🚨LIVE From The Tower: ETFs Booming! AI Trade is ON? Fun CEO, Kinetiq & Kaleo Join The Show

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Heat. Heat. Thank you. Lord, we'll see you around the timeline. Feels good to be back.

>> I think The Rollup is one of the most premier media brands in crypto and Andy and Robbie are great experts at everything they talk about and it's my favorite podcast. >> Adding it to my library every potentially multi-chain deployments. We are at Dev Connect day one here. You guys see? Heat.

Heat. JP Morgan, Black Rock, DTCC, Fidelity, 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 else to say.

I'm bullish. >> He said it. He finally said it. So bull. It is bullish. I'm bullish. We're bullish. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Corola is headed to the top. If we're

not already at the top, we're going to the top. >> Roll up is my favorite. >> People from all walks of life, all over the world, all over this industry come together for the roll up. Zoom out. The institutions aren't

coming. They're simply here. It's the golden age of crypto, guys. Get right. Let's go. >> Welcome to the next. See you on the show. >> All righty. We are here. >> Happy purr day. >> Happy uh >> hyperlquid. >> Happy secular bull market. >> Hyperlquid. Hyperlid purr. >> Hyperlquid near. >> What's going on with near over the weekend? Oh my gosh. >> Hyperlid near. Zcash. The >> trios. The uh the threeheaded dragon.

>> Venice just chilling, holding up. 17.7. I mean, this is just we just continue to have to slam the good coins. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the rollup. You're watching the rollup live from the tokenization tower broadcasting live from the financial capital of the world. Today's May 26th and we have a great show ahead. Before we do introduce Rob's new studio, let me tell you about Plume the Nest. Where we're broadcasting live from the Nest is Plume's onchain asset management and vault product. Shout out to Plume putting us in the office, getting us set up. Rob, tell us about your new studio.

Man, I notice something different. >> Indeed. It turns out the uh there's two financial capitals of the world. Uh the beautiful sunny uh quite warm state of Florida and its lovely income tax laws has brought quite a bit of wealth to uh the sunshine state. Obviously, we are uh we are quite fond of our northern headquarters at the 77th floor of the Empire State. Uh but the this is the new digs in Florida, just outside Miami. I'm on the west coast of Florida. So, just a hop across the Everglades and uh sunny South Florida. Tons of billionaires, lots of capital to be allocated. And uh nowhere better. We're we're we're doing

the snowbird thing. We've got the Empire State and we've got uh we've got South Florida as our dual headquarters. >> Nice. Well, glad you're settled in, man. I'm sure it was a hell of a weekend. I uh >> the Memorial Day weekend in New York was unreal. Um I mean, it was just Knicks winning great hockey games. >> Sweeping. >> Sweeping. Yeah. >> Um great hockey games, great Knicks games. It was electric. Yeah, Memorial Day here was cool. Uh, getting moved in to the new spot. Um, I did get a chance to play about nine holes of golf and I got bit by a lonear tick. So, I picked

up some antibiotics this morning. We're dealing with that. >> What? >> Got bit by a tick cuz I lost a ball in the woods. >> How do you know it was a lonear tick? What even is that? >> Uh, those are those are the ones that don't carry lime, which is good. favorable for the culture. Uh how is I able to how do I know that is because I've got a close uh friend partner of mine that is very uh accustomed to identifying ticks uh through through her photo of it through her work. >> Uh she pulled it off of my leg. She took a look at it. She said, "Yep, that's a Lone Star tick." Uh she got it before it like fully burrowed into my my quadricep. And uh yeah, it's got like a

bullseye looking thing which was not particularly reassuring, but >> unreal. >> The good thing is that we were able to identify the species. It's the less aggressive kind and uh you know, we're keeping all of our arms and legs. It's good good to see. >> Beautiful. Well, we've got a great show today. Welcome back to the tower, ladies and gentlemen. Happy Tuesday. Uh we've got markets and weather funds founder is joining the tower after a massive raise. Alex Fine, Omnia of Kinetic. I think their token launch is tomorrow. Um, the largest liquid staking protocol on Hyperlid. Uh, and then we've got Kaleo calling in Crypto Kalio. Markets and more. Guys, always bullish. So excited to hear what he has to say. Topics are

always powered by Treasure, all our go-to hardware wallet. Visit treasure.io. Use code rollup10 to get yourself a treasure today. Let's get rolling, ladies and gentlemen, into the markets and weather. Before we do, let me tell you about our friends at Frack. Open stable borderless building infrastructure for the future of digital money. For more information, start using the future of digital money today. Visit frack.finance. Rob, it is 78° and it is partly cloudy, definitely sunny, definitely a vibe in New York. It's been a it was a kind of an ugly weekend. Yesterday was beautiful. Knicks won four. Bar the bars were absolutely losing their mind. I mean, it was it was kind of insane. Monday night, walking

home at like 10:30, 11:00 p.m. The whole city was awake. Um, so yeah, it's been a kind of a shitty weekend, but yesterday kind of, you know, made up for it, >> man. It's been uh it's been quite warm uh down here. It is hot. It's a beautiful day in Florida, but uh but we're we're we're uh we got the AC blasting, so uh you might see some some uh some sweat stains building up. We're going to deal with those as they arrive. Uh, but it feels feels good. I I I do like it here and uh it feels it feels good to be in the new spot despite the warm weather. Uh, it's funny how the weather section tends to turn into sports. But I got to ask you, Andy, as now you are a New York local.

