 55% Freya that agent agent yeah that did it get like released around like that might be like no it was trading a bit last year um yeah but anyways the point is

that like yeah things have not been great uh yeah when do we think there is AI stuff bottoms because like Yan said it's like do none of them really make fundamental business case sense and I feel like the Stu that had dwell is like those sold defi things like you know even though they're dupes expensive like massive market share makes money has a path to making more money radium is like actually I think they also recently enabled value right that's that really revers a lot of they ran so hard they ran like they ran so insanely hard but like Jupiter and radium are like more fundamental plays yeah J Jupiter's doing these big BuyBacks or something they're like three

billion tokens or something like that um and they're doing their whole like Jupe Jupe verse thing which I don't know ton about they announced it the other day um but yeah I mean I still think that when the mark it gets more speculative these things are going to be the O performers uh but obviously trying to like pick that you know I thought when they were down 50 60% that was probably the bottom on them and then they've proceeded to go down like another 50% or so since then well yeah so I think like typically this stuff if

it's actually didn't come back probably bottoms around like 70 to 80% like it's that like negative 70 now right like what's virtual virtuals I feel like is like the leader virtuals is down 63 from the top so like yeah like I feel like it's got a bottom in kind of like the 70ish like 70th range how do you feel about virtual moving to salana like they're not they're not leaving base but they're expanding into salana I I don't understand what base what coinbase listings team does all day like like what what are you doing I I I don't understand how the one thing that's drawing liquidity number one driver of activity for weeks to almost like two

months more or less uh and and zero listing I I I just don't get it yeah they literally gave Peanut the squirrel's final life before they they get they got virtual on the platform and they got the vvv one the the day of that was day same day yeah or he's name carries weight yeah the virtual I've seen some people within virtuals team start to complain the last like day or so and it's a big reason why they're moving to Salon I guess it does feel like at this point all like it was Bas in salana for the AI stuff the agent stuff and Bas is still doing that but with virtual expanding to salon and I think the liquidity pools is

like first week of Feb that they're really going to get going I I've never seen that work like has there been a Dap that pursued like multi-chain expansion where that was like good like a net a net positive I mean obviously like I mean especially when you're talking a completely different ecosystem like you're not just sticking in evm or whatever um it just generally like ends up diluting your your community I mean yeah like some of the projects we incubated tried to do this I think it was definitely overwhelmingly a mistake although the bigger mistake there was probably just Cosmos but the uh I think the cross chain thing also just means that you have no real tribe um and like you know they're on token is the tribe yeah like

it's not like yeah I don't I don't I think here it like where it it where it struggles sometimes is where you have like Defi and it's incentives oriented defi because then you're competing against someone who's solely on that chain with a supply focused on that Chain versus one where versus you where you're splitting it both ways it's not like you're relaunching a token so I think it it's more harmful there but you know with virtuals they're not really doing any kind of flywheel where they're emitting virtual as an incentive so I think it'll be constructive in this case I yeah yeah it's like I think it can just

yeah like if you do if you have to expend a lot of money to like get it going on another chain maybe but if it's just like added Revenue it could be a flop on salana but I don't think it's going to like hurt them on base necessarily I think one of the issues is that the liquidity is locked on base for like something like 30 60 years and so you can't if you could actually cleanly migrate everything from base to salana then the chances of this working would be way higher but now yeah you're going to like fragment but that like there's going to be our Bots running like that is fine uh but it's still I don't know you have like virtual you're going to buy it like you're going to get a worse price the more Chains It's on the worse price

you get I know but like as long as you're kind of like anyone who's looking to buy in like serious size is probably going to go to where the best liquidity is and be thoughtful about I is the is the plan to double up liquidity of existing agents in multiple places I think it's just fresh launches right if it's fresh launches then it doesn't really matter I'm talking about liquidity for virtual token but yeah for fresh agents they're just going to be on either Salon base I think I mean p like most there's they just need one decent liquidity pool on on soul for virtual itself I mean I think with the fact that it's on a bunch of centralized exchanges helps kind of

alleviate the initial issues of getting virtual in size if you really want to um yeah I don't think that is there an example of a token that has more liquidity on the like on the chain on a chain other than the one it's issued on yeah I guess there must be but I can't I can't think of one I I don't know if that necessarily matters here though they have to get some deep like the whole thing is getting deep liquidity for virtuals then they compare everything with virtuals right it's part of the the token econ and stuff well the virtual itself isn't that like you're pairing each one on its own with the same amount you're always going to pair it with so I mean that for for for virtual yeah which isn't hard to do

