Icebergy and Tolks, Good Crypto Apps, Identifying New Trends and Improved Onchain UX | Fig Talk

Transcript

I don't know I think you just like don't compare yourself to the Twitter feed all the time uh the 247 of you're an idiot for holding this coin you're an idiot for not holding this coin uh why didn't you buy this why didn't you buy X [Music] um doesn't really matter all the time um and uh I think like using that to like make yourself better as um I mean if you want to be a better Trader then yeah just do it um like but try to get away from the toxicity of just hating everything on Twitter and like the replies of bashing someone chaos Labs the leading onchain

risk management firm recently launched its new flagship oracal product Edge Edge delivers integrated High Precision risk and price data for any application with the market follow and reach out to chaos Labs on X to learn more what's up guys just want to tell you a little bit more about fuel labs and their new ethereum L2 fuel ignition so fuel Labs is launching fuel ignition a high performance E2 powered by their fuel VM with the launch of ignition the team is also launching phase two for their fuel points program to reward users and promote them make sure to check out fuel. Network to learn more nothing said on zerox Research is a recommendation to buy or sell Securities or tokens this podcast is for informational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show

are solely our opinions not Financial advice Pacho Ryan and our guests May hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed what's up guys just wanted to give a bit of context for today's episode at Zar research we're going to be doing a new series within the podcast called f talk which will be more CT native and more riscon before we get started with today's episode I wanted to give a huge shout out to Swanson Benson who coined the term F talk and graciously allowed us to use the name for the podcast and I just wanted to also give an extra huge NF d y r let's get to it what's up guys welcome back to another episode of ZX research I'm joined by TLS and Iceberg to talk about what is happening across crypto and be positive and not nihilistic um I so what's up guys how

you doing pretty good uh thanks for having me on um yeah really like your episodes and like the O research so yeah thanks for having me trying just to like survive the mental exhaustion of Twitter what about you guys yeah good good always pleasure to be here Bach um yeah survive I mean survive is a good a good word for for the current state of the market we happen to have the pleasure of of recording while while things are going straight down so that's always fun too that's really lightens the mood um so in my original notes I

already brought this up a bit but in my original notes I had Animal Spirits are back in the market and not just on the soul side for once we're also seeing a lot of e memes popping off and BTC memes also doing well um I looked at the BTC chart maybe like a few hours ago and then you guys also brought it up that we're nuking um I don't know if that's still relevant but apart from that like what are you guys seeing in the markets I don't know people are just um fighting for their lives or mean coins or um what's really weird is um the like K meme coins that like everyone buys now because uh The Fairly launched meme coins like go down because like the the

people who like cornered all the supply um can't really sell their like KO meme coins and just I don't know it's getting really like toxic where people um you're better off buying the K meme coin than like the Fairly launched one which just feels gross I don't know yeah it's like I mean even if yeah Ju Just on like you know the trenches I guess we can we can start there they've been pretty active lately and like that you know what you're talking about there Bergie it's funny like I mean you can think you're kind of early to a coin and then there's another one launched and then there's one launched on eth and then there's three of them on soul and then somebody's like

oh there's a CTO one it's like what do you mean there's a CTO one the like main one is only at you know four five million like how can there possibly already be a CTO one one or a KO one yeah it's and somehow it's done like 20 million in volume organic like organic you're like why what how did I get this wrong yeah but um yeah I mean it's been it's been the most active I'd say well up until I mean we'll see how this week closes and um you know some of the the recent SEC action I don't know if that'll have any impact on it but I'd say like the past you know two to three weeks was the most really since I'd say around like q1 I don't know if you guys think different across both sa and eth

like Bach mentioned at the top we saw a little bit of eth Revival there you know the the um as far as the trenches kind of activity goes so that was good to see I guess it's kind of the you call it the morat effect I guess which is some something but it definitely breathes some more life into into the markets we'll see if it's sustainable but I guess it's been fun and kind of good to see Min us the you know waiting through the the KO trash that we were talking about at the beginning there yeah definitely it's picked up like I don't I think it was like mid-september where it like started like all of a sudden everything just like

ripped at once and then uh I don't know like people started launching anything like a bunch of stuff I haven't really checked in on like volumes and um like I think you can track a lot of that stuff on like the volumes of like the the Bots are doing and um that's probably like the best way to like keep track of like how active like people really are yeah especially yeah when you talk about crypto Twitter like native Capital too like I mean I think you know there's always that discussion of like when is the outside Capital going to come in um but yeah the Bots are they're definitely

way to to track that and I don't think there's too much outside Capital you know coming into play in in the the mcoin Mania and stuff right now which is kind of surprising with how much liquidity we've kind of seen sosing around the past few weeks like I said you know we'll see if that's sustainable or not or if it just you know is is extracted again um but it's kind of been a slightly pleasant surprise yeah Bergie you're absolutely right um based on this um to our listeners if you're not if you don't have the video on it's um the deck spot sector usage by da uh the trading but and yeah we're like we're back at um not back at but we're around there like

