🚨LIVE: HYPE, NEAR, LIT, ZEC Strength! CXMT Pre-IPO Perps Live! Bounce Continues. NEAR & ARK Join

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>> We'll see you around the timeline. >> [music] >> Feels good to be back. >> I think The Rollup is [music] one of the most premier media brands in crypto, and Andy and Robbie are great experts [music] at everything they talk about. >> It's my favorite podcast. >> I mean, it's in my library as we speak. >> Potentially multi-chain deployments. >> We are at Devconnect Day One [music] here at the conference from space. >> [music] [music] [music]

[music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> JP Morgan black The ENTIRE THING WAS JUST INSTITUTIONS.

It's just It's next level. This industry is going to the next level and guys, I I don't know what to say. I'm bullish. >> He said it. He finally said it. >> I'm so bullish. >> And he's bullish. I'm bullish. We're bullish. >> [music] [music] [music] [music]

[music] [music] [music] >> The Rollup [music] is headed to the top.

If we're not already at the top, we're going to the top. >> Rollup is my favorite. >> From all walks of life, all over the world, all over this industry, come together for the Rollup. >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]

>> Here by two mouths. >> Institutions aren't coming, they're simply here. >> This is the golden age of crypto, guys. Get right. Let's go. >> [music] >> Welcome to the nest. See you on the show. >> [applause] >> We are back yesterday. We are so over the day before. What did I say? Neutral day today. What did we get? Bit more of a neutral day. I know. I know.

Wow. Wow. Wow. So, I am looking at a neutral day here across the board. Um I got NEAR I got NEAR up 2%. I got NEAR up 2%. I got hype up 2.9%. I got a per barely up. I got lighter at 2.5.

Uh chainlink at 1.2% up. Uh happy happy Wednesday, guys. We are live from the Empire State Building from the tokenization tower, the financial capital of the world. You're watching the roll up today's Jew July 15th. Um and as always give a big shout out to our friends at Plume. Uh they brought us the DNext on chain asset management infrastructure backed by Apollo's and the biggest names in finance, guys. Uh we are here. It is a lovely day in New York. It's a bit cloudy, bit bit foggy.

Decided to uh flow this camera angle for a bit. We're going to get Robbie right back up. And as I was saying yesterday, I expected a bit of a neutral day. I mean, not necessarily neutral. I mean, yeah, hype's up, lighter's up. Uh per's even up. Um Zcash up good bit, but overall, guys, we had a hell of a day yesterday. Um and we're kind of getting some pullbacks across the board today, but I I'm feeling pretty good about it. Um I think I think we really got the move that we needed on hype yesterday and overnight. We kind of got back above that 50-day SMA that we were talking about. And across the board, I mean, we are still in >> not a great mic.

>> We're still in the We're still in the bullish summer trend period is how I would describe it. Um I wouldn't say that it's you know, the bottom's necessarily in. Doesn't have to be, but Coinbase quote tweeted one of our LinkedIn posts. Fiv- 1.5 million followers for them. Our LinkedIn is growing its institutional presence. >> Oh, it's bad. >> The institutional presence of the roll up continues to grow, guys. As always, our coins are looking amidst the market. You can just kind of somehow figure out that our coins continue to look good.

I don't know how we do it. How do we do it? How is it such that we do that? I must say that I'm in conversation with my accountant um about trying to finagle some capital losses and avoid the wash trading rule. The wash trading rule says that within 30 days on a brokerage account, you cannot sell the same security, claim a capital loss, and then buy back the same security. Um so, we'll see if I can pull that off. I'm getting word from him now.

Um he is telling me exactly about the section 1091 and uh yeah, I basically need to do what I thought I needed to do, which is going to take a bit of a reshuffling of the portfolio, guys. But, I can't lie. I was a lot more profitable not in a brokerage account. I don't know if I was meant for a brokerage account. It's actually too easy. Like, there's a little bit of something about the um like centralized exchanges and versus on chain. Like, I would just be too lazy to pick up my ledger and like change stuff, and that would be sometimes the

the the best emotional backstop to selling the bottom or panicking. So, I'm just going to put I'm just going to leave my ledger in just I'm going to take a break. The brokerage account and centralized exchanges, you just got to click two buttons and I don't know. There's something about not owning the actual thing. Like, now that I've done so much research about tokenized equities and all this stuff, when you own equities in your account, you don't really own it. Like, I don't know. It's in my name, I guess, but when it's in my ledger, I feel like I actually own the damn coin.

Like, I like that feeling. But, I don't love holding everything in ledgers, so it's kind of a balance. Anyway, Rob's back. Good to have you back, buddy. How's your >> Thanks, man. >> How's your new poster there? >> I'm feeling nice and loose after all those mental gymnastics. Um yeah, the new the new piece of art feels good. >> What even is that, man? >> We shuffled out the white ibis. This is a Norman Rockwell picture painting. >> Okay. >> Um the lady at the antique store said it was real. It was an original. >> Okay, and how much did that cost you?

>> 160 bucks. >> Okay. >> I looked it up. The original one goes for closer like 250 grand. So, the odds are that it's not original. So, I'm happy with my purchase. >> swindled you there, buddy. >> I didn't pay 250 grand. That would be pretty incredible. Um >> Yeah, that'd be like that'd be like 3/4 of your portfolio, bud. >> Um especially after the recent per performance. >> [laughter] >> Um I I'm loving it. I think it outperforms the white ibis. It's called the collector. And so, >> Oh, you'll get there one day, Rob.

>> This is the collector. So will you, buddy. Just keep holding on to that per. You'll get there, too. This It's called the collector. And uh this guy is looking at a coin. And so, I feel like it fits our industry. I feel like it fits the vibe of the office. And I think it's outperforming the white ibis that we had up there before. >> LFG freedom guy. Happy hump day. Awesome day in DR. Clarity's coming. I love the new picture coin collection. No way, bro. Little Miss Gun loves it. Sean, good to see you. Good morning, freedom guy. Good morning, Sean. Good morning, roll up army. Good to have you guys. Let's get into it and get into the show today. We got amazing show. We're here at the organization tower. Markets and weather live from New York.

We got the near intense co-founder calling in and Arc research associate Ray Hoddy calling in as well. So, should be a good uh session there with those guys. Different kind of angles here. And we have a lot of news to cover, so we're going to get right into it and go quick through the markets, the weather, and all of that. Uh as always, our topics are powered by our friends at Trezor. Visit trezor.io, use code roll up 10 to get yourself a Trezor. Let's get into the markets, weather, and all of that. Before we do, let me let me tell you about Frax open stable and borderless. Visit frax.com to learn more about the future of digital money. It is hot as hell in New York. It's 93°. I'm going to Cape Cod today.

Uh yeah, it's 93°. I'm going to Cape Cod. Um it is going to be hot as hell. >> down here as well. >> Yeah. I don't know, it feels like 102°. That's the thing. Here in New York, the 93-95°, it's like this dry heat. It's just gnarly. Like I I don't love the humidity in Florida, but the dry heat of New York is super gnarly. Um so, yeah guys, it's pretty hot. Uh as always, our weather is powered by our friends at Relay. Visit relay.link to start swapping seamlessly. Let's get into the markets. Bitcoin, ETH, Solana, Chainlink, all of them looking quite strong today. Uh but before we do, let me tell you about our tokenized equities partner Denari.

Uh Denari is powering tokenized SpaceX, Spartan, Hyperliquid, and more. Visit denari.com to get one-to-one ownership of real US stocks on chain today. And yeah guys, Bitcoin ETH Solana Chainlink NEAR a lot of green out there. Um Solana kind of lagging, but I think it's trying to reclaim that level. Uh Bitcoin looks great. Really strong move yesterday. The TA guys would say that we got the daily close above the the neckline of an inverse head and shoulders, which should give us some upside to 68-69k range, hopefully, is what I'm kind of hoping for.

Uh ETH honestly looks great. I actually saw Ethereum last Vivek Ramsey in the or Vivek some not Vivek Ramsey. Vivek something uh in the M train this morning at 9:00 a.m. I was first to the office. Uh Alex was a little bit behind. It's okay, we'll give him a break. Uh and Chainlink is up a good bit, and NEAR is looking pretty strong as well. Rob, what's going on with your portfolio? >> Looking good. Uh Zcash is flying. I think Zcash is like [snorts] outperforming everything. Uh the Unity trade, the three-headed dragon, privacy AI and return to fundamentals is outperforming as well. Uh remember the three-headed dragon is NEAR, HYPE, and

Zcash, and these three are doing extraordinarily well. HYPE and NEAR a little bit behind Zcash. I mean, I think Zcash is just the number one winner of the cycle. >> Yeah, and it's outperformed everything, dude. >> The incredible strength to get all the way down to maybe two something three something when, you know, we had the the potential exploit. We're learning that it probably wasn't even exploited, right? Once they migrate to the Iron Wood pool, we'll know for sure. But, the incredible strength to rally all the way back and now be closing in on the levels at which it was originally before this thing was found.

>> Yep. >> I think shows incredible strength. I think there is a real rotation happening from Bitcoin into Zcash, and that is dragging the portfolio upwards. Um you know, we talked a little bit about sentiment yesterday, and how, you know, this rally seems to, you know, this rally will fail like all the others is essentially what we're hearing. So, we had like, "Hey, we're going to go down to the 30s." Then yesterday it was like, "Oh, you know, we're going to we're going to we're so back. We're going to rally." And then, you know, now the consensus is, "Well, you know, we're going to rally into the end of July, and then we're going to get one more leg down, and then we're going to bottom in October just like we did in 2018.

>> 2018, every other cycle. >> Yep. Which, Rob, I think it's like fair to feel that way right now, but in 2 weeks if Bitcoin's at 69K, 70K, and HYPE's at all-time highs, Zcash's out highs, you're going to have euphoria again, you know, and like it's going to be like [cheering] it's not going to be like, "Oh, we're going down." It's going to be like bottom's in. So, I would give it another 2 weeks before you start to say that that's the consensus opinion. And even if if that is the consensus opinion, which Benjamin Cowen has been hammering on for the last however many months, people still know it's coming and they'll still just trade right into it.

So. >> So, I remember Benjamin Cowen saying that we were going to break down even further. People weren't really realizing or expecting that there was going to be a bounce before that ultimate low. >> Mhm. No, he always says that we get the every mid-term year he'll say that we get a June-July bounce. That's what's always happened. >> Well, Benjamin Cowen believes in technical analysis, so I take his opinion with a grain of salt. Um >> But he's richer than both of us, so how can you not listen to the guy? >> I've never seen his portfolio, so I don't know that for sure. Um >> [laughter] >> What I do What I What I do see out there is a consensus opinion that we are going to rally into late July. I do We think that is going to lead to some euphoria.

Uh and we're going to see what happens when we get there, but I mean, you have people that are offside saying that. You have people that are onside saying that, so that does seem to be consensus right now. I agree, it seems like there there's going to be some euphoria kicking around 70k end of July. Feels like that's what's happening. I just don't think it's going to be that simple. I don't think, you know, even if we know that it's coming now, um I mean, what How do you even What What would you even do to position for that, right? You do a swing trade, you know, you somehow combat your emotions around 70k early August, you get, you know, fully risk off, and you just you know, stay at stay on the sidelines for a month or two.

>> keep holding your entries on the coins that you're currently holding and then hope that the that the higher lows come come around to like this level. And where we're currently at. >> And where do you, you know, there is a level at which if you retrace above that level, then you know, you sort of stay open-minded, you get, you know, proven wrong. Not You You get into a mindset of like, well, we've bounced high enough that the trend reversed. Like, you know, you get to 70 >> on Bitcoin? >> 86K is where like you would switch bias. >> If we It would like the most disgusting possibility would be like a couple daily closes above 75K and then a nuke down to flow 50s. That would be just disgusting

and painful. Um but if we got above 80, 85, I think it'd be very clear that that the bottom's in. Uh Simon said Near said Near can't on 14 cents. 197 low for Zcash in March. Yeah, this year. I know. That was crazy. Uh Near rocket ships Robbie hates TA. Indeed, he does. Indeed, he does. All right, guys, let's keep it moving. >> I just don't believe in it. >> As always, our markets are powered by our friends at Zalma. Visit zalma.org to learn more about their confidential blockchain infrastructure and their new Morfo vault that allows you to deposit USDC pri- privately into Morfo using Zalma's technology. All right, let's get into the news. Before we do, let me tell you about near.com and Near powering the home of your on-chain activity. One account, no borders, your financial life

all on-chain. Visit near.com to learn more about that. And yeah, I mean, this is awesome. This is it. This is the thesis right here. This is the Solana is not just a meme coin chain thesis. This is Solana on Solana robo strategy so bought traded $12.8 million on Sunday and it only traded $9.8 million on the Nasdaq on Monday. Tokenized stocks can clearly keep trading on the weekends and they can clearly keep the speculation going. And so, this is just another another example of how where this whole space is going

for hyperliquid, for Solana, for these fast chains. Um this is it, guys. I mean, this is this is the Solana thesis going forward. There is no other thesis for Solana going forward other than it was always touted to us as the on-chain Nasdaq. And this is it. It needs to be the home of spot DEX trading for tokenized equities at scale. That is the Solana thesis. That would take it to all-time highs. That is what is going to allow it to perform, I think, in my opinion, and really reshape its narrative from meme coin mania chain to actual tokenized equity spot trading dominant chain,

which I think is a far more bullish narrative in the in the state of gold markets and tokenization bull run than the meme coin chain narrative is. >> I don't believe any of that. Robinhood chain is that. I'm betting Robinhood is the next Solana. Uh they have meme coins, they have cash cat, they have such such greater market penetration in the equities market. Um I think their mechanism for tokenization in time, just-in-time tokenization on demand, is incredibly thoughtful.

Uh I think there's going to be a drip drip drip of tokenized equities coming out of the Robinhood brokerage and coming on chain to Robinhood chain. It just so happens to be an Ethereum L2. Whether that creates some sort of value accrual thesis for ETH asset remains to be seen. Not going to go that far quite yet, but it doesn't hurt. Uh I do think Robinhood chain success hurts Solana more than it helps Ethereum. The reason being is because Solana is garnering for market share in this tokenized equities trading space. They brand themselves as the on-chain NASDAQ, and there is some lasting elements of meme coin

trenching culture, euphoria, you know, high activity. Yes. >> Yes. >> If I'm Solana, I see both start I I I think Solana is starting to lose on both fronts. They're losing on on the meme coin front to the likes of Cash Cat on Robinhood, and they're losing on the on-chain NASDAQ tokenized equities front also to the likes of Robinhood. So, I don't know how Solana comes back from this. I don't know how they're going to have an edge over Robinhood. New chain, good chain.