>> Knicks going to the finals. >> Who uh who are they going up against? Because the other series here is tied 22. >> I think they're going to play the Spurs. I think the Spurs are going to win it. >> I hope they win it. Who do you put on Webinama? >> I don't know. But I would just I would just love to see that Wemby versus the Knicks in the finals would be just so electric. So electric. >> Yep. I agree. I that's who I'm rooting for in the West. >> Yeah. Today's weather as always is powered by our friends at Relay. Visit relay.link for any of your crosschain swap needs. Let's get into the markets, guys. It has been up, down, and sideways, but honestly, not a lot has changed into uh Bitcoin and and the majors. Before we do, let me tell you

about our tokenized equities partner, Dinari. Quick shout out to them. Building infrastructure for tokenized equities and bringing real world stocks on chain. Do more with your stocks. Visit dinari.com. Quite a bit of red out there today, but I mean sitting at 2.68. Last time we had them on on this ticker before we went on that month-long trip, believe it was at 1.3. >> Yeah. >> So that's right. is flying. >> Double >> chain link's chilling. >> They got all the way up to about 29 >> almost $3 >> what? Yesterday.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So, obviously, you know, uh no show, no live show yesterday. We posted uh our full podcast with Arthur Hayes and I the founder of Near. Tons of great clips. Totally recommend uh watching it. Arthur calls for a 20x. That's when Near was sitting at about $2. Um, and uh, you know, we also, I mean, I realized some things that were kind of just hiding out there in plain sight, but they add to, you know, why Arthur is is making this call. Near is fully diluted, which is incredible. Uh, everyone who, uh, is trying to dump has already dumped. Uh, and then Ilia also talks about some of the tokconomics. Uh, how buybacks could ultimately make near

deflationary. uh they're looking at lowering the inflation rate and they're buying back tokens. All of this combined leads to a very compelling value proposition for near the asset. Then obviously all of the product suite confidential intents near AI all of this is starting to hit uh at the same time which is great and yeah so no live show yesterday we didn't go over the markets near was up at 29. uh Hyperlid was 63 64. So obviously you know even though hype is 62 near is 260 270 uh you know things have come down a touch since yesterday but these things are continuing to charge.

>> Yeah looks good. Um we'll see what happens. Bitcoin's so weak. I mean we just need Bitcoin not to just totally fumble down to zero and we we're going to have some fun times ahead. um markets otherwise obviously this oil kind of stuff happened this weekend where there was a bit of a slowdown in this war and oil tumbled down equities new alltime highs um across the board. Well, I mean it people are still a bit upset about the performance of crypto and I don't blame them because it has been very uh very asset specific and honestly like I outside of Hyperlid Venice near Zcash couple of these other you know kind of

newer AI tokens have been starting to perform it's been you know the signs of life have been bleak so >> Andy I think we we you know obviously we've got a lot of news to cover, but we've got 20 minutes or so until our first guest joins. I think it's worth mentioning some of these other coins that are starting to uh show signs of life. Obviously led by the likes of Hyperlid Venice near uh Zcash, we have this like contrarian privacy AI narrative brewing. Um and I think that is now starting to seep into uh you know broader sectors of the market. And so if I'm looking at, you know, other coins that I think could follow suit, you've heard me talking about Akos. Akos is up 80% in the last month. It's up 175% in

the last three months. They're focused on decentralized compute. They're doing very very well. We've had Greg on the show. He was at Nearcon. We've had him on since then. Always >> looks insane. >> Just a a great guest, great product. They're making waves in the AI industry outside of crypto. And then you know obviously the token uh is following suit. So I like Akos. Um I also you know we have Worldcoin is out there catching a bid that there was some chatter around Worldcoin over the weekend. I'm still kind of on the fence about Worldcoin but obviously it's got AI overlap given that Sam Alman is you know very much affiliated with Worldcoin Open AAI.

There's tons of crossover there. The other one, last one, uh, that I want to mention, uh, actually I got, I guess there's two. Ionet is, uh, a good idea, venture portfolio company. Uh, so obviously >> what is that thing doing? >> A disclosure there, but it's up 20%. Wow. Uh, it's starting to hit. >> Uh, it's starting to catch a bid. Obviously, these things are um, you know, they're they're standing on the shoulders of giants. When you think about Zcash and Near leading this p privacy wave, these things are starting to flow into the rest of the crypto AI space.

>> I own that, dude. I mean, >> crazy. It's crazy. Um, so I'm not really calling that, but obviously you just look at what is going up. Uh, it's up uh doing, you know, 10% uh today. It's up 50% this month. Uh, so >> the chart is not great when you zoom out. Yeah, when you zoom out, I mean, >> you look at, you know, the year to date, it looks okay. A year plus, it looks a little bit bleak. Long way to go to get back up to that 50 60 cents range. The last one to mention is Zama, who is our partner for this segment. We've been friends with Zama for quite a while.

They're a great partner. Uh they're obviously playing into this privacy narrative as well. And I think uh they're an extremely slept on team. they are part of the research lab uh that is ultimately driving the space forward at a very very deep technical level. Uh it does take some time. We've seen this in the past where it it takes some time in order for that technical prowess to flow into the asset layer. But I I believe in Zama. I think the team is great. I think the product is great. They have the right vision. And I think it's just a matter of time before that value that they're building technically ends up uh flowing into the into the asset. Not >> Yeah. looks ready to break out.

>> Yeah, definitely not financial advice. Zomod does look ready to break out. Uh it's at kind of like a really important level here since launch. If it breaks here, it's kind of in unknown territory, which is always bullish. >> It's pretty much at that launch price, isn't it? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Right at about uh >> 3 cents. >> Three cents or so. Three and a half. >> Three and a half cents. >> Uh they had a you know a very unique launch >> um you know where they had confidential bids. uh people were able to place, you weren't really sure, you know, who was bidding where. So, it was a it was a very uh it was a very unique form of price discovery. Uh which, you know, people thought was good and bad. Uh tons drove a ton ton of interest, ton of

opinions. Uh but you're right. Now, it does seem to be looking at uh price discovery once again if it breaches uh this three three and a half cent level. >> Yep. Yep. I agree. I agree. I like it. Zcash looks kind of weak, but I'm not really worried about it. It'll uh chop around before it breaks out. It's got a it's got quite the job to do to break out to a 10-year all-time highs. Hyperlid, great. Anything I'm missing on that on that list? K, Worldcoin, IONET, >> you were talking about grass, but I don't know. It's uh it's got a a lot of a lot of still quite the high float. And then Aerrum, I think.