you can see the bumps very clearly end of July start of August um June as well I remember we had a lot of activity going on and we're back at that at those levels with the trading bots so a lot of hot money um flowing around I think it was the hippo one that really uh like went to like just ripped super hard and then everyone's like oh wait maybe other tokens can go up too yeah I um we with regard to mem coins Bergie one thing that I saw you tweeted a few times and this one that I wanted to ask you because I don't think like a lot of other people are taking this position um I think this is the case is that like we've kind of

rebranded mem coins as not attractive um and as like egalitarian an TVC um we're saving the world we're you know like changing everything um type of deal and I just don't think that's really the case um but I'm not sure how to like argue it with people because I think a people don't really understand that these are very Insider controlled like the general retail or I guess like 80% of CT doesn't understand it or they just don't care and they're just like these are galarian we can just call with it what do you think I think people just buy them because they they don't care because it's like the only thing going up that you can like make money on like in the

last I don't know past I don't even know how long it's been going on for don't say a while don't say how long it's been yeah and the only problem is like there's not really anything your other options aren't really that much better with all the unlocks and like you're kind of just like running into like uh like oncoming traffic with some of this stuff yeah um uh there's probably a lot of reasons why but it's hard to like pinpoint on exactly just one um I don't know just the I think mem coins are like perfectly fine to trade but like when we that's all anyone cares about and then um

there's no better Alternatives there's no one like building apps or like well there are people building apps but like when that's the main focus and like even the scammers just forgot they like stopped launching apps and stuff to scam people they just like build a meme coin um I don't know they're just like not it just doesn't feel optimistic of like crypto can actually do something interesting or like you can like you don't even have to buy those tokens but it feels much better when like people are like building things or like trying to experiment trying to like push the boundaries and I think that's kind of what we've lost um but like the Insiders and stuff with like the K deals

and telling you this is the only way to make it um I don't know it just feels very it doesn't feel right yeah yeah I feel like that's the most malicious like actively malicious thing is saying like you can only make it if you just gamble on Meme coins like there's definitely like you said meme coins have been the only thing that's been going up for for eight months nine months um apart fromed to say you weren't supposed to say how long it's been it makes the only positive I can think of it is like we've like fully stress tested like a ton of apps that we haven't been able to like stress test before and like everyone has a a wallet

in on their phone now and it's definitely helps like a lot of like the the barriers to entry of crypto of like getting people on chain and it's just something like something it's really been hard to get people to like download a wallet and like start using things on chain whether we can convert like these people to actually like stay around use the chains and like play with things um I don't know yet but I'm sure people will stay around a lot of the nft people do yeah that's what I was going to say I mean it's it's a great Point too about the infra and I mean especially the the mobile aspect like eventually you know

everybody things crypto has to scale to to mobile infrastructure eventually that's where you reach the largest audience and I mean just how you were talking there about stress testing and you know people coming in for meme coins seeing it as bad and like what you brought up with nfts like I mean you can there's if you look at kind of like the webs and the strings that have spun out and what people have built from you know coming into crypto for crypto he's or NBA Top Shot or nfts like it's you know sometimes especially you know dayto day week to week like it's hard to think of the the big picture like that but you know every marginal person interested like I mean you know you start to play around a little bit with a wallet realize you can you know self- custody your own money and send it anywhere at

any time and that stuff kind of you know it's more of a slow bleed than than the in yourface meme coin aspect so I like to take the optimistic view on it kind of like what you said with the the infro of the mobile and just exposing to people what what else is around yeah oh yeah telegram training is it's hard not to use because it's so like convenient it's revolutionary I love it like I know I'm not supposed to love it this much like I feel a bit bad but it's just like it's a game changer it's so much easier than anything else um even like a problem with like wallets though

it should be much easier to like sell everything like you shouldn't have to put your money in like a a telegram bot the trade like it should be something you can do but I don't know if like but the problem is it's just such a better experience than yeah some of the other things we have and in defense of wallets I think it's mainly because of the Apple fees um like they have that 30% off of Revenue or fees swing on the App Store so I think a lot of wallets just either haven't focused on it or they just haven't been able to launch a good app um it's possible a lot of things to you have to do to like get around

um I don't know hopefully we see like more mobile apps um like the pwa stuff I thought was really interesting um I know everyone hates on like friend tech for that but um I don't think we'd see all these like pwa apps if it wasn't for like frch oh yeah I I think that's definitely true I remember gosh when frch was that last uh summer that was I mean it was kind of like an aha moment at how easy it was to just sign up and I mean partially because you know the prices and how much but I was like it is so easy to spend a ridiculous amount of money like in you know 35 minutes and just to log in and you know how quick it was it was I mean they did a lot for

kind of expanding what what is possible and we've seen some attempts here and there and like guess I mean it's just you know it's a uh it's a slow process and and building apps are hard I mean we haven't everybody wants apps and I want apps and we're we're definitely going to get more crypto apps but you know you look at traditional world like there hasn't been that much you know development in apps in that sense either so I don't know I think we're kind of just at a at a slow grind right now the apps have been printing money this cycle though um yeah which is kind of funny you know yeah everyone says no one wants to invest in apps and then like some random app pops up that made like