Yeah, I Do you see a path for increasing market share by Solana over Robinhood in the tokenized equity or the meme coin space? >> I think they're in a tough spot between Hyperliquid and Robinhood, but I think this is their This is the This is what the chain has been built for. And if they can get this right, they will own a portion of the market share that is going to be massive, and I think that's enough for Solana to do well. That's That's my take. I think it's enough. So, whether or not it's enough for them to go back to all-time highs, I mean, I think they will when the bull market comes back.

But, I think this is what they needed. And I think this is what a lot of chains So, like, we're like hating on Solana here, Rob, but it's like it's This is like Solana's gracious to be in the position to even be in the conversation. Think about all the other L1s that are just like, honestly, not even a part of this conversation. They're I'm not even I'm not going to name them. But, there is endless amounts that aren't even doing any volume on these assets. So, yeah, that would be my take on that.

>> I am So, I tend to agree on this this the TAM. This size of this pie is massive and it might be the case that Solana is able to retain some piece of that market. But, I think their share of that market is down only from here. I think there's going to be Robinhood coming into the space. I think tokenized equities as a whole is going to grow, but I think Solana's market share of tokenized equities is going to decrease from here as you have the likes of Robinhood chain come on. You have, you know, Denari come on. You have more and more tokenized partners.

>> chain. I just looked at the Blockworks uh research couple today, I just looked at the Blockworks uh research couple today, and BNB chain >> Pancake Swap, too, and it looked like QQQ was like one of the leading like >> chain has the largest amount of tokenized equities volume spot trading on DEX um markets for the last like like 2 weeks ago. Solana like was crushing it, and now BNB is like dwarfing everybody. It's It's interesting. On that note, um let's get into the next topic, which is the uh pre-IPO price.

So, the pre-IPO price market for this CXMT, which is a Chinese chip manufacturer, has launched. This is my tweet. Thank you, producer, for putting my tweet up here. Um So, it is >> producer. You put your own tweet up here. >> It is at 6x 6.25x the IPO price of 1.28 per share. Once again, [snorts] questioning who is the person who is deciding these IPO prices. Like, let me go to Hyperliquid right now. >> Remember, this is what David Chaim was telling us when he came into the tower.

I think it was the day before the SpaceX launch, and the question was, "Hey, is the SpaceX IPO price that it lists at are public exchanges going to be similar enough to the hyper liquid perpetuals price. And the answer was yes, right? When it listed, we knew what it was going to list at, but it essentially teleported right around where the hyper liquid listing price was. >> And so it's at 7.52. So and I saw heart from across saying that basically this is just a worse version of what happens in the US where the um where the IPOs are listed at really low prices, but Chinese just taking it to the fullest extent of that power and

just make all the insiders rich. And um right now it's trading at 7.53. So again, up five and a half six X from the IPO rate. And traders are basically using this market to express bullish views on the It's basically China's leading DRAM maker amongst the surging AI memory demand trade. And so when this thing goes live, Hyperliquid's going to have a So Hyperliquid was kind of struggling yesterday a little bit. It was kind of like, you know, it it had its move up, but it had that big dump down on Monday. As soon as this market launched on Trade XYZ, the the thing pumped.

And again, I think we're going to see that the price discovery of Hyperliquid is far better than that of the pricing structures for IPOs. And at some point, they're not going to be able to get away with this anymore. At some point, they're not going to be able to get away with this. And I just think this is a big win for Hyperliquid. And another showing as to how broke global IPO markets are. Just broken. Just completely off. Um chat says, "Look at this guy. Maybe doesn't believe in TA. Should have studied some TA before loading up on PER." Yeah. Well, that was me, buddy.

>> [laughter] >> We need to talk about the social rails that is the biggest crap in crypto. Crypto market was supposed to un was supposed to be the un such underbank. Robinhood won its audience with GameStop uh hype bullish. Where will we be able to get it the exchange decides the price. We cannot participate in this IPO. I saw I was asking Cloud about it. There is no way for us to participate. Interactive Brokers does not have this. There is zero way. The only way was to buy this on Hyperliquid or is to buy this on Hyperliquid. And after 5 days of this being listed, there will be a 20% positive and negative market force on this. That is the case with all the trade XYZ pre-IPO perps.

So, for 5 days, it's unlimited price discovery. After 5 days, there will be a 20% ratio or kind of stop gap on both sides. >> Like a circuit circuit breaker? >> Yeah, it's just like a range that it can't go higher or lower. And so, right now it's pure price discovery and that's why we're, you know, that's why we see it up today 30%. >> Yeah, but obviously, you know, Hyperliquid pricing it at 5 to 6X its IPO listing price, you you don't want to go buy it on Hyperliquid after it's up 5 6X. You want to get in, you know, on the Chinese exchange that it's going to be listed on.

>> Yeah, well, good luck with that. Well, the thing is when it goes live, Rob, it's going to be listed at this price. >> No, you have to But it's going to tell >> the IPO. >> I understand. You need to have orders in the book before the list before it gets issued, right? Because it's going to gap up. It's go The market is going to list its the order board order book is going to clear all of the order that it has in the book up to a certain price. Which is This is exactly what happened with the SpaceX IPO. You needed to You could place orders on a broker 24 hours before the thing actually went live. So, you needed to have an order in the book where you thought it was going to list, which we know it's going to list at a

certain price. And if you have an order in the book, then you would get cleared, you know, and then all of the orders up to, you know, however much inventory there is on the brokerage would >> get cleared. >> Yeah. I mean, there's no way for us to get access to this. I've tried. I've talked to Claude Fable 5 about it. Uh I think this is going to be a big win for Hyper Liquid when when this IPO goes live. And like like like I said, the token really moved once. >> It unpack that. Why why do you think this is going to be a big win for Hyper Liquid when it goes live? >> Cuz the price is going to be within plus or minus 3 to 5% of the actual demand of that stock. And so, the IPO shouldn't be going live I mean,

the idea This is all speculation price and the pre-IPO purpose are not the real thing. Yes, I know, but the but my my take is that the the $1.28 price mark that the IPO is listed at is supposed to be what the investors and the banks are agreeing to be like the most fair market price. And so, you know, that that means that the company, right? CXMT, is selling their equity to the banks, the Chinese banks, at [snorts] 80% lower than what the market on Hyper Liquid is valuing that equity at. This company is doing 50 to billion 50 to 60 billion dollars of revenue in 2025, will post about 120 billion estimated this year.

This market cap of $1.28 or or sorry, $1.28 is an 80 billion dollar market cap for a company that's doing 60 billion dollars of revenue and projected to do 120 billion dollars in 2026 is vastly underpriced. The reason why Hyper Liquid is the biggest winner here is because these companies are getting shammed by the investment banks in China to This is the price that that they're giving them, 1.28, when the real market value of this equity is quite obviously closer to uh five times 80 billion, so 400 billion.

And so, that's why is that these the companies that are going public are not getting the most out of what their equity's worth. They're They're They're basically selling their equity for a massive steep discount and they're shooting themselves in the foot. It's like if Rob, if we were going to sell our company and Hyperliquid said our company was worth X and the only people and the VCs were saying it was worth 0.2 * X, what why the hell would we would we would we want to do that? >> Well, yeah, we would want to sell it for as high of a price that we could get. >> And that's what And that's what these companies are missing out on because the banks have a a monopoly on the IPO pricing mechanism because the entire system is broken.

>> And so Hyperliquid is unveiling a more correct or true or fair market price for these things, but they aren't quite benefiting The company is benefiting from the more transparent knowledge into the market. And you would think that, you know, the the venue that unveils that information or that truth >> Yes. >> But the the value like the mechanism is broken. Like >> Okay, but just think about it in like in terms of like value creation versus destruction, right? Like >> helping to unveil a more true market price for an asset. Yeah. But but the company is the one that is able to then leverage that information and price their stock or their IPO more

>> Correct. And so the the idea is that CXMT, you know, had this, you know, they should be able to go back to the investment banks and be like, "Hey guys, there is >> that's You know that's not the way it works. >> There is $50 million of 24-hour volume on $22 million of open interest on our pre-IPO perp. Um we priced this thing way too low. >> Yeah, so give us an extra $10 billion. >> Well, no, obviously it's never going to happen, but like the Every time this happens, it's bullish.

It's bullish for the platform. >> It's bullish for price discovery. >> It's bullish for It's bullish for the sake of humanity. >> for the entrepreneurs who price discovery. It's >> Dude, these investment banks are coming in and they're getting the this price because that's the price that they're getting and there's no That's the fair value and they're they're going to hit a 5x for doing nothing just because they provided some capital. >> And it's bullish for the pre-IPO perpetual market in general because these these vehicles and mechanisms are now seen as legitimate tools for price discovery and that's bullish. And the companies can now have a better understanding of their fair market value. That's bullish. The fact that how do you know, after the fact after these things go live is a venue going to benefit?

>> Yes. Yes. There's >> Cuz guess what? Guess what? >> It's not like after the IPO launches they're going to get >> investors are going to look at this and be like like I I guarantee uh there is a sum that is greater than zero of Chinese investors with size that are looking at this and being like woah. How did this happen? Oh. Like the Chinese investment banks are hearing about this for the first time ever. They don't even know pre-IPO perps existed. >> And >> a very indirect value accrual thesis. >> Very >> Very indirect pull out the gloves.

>> And as CSN says, Andy's passionate about this. Uh new type. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So uh >> Very indirect value accrual thesis. I agree it's bullish for humanity in general. It's bullish for price discovery, but it's not It's actually I mean, look, after this thing goes live on public Chinese exchanges, you would anticipate that there's actually going to be less volume and open interest on the hyperliquid perpetual market because then there is a quote-unquote more regulated legitimate whatever venue >> till the Chinese newspapers hit. >> Here's Here's really The XM TIPO was correctly uh correctly priced on this weird crypto exchange called Hyperliquid. What is the Chinese Wall Street Journal? Someone give me the Chinese Wall Street Journal.

Someone in the chat Tell me what the Chinese Wall Street Journal is. We're going to track that thing. On IPO launch, we're going to come back and I guarantee there's a mention of Hyperliquid. We can run it through a translator. >> And if you really want to understand whether or not like like where where this lies here, I'm trying I'm trying to find it, but the SpaceX like where can I see how like the the volume on the SpaceX perp? Because that would be what >> site. >> Yeah, I'm looking at the eco site. >> and bought more Near, Zama, Aero, and Morfo and Derive. Also am out of Canton pretty much. Um just kind of waiting, man, for that thing. Bullish for humanity. Yes, Rob, money wants to be free.

>> If there's um more volume on the SpaceX perp after it IPO'd, then I think I think that's right. Because then you would think, "Oh, there's more volume, there's more activity, more revenue for hyper >> volume after >> interest on SpaceX after it IPO'd versus >> there was. There was massive volume. There was like 1.6 billion dollars of 24-hour volume on IPO day, and there there wasn't Yeah, I mean >> On IPO day, yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah.

>> All right. Well, someone someone look at the hl.eco site, find the SpaceX ticker, see >> Find me the Wall Street Journal of China. Do that first, cuz it's coming. >> the volume profile to the to pre-IPO and post-IPO. >> guys wake up and and and it's like 8:00 a.m. and and it's the the trading session's closed at 5:00 a.m. in China, and your bags are flying, just remember this. Just remember this. All right, guys, let's get into the next interesting topic, which I think is going to come to hyper liquid and perp platforms as well, which is compute futures.

Um and it should be >> futures markets. >> It should be interesting. And before I do, let me tell you about Infinitify building DeFi for everyone, higher yield, [screaming] no leverage, transparent capital efficiency, earning the best yields in DeFi. I got to go. All right, so we launched CPU forward compute curves. If you scroll down, I think this is super interesting. So, we're getting this compute curve and this compute price market. So, we're financializing the AI stack.

And it's super cool because this is going to be a tradeable asset and we're turning compute into a commodity. Which I think is super cool. So, just keep going down to the bottom and you can you guys can read through this, but this is kind of what it looks like. The price of the Nvidia B200 hourly price. So, you can speculate on the hourly price of compute throughout each day at a given hour. >> Right. And he's got to catch a flight, but we're going to run through this. Obviously, this is similar to like corn futures. Any sort of commodity futures.

Remember the original thesis around futures and you know, there's an argument to be made that prediction markets are essentially like a future swap. Um this is a very similar thesis, but we're not trading corn or grain or you know, whatever, you know, farmers are planting and then supposed to be trading. We're trading compute. And so, what what's happening here is that you can hedge. Let's say that, you know, you anticipate that your token usage as a company is going to, you know, you have a major project coming up. You're going to be using a ton more tokens. And so, you need to hedge against the price of tokens going up. Well, you can take out a long on the price of tokens, right? And so, if the price of tokens goes up, you're going to

be using more tokens. So, you're going to be spending more on your token usage, but you're going to make money from your long and it's therefore a hedge. And and the same goes vice versa, right? And so, that is what we have here. Uh there are multiple exchanges uh that are rolling this out. I think the first one to do this was Archetype, which was Brett Harrison, the ex-FTX guy. Um so, this is already live in production. I I he was seeing some decent volume and I do anticipate not only the uh frontier companies that use a lot of AI as they're building out these models to use this, but also like the hyperscalers, and then, you know, slowly down the curve, more and more companies that just

leverage AI in their day-to-day businesses to use these compute futures, these compute prediction markets as a means of hedging their expenditures on token usage. >> Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to Cape Cod. I'm going to the beach, going to catch some waves, going to go on the boat, going to catch some lobsters, going to eat some scallops, and send hype, send per, send Zcash, send near, send to arrow, send lighter, send Bitcoin, send it all, send it all so hard. Save humanity. Freedom guy, I love you guys. I'll be back Monday. Much love.

>> Bullish on humanity, I don't know, bros. I've been trying to wake up people for decades, and most people still clueless. So are we, man. I mean, it's a long and hard journey. We got to do it day in and day out. We've got to continue to to preach what we believe is bullish for humanity. President Trump to meet with US senators tomorrow to discuss the Crypto Clarity Act. If we're checking in on the Clarity Act, you know, this thing has to pass by August 7th before the summer recess. Pretty important that it does. This will codify into law everything that we're seeing out of the SEC and the CFTC. So we really want structure in the US.