>> Oh, Aerodrome. not with the privacy narrative, but uh the >> Aerod Drummond and Sky, I think both have a chance >> to kind of outperform from here >> at least just like hold up and uh do well. >> And is this like the fundamentals thesis? Because obviously on one side we've got the AI privacy thesis but you know hyperlid is driving this fundamentals thesis on sort of the other side where good fundamentals good business model good revenue ultimately leads to an equity like token aerodrome sky these things that have good fundamentals are kind of building on the back of hyperlquid whereas the others are building on privacy AI narratives >> yeah it's kind of like a return to fundamentals thesis buybacks good quality tokconomics good net value flows

um those things are probably going to perform and so I think that's or at least like have a chance to perform. So um that's how I'm thinking about it. >> I like it. I uh I'm holding both Sky and Aer Drrome. Arerome had a nice pop. I think I got a good entry there. Sky, man, Skye's tough, but when it gets going, it gets going. >> I know. And usually that's, you know, one of the signals for what people like to call alt season, which is t it's typically just been like a sectorled, like a defileled bull run, right? Which is kind of the alt seasons that we can point to in the past cycles. Um, you know, they've predominantly been DeFi and Maker was one of the one of the slower moving ones, but when it got

going, you knew there was there was things uh things ready to happen. >> Yeah. All right, guys. Let's get into the news. We've got a ton to talk about today. Before we do, let me tell you about Near, our AI premier partner. The blockchain design for AI native applications autonomous agents start developing today at near.org. All righty. Circles Jeremy Lair says programmable money is the only starting layer. Let's play the video. So, Circle is a is a money issuer. Like, we issue digital dollars. We issue digital euros. EURC is the largest digital euro stable coin. We issue

digital treasury products. We have the largest >> tokenized money market basically. So, we're a money issuer. And so if we can build networks that have wide utility and protocols for that those those monies that we issue that are super super widely used and provide a great you know utility you can permissionlessly plug in etc and and and we can grow that >> the monetary base alone >> can be massive right so we can imagine that you know these these kinds of of digital dollars running on these networks there'll be trillions of dollars of these as opposed to hundreds of billions of them now and so that itself self is is significant and you know the economics are are very significant from that. So circle is a is

a money issuer like we issue digital dollars, we issue digital euros. EURC is the largest digital euro stable coin. We issue digital treasury products. We have the largest >> tok money market basically. So, we're a money issuer. And so, if we can build networks that have wide utility and protocols for that those those monies that we issue that are super super widely used and provide a great, you know, utility, you can permissionlessly plug in, etc. And and and we can grow that. >> The monetary base alone can be massive, right? So we can imagine that you know these these kinds of of digital dollars running on these networks there'll be trillions of dollars of these as opposed to hundreds of billions. Now

>> we have here and we can go ahead and pause this um >> you know the when he talks about the monetary base growing the idea here is that we are going to have a better understanding of the stable coins out there. we'll have a better understanding of the leverage in the system and we can more confidently measure the amount of liquidity in the system and therefore we can grow our our monetary base accordingly. Um you know right now banks are doing the job of credit creation um and you know this is sort of they they you know loan out the money they create the credit and then it's and it's kind of just out there.

Um, and so what I think Jeremy is saying here is that, you know, being a monetary issuer themselves, they're able to create credit. This is taking the place of regional banks, commercial banks, um, not the gigantic, you know, G Sibs, but, you know, they are essentially the new regional banks. They're able to create credit, issue loans, put more liquidity into the system, and grow the monetary base. And this is what the Federal Reserve, this is what the Treasury, this is what uh effectively helps the economy is when uh banks and monetary issuers like Circle and other regional banks out there are able to issue credit and grow the monetary base. This is ultimately

putting money into the hands of the people that need it. They're going to be doing good things with it. And if you think about the traditional system, uh, and the the analog to, uh, you know, the digital dollars that Jeremy's describing, um, you know, you have a mortgage company or a business loan. They make that loan. there's a a a person at the bank that underwrites that loan and they're going to maintain, you know, communication and they're going to do their due diligence to make sure that the bank gets gets uh you know, repaid on that loan with interest via the the creation of valuable services from that business loan or from that mortgage. Uh this is ultimately what helps the monetary base grow. uh in the digital equivalent with stable coins and

monetary digital monetary issuers like Circle, they're effectively doing the same thing, but instead of a business loan to a construction company or, you know, a loan for a house and a mortgage, uh these moni digital monetary issuers are are issuing credit to digital companies or digital protocols. And this is what you hear Jeremy talking about is if we can build protocols that are helpful to an onchain economy and you can issue credit or monetary instruments that help that onchain e economy and and valuable protocols uh flourish, then you're going to grow the onchain monetary base or the digital money base.

Uh this is effectively equivalent to growing the off-chain monetary base and helping the economy flow because you're putting credit into the hands of people that need it. They're going to use that credit for creating new services and filling demand in the economy for a range of services. And so now we're starting to see a suite of onchain protocols and onchain services get built out. those companies and services need credit and they need credit onchain in the form of digital dollars. And I think >> yeah, >> you know, and and then obviously you have the off-chain equivalent here in the analog, but in like to to really sum up this point, it's it's part of the thesis that we've been talking about that a digital dollar tends to stay

digital. You know, this you know theory, this this law of you know this Newton's third law or first law, whichever one it is, you know, object at rest stays at rest. object in motion stays at motion. Well, a dollar that stays onchain or a dollar minted onchain tends to stay onchain. A dollar created offchain tends to stay offchain. And so, I think what we're seeing here is that as you know, new protocols get built out, you know, they they issue credit in the form of digital dollars. Those digital dollars tend to stay digital. They end up in onchain protocols and then that ultimately ends up in onchain assets.

And I think we're going to continue to see this flywheel take place as more and more valuable onchain digital services get create created and credit uh digital credit gets extended to those services and those companies. >> Speaking of digital credit, our boy um Sailor, he bought $1.3 billion of longdated bonds or convertible notes back rather than buying Bitcoin. Uh kind of an interesting interesting tweet from his side. Let's keep it moving into Hyperlid though, Rob. Uh soon USDT will be enabled as borrowable for portfolio margin on testn net and then will be enabled in mainet on the next upgrade.