aund million do it's like oh that's pretty crazy yeah I mean I guess that's the other thing about pump fun and meme coins like you could take the view that it's kind of weeding out a little bit the people that don't want to build and then it also provides like an example of like you said how much can be made from from an app that Clips a couple percent like there's a lot of loow hanging you know money and users that are ready in this space so it just takes a couple right ideas my hot take is that frch was the best social fight app that we've had and they've done a lot I don't know Bergie I don't know how you feel about racer and frch in general I hope you didn't lose

like money in it talk same for you I don't know how you feel about that but I like friend I think it was the best attempt that we had at like a social app foraster is like they had the same hype cycle but farcaster just didn't stay on for as long as it wasn't as like popular at to speak you couldn't make money on it um I guess you could have been through D but I don't know I think frch really like pushed forward like you said the pwa stuff but as well as like it made it led to a lot of spin-offs like forecaster I think definitely got more popular after French same with fantasy top it's not as popular now but that's like I think directly off of frantic as well D I think the the fantasy Top's actually a lot more popular than people

think too I actually been playing it since it launched um just kind of fun to have something to do you know when everyone's just trading meme coins like I guess I'll just do this yeah that's what I was goingon to say too I see a couple metrics you know maybe once every two weeks or so and I mean the fantasy top metrics look look pretty good so um it's interesting for sure yeah it's just like a hard thing to build like to grow it outside of crypto but um I don't know I think it's a it's a kind of a fun app to play around with every so often and I think they did a really good job with um like getting people to log in every day with like certain little like just

like simple stuff that you don't really see a lot of like uh crypto apps do where like you have to open it every day to do something yeah I mean that's a they don't have a mobile app right no I think it's just a pwa okay yeah I mean that's what I was going to say about the other thing I mean what you're talking about is that like reinforced nature of opening things and I'm sure you guys both have moonot on your phone but like when those banners pop up like you kind of I don't know at least like I'm kind of like oh just pop it open and I don't know it's just it's one of those small things but it is it is really important when you know you're trying to to to scale apps to mass audiences I do not have a shot you're

lucky you're not getting the you're not getting the you missed a 2000x dang is up a THX since list you hold none of it you're just like oh S no but yeah I mean again that's like you know specific for for meme coin trading but I just think like you know the entire conversation about pwa and mobile app and all this infrastructure that is here like if you squint you can kind of see that we're we're pretty damn close at least Zoom blast with blast mobile are you talking about blast being like the mobile Focus no I mean like he

tried to do this like log in every few days to do like some new challenge so you can get like extra points and stuff it didn't work out but was a valiant effort yeah I think there's still some smart people that I don't know are remain optimistic on blast I actually never bridge I think I explained that on a podcast with yach like way back when I was just there's too much other stuff going on I was like I'll just I'll just watch but um they also have I don't know if like fantasy top is obviously the the main one but just a couple novel like new things that haven't necessarily been tried and you know you you want to see those things so um I think we're getting

really close to like not really mattering where the app is um you can kind of see it with like poly market and fantasy top where um I don't really know if it matters where like apps will deploy in the future as long as like you have users yeah I think it's definitely fair I mean if you have it you have a good enough product like I think those two make it pretty clear that you know people will find a way to get there um I mean I think you can even say that for some of you know the salon stuff back in like late 23 like there was really nobody there and I mean there's people you build some good enough like like people will show up so um but yeah the infrastructure stuff I mean I guess

we probably talk about the the uni chain announcement this morning because that seems like what they're really trying to to address if you want to go there now Bach yeah yeah let me run over this um just for the listeners so uni chain they announced uni chain this morning it's op stack this morning few hours ago the um op stack chain fast blocks 250 milliseconds the main focus is I guess cross chain liquidity I'm not exactly sure what their exact angle is with this and um so they're using intents in the back end but the two things that me and the other analysts talked about was it's either they're going to try and pour over liquidity um like over some form of like

six to 12 months um try and get like liquidity from other l2s and L1 back to not back to but to UNI chain um and Route trades through there or they're just going to Route trades through there just based on like however intense they're going to try and use um just to capture volume I don't really understand I think this is cool like what they're doing especially like the validator stuff which I I'll expand on a bit later but curious to here what you guys think is like the actual goal of this apart from um I guess like routing liquidity how do you think they're trying to approach it or do you think it's necessary even uh I think it's pretty interesting

because they're like taking all the improvements and like adding it to the op stack um so should help like unify a lot of that like ecosystem so it's not just such a pain to use yeah um I don't know this is what people have been talking about like the theories of what uni chain would be where you can just um trade across everywhere um it's it's hard for me to imagine like wanting to bridge there just to trade but um I think they have like decent lock in with like their the UI and um not the UI the website and the wallet where it could probably direct people to it and just