they they definitely have enough and M yeah like they have the one V2 pool on base which has 12 million in liquidity like they can it will it will be cool to see like if I don't think I don't think anybody has outgrown where they first launched on another chain so if virtual if virtual actually gets bigger on salana um that would be kind of like the first time this is kind of happened like that if anyone could do it it's it's it's them I guess with the Launchpad model like they're just very little there's very little tie into any any single chain um and I think what what helps is like their design is is very uh

acreative to the agents right with their recent shift in token Eon to pass a lot of the fees back to the agents um like there there is a lot of incentive for you to to to launch there because you do have this kind of boot trapping mechanism from from all the fees from people trading your agent does it actually how much like money do accre the virtual token because I know someone posted some chart like it's down 99% but that like didn't include the new contracts or something do you know no all the money it's it's just the listing fee the launch fee that goes to them and then everything else is just circular like they take fees from the liquidity pool and then it builds up and then they just buy that token after yeah but that was what they did before for like that they

they did that with the crude fees then they shifted it so now the fees just go to the agents themselves like half of it goes to the agents wallet and like then it's like 80 or 50 20 30 I forget the exact Pockets but it's like some to the agent some to the lp and then um I forget that they're like a so they only take the the listing fee yeah they they've reduced like it's basically you know trading off the fee for increased Supply sync connectivity on the platform and so it's like a smaller slice of a larger pie type of approach yeah and also another re like I guess I reason a lot of activity shifted from base to Salon is like that Trump trump token that's kind of reignited Base I

mean sorry salana as like yeah that was a reason for it to really explode that day but I don't know I've kind of like uh memory hold that weekend of trump and Melania yeah that was like Supply right yeah that's that's one thing soana stable coin Supply was like five bill at the start of the year and it's over 10 now wow already it doubled it in like a week because of that um damn and yeah it's hard to be uh it's hard to be too bearish on salana just like with everything there some takes around

massive unlocks coming it's like mive the takes on on um I think all the people buying on moonshot and then not in getting involved in the in like the Sol ecosystem or pretty mid like it's it's just like not the natural flow of of a wallet on moonshot it's it's it's a standalone yeah that made no sense why do you expect the moonshot wallet to do something else it's that's this is this is the problem with like looking at data there's a lot of people who look at data in crypto and don't know how to um like understand the like the implications of what they're looking at uh and that's like a prime example of that not understanding the

nuances um yeah I don't know yeah every Salon is just becoming like the place where you w to I don't know launch your app um there's a lot of like new chains coming out this year there's got like be got like over two bill in pre- deposits there's uh I don't know abstract their launch didn't go too hot the other day but it's only like a day or two old um there's still yeah there's a lot of stuff coming so I uh I see that I'm looking at the S it says it's like only $3 billion do worth of Salon unlocks but I I thought it was a someone said this was like way understated no it's uh it's only like 2

3% of the supply it's 2 point something billion it's like 7 and a half million so in March and then uh 600k so a month after that right so 600k times three is 180 million yeah there's definitely a lot of unlocks but it's like okay at some point once the unlocks happen they're over and then you also have the chain that is doing 85% of Revenue 85% of like application like every single application that makes money is on salana right now no for sure you have the ETF coming and so it's like I've never tried to trade personally like an

unlock I remember uh in 2023 in September do you remember how afraid people were of the FTX estate like starting the the process and sold traded down to $17 in September of 2023 and that was the perfect time obviously it's way different now I'm not saying buying so at 230 is like buying at at 177 it's way different but the most telegraphed unlocks are usually not the worst ones because they're so like soul is the it's the it is the co outside of Bitcoin it's like the coin of this cycle it's not priced pretty far in advance yeah I mean year the big will so you have like two

billion in March depending on what price is and and like that I think once that gets through then you're looking at you know kind price dependent 150 to 200 million bucks a month a month isn't much for that for like because then you know that's assuming all of it sold some will get held some get staked some um and then it kind of depends on on the market environment too right if if everything's dumping then people are just going to take it and run for the door but if everything's pumping then it gets very reflexive and people want up holding yeah with that being said though it's like uh I see what maybe like a 2X and like a crazy bullmark for so I don't believe in