This is kind of an interesting piece of news following the following uh news of Coinbase USDC and hyperlquid. Basically traders can directly borrow stable coins for their leverage positions. This being USDT obviously right now USDC is the main one. uh higher capital efficiency, you know, advanced level portfoli strikes me as a little bit weird. Yeah, I I'm not sure what to take out of this, but I know that Tether feels like they've missed the boat on Hyperlquid big time and on other perexes. Lighter

uses USDC. Variational US uses USDC. Somehow Tether missed the boat on perexes quite a bit. And I'm not sure why. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So Tether had a stronghold in centralized exchanges. Remember Tether's >> right >> got, you know, some early early affiliations with Bitfinex. Bitfinex was one of the largest exchanges back in 2017 and 2018. the the largest uh as you know east uh eastern hemisphere exchange uh before you know the the likes of OKX and even Binance got you know grew to the size that it is now. uh Binance obviously is still uh you know USDT is

very prevalent on Binance but I think part of the reason that we see this here is that we do have an alternative you know centralized exchanges has its infrastructure stack uh USDT is part of that uh in you know hyperlquid's case and other decentralized purpose exchanges uh you know you have USDC as a primary asset um you know there's structural design choices to these stable coins and I think uh you know I think there's regulator regy uh rationale as to why you might prefer USDC to USDT, but you know, Tether is starting to encroach on the regulatory mode of Circle. Um, and so Circle might not even have a regulatory moat beyond Tether at this point. Ultimately, it you know, I I agree that it is strange

coming after Coinbase's partnership and Circle's partnership with Hyperlid, but this kind of just goes to show that Hyperlid is going to continue to do their own thing. you know, just because they have this partnership with Circle and Coinbase, >> they're not going to be easily swayed. I think they're going to leave uh leave all of their options open to users and and ultimately try to supersume everything uh and give, you know, all of the possible options to the end users. >> Yeah. And just trying to make the best experience in in general. Actually, more hyperlid stuff coming up. uh HIPP4 prediction markets that there was a polymarket guy who said that this way of doing prediction markets and solving outcomes was uh absolutely redacted. Uh

we're going to get into that. Before we do, let me tell you about Infinifi. Uh Infinifi is building DeFi infrastructure for simpler access to onchain yield, liquidity, and capital allocation. To explore more efficient onchain finance, visit infinifi.xyz. So yeah, Rob, you sent this one in. I saw you were scrolling the feed. HP4 update. This one's big. Hypquid just removed the need for external oracles on prediction markets. The validator set itself is now the oracle. The same 24 validators that sign blocks secure 3 billion and vote bridge withdrawals now deploy and settle prediction markets natively.

>> Yeah. >> No no pith, no UMA, no third party closed circuit. And yeah, there was a polymarket guy in the comments calling this really really stupid and uh arguing about validator incentives, neutrality, governance, and just kind of like what this means for Hyperlid's set of prediction markets. So again, Rob, as you just said, Hyperid will continue to subsume as much as they can. they will just continue to build this platform that is, you know, centered around their validator set, their needs, what they want to do, how they want to do it. And I mean, you you got to think if you're like a chain link, a pith or redstone or

um whatever it is, you're you know, you wanted to be in this position, but unfortunately they're just not going to allow that because they want to have full control of the outcomes. Well, that last sentence is extremely important and yeah, you know, they want to have full control of the outcomes. It's not um too dissimilar from Khi's model. Uh you know, KHI has market makers, but they're trading uh or or uh they're deciding the outcomes of of you know, most of these markets. Um we're big hyperlid bulls here. Uh you and I both.

>> No surprise. But I'm gonna have to go with the poly market guy on this one. Uh I think this is a >> um this is a design choice that could come back and bite them. But with a caveat given that uh uh HIP4 is still very new, I'd imagineless it is. if the the um if the the markets that are listed are rather like handicapped right now and they're not able to really just go and list every market under the sun then I think this design choice is okay because what if you read in here there's like a news

feed uh Hyperlid just you know made real world event resolution a native chain function there's a there's this like automated feed that validators are running uh that is giving them the answers to these prediction market questions that works for a large set of prediction markets, you know, price like uh you know, certain you know, price prediction markets, sports outcomes, um you know, uh you know, the Fed rate rate hikes and cuts that that works for all of that. But as soon as you get into one of these markets where it's a little bit questionable in terms of the outcome, that is when you could see validators become misincentivized to ultimately

arrive at a conclusion that is very objective. And that's where you want to start to have some some separation of uh you know of of uh validator and trader if you will because you can start to see some conflict of interest when you know you have validators that are a little bit too close to the resolution of these markets. This is why poly market uses UMA. got so much flack for it, but ultimately these things are distinct. And the reason being is that you know you you keep the execution engine separate from the the one who ultimately decides the outcomes. Um otherwise you know you could claim that you know Poly Market is trading against its users. Um

Khi obviously catches some flak for this but they don't have as much general generality in the markets that they list. Um and so while Hyperlid is scaling HIP4 uh I think this design choice makes sense. I think once they start to get into more esoteric markets they will need to rethink this design choice. Uh because it these prediction markets can get extremely nuanced. Uh, and I think at that point it makes sense to become a little bit less verticalized and actually have a specialized oracle service that can help resolve these markets because Hyperlid's validator set is extremely good at doing what it does right now. And I don't think it makes sense to overwhelm the validator set and

create something that's extremely nuanced and esoteric. Um, I think it it is better to outsource that despite this grand vision of supersuming a lot of finance, verticalizing a lot. I think it still makes sense to bring in third party players that can be extremely specialized when there's a nuanced uh system that needs to be needs to be built. >> Yeah, I mean it's still very early days for HIPP4 in general, right? for a hypocrit prediction market set and they're going to have, you know, they're going to go through the same trials and tribulations that a lot of these prediction markets have already, but they have enough capital, they have enough validators, they have enough uh kind of backing that this is, you know, that they're going to figure it out on their own. And um you know, I partially

agree with your take, but I also think that you know, maybe we'll see maybe we'll see a changing of the guard. You know, I don't think hyper liquid prediction markets are going to get as big as Calier Poly Market anytime soon, but if they do, then I then I feel like they'll probably face some more scrutiny and flack. So, >> yeah, >> Rob, we've got our stabled up guest in the building. We're going to take a quick standby break, get him set up, and we'll be back. Any any uh closing thoughts before we get Kinetic and uh Kale on? >> Feels good to be back. Had a great Memorial Day weekend. Go Knicks. Go Hyperlid. Go Near. Go uh go Sky. Go Akos. privacy AI narrative uh all over the place. It's great to see. Have a great Stabled Up segment. I will be here

ready for you uh when you guys are all finished up and we'll keep this show rolling. >> All right, we'll be right back. Robin money power

big but I'm Big big money. We get deep. We get deep. Know we get deep know. We get deep. We get deep. Know we get deep. We get we get deep. We get deep. We get we get deep, you know. We get attend the Davos of Web 3.