making their like life cuz like the Unis swap Labs like makes most of their money from the the website and the app like swap Fe from the UI um so I don't know I guess it kind of makes sense and but I just don't really see a point in bridging there just like now do that makes sense yeah I also like imagine though that document's pretty like there's a lot of like technical stuff in there and um I just don't really and all of it yet I um I imagine they're going to try and just keep it on the back end instead like the front ends will still

exist on each chain so they'll still have base. Unis swap.com and then they'll just route especially for um the op stock chains then I assume they'll just host all of the liquidity on the UN chain so you won't actually have to bridge over there they'll just like um use intense to fill your orders I'm not exactly sure how they're going to do it because I imagine they're going to need some form of token standardization across chains and I'm sure there's like really smart people working on exactly how to figure this out but to me the most interesting thing was that they're going to make um So currently most of their l2s they have single sequencer to try to move away from that um Unis swap is going to have multiple sequencers and

they are going to allow people to stake uh validators to stake uni to participate in however like contributing to the infra and this is I think like the only instance where metis has validator stake 20,000 mettis but I feel like that's not a lot anyway um it'll be interesting to see how that like affects uni as well I think they're going to do some stake weighted stuff where the more stake you have the more uh you earn off whatever sequencer fees or yeah there's all the m to that people were talking about um something someone was saying similar along the lines of like what I think like Kyle Sani was saying about

like me going back to the protocol instead of like um the like Searchers so I don't know some people are talking about that but I just haven't dug into it enough yeah I saw um Dan Robinson was talking about it today and he said um what do you say they're not capturing muv for the sequencer it's about building a platform with consistent rules that let apps and users not sequencers control their me so it's kind of like similar to I mean similar in a different way that what blast did to incentivize you know apps and and users like to kind of have the value flow back to them so um I think down the line you can think of it almost more of kind of like a general purpose chain than kind

of just like an app chain um yeah but yeah I mean it's it's interesting and it's one of those things where you know it's to it it's everybody's talking about it today and there's obviously immediate reactions of like oh another L2 and it's it's much more than than another L2 but I also think that stuff like this is ambitious and you know it it'll take a little time yeah I think it's only going to be a net positive as well I don't see like Unis swap shutting down anything else it'll just be they'll add an extra the uni chain um and whatever however much liquidity ports over there it's really good the only and I don't want to be the midwidth that's it's another L2 that is um cannibalizing ethereum but this one I actually think is cannibalizing ethereum a bit um and

that if a lot of liquidity moves over from ethereum to Unis swap or from other l2s to Unis swap uh uni chain sorry I feel like that might actually be not so great U for ethereum but because obviously as ethereum you want as many swap feic like you want the volume on your chain um not on uni yeah and I mean that's another thing that goes back to I mean just you know the how how long it it'll take to kind of you know scale to where it's at and I mean this is kind of in the vision of the the you know the L2 road map it's just you know to get to get to the scale to scale the l2s to get to where it

needs to to not necessarily in my opinion like affect the the eth the asset it just you know it's going to take take some time and you know five 10x plus users if not you know much more than that but this is kind of you know the vision that has been outlined and it just it takes time yeah I think we're kind of like too zoomed in just on like I think we were talking about earlier about uh kind of just being like distraught with the market like just reading Twitter all the time I just think we were like too zoomed in to like crypto to see like the progress of like everything yeah and like if you like you see like everyone fighting or

you like see someone like a bad actor do something and then you're like this is everything but then like there's all these teams like building and I think uh it's just too easy to get sucked into like a negative like space kind of um but for like a bull case for like layer twos um I kind of think they're just going to be like databases and like if you are like an app or something like that you just deploy a like higher performant layer to to like interact with crypto but then like you abstract that away for like people in mobile apps so you still get like some of the functionality and like the like money and like the crypto

money like flows around like pretty aggressively um so like just doing like deploying your own layer too as like almost like a database but like you're extended to these other parties I think could open up a lot of doors of like for like layer to but just the I don't know you just get like so many of them that it doesn't really matter where you deploy eventually but that's just going to take a really long time yeah and uni kind of address that a little bit in their blog post I think it's what is it standard ERC 7683 which I'm not you know familiar with or technically versed in but um what they announced today is kind of like that unified liquidity layer

across the entire op stack which includes what Bas and Zora on there and um worldin and mode yeah so I think I mean it's really good for for op and the op stack in in general I think um but then they outlined how they're working to build towards you know kind of that Vision that you outline there Bergie where it doesn't necessarily matter what you know L2 or even if you're on main net like know you build build the intents in and that there will eventually be a liquidity layer um that kind of offcat everything and and it's seamless and it is going to take some time and I mean that was kind of my original going back to I mean I kind of noted L2 hater and been a little bearish

on Ethan I mean I it was because of this um but that was you know not necessarily like a common take back in you know 2023 but now I think it's kind of like consensus that you know there's too many l2s and the fragmentation and everything and I think like you know in typical crypto Twitter fashion like now that it's a little consensus like we're actually closer to that end Vision than than before it's still going to take some time but you know it's another one of those things where like if you squint you can see it and it's been a long time coming but we're we're getting closer by by the day it's just there's a lot of that other people pay attention to during the day dayto day see I kind of think it I don't really even know if it