these like crazy price targets it's already pretty rich everything is pretty rich like Bitcoin it's funny Bitcoin at 102k really feels like the safest asset in this industry um which it is yes like like the risk adjusted return in a BTC versus anything else like I'm like actually kind of mildly bullish on TIA as like a trade here over the next half year or so but uh it's still like you know it still makes zero money soul soul has like a fundamental potential case if they keep scaling the chain I like we're

talking about this now I think people are talking about this I know I've seen it pick up on Twitter I'm like [ __ ] finally My Time is Here Al plays I really don't think like I really don't think I think you could easily see O2 on like e BTC by the end of the year right um and like soul soul you look at Soul e right and people love to look at Soul eth uh and you know it looks good for soul if you look at Soul BTC it it there's a like the the thing I'm trying to answer now is not like we're so will go I do think it'll hit 0.1 and probably go higher but it's but

it's like his sole BTC going to be the new eth BTC right it's just hard you just hit this ceiling and and like it's just so hard to outperform BTC hype hype maybe the soul unlocks come hype hype comes in a little bit fast chain I do think the the soul ETF will probably be after to the unlocks yeah yeah I mean for sure they're they're only doing the Futures in mid FB and unlocks are March so it's yeah I would be surprised if you get Soul ETF in the first half of the year there's some unlocks in Feb too though no I thought they started in Feb yeah okay so

I just looked it's SI the the numbers I'm seeing are 16 million coins 3.2 in Feb about 10 in March now three in April which is like four four roughly 4 billion a bit less than $4 billion so so it's but someone was saying that maybe there there there's like more stuff like is this so is this the estate is this all that stuff that was going like the OTC deals that were going around like in March or like around that time lot earlier in this year the same coins yeah yeah as far as I know yeah I don't know what else there would be besides this this is like a pretty massive chunk like the big thing that's been on everybody's March 25 has been on

everybody's calendar for the everyone's talk talked about that for the last like year or so it's yeah buy soul but just you know that's watch out for March that much relative to its market cap four four billion I don't get there's probably be more to this 4 billion to 110 that's not I don't think it's the right way to look at it just like the absolute amount of money needed to buy those if they get sold yeah like it's it's it's you know people even looking at volume right so much of that is like Market making it's not like there's constantly directional exchanges of that money every day this is a one-way flow of cash right and and and when it's telegraphed the bid kind of pulls back to it right so it's not like you're selling into Standard Market conditions

um we've never seen like I don't know I the unlocks I feel like uh we're we're not bearish so far in crypto had a bad one s's unlock this year or last year it was in like June or something uh I thought it wasn't going to be bad and then it got absolutely if you look at the chart it's like a straight line down on the unlocks interesting and I was like oh wow luckily I didn't capitulate then but like I that that shocked me uh I didn't think uh the unlocks for that were going to be bad and it was that was a brutal unlock I still think it's going to be driven by um fundamentals to some degree like and markting conditions right if if

like Market's doing well and users activity stable coins up and to the right on Soul they'll be a lot less significant and probably mostly priced in um but if if it's like a if it's if it unlocked today um so back to the the fundamental coins so we've been seeing it more on the timeline what what do we think do we think it's finally time for some coins that have some good fundamentals to shine I feel like so many people have gotten bmed on mean coins and stuff that it's like there's a bit of exhaustion in that well I think whiff is uh I think whiff I'm looking at the uh dollar it's almost under a dollar I know it's almost

under his binance listing price like alltime low on binance but like I do think that there's Pro and even just these these uh AI coins selling off so hard obviously they're not quite meme coins but you know not super far away from them in some cases or at least their valuation super stretched so I feel like a lot of people people just gotten wrecked on memes and what do we think fundamental rotation inbound or what I don't know I've never been a big meme guy but it does just seem like I don't know none of these coins look good the fundamentals also get a lot worse like pretty quickly when like

volumes dry up know but volume but that's the thing volumes are still high it's just like dilution across so many right like hyper liquid for example fundamental play I like is activity is still there that wh sh yeah it's cruising the whiff chart is like a long-term McDonald's chart yeah yeah yeah hold on I'm pulling up see you don't want to see McDonald's chart um okay probably a good buy here's got a bad McDonald's chart let's do since the start of the Year okay I'm GNA do some math really quickly how how are you guys position right now I'm curious like is is everyone like Max long