talk. See you next year, >> second and third of June at the Louver Palace in Paris. We get deep. We get deep. You know, we

get deep. We get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. You know, we get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. You know, we get deep. We get deep. You know we get deep know we get deep we get deep know we get deep we get we get deep we get deep we get we get deep know we get deep Welcome back to another episode of

Stabled Up, our premier weekly show covering the ins and outs of digital dollars, stable coins, and the future of decentralized finance. >> Show is made possible by FRA and FRA is powering the financial engine of the internet, powering FRXUSD, and genius compliance stable coins. This is the stablecoin super cycle made possible by FRA. Now enjoy stabled up our weekly stable coin show 7th floor.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are back live here from the Empire State Building. I'm joined by Alex Fine, the founder of Fun, 26-year-old founder, a high conversion payments infrastructure company and onch onchain rails for global fintech. Quite the background. Also a fellow college dropout. I dropped out of University of Florida. Alex from Stanford Quant AI Compsai. Lot going on. Alex, welcome to the tower, man. Good to have you. >> Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. >> Welcome. Welcome. Glad >> to be here. >> Beautiful day in New York. >> Gorgeous day. Gorgeous day view. Good vibes.

>> Fantastic vibes. >> Congrats on the recent raise. I know you guys put a lot of energy and effort into that one. And I feel like it was proper timing given the maturation of the industry. The realization that payments, stable coins, tokenized assets amidst this kind of broad web 2.5 fintech era is very much uh in the limelight and very, you know, very clear use case of what we're doing. So, bravo on that. I I appreciate it. I mean it's pretty exciting because we started the company saying hey we're we're really big believers in fintex going onchain and if you go back four years 5 years in crypto like that wasn't a thing and now it's really starting to manifest like those kind of like web two web 3 companies like ours are starting to hit a stride

so >> it's exciting and we're at the very beginning. >> Yeah. No, I mean most definitely. I I actually was speaking to a guy on JP Morgan's innovation team like last week here and he came in and he basically said that he agrees and that they agree that stable coins will be the primary form of payments. Um we're on our stabled up show episode number 35. Shout out to our friends at Fracks. We've got Alex Fun. Alex, um let's just start with an understanding of the mission of fun and just kind of understanding what it is that you are setting out to achieve w with fun. what is the main problem space that you're looking to attack?

>> Yeah, so I'll I'll differentiate kind of fun and how we work from traditional payments companies. There there are a lot of payments companies out there, a lot of crypto payments companies out there. And the way most of those companies work is they say, "Hey, we are going to build a rail. We're going to convert euros into USDC. We're going to convert USDT over here to USDC over there." And we said, hey, that's kind of valuable to a certain extent, but ultimately the applications that are really building the future of finance, they're they don't care about moving asset A to asset B, ultimately what they care is getting as many dollars into the platform as possible.

>> So what we do at our core, we're the highest converting way to get money onto a blockchain. Like that is our primitive. Nobody if you AB test our flow against any other flow nobody is better at getting money onto a blockchain and then that manifest that primitive can apply to all sorts of different verticals. So it will apply to your classic fintech apps building on chain like poly markets and lighters. It can apply to global commerce applications. It can apply to traditional fintexs looking to take in crypto. there there are kind of like all these applications where blockchains create utility and ultimately we're the best way to get money onto a blockchain like that is what we do at our core.

>> Yeah. And when you when you think about like getting money onto blockchains right people think about like on-ramps offramps often just exchanges as well and like there is certainly a focus on like getting a US dollar or a euro onto the blockchain into like a stable coin format. Um, right. And and so that's kind of like the entry point. It it used to not be that way. It used to be kind of like you would buy on like, you know, way back you would buy on exchange. You'd buy your Bitcoin or whatever and then you use that to trade pairs. Now all the trading on centralized exchanges is mostly USDT or USDC denominated and then onchain is kind of a mix of like ETH, Soul, etc. When it comes to

actually getting people's money from fiat into stable coins, why why would I why would I use fun? What is so great about fund compared to an exchange or a different platform? What what you know makes you guys unique in that respect? >> Yeah. Well, I'll answer the question kind of in in two parts. One, we can do a little bit of an overview on hey, how do how do we get to where we are in terms of stable coin payments and deposits and then more directly answer your question. So I I think there were really three eras for how we moved money on chain. We had era one which is your centralized exchange era. Like Coinbase started as a Bitcoin on-ramp and people would go to your go to Coinbase, go to Binance, they'd buy their crypto and

then they would move it into their wallet right? >> That was phase one. Then we went to phase two, which is kind of this like intermediary on ramp style world. Think of those like iframes that you typically see. Imagine you go into your favorite wallet, you see a list of different providers who each have their own iframe to onboard funds. And a solution like that like feels a little bit more native, but they have a lot of different friction points built in. Now we're moving to this third era. And this third era is really purpose-built for we call them the fintex onchain and what that means is their their finance apps just like any other finance apps. They just decided to pick a better backend which is blockchains to build their finance app on top of. And for those types of applications, they're able to access a

payment workflow that is at par with almost like where we started 10 years ago in terms of the the payment experience, the conversion rates, the, you know, KYC streamlining, the risk threshold, like all the components that go into high conversion deposits. We're able to get back to kind of where we were originally with centralized exchange level experience for decentralized and onchain kind of applications. So, I could talk more about what that looks like in practice, but those are kind of like the phases that we've seen the market going through. >> Yeah. No, I mean, I agree. I I remember going on Coinbase in 2017 and just putting in my debit card. That was the that was the only KYC that was needed.

>> That's I mean, that's you you should have KYC to ensure that you are compliant to ensure you are compliant with all rules and regulation. But most of the KYC that you experience when you're going through on-ramps, that is not to do with compliance. That is to do with in our opinion poorly built but risk models at the end of the day and it's bad risk and and we think there are better ways to manage those kind of things. >> Interesting. And how much of the volume that you're seeing is directly you know fiat currency or you know dollars euros etc. directly just to stable coins like is that the is that the primary flow? >> It's man to stable coins over 99%.