was all because of layer 2 stuff um I think people are just really too allocated to eth versus everything else yeah like even if eth did everything perfect I don't I just don't see how you compete with like the Bitcoin ETF the inflows um it kind of like becoming like more of a macro asset and then um like Salon was really cheap and it's like there wasn't a lot of money inflowing I mean there was some money coming in but but uh it was mostly like Capital like being reallocated repositioned um versus just like um but then like price going down uh you start creating like narratives

and reasons why and then it becomes like self-fulfilling and then everyone's like talking about it and it's just kind of like snowballs yeah yeah I mean that's definitely true there were a multitude of of factors um but yeah the um it's yeah the competition on on both sides is is hard and it's just kind of you know you get to that valuation you're kind of just you know you're just stuck for a little bit and like that's doesn't mean like you know it's the end of the world it's just it's you know there's it's it's just hard yeah and then the negative cycle of like comparing yourself to some dude who traded like $100 to like4 million dollar so like

[Laughter] that's not good for anyone yeah I mean there's a bunch of cases and then but then you're like what do I really like I know like that dude probably bought who knows how many tokens and um probably put in some work to get there um I just don't really know if I want to do all that work I tell myself yeah to be able to sleep that he he he did some marginal amount of work because I can't live with the alternative it'll be me me next yeah right right but yeah just I guess closing the loop on on uni chain it's um I don't

know what it'll be something to Monitor and it'll be interesting to to monitor Uni's price action and and some other dexes because I mean as we've seen often in crypto like when there's announcement like this you know there's other protocols and things that are building in in that specific sector that that pay attention and it'll be be interesting to watch I mean it's definitely something that again everybody makes a big deal about at that morning and then kind of forgets about it but it'll be something to to keep track of over the next couple quarters for sure still waiting for uni V4 to launch too but see that's what that's what I thought was coming this morning because somebody noticed that you know there started to be a a you know classic uptick in in oi and uni out performing a

little bit and I thought it was going to be uni V4 but I guess that'll be soon too we'll see I um what I was going to mention with the um I think it was pretty telegraphed the Unis swap the uni chain thing like I can't remember anything else being this telegraphed for this long I'm not sure what it was like oi increase was a lot more than uh typical pre-announcement but um apart from the talks like you mentioned there's a bunch of other stuff I think like the big one is um Unis swap work together with a cross uh this is not Financial advice but they work together with a cross to out that ERC 7683 um cross chain interoperability intense

thing uh intense proposal and apart from that I think in general we're goingon to see more and more because intents are just so so good um I know it's like basically just some Market maker feeling like me on chain a taking from chain B but like it's changed my life in terms of bridging um I feel like I do this on the Pod every three weeks but it's like wormhole or early days of Wormhole like bridging to Luna bridging to Solana was hell and dbridge has changed that for me like dbridge has made uh bridging to Solana good so like anything that's with intense I imagine we're going to see more and more um over the next six to 12

months debrid is so fast I was I was scared the first time I'm like there has to be fraud on the back end there there has to be some fraud going on here this is far too quick but I think there's a lot of like small increment improvements in like quality of life on chain that um definitely I don't know just slowly happening yeah rabie is a big one like just that wallet changed my life as well it's so much better than I can't remember we won't get into like every single Improvement that has made in crypto for the past three months but that's another one that just immediately popped in my head is like Rabbi over metamask is very very good chaos Labs

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utxo based asset Centric architecture with e grade security make sure to check out the growing fuel ecosystem by participating in phase two of the fuel points program today visit fuel. Network to learn more Bergie since I have you well since we have you here I want to ask you if you questions because you've been in in the space for quite some time um I think the first one that I have is how you view um currently the public versus private markets and how you you like participating in private how how do you think it is right now do you think it's overpriced underpriced um yeah in general what do you think of private Markus is I guess my question um uh so like q1 people were just like I think a lot of people they didn't

allocate post like FTX and then the catchup in q1 was just throwing money at anything or like uh maybe even Q4 of last year and uh that just like ballooned all these valuations so like crazy like everyone's getting all these rounds all these uh the the guy in your chat who like never has any information is giving you like uh he's like sending you deck and you're like h i don't this is interesting $4 million valuation yeah uh so I don't know it's calmed down quite a bit and a lot of like valuations either can't raise as high and they're it seems a lot more

reasonable but I think people are a little afraid of buying any like things in private markets um just because they saw what happened with all those like air drops in April and yeah the valuation just went down only and uh I don't know uh a lot of people maybe like realize like there wasn't why are they building this this isn't going to like I there have been like a decent amount of teams who like close they're like this isn't going to work out which is pretty like I think Honorable in crypto because a lot of people can just like collect a salary check for a long time um I think like Echo is a really good way to like I think it's still really early so