Things priced at 40%. It jumped up from 38% earlier today, earlier in the week. It was trading around 45%. Spiked way down. Someone offloaded, got all the way down to 24%. But now we are pretty much back at that 40% mark. There's no guarantee that this thing goes through. Um the latest that we saw President Trump is supposed to talk to senators. He wants to get this through, but a lot of people are holding this against him.

We saw how much money he made from crypto, and now they're holding the clarity bill hostage. Um The Nvidia compute uh forward markets are incredibly fascinating. I anticipate these to get a lot more activity. Um I would Uh I mean, there's also some very very cool strategies here. Like I would want to see some options markets on this where you could start to trade some volatility on some of these things. Uh incredibly risky business, but I think there's a ton of money to be made. These things are getting financialized, but ultimately this is greater financial tooling to teams that are spending millions if not billions of dollars on AI credits.

Pretty fascinating behavior, and uh there was also a clip of Chamath that went pretty viral on this topic saying right now uh barrel of intelligence, kind of analogizing this to oil. A barrel of intelligence is uh technical term for a million tokens. And a million tokens right now is going to cost you about 56 bucks on Claude or Anthropic. Uh it's going to cost you around 50 bucks on ChatGPT. Uh Meta and Grok are going to sell you that million tokens for about a dollar. And China is going to try to sell you that million tokens for about 50 cents. And so, you should be able to get a market where you can see this price

dislocation. Uh you can actually profit from buying and selling these compute futures, and then you can use these as hedging mechanisms as you incorporate AI into your business. Uh pretty pretty cool because uh Uh, just like oil and commodities, compute is one of the biggest uh, commodity markets uh, in the market right now. Very, very cool stuff. Guys, let's keep moving along to the guy that's been in the news the most, one of the most contentious characters in the business right now, Michael Saylor believes working hard is for losers.

Let's roll on the clip, see what he see what he see what he means here. >> And you look at the modern era right now, you want to work smart not hard. I've worked hard. I I've worked 3,000 hours a year, 10 years in a row, done everything possible, and I have beat my head against the wall and made no progress. I So, I've lived it, you know? And and you want to do it, go take a shovel and start digging ditches, you know? And don't don't get a caterpillar tractor and don't use machines.

Well, you can just start walking across the country right now, too, instead of using a car. It's like I I guess I would say, you know, don't run fast, drive your car, right? And you look at the modern era right now, you want to work smart not hard. I've worked hard. >> Yeah, okay. Um, I mean, this is tough to hear when Michael Saylor is one of the biggest reasons that people are claiming Bitcoin is going down. Also, um, you know, people are calling for his demise in order to spark a new cycle.

Uh, so, it's difficult and a little bit unsettling to hear that he uh, you know, doesn't work hard because it doesn't pay off. Um, I don't know about you, but I was always raised and believe that, you know, hard work uh, leads to better results. The work It's sort of this like universal law that keeps the world going around. I do think, if I'm being a little bit uh if I'm giving him some some credit here, that this clip was probably taken out of context. I think he's saying, you know, maybe the we didn't hear the question, but maybe the question was around working hard versus working smart. Uh yes, it's silly to just If you're trying to get across the country, why are you going to walk across the country? You should take a car or a

plane. That makes a ton of sense. So, I think the the the clip here is probably taken out of context, but even so, it's a little bit difficult to hear him describe this. Uh we're not going to spend too much time on this. Michael Saylor does have a lot of work to do, whether that's working hard or smart. He's got a lot of work to do. Um Guys, we're going to keep moving along, but before we do, shout out to LeFi. Uh these guys are crushing on the interrupt space. They are universal market for digital assets, and they are continuing to underpin a lot of the aggregation space. They run a lot of the order flow routing that is taking place, and they're starting to get into RWAs and equities themselves. This is what we see

happening all across the board, and we're going to continue to see. Guys, Axis launched their Axis Origin Vault today. This is a very very fascinating product, uh and anticipating several more to be launched like it. Axis Delta Neutral Arbitrage Engine, it's opening to all of you. Deposit USDT, earn a verifiable 10 to 20% base APY. This is DeFi in its bread and butter. The cap is 50 million. Early depositors get a 2x multiplier. Mark your position on July 29th. Let's play the video to understand what this new generation, this new era of DeFi is as it comes online.

>> New venues and assets have fragmented [music] global markets. These fragmented markets need a new center [music] of gravity. The Axis engine synchronizes global markets. >> [music] >> The resulting alpha is passed to holders of USDX. Deposit USDT [music] on Ethereum into the Axis Origin Vault. Every deposit marks a coordinate on the [music] Axis grid. Pre-deposits open on July 29th. Get ready to mark your position.

New >> Very cool concept. What I understand this to be and I I've talked to the Axis team. So I'm I'm supporting this. I think this is going to do well because it's verifiable. I think what we've seen in the past, we've seen this fugazi DeFi. We don't know where the yield comes from. The fact that the yield is verifiable. Yes, they're claiming a 10 to 20% APY base APY. That is relatively high. However, I think the fact that this is verifiable makes this extremely compelling and it provides a new thesis here for what DeFi can look like on chain, especially in a high high APY environment. I understand this

to be effectively an arbitrage mechanism. And so you have these deposits. You have the set of smart contracts on chain. These are running arbitrage strategies, probably doing some cross-chain, maybe MEV style arbitraging. And there's a lot of opportunities out there because you know, we do still live in a low liquidity environment. I think you can also point to tokenized equities. You can understand that there's going to be some inefficiencies in these markets, especially as they come on chain. And so there is an opportunity to arbitrage these, earn some rewards, earn some revenue as a result of making these markets more efficient.

Axis is passing that revenue back to users. And so it's effectively this mechanism uh that is you know, quote unquote open source, right? It's verifiable. Uh anyone can deposit into it. And uh in fact, you know, this uh this July 29th uh opening is going to give them a 2x multiplier. Cap is 50 million. Um this is something where I would take a look. I'm interested in the verifiable nature of this. Uh I think, you know, anyone can claim that they have an API a strategy to earn some some yield. Uh you know, few can earn that yield sustainably. Even fewer are able to earn that yield sustainably and verifiably.

So, I am interested in this. I'm curious about it. I'm going to be digging deeper. We're going to be tracking it. Uh Axis uh I think is going to do quite well. Guys, let's keep moving. We've got some news in our uh payment space. Uh Stripe has bid more than 53 billion dollars to take PayPal private. PayPal's a public company. It's been around a long, long time. I think they're doing about 5 and 1/2 billion dollars of revenue every year. But, they've had a turnstile CEO situation. The company is way bloated.

They have something like 15,000 full-time employees as I was doing some research into this this morning. This is some massive, massive news in the payment space, especially if Stripe wins this deal and the PayPal board decides to approve this this merger because it would make Stripe a ginormous jug- gargantuan player in the payment space. They already are huge. And I think this would mean that they're just that much bigger. Um if they do this, the details per Reuters are 60/50 a share, a 28% premium backed by roughly 50 billion in committed bank financing.

Uh that is absolutely massive. If we scroll down a little bit, uh, you'll see some more details here. Stripe and Advent would own PayPal 50/50 and keep the company whole. The first approach was April. PayPal hasn't responded yet. The timing is poetic. Last year was the first year Stripe's payment volume passed PayPal's. Now they're talking about acquiring PayPal. 1.9 trillion versus 1.79 trillion. Think PayPal generates about 5 and 1/2 billion on that 1.79 trillion of volume. The challenger passed the pioneer on volume then went straight for the whole company. Uh, you can definitely see, you know, the growth trajectories have now intersected. Stripe on the way up, PayPal on the way down.

Uh, PayPal peaked at 360 billion in 2021 and just got a bid at 53 billion. Same volume, wildly different price tags. Uh, Stripe's tender offer in February valued it at 159 billion. I mean, you know, if you're PayPal and Stripe offered you 159 billion in February and now they're offering you 53 billion, you wait another few months and now you're going to be down to what? 25 billion? It just PayPal's just down only. If I'm PayPal's board, I'm like, hey, yeah, this is a lifeline. I want to get, you know, acquired and actually get some cash out of this thing. The gap in the growth rate, Stripe grew 34%, PayPal grew 7%.

Advent's name in this deal, I think this is the more curious aspect of this, uh, because Advent is a lot less known versus Stripe. Uh, Advent's name in this deal tells you just as much as Stripe does. PayPal generated 6.4 billion in adjusted free cash flow last year. So 53 billion is roughly eight times cash flow. That is private equity math. Advent takes on the turnaround of 23,800 person company. If I'm working at PayPal, I'm scared. Probably going to get laid off if this deal goes through. And Stripe, Stripe spent 50 15 years building the merchant side of the internet. PayPal handles the consumer side. So, Stripe would verticalize, they would get both sides of the payments flow.

Uh PayPal on, you know, the the consumer-facing, you know, top of the funnel, front-end side. PayPal, or excuse me, Stripe on the bottom of the funnel, settlement volume, payment processing side of the payment stack. Uh PayPal handles the consumer side. Remember, PayPal owns Venmo. 439 million active accounts on Venmo. The yellow checkout button consumers know on sight. Uh if this closes, one company touches 3.7 trillion in annual payment volume. They're talking about Stripe if Stripe and PayPal's volumes are combined under Stripe. 3.7 trillion in annual volume, around 3% of global GDP, and would be by far the largest US merchant acquired by

volume. I saw another reaction to this proposed deal that this would be the straw that broke the camel's back as it pertains to Stripe's uh reputation and place in the market relative to Visa and Mastercard. Remember, Visa and Mastercard are the payment processing Goliaths, the incumbents, the monoliths, the biggest in the game. Stripe is the private company rising through the ranks with an incredible growth story that is now nipping at the heels of Visa and Mastercard. Uh Simon's questions, can anyone fix the back-end mess of PayPal?

If it If it's anyone, it would be Stripe. They have the back-end, PayPal has the consumer relationships. It's employee-heavy, massive layoffs to come at PayPal. Stripe is extremely proficient in, you know, very innovative innovative technologies, AI, blockchain. They could lay off and automate and make more efficient a ton of these processes. Uh I imagine a lot of layoffs will be required. I imagine so as well. Is this actually a dis- distraction from a very healthy growing Stripe? I don't think so. I think this is just massive order flow. People use PayPal, it's ingrained.

And the people who use it are just so removed from the inefficiencies that they have as a company. I think even though PayPal's trajectory as a business is going down, their brand identity is still relatively solid. Would you just keep the bits and jettison others? Not even sure what that question really means. I get the attraction to the raw volume and assets, but underneath is a massive company. M&A and systems that never got fully integrated. Doing that is hard and not the four the faint of heart. I don't think Stripe is for the faint of heart. There's certain no certainty it happens, but someone just put 50 billion of committed financing behind the idea that PayPal's worth more than stock market than on it. Stripe sponsors my podcast. Opinions 100% my own. Uh, I think that's pretty uh

objective analysis uh from someone who is sponsored by Stripe. Maybe biased in wanting this deal to go through, but honestly for the sake of M&A and for the sake of a incumbent that is no longer building in innovation. Uh I kind of think, "Hey, you know, let's get some new blood in there. Let's get PayPal into a company." Maybe it might Stripe too big, but I think this would probably be the final the final item for Stripe before they go public. This would put them with, you know, Visa and Mastercard as Goliaths in the payment space. Uh remember Stripe also acquired Bridge, Tempo, and Privy.

And so, they have a massive digital assets and stablecoin strategy as well. How does PayPal fit into this? Remember our strategy as it pertains to stablecoins and digital assets means the consumer finance, consumer behavior does not change. People using PayPal continues PayPal. People using, you know, traditional fiat online banking continues to just, you know, see a number in their bank account underneath the hood, whether that's Stripe or JP Morgan Chase or any bank is going to tokenize their deposits and use stable coins on their balance sheet for settlement 24/7 days a week. That includes Stripe.

Stripe at 3% GDP, they think they are going to continue to move in this direction, increasing their share of global GDP running through their systems. We'll see what Visa and MasterCard have to say about that. Guys, we're going to get into our next segment of Daily Equity. Why don't we just Why don't we just keep on keep on going. Let's go. Daily Equity. >> [music] >> All right. The Daily Equity tweet today

is who the hell prices CXMT IPO. We talked about this a little bit earlier, but they are pricing it at $80 billion market cap. Revenue will be in the 50 to $60 billion range this year and next year's projected to go over 120 billion. Is there a way to get in? We talked about this. There really is not much of a way to get in because this is on Chinese exchanges. So, if you have a Chinese brokerage account, you can probably get in. If you can, you want to submit an order before it actually goes live so that you can get filled in the order book when the inventory goes live and is listed.

We do not have Chinese brokerage accounts here at The Roll Up and so we are probably unable to access this. This is why we want to democratize access with tokenized equities. This did go live. And it went live on chain, but it has already repriced. So, you heard us talking about this earlier in the show. There's a 5-6x premium on chain. Uh Uh and so we are going to anticipate that this is where this this ticker goes on the Chinese market when it does get IPO'd.

And that's because that's what we're seeing the perpetuals markets now. Uh I think IPO pre-IPO markets are healthy. So you can get a bit of an understanding of what you expect the price to do before it ultimately does IPO. Uh the CXMT is the Chinese uh memory manufacturer. Uh this is a key component in the AI bottleneck trade. Remember, we are bottlenecked by the amount of memory and compute that AI has access to. And so we're going to continue to see this. Um guys, let us know if anyone has access to this. I'd be curious to see how it goes. But ultimately, you know, we talked a little bit about this earlier, there is going to be a re- configuration of the IPO pricing

mechanisms both in the US and abroad. I mean, just to see how much money is being left on the table by these businesses, I think there's probably some, you know, insider I'm not going to say shenanigans, but, you know, it's very top-down over there in China. They want to make sure that the right people are incentivized at the right point in time. And so that's probably what we're seeing with how underpriced this IPO is. Um you know, you have to leave a little bit of meat on the bone for those bankers, but to price this thing at 1.1x free cash flow or revenue just seems ridiculous. Uh feels like there's some insider uh behavior happening. And uh as

we move into a more democratically accessible and capitalistic market as a whole, um I would anticipate that we end up with uh some more fair pricing mechanisms. And as a result, uh those with price discovery become extraordinarily uh extraordinarily um valuable. And that means hyper liquid, lighter, Tenari, uh all of those that are working on IPO markets, uh pre-IPO, perpetuals, tokenized equities, all that good stuff.