>> Really high. >> That's just like the easiest way to do it is just take your dollars get stable coins and then use them to do whatever you want with them. I I mean at our core we um we you know we user shouldn't know we exist right so you would ask like how would I use fund yeah you would go on you know something like lighter or something like poly market you would deposit and you shouldn't actually even really know that that we exist you shouldn't have to know that we exist you should just be on that platform depositing on that platform and many of those platforms take stable coins and that's how most users prefer to transact >> and then do you make money on that >> we'll make a small amount of money so our our model is very much kind of like

a Costco model. We realize that if you if all these companies are fragmented and they each have to build their own payment stack, they're each paying a certain amount for that. But because we can bring it all together and we can have one unified flow, we can then compress all of our downstream vendors. And so what that means is that we can offer the best market rate. We can offer rates that you can't get anywhere else. And then we are able to take margin from the kind of Costco model of massive scale. And that that really is our business model. and who's providing that that liquidity on the weekends and you know on Memorial Day you know I'm trying to buy hyperlid trying to go on lighter and go long who's providing that

liquidity >> yeah so I'll kind of answer the the meta question like what like what is the delta between the liquidity requirements the routing requirements for a deposit flow versus kind of what you traditionally see in web 3 and there there's a meaningful kind of delta and this is where a lot of our value lives between call it like a 29 SLA and like a 69 SLA. If you are going through a deposit flow, it always needs to work. If you're going to deposit a million, $10 million, I think our largest deposit like $40 million, you you just always need to clear. You can't do a $40 million deposit and then you're like, "Oops, it didn't work. Like, you can't ever have that." Whereas, if you think about going to unis swap, sometimes it might work if you want to do $40

million, but sometimes it might not work if you want to do $40 million. And that kind of isn't isn't an option. And so that goes back to your question, you know, what does that look like on the back end? Where do those liquidity sources come from? And we'll we'll bring together a number of different providers to ensure that we can hit those highle SLAs's. So this is everything from your public providers that we might get special rates on. We'll work with private providers that might not be publicly available and then we'll we'll build our own rate or our own route, sorry, as as fallback mechanisms um to ensure that all deposits, all transactions are always fulfilled. So it's a whole stack is kind of the answer to your question.

>> Yeah. Yeah. And okay, so let's kind of look at this holistically. There's a there's a some sort of demand to come on chain. People with dollars typically probably aligned with a bullish market or just a, you know, wanting to try a new product or whatever it is. I come in with my dollars. I want to get them into stable coins onto an application on chain. I go on these applications. They have a deposit function. I'm able to click that deposit function. It runs through fund on the back end and then I get stable coins at the end. Great rate.

I pay a little fee. Fund makes money at, you know, kind of at an economy of scale type of uh, you know, mindset. I don't really even know that I use fund and you guys just consistently exist at, you know 99.99999% of deliverable effectiveness and that's your business >> essentially. Yeah. So like when you click on the deposit flow, we will power that deposit flow. everything from the front end. So, we run a bunch of intelligence where you are going to deposit very differently than myself most likely. Actually, we're both in New York. We're both in crypto. So, maybe we're actually pretty similar. Um, but we're going to deposit pretty differently than say a market maker in Dubai, then a retail user in India, then someone in South Korea, then a mid-market person in Europe. And the way

a lot of these teams have solved this in the past is if like imagine you look like the big i gaming sites, you like a stake.com. Stake.com's great. you. But these sites, they'll have like 40 different payment methods on the screen. Yeah, that is not a very high converting flow. At the end of the day, we're each probably going to use one or two assets. Like we probably have a bunch of USDC on base and or a bunch of USDC on arbitr something like that. And the likelihood that we use, you know, SEPA to do our deposit is is probably pretty low. And so you want flows at the very front that's really smart that kind of knows one or two payment methods a user is most likely to use. Like for example, if you've KYTed and saved a card with us, you're going to be 19 times more likely

to use that card than just a random user coming to the site. Like that should probably affect how you change the deposit flow. >> Mhm. >> When most of these sites that won't change it at all, right? So we we have the full front end and then we do everything back to the back end routing. >> Yeah. Okay. So then let's kind of get to like the broader bigger idea here, which is Stripe is going all in on stable coin payments with Tempo. Shopify is adding or has already added USDC payment flows. Um, you know, you we've heard the likes of Amazon and some of these others either doing it in their own native, you know, coin or token or doing it with stable coins. Um, and now we're seeing the also the rise of cryptolink cards.

>> And so in the broader landscape of stable coin adoption from some of like the largest e-commerce providers, you know, is there a strategy for fun? Do you guys have an in here? How do you how do you guys capitalize on the broader kind of h like the like the broader trend that's happening which is very much a lot of these e-commerce businesses are trying to adopt stable coins. How does fund get in there and kind of make it uh a a part of your business? >> Yeah, it's it's a good question. So without naming specifics, we are working with um we're in the process of uh co-designing a a solution with a very large commerce site. Now, our philosophy is not to be speculative in how we

build. So, we won't go and like build a bunch of stuff for commerce and then see how it lands. We co-design work with with really big customers. Now, a lot of our work so far we've been really focused on is the the fintex onchain. And I think this market is actually going to be multitudes, orders of magnitudes larger than what we're going to see on commerce. Like stable coins are big, right? Stable coins, hundreds of billions of stable coins. I think stable coins are going to grow 10x, 100x. But we think real assets on chain, if you just think about your own money, what percent of your money is in cash, right? What percent of it is in stable coins? Probably singledigit percentages if that. We think that relative proportionality is going to be the same proportionality between stable coins and all other assets and all other value

where that market is going to be 10 times 20 times larger and thus is going to grow 10x 200x from where where we are today. And so that's a lot of what we're focused on. It's like those fintech applications leveraging blockchains in the back end. >> Okay. So big fintech, big e-commerce company comes to fund. I want to design a stable coin payments flow. Is that kind of like the demand question? And then the the value or the supply is just kind of like, all right, let's build something that allows your customers if they want to pay in stable coins to pay in stable coins or receive payouts in stable coins. Like what is the like e-commerce is kind of a two-sided transaction, right? there's a merchant

and a customer and then there's refunds, there's chargebacks, there's payouts, there's there's all sorts of kind of like functions of the business. What is can you just kind of without talking about who it is or what the company is or the specs of the deal, what does that actually mean for funds involvement in something like that? >> Yeah. So, so what we'll commonly see is we'll see a merchant that will say, "Hey, we're we're trying to go into these certain markets." Yeah. and we're trying to figure out how to get as much money from those markets as possible. And blockchains are a good conduit to doing so. And so what does kind of like the web two alternative look like here?