we haven't really seen like what it would do to like effects of like tokens on public markets but I think it's like a I think it's like interesting experiment and I think it's Health like something like that had to get built to make it a little bit healthier for crypto in general um but like anyone who thinks like private Market investing is like free money is like um I don't know I've probably lost the most money just in private rounds and stuff so I don't know it's uh it's not like a super easy Endeavor yeah it maybe could have been you know back in 2020 and 2021 like but yeah nowadays I mean like you talked about the I think the a lot of the aird

drops in in April and just valuations in general like people started kind of opening opening their eyes a little bit um but yeah it is kind of funny how um I don't know especially Crypt VC I mean there's been you know some push back here and there but it is kind of funny how people thought as little as like six month ago you know it was just like a free money printer it's just like no it's it's not the way it works at all yeah um and then like the valuations they were coming out were so high it's like how do you ever justify buying this at like 40 billion 20 billion valuations not for me Berg how is um managing the echo group been or like what has that

experience been like for you has it been um yeah in general what are your thoughts on that like you said it it had to be built but what would you improve on it and what has been great so far um I think so far it's been really good um you just like don't want to just like well I don't know like you can just shove people like deals down people's throats if they're like really interested in it um which I think is fine uh I what I kind of like it for is um it's been like a good way to like meet a bunch of people that I don't really talk to in crypto um and so you get like different opinions or like different ideas that people are talking about and um kind of like help me just

meet a bunch of new people and um then like uh you can kind of like be like a little picky on like what kind of deals you want to put in there because um I don't know like private round investing isn't like free money so it's just like it's hard like balancing that out um but I don't know I think um it's still like pretty early days and I don't know it's one of the one of the few things in crypto I think is like kind of pretty exciting yeah I I think one of the on yeah yeah and a couple groups there um I haven't like deployed you know a ton of

money cuz again like it's not you know people think that you just you know get get on there get a couple deals and all of a sudden it's a 5x and it's liquid like you know two months from now and it's not the way it works but I think one of the the benefits for me at least has just been you know whether you invest in something or not but it's just it's good to see people still you know building and coming up with I don't know not necessarily like novel but you know there's been a few kind of newish attempts at apps on on different chains here and there and stuff like that is you know just what we're going talking at the top like you know the nihilism and the mean coins and everything like there's there's a bunch more that goes on you know kind of

underneath this ecosystem and underneath what's just on CT and it's always refreshing for me to to see that as well yeah it's really cool to like see like I think it's been really great to like meet and talk to like a bunch of Builders and stuff um and then like being able to see a bunch of like rounds and like valuations and what people are saying about something um yeah it definitely and I think like just the the rounds and the valuations too like obviously you know you have one person and everybody's in a bunch of different group chats and it to me it's come almost like a a little bit like leveling the playing field just like knowing what

valuation because that's some of that stuff used to be so hard def finded you know as little as like a year two years ago and even just like knowing you know nothing like inside nothing about the projects whatsoever but just like the valuations and you know the the tge details and like what the float is and like some of that stuff was just so impossible and so gatee kept and I think another good part of Eko is you know there's a lot more information out there about you know valuations and what people are raising at and what's realistic and what's not and I think that's good for the space too you can't really talk about anything on there though or else it's like um there's some like legal uh problems you get into um but I

definitely think it's worth like joining if you want to join you don't like have to but I don't know I think it's a interesting like segment of the market I definitely need to join um I also want to ask this is for both of you guys how do you which one do I ask oh what are the I guess like we talked about apps a lot and how they're still being apps built one thing we brought up was fantasy. toop what other apps um do you guys really care about right now Echo fantasy. toop is there anything else that you're like actually actively using that is not moonshot um moodang you miss another thousand

deck uh let me think not too much um I mean it's more infrastructure but I mean magic ens kind of wallet and I mean I say phantom phantom expanding to base like I don't know it's not necessarily an app but it's just another kind of like infrastructure stuff that is just really really improved um what else is there noids yeah You' Love talk about hyper liquid hyper liid you can consider as a app yeah you definitely can and people will love that we to hyper liquid I don't know what they're doing like what they're feeding the the people the

community on hyper liquid but I I think like typically I I fade a lot of these communities like I I don't really take it too much to heart when there's the the bar guys are like oh like G GM bar and stuff and like the Monet guys as well but I think hyper liquid is the only one that I can't be like because the app is actually there and the token's not live well I guess they might they're just farming it but they're very very like almost rabbit about that protocol and I love hyper liquid this is like coming from somebody who loves hyper liquid they're not going to give you extra tokens if you say that they might you don't know that Jeff Jeff was on the Pod once um you know I think it really fits into

that Narrative of like anti- VC tokens and someone who's like sticking to the man um I kind of wish we had more people like that where they're like actually building something interesting but they want like they want like Community to win they want to like build a successful product and it's not all about just like the money it's about like building good product but then also like allowing people to like have some upside or like you know like maybe upside I don't know we hope yeah but yeah no everything you know Jeff's off awesome and everything they buildt is is cool hyper liquid hyper liquid's definitely a a good up to cycle I'm trying to think of uh anything else