Um all right. Wow, the chat is popping. This is why most people have financial advisors. They're too emotional and don't have diamond hands. Yeah, even the financial advisors uh you know, don't have diamond hands sometimes. Hmm, wondering if he really gets it. We have Bitcoin because the 1% of the 1% is forcing people to work hard to eat, provide a roof for their families. Yeah, that's Michael Saylor right there. He's just over it. He has to put his money where his mouth is for all to see. It's the influencer media clinging on to say something during the bear market. Uh uh Agree with Shine. I think that is what he meant. Too many people in the space are looking for fast money. W's in the chat.

All right, guys. That is daily equity for today. Let's keep moving along. I think our first guest is ready in the back. Uh we're going to bring him up. I think we have We're going to do a quick standby and we're going to get into our AI super cycle segment of the show for today. And today we've got the man, the myth himself, Alex Shevchenko of Near Protocol, is going to be joining the show for AI super cycle this week. This guy built Near Protocol with his bare hands, co-founder of Near. These guys are doing upwards of $20 billion on Near Protocol.

Uh rock solid protocol. This is where I first got exposure to Zcash. Zcash is absolutely flying today and they are incorporating Near Protocol into their agentic uh umbrella. And it's pretty, pretty cool to see. So, near.com, Near Protocol. We're to get Alex Chevchenko on the show in just a moment to talk all about it. Guys, we'll be right back. >> [music] [music] [music] >> If you're serious about crypto, this is

where you need to be. The Rollup will be broadcasting live from the Rare Evo Expo floor on day one. It's July 29th and 30th at the Arya Resort and Casino in Las [music] Vegas. General admission is free, so don't miss out. Hear from US Senator Bernie Moreno, [music] Steven Gregory from Binance US, Brian Quintenz from Kalshi, and Maggie Parsons from Lighter. Connect with industry leaders from Bitwise, Wintermute, Privy, [music] and dozens more.

Claim your free ticket today at rarevo.io. We'll see you in Las Vegas. >> We get We get deep. We get [music] deep. We get We get We get deep. You know we get deep. >> [music] [music] >> You know we get deep.

We get deep. We get deep. You know we get deep. >> [music] >> We get deep. We get deep. You we get deep. >> [music] [music] [music] >> Money, power >> [music] >> Welcome back to AI Supercycle, our

premier AI show airing every single week presented by NEAR. We cover the ins and outs of decentralized AI, privacy, and the future of this massive technology. NEAR is the blockchain for AI and the execution of AI-native apps. You can check out NEAR's latest AI product at near.ai. Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. All right, we are here with the man himself, Alex Shevchenko, the co-founder of NEAR Intent. Uh also brought to our attention a rap song that was generated by someone in the NEAR community. So, we're going to see if we can tee that up for you guys.

Uh Alex, welcome to the show, man. >> All right, well, thanks for inviting me, as always. Super happy to be here. >> Absolutely. Well, it's a pleasure to have you. You know, we've had you on the show before, and um it just seems like every you know, 5 billion or so through the NEAR Intent protocol, we bring you back. We ask you how the last 5 billion went, and uh and then we'll, you know, we'll get you back in a couple of weeks to hear how the next 5 billion went. Um but, I mean, yeah, just to to speak to the absolute incredible nature of how NEAR Intent has grown. Um so, kudos to all the hard work and and the success. Um yeah, tell us how have how has the last few billion volume gone through NEAR NEAR Intent? How's that been going?

>> Yeah, I would say it's kind of a little bit more relaxed at this moment in time. It's it's a little bit less about you know, trying to prove anyone that that you are the thing that you are building is is important and interesting. It is more about you know, like polishing things. You know, like in the knife making, you first make a knife and then and but then you need to sharpen it. You need to sharpen it to the point when it cuts cuts the paper. And so I'm feeling right now that we are sharpening and sharpening and sharpening and making like everything working absolutely incredible, extremely robust. Yeah, that's that's kind of all of the things.

So so there are not a lot of there are some visual changes and there are some some changes to the protocol itself, but many of these are not very observable by the by the people who are using the protocol though they are very very important. >> Well, one of the things that we've heard quite a lot about as of recently and and you know, the primary reason we wanted to bring you up here today is to talk about the sharpest, you know, edge in the in the in the knife right now. One of the most recent features that I think people are really excited about is confidential intense because this just adds a new dimension to near intense.

You know, there's there's quite a lot of questions that I have around confidentiality, you know, why it was important to bring now, these sorts of things. But maybe you could just start by giving us, you know, the one sentence version, you know, the the short and sweet confidential intense, you know, just became available. What is possible now that they weren't able to do before with near intense? >> So in one sentence I can only say that confidential intense are bringing normality into crypto. And the reason for this is that up until this point in time all of your financial operations have been visible on chain and the privacy solutions that were available they were only limited to a

very small set of tasks uh which are covering just transfers. Um with confidential intense what we're trying to do is to wrap all of the DeFi primitives into the uh private mode and make sure that everybody are able to enjoy the same level of privacy that they're getting from the uh from traditional financial applications like banks uh and they're able to get it in a decentralized non-custodial setup with crypto. >> Very cool. Very very cool. And so even though you guys have had confidential mode on near intense for a little while um this was sort of the generally accessible mode. You know, you mentioned it was originally for transfers. Now

it's it's open. It's to the public. Anyone can use it. Protocols, developers, users, everyone. Um what are some of your favorite things that you've seen people do that previously wasn't possible. You know, now uh are there integrations that you're excited about? Looking forward, you know, what is confidentially in the stack really mean? >> Yeah. So I think that traditionally like crypto I I've read this uh this tweet from Jesse um today and he was thinking about like the future of base and blah blah all this stuff. But one thing that he said there is that like I can agree that uh that crypto is is a better money.

All right. And uh and we have been miserably miserably failing in producing a product that is at least on par with cash. So that everybody from doing a payment everybody are able to take a look into the blockchain and see what I have been using what are my positions what what is happening. And and now you can you cannot even if you're Charles Hoskinson, you cannot liquidate easily your position because everybody are tracking your wallets. So same same is happening with with Michael Saylor, right? So that's kind of the the problem.

So So the use cases that people started to to bring directly on near.com, which is not the perfect tool for example for business style use cases yet. Yet not the perfect tool. Many founders have been coming to me and saying sharing very positive feedback about okay, oh my god, I now can start executing payroll confidentially to to my employees and I don't and I can also, you know, deposit some money that might be in some one type of cryptocurrency and then I can convert it confidentially into fiat or sorry, not into fiat into stable coins and I can

make the payroll. Right? This is this is one of the one of the things that we are seeing that is happening. But also many people are just entering getting their positions confidentially just because they don't want to be copy traded or you know, some some other things. And and that's that's a really really good thing. Like I feel this refreshing breeze of the privacy that is coming down my face and this is amazing thing to feel.

>> Yeah, and it opens up all these new use cases. You mentioned payroll, which is, you know, a primary one because we have this thesis on on the roll up, which is that a dollar on chain tends to stay on chain. And so if people are earning their money, their paychecks, their salaries through payroll and payroll is done on chain, well, first it has to be confidential and and and the confidentiality unlocks the use case of payroll on chain. And so, people earning their their salaries on chain tends to stay on chain and set up in DeFi protocols, so on and so forth, and and powers the on-chain economy. So, it's a very powerful use case, uh and it's very cool to see NEAR Confidential Intents supporting this, powering this. Um you know, this is just

one of the use cases. Um you know, you guys helped unlock the Zcash ecosystem. We were talking about this a little bit earlier. Um all of this has driven volume and activity up to, you know, my notes say 22 billion plus. I just checked the dashboard, you guys are at 23 billion plus. So, you know, more and more every single day. In your perspective, given that you've got, you know, this very wide vantage point on everything that's happening on NEAR Intents, what have what according to to you and your perspective, what have been the biggest drivers? Why do you think, you know, what have been the biggest drivers to get NEAR Intents to 23 billion up until now? And then also, if you're looking forward, you know, you've got an understanding of the road map, and also, you know, some of the variables in the

market, what do you think will be the biggest drivers going forward to ultimately propel this to 30, 40, 50 billion dollars of volume? >> Yeah, that's a great question. So, um I think the the biggest uh the biggest drivers was just the relentless delivery of the of the product and as well as the growth functions uh that we had. Uh in the beginning, uh it was very very hard to to sell to somebody a new protocol that is developed, that is untested, and is not very very clear uh to the other person why would they choose us in comparison with ThorChain.

Um and uh uh yeah, but step by step, bit by bit, there were uh there were like more we we have been building more and more trust, uh and then it became easier and easier. Uh definitely probably the biggest impact was uh Zcash, and we've integrated Zcash uh more than 1 and 1/2 years ago into the protocol. So, it was not integrated just because of the privacy hype and the the spike of the activity uh connected with the Zcash, uh but rather it was just the the internal alignment of the teams, the beliefs uh of the in the ecosystem, and that's it, right? It just happened to happen that

Zcash became more interesting to everybody around. This could have happened with uh any of the more than than 35 chains that are uh supported by the NEAR and tens. Our idea is to just help everybody and create the actual network effect in between the blockchains uh rather than uh you know, being in this constant PvP battle um in between the ecosystems. Now, if I would take a look um forward, I think that the most important thing for the growth uh is uh is adoption by the businesses and or organizations, and there are different scales of these businesses. So, um uh and there are types of these businesses. There are like small offices

that are that are taken care of managing crypto on different chains in a in the self-custody multi-sig setups. Uh they are deserving a better solution. A solution where all of this stuff is uh is available in a single interface in a confidential mode with ability to execute financial transactions directly not leaving uh this confidential mode. For bigger clients, um uh for a bigger organizations that are crypto native, uh things that they want uh they want to have uh a better tooling to operate, and many of them are operating right now on the centralized tooling. However, um uh projects like HyperLiquid are opening up

uh their eyes that actually decentralized solutions can be uh pretty competitive with the centralized ones and can deliver great features. So, we need to cater to these to these kind of more institutional clients, if you will. And then, the last step would be obviously getting outside of crypto crypto adopters into the traditional finance and showing to them the values of the blockchain and ability to move money freely across borders extremely fast. That's the That's the thing. So, stepping into the payments territory, enabling agentic markets, and making sure that the agents are able to communicate and transact value.

This is the the kind of yet another frontier here. These three directions or these three pieces of the different types of organizations, I think that this is the most important. >> Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, this is this is where I think you guys have, you know, started to drive a lot more market share and started to generate a lot more interest. I remember going to an event powered by NEAR in Miami and, you know, there was Grayscale there, Bitwise was there. So, kind of getting more on the asset issuance institutional side of things.

I was just looking at this article this morning in the Wall Street Journal. Said JP Morgan, BlackRock, and Goldman to tokenize stocks and treasuries. You know, this could initially happen on some sort of, you know, DTCC you know, maybe private ledger of sorts. But, they plan to convert a batch of shares and treasuries into digital tokens. I'd imagine that once they tokenize these, you know, capital wants to be free, right? And NEAR intends does a great job of allowing it to reach, you know, the peripheral, the depth of the on-chain ecosystem. And so, I think once these things are tokenized, they're going to be be for places to go and I think NEAR intends can help them get there. You

make a you know, a great point around the institutionalization of the space and how, you know, the the NEAR Intent protocols are a piece of infrastructure that can underpin this adoption. Uh and then you also mentioned, uh you know, the agentic economy, which we know is going to be a driver of so many more transactions, and people have been calling for this, you know, for a for a long, long time. In the chat here, we have someone Travel Wings that said that they're on their way to a donut shop to sell blood for for buying more NEAR.

Obviously, as more of this activity happens, you know, there's going to be more revenue, more fees generated. Uh and we have more people that are asking about, you know, NEAR being supply capped, right? Effectively like a max supply of NEAR. Um is there anything any insight that you have on, you know, what we can expect from, you know, like as more fees are generated, these fees go to NEAR, and then, you know, we end up, you know, stopping the inflation, maybe making NEAR deflationary. You know, we'll we'll kind of get back on track to our confidential intents conversation, but as we look at the size of this industry, you know, the amount of volume that's been generated up until now, and the amount of fees that we anticipate will

be generated over time, you know, people like to put this these puzzle pieces together around, you know, what the economics look like for NEAR the token. When it comes to the max supply side, is there any anything that any insight that you can give us? >> Yeah. Um so, at the moment, uh NEAR token economy is inflationary, and the inflation is 2 and 1/2% per year. Um uh there are quite a lot of discussion that that is happening inside of the ecosystem. This was reduced from 5%, uh but there are continued discussions uh around whether the inflation is the good economical instrument in order to motivate uh the the validators um to to have

kind of to provide the security to the decentralized network. And and there are quite a lot of voices that are saying that actually no, because they are getting near tokens while instead they are spending US dollars to pay for for their servers and for maintenance and salaries and like all of this stuff. So so this this is a disproportionate thing. And when everything is good, then yeah, they are getting outsized returns. But when everything is bad, um then then everything [snorts] is bad. So So like this is this is a strange strange strange dynamics. And yeah, so there are there are talks of that maybe instead of using inflation as an instrument here, maybe it's better to

turn it off and have a different types of instrument in order to pay for the for the security of the protocol. However, to my best knowledge at the moment, I cannot say that I'm highly involved in this. I'm building the universal liquidity layer while somebody else is taking care of the inflation questions. Um so this is economics. Uh uh but the discussions are happening and to my best knowledge they are not yet finalized, but definitely there is a motion towards changing this.