You would go look like an Uber or even like a a DraftKings. DraftKings is just in the US. They have a 100 people on their payments and onboarding team. Uber has hundreds of people on their global payments team. And so for them, that's kind of the choice. They're saying, "Hey, you know, maybe we're a fintech or or a service provider in Argentina or Chile and we're trying to go to the rest of South America." Or maybe they think, "Hey, we have PMF in in in broader global regions." And now there's there's a little bit of a fork in the road. So, they can either build out a full payments team themselves. They can go to all those regions, understand the highest converting payment methods, go through any licensing requirements or relationship requirements to set those up. or they can they can work with a vendor like ours where all we do is kind

of optimizing those payment flows. >> Got it. And this is not just in the US I assume. >> Most of our business is international. >> Really? >> Yeah. Over 95%. >> Wow. So we're talking like non USD stable coins then? >> Oh well it's still USD stable coins. Yeah. Still USD stable coins but it's users outside the US, >> right? >> Yeah. I mean I think in the US like our rails work pretty good. Robin Hood app is fantastic. I like Robin Hood. You know it's not that hard for me to get dollars. not that hard for me to buy Apple stock. Yeah. >> But those challenges are are very very real outside of the United States. Like fintech applications outside of the United States are very often uh scams.

And this is something we've seen where when we work in high trust environments, you know, teams just care about the deposit flow. When we go to regions where fintech applications are are are sketchy, we see teams really start to care about the withdrawal flow as well. So can you deposit and can you withdraw immediately and then deposit again? So it's like those sets of requirements are very very different. >> Yeah. But it's all outside the United States >> and it's mostly USD, you know, stable coins like the big ones. >> People around the world want Western assets, want dollars, want US equities. >> Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting.

What do you think is is the part of your business that's going to grow the most following this raise? You know, you have a ton of capital to basically grow and scale. You know, what are you going to use this capital for? What part of the business are you really trying to, you know, kind of bootstrap and accelerate? Yeah, it's a good question. This kind of gets to my philosophies on building companies. I >> That's where we're going. >> That's that's where we're going. I I I think you know most people you ask most founders like a lot of VCs would ask me they be like, "Oh, what are your what are your moes? What are your like competitive advantages?" You know, and we have very real competitive advantages at scale. When you look at startups in general, I don't believe startups have true competitive advantages when they're

early on. Like anything five people in a room, 10 people, 20 people in a room can do in a year, someone else can put 20 people in a room and do it in a year, you know. And so the the reason I said is I think our our only real competitive advantage when we are an early stage company is people. It is having the best people. People who are smarter, who grind harder, who have more just craft and love and care for the work that they do. And like that is how we win. And so you're asked like, "Oh, we raised money. What are we gonna use? How are we going to use it? How are we gonna it's all people. It is it is finding the very very very best people." And I think that's even more true in an AIdriven world. And so our team currently is

super stacked. Like our team is really really strong, but it's just how do we take that quality and how do we extend it even further? How do we have like an open AAI anthropic level talent density in the you know this modern fintech space which I think we totally can have. Like this is the coolest work you can be doing if you don't if you don't like AI or like AI isn't for you. There's nowhere else where you're solving sicker problems than in in our industry. >> Yeah. And being 26 and you know not having a college degree and kind of uh you know having like a young feel and h how does it how is it like hiring folks 5 10 20 years older than yourself managing a team? How do you how do you

garner the respect of your team and you know kind of build a culture of shipping? >> You know, it's a it's a good question. I obviously look young. I have youthful mannerisms. Uh but but I think often when I meet with execs and spend time with execs who are who who have real pattern recognition for what best practices look like. That's when we kind of build comfort. And I actually haven't had a respect issue. I mean, most of our team is is all older. I think I'm one of the youngest people uh at our team. We're mid-30s by headcount. A lot of folks were moving a lot of money. So, a lot of folks have real pattern recognition for how to, you know, we create technology to help move money and they have pattern

recognition for for how to do that. Well, um so they're often much much older and and it's important security, things like that are top of mind for us. But it honestly, maybe I'm fortunate, maybe I'm blind to it, but it hasn't been an issue. >> Yeah. I'm curious what your um decision-making framework is, right? Like I asked like how how are you going to, you know, use this capital, right? Or how who are you hiring or what market are you going to kind of attack next when it comes to like, you know, Alex's decision-making framework? >> What does that look like on a, you know, decision-m basis from the CEO kind of perspective? What what are you thinking about as far as you know there's there's there's very basic like risk and reward or like positive and negative or like

pros and cons. How do you how do you make decisions that are important to the company's trajectory? >> Yeah, why don't we go back to the customer and how we add value to the customer and then that deres out the framework for which I make decisions. So how do we add value to the customer? We're the highest converting way to get money into the application. When you are at scale and you are moving hundreds of millions of dollars a month, billions of dollars a month in volume, every percentage point matters. Like the craft is critical. And so it's like, okay, everything for us is about product quality. Everything is about quality.

Everything is about craftsmanship. Like if we are the best way to move money on chain, it is in everyone's economic best interest to work with us. So now how we work comes out from that where there are a lot of companies who are very loud. I know it's ironic I'm on a podcast right now but there are a lot of companies who are loud. They do a lot of marketing. They you know all of that. That's not how we work. And in fact we've been so quiet for so long because all that matters is quality. So now you're like okay what you know h what is my decision-m framework. Think about team and culture. Everything is about craft. Everything is about quality. If I'm in an interview and I ask someone what is their perfect day? I don't want someone who's going to tell me they're like

researching all kinds of new technologies and are like, you know, up to date on on this and that. That's great. That's awesome. That's a great value, but that's not our value. I would rather have someone say, "Hey, I want to spend all day making a button perfect and beautiful and amazing and and that to me is awesome." Like those are the people we want. And so like those values of like how we deliver value to the customer that you know the rest of what we do derives from that from the people we hire to the way we work internally to the types of financial backers we want to the types of customers we partner with everything is about quality and craft >> and so are you a perfectionist then would you call yourself a perfectionist >> yeah probably >> y yeah >> I'm like I'm quite particular