um just what you're talking about with mon I use Zora quite a bit oh Zora yeah I will say the one thing about Monet and barah and I think Mega eth too though I'm a little less familiar with their ecosystem is like I at least think they're trying like I don't know the Vape turn thing like maybe it's really dumb and there but there's at least like attempts at you know like Monet has a couple Sports gambling stuff and DFS like I don't know it's it's at least something new you know it's not just a like a a deck Swap and I at least applaud them for that yeah I went to the the mega eth event in Singapore and saw a bunch of demos for their apps and um it seems like they're very focused on like app building and yeah I don't know just um

kind of goes back to like what I was saying about uh I don't know if it'll really matter like where you deploy as long as like the the like base layer is like really good and um you know you know like it'll maybe not get all abstracted but uh like building apps people want to use and like mobile friendly apps will definitely like make people um maybe not like change their mind about crypto but um it's just would be like fun to use right right I mean I don't think anybody's going to applaud us for talking about three new l1s that are that are going to come out but like I said I I do appreciate that you can tell that there's a concerted effort for them that like I think they know that

they can't just you know like again they saw some of the air drops in April like I think they know they can't just you know launch a launch another chain without new and interesting stuff so I at least applaud them for for you know going kind of out on the risk curve with with funding some of the the apps there and some of the stuff that's that's being built like will it work who knows maybe not but it's at least something a little differentiated we were talking about this and increasingly like the tech stack is not that much differentiated between a lot of these chains um like the jump from E to Solana was quite big but since then like Solano to apos solo to sui it's not that big I don't think the Gap

is that big like tech-wise um and I think the same is with monad and with Mega E the like the L2 like okay it gets stuff from e but doesn't matter um I think the main thing is going to be like you guys said it's going to be apps and like what what's actually built on the chain and not I I don't know how much the L1 trade is going to be reliant on Tech um versus like BD efforts and ecosystem growth is what I'm basically trying to say uh it's just hard to like if you're like an app developer to choose where to build I think uh you kind of have to build to where like you either like really believe in the ecosystem or um like believe in the team the

founders um you like what like their mission is or like you're going to get paid to like deploy there um I don't know what's the it's just really hard to like fight for these like really good devs I don't really know like so pump. fun and all those telegram bots made like hundreds of millions of dollars from uh you know just uh yeah I don't know why that hasn't drawn in more Talent just yet I know things like take a long time to build but like I mean that's a pretty sizable chunk for like six months I was going to say $100 million and I mean pump's team is like they have like four people on there don't they or not even that yeah $100

million between four people last time I did math like it might be enough to retire but but there's a lot of opportunity though it should be like pulling in more talent to the space and like more like creative ideas or um not just through like the fundraising game but like in actual products that people want to use that's the Hope yeah that's actually kind of crazy we haven't had that like Talent flow back in I mean like ignoring pumped off fund trading Bus Let's ignore those because those are let's say like related to mem coins people immediately go like oh I might as

well just launch a mem coin try and make it on that um like frch also made an insane amount of money and the app barely worked it had users but not that that many users like that was still semi it like the chain wasn't being used as much as Solon and stuff are being used now um they didn't have to work that hard it was just racer sending out a few tweets so I'm I'm like you said Bergie I'm kind of surprised nobody's really come in I assume they're building it right now but yeah I think it was a lot of the lag from FTX made it like uh very toxic or like nuclear to touch crypto in general

um and then people say it's they like pivoted to AI but like even I don't know that's kind of like the fundraising game again of like raising a bunch of money and then uh I don't know pitching a bunch of VCS but like if you build an app in crypto you can make like millions of dollars just off like a telegram bot which is really crazy yeah you know that's got to like catch maybe it's just like I don't know maybe we're the people who care about apps and revenues and you need to tell the the editorial team to put an article out there about how much you know devs have have made recently crypto

apps get I mean they've been based on like speculation which is just always something crypto is but um I don't know like it's apps that people are willing to like pay and use um so I don't know yeah the model is clearly there and I mean some of the stuff you know it takes it takes some time and I think what you said is about FTX and and crypto being nuclear like it's still still pretty toxic you know um at least I think to you know kind of like everyday people or people that would you know Tinker with like an app on on the weekend or in their free time like I don't necessarily think they're they're thinking about it right now so I'm trying to say we're early do you guys see this poly Market

stuff by the way uh the clashy is paying like interest for open positions yeah that's why GCR moved his position and everybody got freaked out right yeah I put out that tweet just uh I don't know just to see if people get mad but uh I don't know there were some people in the in the comments saying like no selling allowed ever it's just like I didn't even say that like he can still position it's okay oh yeah Bach you know my thoughts on on poly Market I don't I they' they built a lot and got a lot of attention on CTO hates poly Market I don't hate poly