>> Very cool. And you know, as the universal liquidity engine builder, you have a uh you play a you know, very important role in generating you know, revenue for the company that you know, ultimately is represented here. So make makes a ton of sense. Appreciate the the little tangent into something our community was very very curious about. Um you know, another thing that we're seeing is this three-headed dragon, right? So we've been talking about Zcash, we've been talking about hyperliquid, we've been talking about NEAR, and privacy is fundamental to the thesis that people are thinking about in the market right now. We've We've talking about AI, you know, NEAR has a whole AI, you know, department as well, and that's a very important piece to this. And we

talked about the Agentech economy a little bit, but privacy and confidentiality is also another another head on this dragon. Uh, A16Z called this the most important moat in crypto this year. I'm curious why, and we talked a little bit about this when it as it pertains to like, you know, payroll and these sorts of things, but privacy seems much much bigger than this, right? Which is kind of similar as to why Zcash is, you know, get garnering a lot of attention. You know, NEAR is sort of you know, if if Zcash is the Bitcoin, you know, NEAR is sort of like the, you know, the unlocking of this entire ecosystem when it comes to actually using and the utility of confidential assets. So,

maybe you can just unpack a little bit more about why confidentiality is so important to compound into a durable advantage. You know, what do you have to say here and how do you see privacy compounding in these use cases? >> Yeah. So, I think that the history here is is going like this. In 2009 and or 2008, Satoshi has been working on a on this new version of money that is not centrally that is not a monopoly of the government.

And up at that moment in time, if he uh would be able to design a system that preserves privacy, then there is no point in not doing it because cash is private. And then the majority of the of the transactions are happening with cash, especially some kind of shady transactions right? And yeah, so so this thing is is there. There is privacy and then if you're using banking system, you also have banking privacy. So, but there were no instruments in order to to deliver the idea of the decentralized money um

in a form of a private solution. So, it was not the the the public the the public nature of blockchains uh it was not the goal. It It has never been the goal. Uh uh it was just a necessity. It It is like an outcome of the current state of the technology back then. Now, uh we are getting ZK solutions and also trusted execution environments that are marching forward. Uh they are uh becoming at a at a progressively better shape. And at this moment in time with trusted execution environments, you're able to deliver many many different things.

ZK's are fundamentally having different uh perspective on the um on the on the threat uh on the threat levels, kind of. Uh and um uh and they are uh they are much harder to work with. Uh especially for more complicated primitives um that includes different defined primitives. So, uh so, yeah, the privacy now is coming back to the attention. Uh yeah, so so now the governments uh and regulators in the beginning, they have been fearing uh blockchain as as an alternative version of money uh because they are not able to shut it down.

So, they have been fearing it. Uh a little bit later, they started to understand that well, actually there are some benefits of it and uh you're able to build better uh uh better uh systems when you're transferring value using uh the blockchain. And uh I think that helped them understand this were the stablecoin providers. So, you still can regulate something there and uh and but still the technology you can get the benefits of the technology. Especially with the current US administration with the genius act, it became much more apparent apparent, right?

And but now also there is like another hurdle that okay, there is a new type of a technology that is able to deliver the privacy and where you are actually able to make blockchain this new better version of money on par with the financial systems that you have had in place before. So, why not to do this? There is an a straightforward path. You can imagine a let's call it Shevchenko act in the future where the US lawmakers are going to uh express and and legalize the privacy and they would say that this type of privacy

is okay and that type of privacy is not okay and there is some guidance of how how this thing should be happening. So, in that case, if you're going to have genius compliance stablecoin under Shevchenko act, uh you are suddenly are able to get a better version of money that is delivering all of the promises of the traditional financial system. So, that maybe that's the reason why A16z is thinking that privacy is is important here, but yeah, internally very deep inside myself, I'm just thinking uh the privacy solutions are just bringing back normality to the blockchain.

>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean this is part of the thesis that was always present on chain, but you know, with the institutionalization of a lot of these protocols, we've sort of navigated a little bit deeper into you know, some tradfi ethical, you know, design choices. Um it's good to see the pendulum swinging back into you know, the original ethos of the industry. And, you know, you mentioned how the genius act is something in the US where regulation is pushing forward. We have sort of the right kind of privacy wrong kind of privacy. And, you know, there are ways to combine that with some of the regulatory pieces of legislation that are out there now in the US.

Europe is taking a different approach. Mica and these things are sort of reshuffling, you know, they kicked out finance, right? They're sort of like European maybe stable coins, maybe central bank digital currencies still kind of to be determined. How are you viewing the regulatory environment in Europe? And, how do you program in, you know, compliance where compliance is necessary, but maintain the confidentiality that keeps crypto true to itself and true to its principles?

>> Yeah. I do believe that the current stance of the US is much more aligned with crypto values. And, it feels to me that the current administration embraced the values and the limitations of the technology. Right? While at while in Europe the regulators are trying to to kind of put the the crypto into the framework of the traditional financial system, which is impossible, right? So, regulations that are that are instantiated in some of the countries like are so so strange and they are extremely

unenforceable. So, like like limiting of how much money people are able to custody by themselves. Like how much how much crypto they are able to custody by themselves. Like you are not able to this is unenforceable. And, so I feel bad about this type of regulations when they are when they're coming out and that that is very very strange. This is like I feel that the regulators just fearing that they are they are losing control.

And the best thing to do here would be just to explain to them that the control plane is different that that you have been expecting and you have digital money, but then you also have cash. You're not able to limit how much money a person how much cash a person can hold, right? So the way how you're regulating it is with some other instruments. That is a very very similar thing to crypto, right? You you regulate the issuance of cash. You regulate like how you're putting getting out cash out of the market, right? So things like that. So I feel that like particularly in Europe, I feel that

that crypto with all of the lobbyists, with all of the all of the people around who are working with governments, I feel that in Europe these people and us we are failing and I feel good about being able to meaningfully progress things in the US and this is great, but yeah, unfortunately in Europe there is we are currently at at failure mode. This can change and I think that this will change eventually, hopefully sooner than later, but at the moment definitely it's a little bit more complicated.

>> Yeah. Yeah, well it's difficult given that, you know, in the US we have administration that changes every 4 years. In Europe, you know, they they've taken an approach to, you know, applying the rules that they've always tried to apply, but you're right, crypto is something fundamentally different to try to apply that to rules that have always been here is effectively impossible. Uh Uh, and for some reason, you know, these these regulators are just too close-minded to create some new regulatory framework that would, you know, regulate these things more appropriately, uh, which I think you know, there are some libertarian maximalists that might not want any sort of regulation at all, but, you know, you

being in the space, we've seen, you know, the scams, we've seen the rug pulls, we've seen these things. We ultimately do want some sort of, you know, control over, you know, illicit activity, uh, but, you know, given that this is a a technological leap and bound above anything that the regulators have seen before, it takes some customization. Um, and that customization applies, you know, all the way deep down the stack. It applies to, you know, the financial components, it applies to the governance components, it applies to the technology itself. And so, you know, I I'd be curious to to understand a little bit deeper about, you know, how you've designed the protocol at a technical level, right? Cuz there's a bunch of different private approaches to how you

could design privacy applications out there, right? There's, you know, encryption, there's ZK proofs, you know, there's some of these different tradeoffs. You know, what does the the privacy preserving mechanism of confident confidential intents how does it work? What does it look like? Does it include ZK? You know, does it not? How did you think through what options were out there? What options are out there? Maybe who did you borrow technical ideas from and and ultimately how did you make the decision on what you ultimately came to to implement into the protocol?

>> Yeah. Um, thanks for the question. Um, so, uh, uh, I'm very aligned with the idea that uh the privacy and freedom is not impunity. And, uh, the freedom and privacy of a single person ends where the freedom and privacy of the another person starts. Um you're free to have a gun uh in the US, but when you're starting to kill people, then you're becoming not free. And uh uh and and and from my point of view, uh the way how the protocols are designed and the protocol builders should design the protocols uh that are uh

securing people, securing legit users, and trying to make sure that the that the proper like the the good users are not going to be fooled and not going to be scammed by others. Which means that the protocols need to think about preventing the attacks, preventing uh specifically black liquidity going inside of it. Uh this is just my deep belief, right? This is not aligned with the crypto anarchists. Uh this is not aligned with uh um you know, with maybe like some some some some more right-wing crypto people, I would say. Uh but I do believe that this is for good. I don't want uh NEAR intends to be used to fund terrorism. I

don't want NEAR intends to be used for laundering money. And NEAR intends is the worst place in the world uh that uh these people who are willing to execute this um this use cases uh uh so NEAR intends is the worst place in the world for them to try it out. Uh and in order to do this, uh we have lots of compliance student that is attached to it. Nobody was forcing us to do this, but we decided to do this in order to protect legit users who are inside. The same principle was behind the designing of the confidential NEAR intends. So, we thought that that the end-to-end encrypted uh systems with ZK, where you are unable to prove anything and you are unable to execute

many things, uh uh these systems are going to be very hard uh to use in the long run because of two reasons. First one is that the person would not be able to prove uh independently to uh to for example auditors or to any centralized parties that they are interacting with uh things like origin of funds and stuff like that. We see that the crypto is moving forward and more beginning beginning to be intertwined with traditional finance. So, there are more crypto to fiat interactions and that's why there are more and more questions uh about the origin of funds and stuff like that.

But, this is natural for the kind of stratified ecosystem. So, we would like to make sure that such such audit proofs are able to be generated by by people by legit users who are using this. So, this is one thing. And second thing, uh independently of how good our compliance student is, uh uh there might be cases and hopefully there will not be such cases, but uh there might be cases where still bad actors are going to try to use the the privacy tools in order to conceal uh uh the path of their black liquidity.

And we would like in these cases to be able to issue an independent uh by the by the compliance council, uh which is a multi-sig, uh the viewing keys to the uh to these bad actors' accounts. Now, uh we understand that this needs to be properly disclosed. So, the plan right now is to um to put down the information about all of the issued viewing keys on chain so that people are able to verify at any given point in time whether whether their account was uh uh was getting and the this viewing key.

But, this also gives an opportunity for law enforcement agencies uh that are working on investigations uh to be able to access this information. Now, obviously this is a still decentralized system and the compliance council is not a a single person who is making a decision here. Our job is to help law enforcement to get connected with the compliance council and then they are they're going to all of the councils are going to make their individual decentralized decision on the particular issuance of the key.

So, I would expect that for example I believe if FBI is going to come and say that like this particular account has been laundering money or like has been funding terrorism, we would like to know where he where this account was funded then this this request will be will be validated and everything will be okay. But if the North Korean government is going to tell is going to come and tell that all of the users of New Internet are the illegal guys, so you need to open up all of the information here then probably compliance would not be okay with this setup, right? And I think that this is kind of like a logical thing to have.

Yeah, so that's the approach. We call this a practical privacy. And the idea here are the idea here is coming from the same very similar systems that have been in use for many many years and this is just a traditional banking sector. There is a a banking privacy rule, right? So, that's great. This is exactly what is executed. It's just a random person is not able to see how much money you have. But if there is a law enforcement who is looking into this stuff, well, yeah, there are some suspect suspicions or something and then yeah, that's that's kind of it happens from time to time and and and that's okay and

nobody is freaking out because of this. That's okay. Usually people who are freaking out are the people who who are doing some scams or some illegal activities. So, uh, this is by the way not my quote. This is something that Elon Musk said from his paper news times. Yeah. >> I remember. I remember he said, you know, he he said the same thing about the politicians that are screaming, "No, there's no fraud. There's no waste. There's no corruption." Usually the people that are saying, you know, there's no corruption are the ones that are corrupt. I remember Elon talking about that as well. And so, what you're saying is that there's a council that is able to validate the requests from law enforcement. And even if you say, you know, there is a viable valid request

from law enforcement, the council would approve the issuance of a viewing key, but the viewing key >> to see the the transaction history. >> Uh-huh. But not the transaction history of everything in near intent. Just the one account. >> No, the end and even it it is more granular than that. It can be limited in time. It can be limited in in particular assets and stuff like that. >> All right. Yeah. I I mean, I look, I think this is practical. Um, you know, there are, like you said, there's, you know, uh, libertarian maximalist, you know, cypherpunks out there that might be claiming things. But

the the point is that this is not a mixer, right? This is not Tornado Cash. This is like, you know, practical privacy, as you had talked about, right? Like, the the these are some of the the, um, design choices that are important to make to be practical in the eyes of both, you know, normal everyday privacy-preserving consumers and as well, you know, into integrations with institutions that are looking to use this on large-scale enterprise-grade software. Um, and I think you answered my next question actually very well already. Um I'll I'll kind of ask you anyway if there's anything else to fill in, but you know, balancing the two. How do you

balance right everyday privacy-preserving consumers with, you know, integrations with enterprises? Like do you have I and I take it the the idea is that no, you don't need some, you know, separate instance that has some extra compliance features in order to make sure that, right, cuz institutions don't want to mix funds. They don't want to mix funds with potential criminals. That is something that institutions have made extremely clear. But, what you're saying is that you don't need separate systems, you don't need to fragment liquidity, you don't need to do these things. You can have this council that preserves privacy in a very practical way and is able to validate requests from law enforcement. Everything stays

as one, but you're able to make this one protocol compliant. >> Yeah, so privacy-wise, definitely that's that's kind of the same thing. The thing that institutions are more, um, uh, freaking out about is the counterparties that they're trading with. And uh taking into account the design of the protocol, uh, the people are trading with market makers the same way how traditional markets are working, you know, uh, centralized exchanges. Um, and, uh, you know, like like prop MMs and stuff like that. So, um, you the important thing for them is there is a

KYC'd or KYB'd counterparty on the other end. And, uh, and within this uh, this KYC or KYB, there is also a check of the of the origin of the funds. So, and then once this is happening, then they're absolutely okay. So, this is something that needs to be handled on the level of the protocol within the, uh, within the matching algorithm. And at the moment in time when when institution is coming in and says, "We would like to work on the with these set of partners uh that might be just KYB'd, uh maybe out of this particular list that we are trusted we are trust we are trusting uh then the protocol just behaves correctly so that it is not

matched against um unknown liquidity. And now very very small comment uh on the uh you know, to close the loop on the on the architecture of the confidential intents. Uh I do believe that you said a very important piece there that this is a design choice. Nobody is telling us uh you know, how to build what is what it what is good and what is not, right? Uh the important thing that I would like to just mention is that uh Near intents uh and the confidential intents is not better than Tornado. Uh it is not better than than Zcash. Uh it is it is just different. It's just different different design principles

that are inside. And they are um uh they are delivering like there are different products that are delivered here, right? With Zcash, uh you have this sense that uh independently of anything, nobody is ever able to uh to see your transaction history, right? And then uh this is like protection from state level attacks, right? So, uh all of the countries in the world are trying to attack and trying to uncover your privacy, they are not able to do this.