still mostly yeah like I've mostly taken the draw down on the chin for I mean I mean I sold stuff at the beginning of the year and like some stuff in December I have I have some Stables I but like my overall construction hasn't really okay changed you know like um yeah the AI stuff is taking a pretty big hit is what it is I haven't like changed yeah got this I know okay we can go do that first or did you do risk kind of took it on the chin as well like I definitely I definitely deris at the beginning of the year like I wish I did

more yeah but yeah I sold some stuff in the year just like in anticipation of of people selling but definitely not enough and then I I've reallocated since not not fully but um yeah I mean I've definitely uh taken it on the chin yeah douan you were in cash right uh yeah I had I was definitely overweight cash into the year and then uh always sold stuff in January because like try to defer the taxes a bit so and the fundamental plays have actually you know they're still down but like you know hyper liquid's basically flat to date or like since the start of the year like

maybe down a little bit banana isn't uh no year Well since since Jan it's it's flat but yeah it got it got crushed in December um the thing is the AI stuff just ran so hard for two months yeah and so they're actually still up more than most things over like a two three month period it's just they just ran so much and then yeah met Lex is another fundamental one I liked that was fine so yeah definitely down but like I feel like I haven't felt like any insane like 70% type draw downs I guess banana was pretty [ __ ] bad actually looking at

the chart from November but um hyper liquid is is my main BET right now and that's that's held up well so that's actually that in the cash have been decent but so yeah Banana's bad considering that's when everything went parabolic and like I know but it's still like its fees also went up so I'm a bit confused it's paying a 50% apri right now I saw I saw lefin on salana who does like they're it's they're basically like a hedge fund they use this Oracle based pricing um they are an amm but you don't deposit your own assets to it it's like all protocol owned they did uh like 2 mil in trading fees

yeah they're doing last month which is like a 55% APR on their token um would those have all been distributed or yeah they get distributed like have to lock it you have to lock it it's it's the token honestly hasn't I owned it in the past it's like doubled since December um or since nove end of November but it's just like it's just like it feels like it could be I think the the the problem with affinity is like it's MO is like ambiguous it's like they're making markets on salana they're plugged into Jupiter and they do a [ __ ] ton of volume but it's like why couldn't jump just like plug in like well jump doesn't do onchain trading yeah I know

but like someone like that like why could somebody comes in Phoenix yeah I think it's like regulatory ARB and so I do agree with you that like once the straty hft shops are more comfortable moving on chain then it becomes a harder game so right now they've just like raking it now they do have like hft background team I know but it's an automated like it's a like I I don't know it's obviously it's it's cool and they've stayed around and made a lot of money a lot longer than I think a lot of people thought uh because like these people haven't come in to to to take their market share but yeah that's the thing if like if it's a 50% APR in the token then you actually need the business model to still work for two

years yeah to get your money back right and so yeah it's kind of sad that like that's how we value the fundamental I mean but it makes sense it makes sense right like am I going to hold this and lock it up and get the Y because it's it's a very disruptable business because you're it's just a trading firm and trading firms don't have they don't trade at like big multiples right uh they don't give you the massive upside it's it's like they're market makers right they're not they're not taking they're not like a VC firm or even like a liquid fund that's making dire bets on stuff so yeah but they've been impressive like don't get they've been yeah uh yeah so like this is the thing with banana it's like it's

always traded between like 30 to 50% APR depend like 20 to 50% depending where its pric is at but now it's like kept up its revenues for like a year where you've been earning that for like a year and it's like okay is this does this continue is like the big question on all these businesses that are trading at like such low multiples and then something like hyper liquid so I just did the fees 47 million so far in January divided by 28 so that's 1.7 million a day in BuyBacks uh so yearly that's 620 million that's but that's not like it's not a one to one to BuyBacks though is it it's like you choose whether you get ether banana and then there's also

no no that's that was that was hype Oh I thought you talking about banana sorry uh so hype is 7.7 billion so yeah so hype is like on circulating cap is like a 13x right now on Burn which is like uh feels like that's pretty good that almost feels like that might be wrong but I did I did the math more closely earlier when the volume was a bit lower and it was like 20x so I think that actually is right um yeah yeah no no 13x is right so that's like pretty good for like a business like that where it's like the liquidity is really sticky there the oh they have like real Moes versus like a linity or banana a little bit easier to disrupt um banana has a