Market hat po Market I'm just very why you hate Market no I don't I don't hate po Market I just said that I I just got very annoyed over the summer of it was the only thing people were talking about and people would try and tie you know 1% move in the odds to BTC price and it was it was D driv me literally insane and I was just like looking at the volume of everything else they have on there and I'm just like this I I don't know it's just going to top around the election like I just can't wait to stop hearing about it you know 87 times I I I really I kind of think we're like starting to see like the volumes and stuff probably drop off but I really like the micro markets of like people betting on like

which word Trump's gonna say yeah and that like you can finally start to see like what everyone was talking about prediction markets for like a decade of like what they could become and I don't know I think it's kind of fun yeah no it definitely is and I I went on a heater an last time V had me on I feel bad for the poly Market people but I did say I was like like the idea and that that micro stuff and especially like verifying you know just stuff and putting money behind like in the AI age like there's there's markets and like these things are they're important for verifying events and especially again like as AI becomes more prevalent like verifying that is going to be important like I see the vision I'm just I'm tired

of the election betting I guess yeah I mean the polym market guys been grinding that out for like years I have DMS from like TW like 2020 or before 2020 of like hey you should try this out just like years of asking people to like try out their product so I don't know I feel like they deserve it for how long they a lot of people a lot of team teams probably would have given up no that's true yeah they have grounded out and like I said it's been awesome for I mean just awareness of crypto and you know what can possibly be built again like it's another shining example of what what can be done so I um that micro markets thing you mentioned Bergie we'll we'll wrap it up

after this but I've been seeing a bunch of these apps of people betting on influencers on Twitch and I think it's go like I agree with you I really like stuff like that like I don't I'm not a big betting guy uh apart from the tokens like I don't really like gambling and stuff but I do the way that the younger generation interacts with um internet and with money is going to be so different to the way that we um or like all of us have interacted with money and I think like they place a lot of importance on influencers and on these twitch streams and stuff and I think giving them the ability to bet on those easily like either for prediction markets or through like these apps I know they have one on monad talks maybe

you know what I can't remember it but they have a few of these like uh overlay on top of twitch betting apps I'm excited to see those um I've once again said that I'm excited to see Casino stuff after saying I don't like theism we need more but um no I'm with yeah I don't know how I'm gonna I don't know I'm gonna tie that up but in general like that kind of stuff I do think is kind of cool at least because it is an app technically um we're still buying and selling dog but at least it's in an app format well I think it's more of like entertainment though uh than like straight oh some people might have it

might be gambling to some people but um yeah just kind of like fun yeah I think you can also spin it like to me it's honestly one of like I don't know when I get sad about all the nihilism and stuff like one of the North Stars about like where crypto is going to me is about you know the way people the amount of money and time spent online like that's not ever going down it's only you know it only goes up and like of course it makes sense that you know internet native money like should be transacted there and settled instantly like that is honestly one of so it it does play into the speculation a little bit but like those Trends aren't reversing they're only going up so deal lost yeah we kind of lost

that um like when nfts are really popular of getting away from like the real world kind of assets and more of like a digital economy kind of thing and I don't know I think that needs to come back a little bit stronger um but I get like wanting to put like the high value real real world assets on chain um and like I think you should do both but uh the I think we kind of lost a little bit of that like internet digital money kind of like like for fun or like uh like payments stuff like that um I know I think we kind of like lost that it's all about just like making money versus like

um this could be like a kind of separate thing we need to bring the metaverse back that's what you're saying that's why I always loved nfts though like I I don't meme coins meme coin culture thing is to me always seemed a bit fake I mean obviously it is fake and but nft culture is also kind of fake but at least like you know it's it's a bit more believable I genuinely liked it and that's why I like trading nfts and buying and selling and minting stuff it's a lot more fun than meme coins and I don't care like if I make less money doing nft stuff like it's not ruining my soul um like the guy yeah we lost that um well we took the it's a it's a j it's a shitcoin but it's a JPEG we took that a little too

far and now just all shitcoin with just one JPEG and uh we just it it's just too much of an extreme and the loot box we lost the loot box of you know oh yeah of the reveal of a rare and you were just like no way let's go yeah I mean that whole thing was so crazy like thinking back at it I definitely wasn't like healthy for but it was fun it was fun though I don't know I don't really think me like me points and stuff aren't terrible just when that's all there is to do or all people are talking about I don't think it's super

positive yeah I agreed do you have any no that's work go ahead we bring the positivity we're gonna see um guys I think I think we're good to go right talks Bergie do you have anything else that you wait let's do this Bergie do you want one final word well one final sentence to our listeners that they can take to heart and think about over the next week H [Music] H I don't know I think you just like don't compare yourself to the Twitter feed all the time uh the 247 of you're an idiot for holding this coin you're an

idiot for not holding this coin uh why didn't you buy this why didn't you buy X um [Music] um doesn't really matter all the time um and I think like using that to like make yourself better as um I mean if you want to be a better Trader then yeah just do it um like but try to get away from the toxicity of just hating everything on Twitter and like the replies of bashing someone because they said something or uh I don't know I need to probably do that to is just like walk away from the computer walk away from like Twitter and uh I think it'll be a lot healthier if you just log out for a little bit just

log out just log out that's the takeaway all right Bergie thanks so much for coming on talks you well it was fun thanks for having me yeah thanks Bergie always a pleasure and talk soon [Music]