Um and this is like one uh if especially if you if you died, because if you're if you didn't [snorts] die, then probably they will find some kind of way um how to do it. Um but like if you die if you're if you're dead, then like impossible, unclear. Uh this this is This is like a uh uh like a fully up to up to the end uh kind of play on the privacy. Um do we need to go there? Do we want to have the same type of risks uh that are associated with this? Um uh will there be any scrutiny from the governments when they are going to understand that

like it's like the Zcash is such a powerful instrument? Uh are we going to see a very similar adoption curve of of Zcash's privacy? Uh I don't know. Uh but let's see. This is just a different design choice and I admire people and Zcash a lot and on what what they are building. Uh but this is just a different take. It It It brings different set of risks. It brings um interesting challenges like like with the Ironwood the the recent Ironwood update, right? And uh yeah, that's uh uh um yeah, it's I don't think that one is a substitute for the other.

>> Mhm. >> I do believe that these technologies are actually working together. Absolutely the same way how there is a difference in between your money in a bank account, your money in a safe deposit box, your money in a safe that is in your house, and the money that is in the counter in your kitchen. So, the these are just different things and what people are doing, they are just managing the risks and the convenience of all of these tools and they are using these things the way in order to in order to have like a diversified uh portfolio and they are balancing

privacy, usability, and all of these different things. So, there is no silver bullet killer here, but having multiple types of solutions and multiple types of system is actually enriching uh the possibilities for everyone in crypto. >> Yeah, it's like um it you know, the people and money is a tool and you want different kinds of tools, right? Like I don't want to take a hammer and try to you know, screw in a a nail or screw in a a screw. Like I would use a screwdriver for a screw. I would use a hammer for a nail, you know, and so I would use cash for the more convenient less, you know, private elements for you know, why bank in a vault sort of thing, I would use, you know, a different type of money, a

different tool. So, you would, you know, use tool money money purpose fit. Uh so, it makes a ton of sense what you're saying. I just want to I just want to understand maybe the the one minute, you know, take from you on on Zcash. It sounds like you're bullish. I I want to understand, do you do you have some Zcash? Like what is the bull bear case in Alex Shevchenko's mind for Zcash as an asset? >> I'm the holder of Zcash. I'm holding Zcash in the confidential near intense. So, that [snorts] nobody knows. Um it's but it is a little bit more convenient me to have it inside there because with Zcash I need to wait for the synchronization with the network and usually it takes a little bit more time.

So, I actually have a hedge to set up. I have some amount of Zcash on the hardware wallet, but some amount in the in the confidential near intense. Um yeah, and I'm using Keystone and overall the feedback to the Keystone guys, please do something so that the so that the the device is not dying so quick. You need to fix the battery like really. Um my my case for for Zcash, I do believe that um uh it is going to it is going to appreciate more. This is not financial advice and this is like nothing connected with near. This is like my personal feeling uh internal.

Uh I think that it is going to appreciate more in value especially with the next bull market that is going to happen. I don't think that it is going to go to 10,000 US dollars, but there is a there is a high chance that it is going to break multiple thousands of US dollars like it's it's pretty straightforward. I do believe though for Zcash it is extremely important to work with regulators and make sure that the technology is adopted this similar way how the stable coins were adopted through the genius act. And I know that Zcash team is putting quite a lot of effort into this and

that is one of the core reasons why I'm bullish on Zcash. >> Yeah, pretty pretty cool, pretty incredible. I don't know maybe 10,000 dollars is far, but multiple thousands of dollars is very very cool to see and yeah, I share I share your your bull thesis. Alex man >> Alex is guaranteed. >> [laughter] >> Don't do this to me. >> I'm not I'm not going to I'm not going to ask your your bull thesis on Near. You know, we mentioned we we already know you're bullish on >> Yeah, this is very similar like I'm ex like at this point when I'm already sharing any numbers this is yeah, but like the ticker is Near. It is always

it always has been and yeah, it's 142 37 very easy. Go in there or at least in that direction. For me >> 142 37? What is what is that? >> Yeah, you never heard? Yeah, it's a plan. It's a plan. The the masterminds, the reptiloids and the masons and all of the flat earthers they were on a convention together and they figured out that it is going to go to 142 dollars and 37 cents. So I'm waiting. >> Near is going to 142 dollars 37 cents called >> [snorts] [laughter] >> called by the flat earthers and the

reptilian overlords. >> Yeah. >> Oh my goodness, we're going and the Masons and the Masons and of course the Masonries. Wow, we're going to our team is going to clip this and the community is going to run wild. >> We can we can do the contest of of the best t-shirt on token 2049 that is connected with this. >> Near to if near hits 142 37, I'm driving in the Singapore Grand Prix token 2049 2026.

Um oh my goodness, that's incredible. Uh okay, last but certainly not least Alex, I I think our team has the song ready. The song that you brought to our attention from the Zcash community. It's called big city roll up. It seems like someone from the near community >> Yeah, there is one guy there is this guy Cooper and then around near con where in San Francisco one of the teams from the community has built this near dot FM website for the for the AI generated songs.

There are quite a lot of hidden gems there. But we also have this guy Cooper very active from the community. He's from the US as far as I understand and he's vouching for near. He's posting lots of bullish thesis. Today I woke up and saw another message another like post from him and then I I commented something like I'm going to I'm going to put your put your name and your avatar on a t-shirt and I will always wear it when I feel down, but nobody will see me in this t-shirt because because you always you know kind of like giving me lots of energy, so I'm not feeling down.

>> You're not [snorts] down. >> Yeah. So, something like that. But, the but but Cooper is hilarious. There are lots of internal memes about him, about how how bullish he is. So, I'm not going to share this. But, he produced several great songs. The song This one about Bitwise, the Dragonfly, and especially Big City Rollup. That's This is one of my favorite songs on the Near From. Everybody go check out near.fm. You will find some cool things there. >> Guys, go check out near.fm. Let's play I think we have the song ready. Let's go ahead and and see if we can get a clip of this song.

>> Yeah. Rollup Co in the building. Andy Robbie Manhattan Let's get it. >> Yeah, I'm out of Gainesville. Gator boys with vision. [music] Bitcoin club at UF. [singing] Freshmen on the mission. Started Defi Slate. Grinding through the winter. Bear market couldn't break them. [music and singing] Nah, it only made them sicker. Living in the Rollups. Called the thesis early. Modulating the future while the rest [music] was getting blurry. Two kids from Florida with a mic and the conviction. Now they face to face with leaders. That ain't science fiction. Studio was anywhere.

Laptop and a dream. [music] Late nights, early mornings putting out the stream. Episodes on episodes. The catalog is [music] deep. West they move the market, conversations that you keep. They don't sleep. They don't stop. They don't stop. They don't fold. Every cycle, every chapter, watch [music] the story unfold. From the dorm room to the big room, bet it all on the content. Now the city's calling Andy Robbie, you're the moment. >> [music] >> Here we go. >> [music] [singing] >> Yo, what a banger.

>> [singing] [music] >> Catch them at the Javits. They're stage, no debate. Roll up co-official [music] planting flags in the Empire State. Manhattan office corner desk skyline out the window building out the network like a protocol. [music] Let it grow. They covered every hour one, every branch, every chamber of peak prodigy talking near man. They saw it on the plane and tips the ages stack privacy [music] in the cold. 67 chance connected zero slippage on the road. Smart enough to see it, real enough to speak in near protocol the future and the roll up didn't sleep on any breaking down a thesis. Robbie pulling up the gas [music] when it comes to neo finance.

Yeah, they simply are the best. >> Hustlers in the truest sense they built it brick by brick. Twice a week they're dropping gems. The quality [music] is sick from the bed to the bull. They never miss a beat. Now they're running Manhattan, put that city at their feet. >> [music] [singing] [music] [music and singing] >> One hand in the air for the podcast king. Street lights, big dreams in the future that they bring. No place in the world got a show that compares. Put your

lighters in the air. Everybody say yeah. Come on. >> [music] >> Come on. >> [music] >> 8 million stories in the city. Here's two more, [music] two founders who refuse to ever settle for the floor. They interview the builders, CEOs, and protocol leads. Turn a 30-minute episode to everything you >> Man. That was a banger. I think we I think we're going to bring that into our new our intro and like that's going to be our new theme song, Alex.

>> Yeah, let's get it. Get it. Get it. Get it. Shout out to the NEAR community. >> Yeah. There are there are lots of great songs. There are many songs that are that are about Zcash. There are There are some AI agents who are writing the songs there. Yeah, there is an AI agent that's called AI Rock Lover or something like that. Um There is a bunch of the songs about Litecoin and their hack. Um >> Oh, yeah. >> You are able to also create their challenges for people to create whatever song and agents and whatever song that you would like to have and uh I mean this is we have been talking with at some point in time with the marketing department and uh kind of the conclusion is that this

is a new form of creativity that you're able to do with the AI tools here and uh yeah just Yeah. Recommend it everyone. >> It's incredible. Alex, man. We uh I could stay here. I could jam. We could We could write some new AI music, but we uh going to prepare for our next guest. Uh thank you so much for joining. This has been AI Supercycle episode 42 and uh it was a pleasure as always. Alex, thanks so much for coming on. >> Yeah, thanks. Everyone, check out confidential at on near.com and see you in a couple of weeks after the next 5 billion.

>> You got it. You know it, Alex. We'll see you then. Take care, everybody. See you next time. Amazing. All right. Well, new theme song established. We got it. We're going to get geared up for our next guest. Um we've got Ray Hadi, research associate at ARK Invest. I bet he's got a NEAR thesis and a Zcash thesis as well. Very very cool to see. Guys, we're going to take a quick standby and we're going to bring our next guest up.

Uh man, let's hear it for the roll up. Let's go. Check out Near FM for uh for all of this all men. That's epic. Very, very cool to see. W's in the chat. And uh yeah, very, very cool. I mean Alex Shevchenko came down and said uh 147 according to the reptilian overlords on Near. And I said multiple thousands of dollars is the call on Zcash. So, yeah, pretty, pretty incredible. And um man.

There we go. There we go. Freedom guy, appreciate you rocking with us. Hype chart is sick. And uh we see the flag forming. You guys heard the thesis on Near and Zcash. Nest army, little miss gun, appreciate you guys rocking with us. Christian, Freedom guy. Let's keep it going. Guys, don't go anywhere. Be right back. Keep the chat fired up. And uh we're going to have a quick little standby. And uh we're going to keep things rolling here with Ray in just a minute. Guys, don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. >> [music] [music]

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[music] [music] [music] >> All right. What's up guys? We are back. This time with Ray from Arc Invest. We're going to be chatting about the market and the tokens as a whole.

Uh some general trends, clarity, stable coins, tokens, everything going on out there. Ray, um I think it's like your second or third time on the show, but it's been a little while. >> No, I mean no, actually actually first, man. I think Lorenzo came on. He did an episode with you guys like a bit ago, but this is definitely my first time on the show. I've been in the I've been in the studio though in New York. I just haven't been on the show. >> Well, uh we've had plenty of conversations offline, so it feels like, you know, you're a familiar face, but it's the first time introducing you to our audience. So, in in that case, just give us, you know, a little bit of background then, you know, uh you know, how did you ultimately, you you find crypto and and what led you to

ARK Invest? >> Yeah, so I actually got into crypto kind of in high school. My dad had like a friend of a friend who does like kind of like a Bitcoin adjacent hedge fund. And he was telling us we need to buy this thing and so I had like some allowance money, just kind of put it into this Bitcoin thing and forgot about it. And then like later on, I was in college at the time and this was around like 21 during like the huge like crypto bull market. You had like Neymar and like all these huge celebrities like Justin Bieber buying NFTs and Bitcoin was at like 60K. So I decided, okay, maybe I should check this out cuz this little $200 I put in my wallet like or in this, you know, what I was thinking of like a you know, flash drive has done pretty well. And so then

I started like actually like reading about it, you know, reaching out to people who knew about you know, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever. I read, you know, a couple books, started like messing around on on DeFi like on Ethereum and then eventually just got kind of hooked, started my school's blockchain club and then basically kind of knew like this was the industry I wanted to work in going forward. So you did a couple internships in the space, worked at a token advising firm after I graduated college and then, you know, eventually ended up in this position and then been here for about a year and you know, most of the experiences you know, has been on the research side and that's what I find interesting in crypto. But yeah, that's pretty much like the long story short.

>> Awesome. And yeah please. >> Oh no, I I wasn't going to say anything else. >> So on you know, ARK Invest side, just give us like could you give us kind of a general overview of you know, we we are familiar with ARK Invest. We had Cathie Wood on and you know, she kind of talked to us about all of her big ideas and you know, those span from robotics to AI to crypto. Can you just give us a bit of an overview as far as you know, what is ARK Invest's involvement in the crypto industry? >> Yeah, I mean, obviously like kind of like the main like products that we're going to have touching crypto are going to be the public ETFs and that'll touch a lot of like public like crypto related or crypto adjacent companies. So, that's where like the majority of the AUM is.

Um there are some like product like asset specific like ETFs that we have as well and then like in the past we have done some stuff on like the private side with actual like token exposure. Um those have been sunsetted like as of recent and then additionally there's like the private fund um which does, you know, contain like a couple of crypto related names. So, basically it's kind of just like general like crypto exposure and then like investing in the companies then also like a lot of the tokens that we have high conviction in and think, you know, are disruptive and you know, enabling new behaviors or you know, something that we find like interesting or you know, valuable going forward.