mode on ethereum with it sniping but anyways uh but yeah like hyper liquid is like a lot more sticky uh there and people like project that in the future it also has like the L1 potential so and I think that's why it's held up pretty well relative to this other stuff like obviously it's kind of hard because it launched recently and had the crazy run up and then pulled back but you know 13x on your market cap for a business that's like you know the most profitable business in crypto our exchanges you know binance and uh growing it's like pretty feature parody with these Sexes has the L1 like potential Tailwind I think is like that sort of stuff is is what's holding up looking the sday returns and xrp is

like top perform are only down 2% it's just so frust yeah the fundamental stuff makes S I mean yeah like hype definitely has a mo that's one of my bigger bad have decent amount of banana that I've picked up recently just um with like how cheap it is yeah it's it's it's funny how how uh the difference in multiple right banana basically trades at like a two to 4X multiple this things trading at 13 um it it's like yeah moat and growth are really the big ones but at a certain point some of this stuff is just too cheap not to buy yeah and hype was trading at like earlier in the year like at a 20 but like with with the Trump

listing and I mean if you're using the market cap though then like something like Athena is pretty looks pretty cheap too it's just that obviously the unlock but the unlock profile of Athena versus Hyper liquid is drastically different it shouldn't be market cap though it's market cap plus uh non plus tokens non treasury tokens like like any kind of incentive token so it's basically market cap plus investor plus team yeah so hyper liquid has no investors and then they have team at like 30% but like that yeah that's the real markety I think I think you should use like the Circ as 60% because team is like I know but like

that guy I'm pretty sure like Jeff was like a billionaire or something before so someone said that so it's like buddy decentralized how does he become a billionaire he was like the head of hft at Hudson River Trading he's like a [ __ ] Chad I've heard billionaire got like yeah I don't know if he's a billionaire but like he's got yeah that's what I've heard someone said that but I think it's like a he's he's very well off you're GNA use I think you you yeah you use like a disc like a discount a discounted version of team I mean you can try and write propensity to sell but yeah you want to use a discounted version of the of the team like it like for for reference I think according to

Def ltina has done like 37 million in fees in January um does that go back to the Token because this is I was profit is the difference I was including just buyback there not even total fees right which is like big distinction which I think a lot of CT gets wrong when when quoting tokens it's just like this is what it generates like all right what is it actually passing through yeah that's like banan is trading at a 2xp it'd be trading like a 1x Revenue less than which is I mean I I I think that the yeah Revenue in in December was definitely 27 27 million I believe we can look at we can look at um I think January hasn't been hasn't been updated yet I mean I think that it really boils

down to like the whole Market is is basically pretty binary right Reserve or not and in the event of a reserve like what's gonna outperform Bitcoin do do you think it's like what do you think if we don't get a reserve it happens I don't think it's as like I don't think it's that like still lot of regulatory Tailwinds and stuff like obviously the reserve is like things go nuts but like I think there could be a path without the reserve to do decent if you look historically like all the Bitcoin gains have have usually been you know like Catalyst driven like one big Catalyst big move and then kind of chilling yeah but this is like a catalyst of like complete regulatory overhaul like a lot of the Trad fight people that I talked to like the sa what

was it called Sab b121 or something yeah yeah the one where Bank can custody yeah actually bullish yeah like people think crypto like didn't give a [ __ ] about it and then I'm talking to these like more like trafi people and they like this is huge like that like stuff like that is positive regulatory changes I think that was actually yeah we didn't talk that that is um so basically Banks and trfi institutions when they held crypto on their balance sheets they would have to hold them as liabilities in the past uh and now they don't need to do that so basically it opens them up into the custody business which is I guess it's not good for like the cipher Punk ideals but it seems like a lot of the industry doesn't give a [ __ ] about that these

days anyways we're kind of bigger than that now you need this so it definitely will drive if you can just like log into you know JP Morgan Chase and it's like deposit your BTC right A lot of people are going to do that like let's face it a lot of people are going to do stuff like that so it adds to the constant drip for sure yeah I think that like that stuff is like where we kind of have a path outside of the Bitcoin Reserve like you even saw I mean because like sailor dumped a billion in last week and and like BTC did well and then it just kind of shrugs it off like there is a decent amount of of exiting happening if you're