>> Yeah. Um as, you know, kind of a research analysis you guys are diving deep into several different categories. There's categories that seem to be like these converging supercycles if you will. Like there's tokenization, perps, and stablecoins. >> Yeah. >> Every show we do this daily we just continuously find ourselves coming back to. It seems like every day there's something coming out of like the hyper liquid lighter situation or something coming out of the stablecoin Goliath's new stablecoins or market share developments. And then you've got, you know, regulatory perpetuals, stablecoins, tokenization as a whole. Like just today you had these major banks, financial firms, JP Morgan Chase, you know, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs all talk about

tokenization uh in terms of tokenized equities and RWAs, you know, going and either doing this on a DTCC ledger or Canton or something like this. Feels like perps, tokenization, stablecoins are just these big general trends that are taking the world by storm both crypto native as well as, you know, kind of the the financial institutional incumbents. What is and and that's just sort of a preface for cuz I'm curious, what is your main focus given that you've got sort of this holistic view of the digital assets industry? Out of Is there something out of those three or something else that you find most compelling that you just from a from a research perspective or an investment perspective, you just find like there there's such a deep niche

here to explore both technically or financially? Where do you find yourself spending most time, spending the most amount of your focus? >> Yeah, I mean I think like kind of like where we spend time and like what is the most interesting? Those like kind of align but sometimes, you know, they diverge. But I would say like in terms of like what's the most like interesting. Like if you think about like blockchain, like what fundamentally got me so interested was I was like this is just a much more efficient and like for me like logical way of moving value. Like when you think of what Bitcoin actually enabled, like the internet it was great for, you know, peer-to-peer messaging, but there was no peer-to-peer value transfer. And so then blockchain enabled that through Bic or I guess Bitcoin enabled that using blockchain technology. And then Ethereum kind of built on top of it um

adding like the layer of programmability and then that's kind of where like these different layers like ended up like of each kind of building on the next and you have like Solana and then eventually hyper liquid and then that kind of gets into like what we're talking about, what you're mentioning with like perps and stable coins and RWAs because then you have like these actual like financial primitives that then people are realizing like this is like like a purpose a much more pure way of like and expressing like a certain view like instead of like the way that options contracts have worked or like futures contracts have worked like in the past or like a stable coin is just a much more pure way of sending value from like one person to another instead of going like you know, cross-border payments like nostro vostro accounts

between like multiple banks. And I think that's kind of the realization and I think fundamentally that was like what was so interesting to me. So in terms of like where I'm spending time, it's like all of this stuff. Like all of this kind of falls under the umbrella of like what is interesting one to Arc and then two to me as like somebody who was kind of like nerd sniped by this like asset class. And then but terms of like where we're actually spending time, like obviously, you know, it does depend on like the time of the year. Like if it's earning season, you know, that's different. You know, we do have public coverage and you know, portfolios that we do have to manage that may not allow me to be like you know, I guess like as deep in the trenches with like tokens and like kind of the

on-chain world as much. But like where I'm spending time when I have it is, you know, in tokens and kind of more of like the on-chain native areas cuz that's what I find the most interesting. >> Mhm. Yeah. So I mean same here. This is where we're deep and you know, we we talk to a lot of people that come from this token world. You know, maybe we'll we'll start on you know, the blockchain side of things and then you know, want to get your take on you know, some more of maybe there's applications and tokens that are really catching your catching your eye these days. Um, you know, there's been new chains that have gone live and and have been quite successful. And you know, even Ethereum you know, and ETH the asset is showing signs of life again, which is you know, really really

cool to see. Yeah. You know, I'm I'm curious if if you think you know, this is as a result of you know, people considering the ETH is money thesis, you know, people are denominating more of these markets in ETH and it's becoming more of a collateral asset. Or do you think this is more ETH the revenue conversation? You know, your partner Lorenzo kind of put out a great analysis about what the pricing model is, what it could look like. It it seems like ETH could raise prices and not lose customers to other chains. But philosophically, I just find it difficult for them to justify higher prices when they just continuously, you know, have been hell-bent on trying to scale the chain, bring down transaction costs, unlock new use cases.

So, do you think there's a path for ETH to raise Do you think they should raise prices? If so, how do you think they should go about doing that? Or do you think you know, it's not necessary at all. ETH is money and that is just enough of a value proposition as it is. >> Yeah. No, I mean, it's a really interesting like question, and um I'm I'm kind of like torn between both sides, cuz I actually understand like the argument like of Lorenzo's like piece that he had. It's, you know, very well thought out, and you know, they probably could charge more, um and maybe they should be, right? But then when you think about like what's the underlying mechanism to do this? Like is this like an EIP? Do you edit like 4844? Like the EIP for like the blob like capacity? And

like I think like the whole point of that was to make cheaper, more abundant blobs, right? And so then when you increase that that kind of goes downstream like if you increase the rollups. That's probably going to go downstream to the rollups themselves, and they probably have to charge more. Maybe that inhibits like rollup growth, so that's maybe not something you want to do. It's like, "Okay, then does Ethereum go negotiate like a rev share with like the L2s themselves?" And that's something that, you know, who's going to do that? Like which organization within Ethereum's very fragmented like R&D ecosystem, um is heading that, cuz it's probably not the foundation. Um but for me, it's like like when I kind of think about this, it's kind of a double standard that only like really Ethereum has. Um a lot of

other chains actually get away with this. But if you go to like probably like an average crypto investor, and you're like talking to them like, "Hey, like Ethereum is only earning like a very small amount of like the fee share here. They're not charging fees cuz they're maybe you know, you know, hoping to gain more users or like grow their actual adoption and distribution of rollups." They'll be like, "Oh, that's, you know, dumb. That's not economically aligned. You know, there's no symmetry there." Versus like when the same investor goes to Morpho, and they're like, "Hey, we're not charging fees cuz we want to grow adoption and distribution, and actually get uses of like our on-chain credit product."

Everybody's like, "Oh, that's genius." So I think there is like a bit of a double standard, um and kind of just like I think that stems from just so many people have held Ethereum so long, and it hasn't really prioritized the asset to the extent many of them would like. So, there's like a you know, a different sentiment when looking at it versus like other tokens, even when it does the same thing. >> Uh so, you are you still a believer in ETH the asset? It you know, and and also I'm curious how you how you think you know, some of the the disin- the ETH Foundation feels like it's almost dis- disintegrated, right? It's just been almost dismantled at this point. The people have left, they've gone into other organizations, which it you know, I I would I was speaking to someone as part of this new ETH Labs

organization. They were mentioning that the ETH Foundation always had this principle of subtraction. They always wanted it because it was very instrumental in the early dev- days of Ethereum, they always wanted it to get smaller, not bigger. And so, this is kind of always gone according to plan, but I think the communication strategy just was always so poor that that principle of subtraction should have been communicated to the market as a whole so that people were a little bit more understanding of the trajectory for the ETH Foundation. You know, now the people have left, they've sort of started their own independent or entities, you know, some dedicated to research, others dedicated to the asset.

Do you think this, you know, this um more, you know, just this divergence from, you know, the one foundation and you know, do you think that's bullish for for Ethereum as a whole? They're a little bit less united, but now we have more of these entities. Just curious, you know, how you see this and then also maybe ETH you know, digital asset like Dats and treasury companies seem to have taken so much supply off of the table that, you know, in the case that we do see some friendlier market conditions, there is I don't want to say, you know, a liquidity, you know, or supply crisis or whatever, but you know, that might be a little cliché, but they've taken a lot of supply off the table. So, we've got all of these independent entities now.

How do you think the Ethereum protocol and ETH the asset are going to react to this new organizational structure. >> Yeah. Um so I guess like to start off I kind of my view on like Ethereum and like it kind of just stems from like how like how do people value an L1? Like what is the correct valuation framework? Like is that fees? You value it as money? And I don't think we've really figured that out yet. And I know that's like very cliche. Everybody kind of talks about that, but it is true. Like there's no like one way to value an L1. And for Ethereum for example, it's like if you go and think about like Bitcoin as money and like that is a store of value. I think Ethereum has very similar properties. Maybe not at the same scale.

Like it doesn't have the same monetary properties as Bitcoin obviously, but whatever discount you would apply to that, maybe it's significant, maybe it's, you know, not insignificant, but somewhat like the ETH asset is still valuable um through that analysis. And I think like going forward and you know, you're talking more about like like the fragmentation of like kind of the R&D side of Ethereum and kind of the organization. I think that is like somewhat of an issue going forward. Like obviously the Ethereum Foundation did have the view and they've been very clear that like they do want to I guess become smaller over time and take a a less of a role. But for me like I would imagine like from just like my perspective, that would happen when the protocol is more mature. Like when

you've maybe hit those scalability um thresholds that you've wanted and like maybe those other things like privacy and etc. Like you've hit those walk away standards. And I wouldn't say like it's hit that today just based off of like what the Ethereum Foundation like hopes to achieve, especially like also if you're considering like implementing like post quantum as well. And so there's a lot of like things in the development that still need to happen. And I'm not saying that um these, you know, additional I guess entities here are not going to be productive, but for me it's it's already when I think about Ethereum as like governance or like an ecosystem, it's already a very distributed ecosystem that takes a while to get anything through because of how many different parties need to be in the conversation.

So now we're kind of splitting that up even further. And for me that makes it, you know, that it just adds a bit more like I mean, I would say like you know, skepticism because if you look at something like Solana, like maybe you can have your criticisms on like, you know, they aren't as, you know, decentralized or you know, the like the client distribution isn't as diverse as something like Ethereum, but at the same time it's like they're in a stage where they do kind of have everything under like one roof. It's a little more organized. And I think that does help when you're actually like in that stage of still growing and like shipping and developing at the protocol layer. And I'm not saying like this isn't the right move for Ethereum. I think time will tell. We'll see how they actually, you

know, adapt to it. But it is definitely something I've thought about like especially after, you know, seeing all the news and then like the drama with the Ethereum Ethereum Foundation as of recent. >> Yeah. Yeah, it it seems a little bit early to tell because it is a new trajectory for the Ethereum governance and organizational structure. Um, ultimately I think people were, you know, they were a little bit disillusioned with the way that the Ethereum Foundation was heading. So people felt that there was a change that needed to happen. Now we've gotten a change, so kind of, you know, still a little bit too early to tell, but we it remains to be seen how how positive or negative this is. Um, I'm bullish on ETH, man. I get dogged for it a little bit, but I I just I still think, you know, you look at, you know, the most

amount of stable coins, the most amount of tokenized assets, they have the developer moat, they have the solidity, you know, smart contract robustness. I think all of these form the moat for Ethereum. If they can solve, you know, the value accrual to the asset, maybe it's money, maybe it's revenue. If they can raise prices, they probably wouldn't lose customers, but, you know, the I think the idea is you just they're still in growth mode. They can still go out and acquire customers before raising prices. And they to change their tune and then just flip into a higher pricing model feels it feels contradictory to the the ethos and the principles that they've had around maximum scalability up until this point and

even though it's one of the oldest cryptocurrencies and oldest protocols, it still feels like it's so early in this entire the life cycle of this technological you know, shift that it is it can still be in growth mode and and and still do quite a bit of growth before it has to you know, really turn on monetization. >> Yeah, I mean I I 100% agree with that. And I think like if you were to ask like any developer of like where would you deploy your like software like your app so that you can retain like maximum sovereignty over this in the next 10 years and like actual ownership. It's Ethereum. Like that's where you want your application to live. Or if you're a user and it's like I'm going to put funds somewhere and like stake them so that like I can have some type of like

interest income or like some you know, make them productive to some extent and leave it for 10 years. Where do you want to leave it? It's like probably Ethereum. Cuz yeah, they do have those network effects. They do have that track record. And I think that's going to be like I 100% agree with that. I think that's going to be extremely hard to disrupt. Like that's a very deep moat. >> Yeah. There's another thing I want to ask you about maybe on more of the the store value thesis cuz I just got off a session with Alex Skiff Shenko, the co-founder of Near and Tens. They're crushing. Near's doing great. Got like 23 billion dollars of volume through their intense protocol and Near, you know, is is picking up quite a bit.

A lot of the volume that they had through their protocol was a result of kind of unlocking the Zcash ecosystem. And he had this, you know, Zcash thesis of, you know, multiple thousands of dollars. Andy and I in the show talked quite a bit about this rotation from Bitcoin. You know, you got MicroStrategy. You've got this institutionalization. Kind of feels as if it's lost its Cypherpunk ethos. Zcash fixes a lot of that. Feels very Cypherpunk, you know, not institutional and and has a lot of the, you know, privacy-preserving aspects that, you know, people enjoyed about Bitcoin originally before, you know, chain analysis and and people got involved.

What do you think about Zcash? Like, it feels like it's outperforming off the lows here. I'm just curious if you have a thesis. >> No, I mean, that's funny. I feel like I could have bet if there was like a Cal Sheer Polymarket to bet on what tokens you're going to ask me on, I would have put Zcash in top two or three. Um but no, I mean, Zcash I've been like dug a ton into. Um I I actually I think um you know, the private Bitcoin narrative, like I think that's more of like a meme like than real, but you know, I I do like Zcash. I think like um I would say like privacy sometimes is thought of more of like a feature rather than like the product, right? You want actual like utility and then you have privacy on top of it, but in terms of

like, you know, just a store of value asset that can like kind of obfuscate like your holdings. The Zcash team, I think they're one of the most like technically impressive teams in crypto. You know, obviously like have followed like the migration they're doing from like Orchard to the Iron Wood pool and, you know, what you know, that that clears up a lot of like the skepticism that a lot of people had about the counterfeiting, but for me it's like I need to see the actual migration happen first before I'm fully convinced because I don't think you know if any counterfeiting has actually occurred until you see like the same amount that's entered the Orchard pool is that which has left and moved migrated into Iron Wood. So, I don't think there's any way to tell until that

happens. But, besides that like the work they're doing on formal verification is also something I'm very impressed with because that's a direction like Vitalik has talked about that and a lot of other founders in crypto. And that's the direction the whole, I think, ecosystem is going to move. And the fact that they're already getting ahead of this is very impressive. And then, um you know, privacy is important like we see all these really dystopian headlines like coming out like every other day I think you know crypto Twitter loves like propagating those around and redistributing it. So I think you know like yeah it is kind of like private Bitcoin to an extent maybe I don't know what the equivalent of like hash power like you know whatever securing Bitcoin you can look like the hash rate and that's kind of a measure

of its security. I don't really know what that would be for Zcash maybe it is also hash rate I'd have to check that out but yeah it's like it's like a derivative of Bitcoin with privacy to some extent so bullish Zcash I think I don't know but I would say like with a caveat until the I see the migration happen fully then that would reassure me. >> Yeah it is almost up to the price at which it was when the you know potential exploit was announced which is pretty incredible even before this new pool is live.

>> I I thought that was one of the most crazy like panic and sells I've ever seen. >> Mhm. >> Because like there was no actual exploit like that was even verified. It was like hey guys there was a potential for this to happening and we found it you know likely found it first and plugged it and now we're going to do all of this other like very great like technical work to further verify the network and everybody was like oh my god like there was a potential exploit I'm going to sell everything and I was like I watched it crash like 50% I was like what what are we doing?