seeing this guy dumping in size weekly yeah like micro strategy is still cooking along what's the premium I can't I can't believe well they just expanded their like the the the share issuance allotment by like 30X I don't know it just feels like this like I feel like we're in a really good spot like I think we're in a really good spot I feel really good about things we we we we we nked the complete Vapor dog [ __ ] and now like we are building back that Vapor dog just going to get bit up again yeah no probably but I don't know I feel like it's like it's easier to feel

bullish here than it is when like stuff that makes no money is trading at M like5 billion dollar valuations there was a good there was a good pod the odd Lots pod with Howard marks the other day on like how to spot spot market bubbles and stuff um he's been spotting them for like 15 years though not that we're in a position to ever criticize Howard Marx no no but he doesn't think this is like a bubble because he says a lot of the signs are still not there like like the only thing is valuations have gone up a lot but he's like you know when there's a market bubble I'm I'm the star of every party and event that I get invited to and like there's all these different kind of like Behavior qualitative stuff yeah it's all like behavioral cues and

he's like so yes the market is definitely overvalued on valuation metrics but a lot of things that I would see in a bubble have not appeared yet and you kind of feel that with with crypto too like I want to there's there's the one side of me that is saying especially with the Trump thing I was like maybe it's all over maybe this is really the top right but there's still that just like no there still just that feeling that so many people have not made money and so many people are depressed and like yeah but there's also probably a subset of like the extractors that have gotten ridiculous for sure for sure I don't think you need a scenario where everyone's making money uh to to to feel like it's a top I think this is

where the whole dilution element comes into play right like there has been like it's a top because a lot of money's last time a lot of money came into the system everyone made money and that was an obvious sign of of a top here because of the wide amount of assets that have existed there's just been a lot of money sunk in and then market caps evaporated right like and the president's just extracting billions from us of these tokens but I think that's what that's who the real winners of this cycle have been so far it's been like the BTC and soul blls I guess and like you know select Pockets about performance but then like these people who've just like played the low float High FV game or

just launched tokens and just extracted a lot of money and like I don't know how much of that is like just a oneway flow that's just like we're taking this out forever versus dude from FTX is collapse eth is not even up 3x like think about that I don't know if that's relevant though like it's like a big part of the market it's like a big part of the market that has just been like allocated to that yeah it's just like it feels like we need more money coming in which I think the regulatory stuff could shift in order and also like a return more to the fundamentals because like if you keep on bidding up stuff that's Valu with then it's gonna keep on being created right so it's like kind of a like you can never get everything like

your fundamentals are all based on people bidding up valueless [ __ ] though like yeah there's definitely an element of of reflexivity to it for sure and that's yeah all the apps that make money trading yeah but I think that the counter to to Z's point is that St you can have the same amount of like there there's a certain amount of activity and whether that's split amongst you know uh 100 assets or 10 assets obviously we're talking like a magnitude difference it's it's still G to be you know creative to the to the fundamental token so it's like either these 10 assets are doing much more volume or these hundred assets are are all selectively are all equ doing less and so the sum of the parts

is not too different so I mean like you could still have a world basically where fundamentals do well without needing the long taale of [ __ ] to keep going yeah it's also like you have to ask yourself the question okay like outside of like BTC and soul how do you express in like maybe coinbase or something how do you but that's also an exchange it's like how do you express a bullish view on the space and like the only way to Express a bullish view on the space outside of those as like from like a long-term perspective and some routined fundamentals is like to buy like the pipes of the space like these exchanges and like you know maybe a or something like yeah like these are the pipes of the the stuff like you have to have eventually real applications that do

stuff for people to trade right for the pipes to to make money because right now the pipes are mainly people trading the stuff that you hate right like that's yeah where a lot of the volume obviously major is the majority of the volume but realistically like the majority like the the the pipes make money trading all the stuff that you hate so you still do need like applications to come in and and and do something I think long longm but that's like such a long you could have made that at any point you could have made that be case at any point over the last 15 years or whatever 100% yeah I think it depends what pipes though like if you look at hype then the the bulk of volume is on the majors themselves yeah it's on BTC and soul and shave off the trash and they're not