What [laughter] are we doing guys? Like I I don't own like a ton of Zcash but still I was looking around like that was you know a buy opportunity if I've ever seen one but >> Yeah it's tough to knife catch those but but you're right there's still a lot of fragility in the in the market especially at that time. Ray moving a little bit more general like away from you know the the conversation around specific coins or tokens like ETH and Zcash. Uh just kind of categorically, like there's been a couple of things uh that have come out even over the last 24 hours. Space still moves so fast. I want to ask you about. Um So, Jesse was uh Pollak from Base was kind of commenting on like the pillars and sort of this strategic shift from uh

like his social thesis for Base and more into like winning on trading, payments, and agents. And so, you know, we don't have to talk about Base originally if it makes sense for them or or or not, but just, you know, as a whole for blockchains, as we look to apply the technological innovation that we have into certain use cases, you know, historically there has been a push into culture, consumer-facing, even decentralized social, you know, Web3 type of things. Now it really feels as if we're, you know, taking a more practical financial approach and applying this technology into trading, payments, agentic finance, you know, these sorts of things. And you can even,

you know, put perpetuals into this category as well because, you know, that is one of the the leading, you know, trading venues and and trading vehicles as of right now and mechanisms. Do you think this is a, you know, a warranted shift? Is it justified to effectively like sunset, you know, the even the attempt to to Web3 social and consumer-facing crypto and these sorts of things and shift primarily into a financial point of view? You know, are we are are we just still too early? Like, you know, Farcaster shut down and these sorts of things had a good run.

They were building for like, I don't know, longer than 5 years, closer like 7 or 8, but, you know, they just weren't able to get the traction to ultimately stick around. Do you think they would have ever, you know, stuck around? Are we just too early or does it make sense to really just hyper-focus on the financial applications of blockchains? >> Yeah, I mean, I think definitely too early. I think a lot of these like social fi kind of I guess like the metaverse like that type of stuff web 3 like it just really is like reliant on kind of like crypto in the back like user like user abstraction such like something where like the user and the

user doesn't know that they're using crypto cuz I think it's a different user base. Like a lot of these like more social like uh like social applications. And for most of like the time since we've been in crypto it's been a very difficult or like high friction experience for a lot of users that are non-crypto native. So I think most crypto native users are there for the more like financialized or like financial use cases, right? So that user base I don't think is one to one with those that would be using like a social app. And so until we've really abstracted all that complexity and I think you're seeing that today like there are some applications with you know through like payments or credit cards where like people are using stable coins and blockchains and they don't even know it. And I think like as that

matures like there is a place for like web 3 and you know social fi and etc. but um yeah, I would say like a bit early on that front and then yeah in terms of like what's working like perpetuals um payments stable coins like blockchains I think um we we touched on this earlier blockchains have been one of the best ways to move value. Like that's been proven that's why institutions are building out their own kind of like you know proof of concepts you know like the even the DTCC announcement today like DTCC. They have their own like uh I I think it's like Ethereum fork called Hyperledger Besu like that they're running. Uh yeah that they're running like piloting transactions on like uh if we look at a lot of the institutions like JP Morgan has the same thing with

like Connexus. So that's been proven so I think that's definitely something we should lean into and there has been product market fit. Like if you look at what has taken off and what has done well just like lean into that in the short term especially like in like where you're allocating like your time and like maybe like the tokens you're looking at and I think that's you know what's going to like drive crypto into like greater relevance and then eventually like moving into the areas where it can impact or can't have a strong impact but it's just maybe not as obvious or um you know ready for today. >> Yeah.

I I think that I think that's absolutely right and you know we're we're seeing a ton of the adoption that's happening and you know you mentioned this DTCC announcement uh you know they plan on launching their tokenization program formally in October and so I think we're going to see a lot more announcements like this leading up to October uh ultimately when this thing is going to launch and then a lot of the firms that keep assets at DTCC will be able to convert you know their securities into tokens. Um I've seen a few different like really cool mechanisms around this um you know from the broker perspective those with you know the broker with its own chain um we're chatting with uh I think it was formerly the founder of dYdX now

launching a DEX on this chain uh is uh the way in it's working is effectively like this tokenization on-demand or like just-in-time tokenization mechanism where you know this DTCC thing is essentially will tokenize a batch of securities these will become you know stock tokens and then you can use them in you know an on-chain format whether that's Hyperledger Canton or what have you. You know that requires essentially setting aside this inventory and putting it into a tokenized version whereas the alternative approach this just-in-time tokenization is hey you know I have this on-chain facing application that is going to

uh sell or facilitate the exchange of these stock tokens customer comes in they submit an order they are streamed prices via brokers APIs and the order gets submitted, and the broker tokenizes it right then and there, and delivers the tokenized version on the chain. Right? And the broker's able to do that because they own the stock on behalf of that customer, and so they can tokenize it when the order comes through. They don't need to tokenize a whole batch of inventory right off the bat. They can just tokenize it on demand when that order from a customer on chain comes through. So, it's been really cool.

Like, we obviously were around for DeFi, and you know, we saw so much experimentation in this regard. I I just think it's really cool to see the different mechanisms, some of these different financial experiments come into play as we're, you know, just continuing to chug along this tokenization adoption curve. >> Oh, no, 100%. And I think like we'll we'll see a lot more experimentation. Like, like the uh kind of like synthetic like equity like tokens or like I think those are very interesting, and like they're definitely like plugging like a hole like where there is like demand today.

Um but, like long term, like what just seems the most natural and most obvious is like the native asset issuer like um tokenization from like the issuer themselves and like native issuance. And those are just cleaner. Like, I think a lot of these, you know, they're become like complications when it's like a third party determining like who can hold the token, like who's whitelisted. Okay. And like you actually access the underlying. It's complications which we saw with like a lot of like the pre-IPO like SpaceX um synthetic tokens that were uh floating around. And I think like once you have like the native asset issuers doing this, and it's kind of like written into like the token contract itself in terms of like the permissions and who can hold it, and

it's like approved where it's regarded as like an actual like one-to-one canonical share of like equity in the company, like a lot of these like kind of frictions go away. And but it yeah, it's it's definitely like really exciting, and I think like going forward like you will see like asset issuers be more incentivized to get involved here. And I think like something like in like we're seeing like a lot of, you know, like companies and like tokenization firms actually kind of like pushing into the space more aggressively and that's definitely like a trend that I think is extremely like nascent.

>> Yeah. Yeah, it it I mean it's been very cool to see and you mentioned the you know the SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual market. That was that was very cool. And it was very cool and we were just talking about this today because there's a Chinese memory manufacturer that's going to go and IPO on the Chinese markets and you know, there's this pre-IPO market for it on Hyperliquid and it's priced at like five to six X what the IPO listing price is and you know, kind of not specific to any you know, whether it's SpaceX or this new you know, Chinese memory manufacturer, you know, the the fact that you know, Hyperliquid and Lighter and these these guys, like these are real mechanisms for price discovery. This was always the question

mark is you know, are they going to have a price that is going to be similar enough to the way that these things trade on public exchanges and you know, we've gone through a couple of these IPOs and lo and behold they are similar. This is a reputable and legitimate venue for price discovery of these of these assets. And so you know, given that these things are real, they are they are legitimate, like do you have a horse in this race? Like when it comes to Hyperliquid, Lighter, you know, variational, um, you know, >> Are we talking about what you >> perps specifically?

>> Yeah, on perps. Like these things are money-making machines. What do Do you have a you know, do you have a What do you think when it comes to the Hyperliquid Lighter market share? Or we know, you know, CME, there's incumbents that are going to enter this market that are coming from a more, you know, traditional financial, you you position and they're going to be looking at listing some of these things as well. You know, who do you think ultimately takes the cake here? >> Yeah, it's it's difficult because obviously like when you go and look at, you know, these different like perp you know, like on-chain like perpetual exchanges like Hyperliquid, like especially with like HIP 3 and kind of like the flexibility that's provided it has just taken this whole thing by storm. And

while like, you know, yes, like you look at the market like extremely like extremely dominant. Um there are a lot of like interesting developments. Like I think as we like like cuz we do something we do like a DeFi quarterly basically and we look at like a lot of metrics across the space and like just looking at perpetuals, the long tail of like on-chain perpetual exchanges has been taking share in the open interest and volume. So, those are actually like, you know, I'd say speeding up. And then additionally, you know, we look at Lyra, like they've had some great announcements being like the de facto I guess perpetual exchange on, you know, big TradFi players as well. So, that's something that, you know, gives them some like that that definitely is going

to give them a lot of distribution. But I think right now it's kind of difficult to tell and I still would back Hyperliquid because when you look across crypto, one thing like I always see and like has been true like across time is, you know, it's an incentives game most of the time. And at the end of the day, there are a ton of backdoor deals that you never hear about. And I would say a lot of like growth like when you see early growth on a lot of different platforms that kind of just comes from nowhere and they, you know, go like zero to hundreds of millions or something, it's like there's probably some incentives or some deal that's happening that's kind of driving this.

And once those incentives dry up, then I think it's you know, the time to tell like which one is actually organically scaling. And Hyperliquid has already passed that point where they're organically scaling. They're not really in an incentive driven period. They really haven't been for most of, you know, the last like year or two. So, for me that's like kind of where like I'm looking at the current market because if you look just at the volume or the open interest, like it does look like it's getting more competitive, hyper liquid, and HIP-3 is losing share. But, you know, then you have to go back and kind of think about how new some of these protocols are like these exchanges are, and then, you know, think about what's the incentives behind it.

>> Oh. Yeah. I I mean, I I think that's right, and I think we've seen that with not only PERPs, we've seen that with DeFi as a whole. Like, there are uh and and it even goes I mean, it goes beyond, you know, blockchain applications and and crypto companies. It goes to the growth story of, you know, companies at large. You know, when when the subsidizing when the subsidies end, is the company still alive? Is it still growing? And, you know, you can't say that for all the crypto companies or all the companies that are out there. But, you're right, Hyperliquid is already past that point. I think Lyra's probably past that point as well.

Yeah. >> Yeah, I mean, I know there are some incentives like for the new um like instance Lyra's deploying um to kind of drive like distribution and growth there. I wouldn't say that's like massive compared to like, you know, obviously it's a much smaller instance than their canonical like um L2 that Lyra runs, but, you know, it's still something you have to like consider like as like new growth or like, you know, happens or, you know, market share does like maybe accrue to them to some to some extent. >> Yeah. Uh Ray, last thing I got for you, uh we talked about it at the beginning of the show, Polymarket is pricing the Clarity Act at about 40%.

That's how That's where it is uh on the prediction markets. Over under 40%, you think this thing And it seems like it has to go through by August 7th is when the Congress goes on a recess. Uh you think it goes through? >> Um you know, I really hope it goes through, you know, knock on wood. But, so I actually I was in DC for like a crypto policy thing that the Digital Chamber put on, which was great. But, interfacing with a lot of like the Senate like staffers and some of like the senators that are close to it, it feels like there are a couple things that need to get done still that we just haven't seen any developments on. So, like for example, one of those is like obviously the ethics provisions everybody's talked about. If I saw updates on that and like there was

actually writing that both like Republicans and Democrats agreed on that was being like incorporated into the bill, then that would definitely increase my odds. And then I think the other issue is a lot of people have talked about like just like some of like the illicit finance protections. And those I don't think will be as much of an issue. Like we have heard from like some senators that they won't back the bill unless like the language is changed. I think the language as is is very reasonable and like changing it actually like pushes a lot of like non-custodial like um developers or like I guess developers building like non-custodial software into um requirements that they did not um like basically like in their like

implicit contract in terms of like what they thought they were building, they didn't agree to initially. And it kind of undermines a lot of like the entire thesis of like what crypto is there to do. And I think would be like very unproductive to the growth of this industry. So, I don't see that change like a big change there. And then lastly, I think the biggest other thing was like the um uh like the yield and like active or passive like stablecoin yield. And I think that's pretty much settled from what I've heard. So, like the language that's there is basically what's going to stay regardless of what the banks say at this point in time.

So, out of the three, I think one very big one outstanding. Second, like with the illicit finances kind of like for me like 25% maybe could be an issue, not as big of an issue. And for me it's like I would actually need to see language on ethics, and then the illicit finance stuff maybe pushed under the rug. And then we have to actually get this on like the Senate floor and then if it is like on actually push it to the floor and then vote it on has to go to the president's desk but I don't think it gets to the president's desk without ethics included and then it's like does the president sign something that potentially like inhibits his ability to act in crypto as he has or like currently is or like historically has so that is also a question because it's

like you could actually get all this done and get it to his desk and it's like does he sign it? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> But the one thing that I would say like definitely gives me confidence so I'll end on something positive I don't want to be a downer is that Lummis has come out and said like this is like her sign-off legislation like this is what she wants to end her legacy on and she's somebody who has historically historically got stuff done so she's somebody like I want to bet on so if she's saying like this is her sign-off this is happening like she's going to will it over the line then you know that's something I'd like to believe.

>> Mhm. That is bullish uh appreciate you you leaving us with with with some good news there I mean she's been a great advocate as a whole on Bitcoin and you know broader market structure so that's very cool and yeah ultimately it seems like it's it's sort of you know it's it's time to make it or break it when it comes to Clarity Act so appreciate the insights you know like you said from the Digital Chamber event interfacing with Senators as well as you know give us some some reason to believe in in the Eths of the world Zcash you know some insights on on stablecoins and perpetuals as well right hope to have you a guy again you know back on the roll up sometime soon.

>> Yeah definitely I appreciate you having me on glad I could end on something positive I think we definitely I mean the tides are turning but we definitely need as much of that as possible right now I think. >> It feels we're like in this transitionary phase like end of the bear >> Yeah no great great chatting as always Thanks for Yeah. I mean, I know everybody says like macro drives crypto and then you had like the, you know, CPI and PPI numbers come out better. So, like that's kind of probably what's driving a lot of this right now, but you know, uh we'll see. Like hopefully like this is kind of like the start of like a more positive trend, but you know, time will tell.

>> Yeah, we'll see. Right, thanks so much again, man. We'll we'll see you again soon. >> Thanks, Robbie. >> See you. All right, guys. >> Am I Wait, Robbie, am I on still? >> Nope. Uh that's it. All right, the chat is the chat's telling us to go ahead and drop cuz they're ready to go watch FIFA. >> Yeah, I was just going to say. >> [laughter] >> We're we're ready to end. Let's wrap it up, guys. Thanks for rocking with us and we will see you next time. >> [music] [music]

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