losing much volume yeah but the majors themselves like like soul and eth trade based on the traction of their ecosystems like especially Soul right it trades because pump Fon is doing like 300 million a year in revenue and like there's a bunch of mem coins and stuff like it all is reflexive down to the the [ __ ] that the Duncan's complaining about and so maybe we should do like an episode on like Evergreen like what do we think the actual because I think we've talked about this before it's like okay Bitcoin competing as money you know stable coins are competing for like payments and that sort of stuff you have like some deepin stuff actually like makes sense as real businesses uh you have the kind of Casino element uh that's like just general crypto speculation is a big one

and then uh the the fifth one like you know potentially gaming like with with Off the Grid and some of these things could actually add value to to gaming and in the metaverse stuff uh maybe we should do an episode on on on those sort of things it's like what could actually like be launched through crypto to to take part it's like meaningful Revenue that that makes sense and this is longterm so sustainable um but yeah it's obviously right now a lot of like I think it is mostly just Finance it's just we need better assets on chain oh rwa rwa it's like I've always felt that especially when defi summer took off it was like democratizing like private banking almost it's obviously not the exact same

but you know being able to access these Financial products that you otherwise would not be able to yeah and the red yeah the positive regulatory environment I think is a massive Tailwind for that stuff like the rwa stuff did you guys see that quote thing is though with that being yeah with that being said though I think like at a fundamental core when you talk about like censor censorship resistance in crypto I think there's only like two things you really need that for uh one of those is is being able to like transfer and store value and so that's just Bitcoin or it is like actually decentralized stable coins and so I think the easiest case for that is like Bitcoin back

CDP and then but the thing is that can never compete on a yield like I thought about that you can never compete on a yield basis yeah yeah yeah but then like if you think about it nothing else in crypto really needs like World War III level censorship resist you know what I mean like that's the only thing that you really and like privacy too those are the only things stuff does right if you wanted to reild a financial system post World War II you do it on DS I was like but like but you but you need to what do you need that for you need to transfer and store value like that's the main 99% of what you need you don't need to trade perss in World War I you don't need to you know leverage long on CDP protocols in World War

IIT trading on amm yeah you need credit markets I mean I think like the idea yeah in the World War I scenario I feel like we should cut cut the the put that I feel like we're rambling but I think I think the idea in a World War I scenario is just that yeah you want to rebuild Finance in a world with like zero trust right um and so you everyone just uses crypto Primitives yeah but I think all you need in that is transferring and storing value like moving money that's I don't think you need anything else in that scenario well I think you need all the things that you anyway yeah let Let's uh but did you see the Larry think rwa thing though like get had a quote where

it was something along the lines of I want the SEC to rapidly approve the tokenization of stocks and bonds like that's I think that that's still a narrative to to actually it's funny every time like someone says something like that you get everybody from all the different chains and ecosystems coming out like wonder what Chain's going to put this on right like you know you see like the Avalanche guys come out oh I know a stack that's perfectly built we got a subnet for this it's like where do you think they would go eth or soul I think they' do both like they'll just do what people wanna wherever people want to hold these assets right yeah like if you want if the point of tokenizing it is that you

want to be able to borrow against your Vanguard your black rock fund and you want to do that on Salon or you want to do that on eth I think they'll let you like those on either obviously there's like liquidation and considerations right and like you know the more you split up between all these chains you liquidating becomes harder and all this but yeah I don't know uh I find it hard to believe and this is my thing with like rwas where this was always my a lot of people when I asked them like why eth was going to like start a performing in a lot of people start talking about rwas and it's

like well for RW you don't need any of these censorship resistant properties and everything to do rwa it's like the total antithesis of that and so um I don't know Black Rock announced their bid their their I hate that [ __ ] word too bid like why are we still using that like just say build I don't know yeah that thing just killed all the tokenized treasury startups that we except Uno ando's somehow like holding strong through their first unlock too like a 14 Bill value what the [ __ ] are those guys doing I think anywhere that that that is proven that people want to hold assets on they'll be more than happy to

tokenize there you know and like I just really if it also depends what you're tokenizing if you're like if you're tokenizing something that's going to have a lot of turnover then you're not going to put that on eth right if you're tokenizing something that's just going to like sit there and then go through redemptions and stuff sure maybe it goes on eth but it kind of depends what asset you're talking about too so yeah we should do this as like an evergreen episode at some point yeah yeah all right this this was pretty good I thought thanks everyone for listening see you again next week y see two weeks [Music]

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