>> that doesn't slow you down throughout the you know >> Oh totally slows us down yeah no absolutely there there are many times where like I will see materials and they have we like if you're going to ship something externally even you ship something internally the quality bar needs to be ultra high and so yeah there have definitely been times where I've gotten materials and I said this we cannot this is not going to go out just period full stop and like a meeting needs to get moved a launch needs to get pushed but that's just not something we are ever going to compromise on because I think that is at the very core of why we exist as a company it's like we exist to serve these people we exist to be the best. We don't exist to just like put stuff out there. So, yeah, totally slows

us down. >> Yeah. Some of the founders that I've spoken to often talk about micromanaging their team as slowing down their work, but like, you know, it's it's just something that if you work at that company, you have to deal with um how do you how do you go from like micromanaging and perfectionism to letting your best people do their best work without kind of and like having trust, right? And like being able to to to trust your team to do a good job. How do you balance like your your desire for optimal results and perfection because you know you care probably some of the most of anybody on the team versus you know letting people do their thing, letting people breathe, have space. How do you balance those two?

>> Yeah, it's it's a really good question. So the the way I view my role, I have deliverables and those deliverables I make very clear to essentially our exec team and then once we have an exec and those deliverables are clear my entire job everything I work towards is making that person successful. So whether it is resource allocation, whether it's how they want to run their teams, whether it's things I should be communicating to the team at large, like I work for them in making them successful. And so I actually give extremely high amounts of latitude and flexibility to the exec team because I find most really really

skilled execs, they have a vision, right? And if you're going to say, "Hey, you can do 70% of your vision, but it's got to be 30% of my vision for how we execute." that's going to up the whole thing. Like it needs to be 100% their vision and you need to do everything you can to make it like 110% their vision to make their vision awesome and massively execute on their vision, right? To on how to execute and as long as the deliverables are clear like hey, you know, I think saying, "Oh, hey, we're not going to ship like subpar things." It's like, no, it's not even we're not going to ship good things. We're going to ship excellent things. We're good is going to come and we're going to say we're not okay with good and then great's going to come. We're saying we're not okay with great and

then we're going to say it needs to be excellent. And as long as those expectations are set right, then my job is just helping my team perform and I work for them. >> Yeah. So I spoke to the the CEO of or the coco of Kraken Arjun Sethi about AI at Kraken following Coinbase's set of layoffs due to AI highlighted you know circumstances and you know he spoke about that internally they had this initiative that uh the employees need to be showing proficiency development in using AI over a period of time and if not that you know then there's they kind of have like this the way out of the company process that is like they make

it very easy for people to leave and um you know he's he's built this thousands and thousands of people in their company you know when it comes to using AI internally for yourself as well as for your team how do you how do you think about using these tools and how do you think about your team becoming more proficient at using them time over time again so that way your biggest competitors are doing the same thing you're not kind of falling behind and how do you how do you leverage AI and your and the ability to do things with it and encourage your team to use it?

>> It's it's a really good question and it's something that I I think about a lot and in that I'm a very very big believer that AI is going to massively transform how teams organize and how teams execute. But there's an an asterisk to that where we live in the world of 69s. We live in the world of perfection >> and AI is very good at velocity, >> right? But you can have instances where AI will miss certain things, right? It'll miss certain contexts and it could take a 69 to a 49. And for us, that's that's really detrimental. And so we're very focused on using A, but we don't we

intentionally don't measure like how how many PRs are you submitting? How many lines of code are you submitting? Those are not the measurements of success that we're that we're orienting towards. Um, but it's it's still how do you use AI in an environment where perfection uh is needs to be just so so so core to what we do. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, we have all the team plans, all the things that you can need. It's used daily across variety of things from ideiation to execution. Um, but yeah, we're, you know, we're still at a point where it's like, you know, there's a lot of corrections that that that still need to come. Kind of last thing on the personal side, then we'll hop back to the business. How do you differentiate your self-worth and your your kind of um

self-esteem from the success of your business, your portfolio, whatever it is, right? Like it's quite ups and downs. You know, you just raised this round, everything's great coming out of stealth. next month your competitor signs, you know, the next biggest deal. Then you win the next one, then Bitcoin's up, then Bitcoin's down, you're in your then your girlfriend dumps you, then you get a new girlfriend. Like, it's just never ending. You know what I mean? Family troubles, etc. How do you kind of separate these external events from shaking the internal of Alex? >> Well, let's let's start with what external events matter. The company.

That is the external event that matters to me. I'm not too worried about market prices, not worried about my social life. It is the company. Yeah. Now, how do you how do you separate to stay? I don't I reject the premise. You just full. You just go on the roller coaster. You I completely 100% tie my own personal identity to that of the company. And so when when things are going hard, there's a period of like a year where like I like multiple nights a week I couldn't sleep through the night. You're waking up at 3:00 a.m. You're in the office at like 4. And I'm a big believer in like the Jeff Bezos notion of hey when you're stressed there's probably that's probably accurate. Like you probably should be stressed. Something's probably up. So you should the way the way you act on

that is you execute. You you go you build. You ship. You do things. You act. And so yeah. No I just you you you're right. It's a total roller coaster and you just full ride it. You just ride the thing. Just full on hands in the air ride it. But then you kind of take control uh in the in the troughs. You kind of recognize that you're feeling anxious for some reason. There's something wrong and you take you take control. And then in the more kind of like uh you know uh peaks, you're able to kind of like not let your foot off the gas but not have to be like a you know stressed out to the max. Kind of be more uh practical, less like uh you know day-to-day like actionoriented.

>> I mean to be honest I'm not very good at peaks. Like even when things go well, it's just not the way I see it is like I think I think a lot of happiness in life comes by removing the delta between what you know you are capable of doing and what your lived reality is at the present. And I think minimizing that delta creates a lot of happiness. And so this could be for work, right? Like what do we know the company is capable of doing versus where we are today. It could be in how a team executes. It could be how you have an interaction with someone like at your local coffee shop. Like are you treating them the way that you know you can treat people? It has the same with relationships. Like are you dating someone? Are you with someone and you know they're like the

best person you can be with? Like I think happiness comes by by minimizing that delta. And so the reason I say that is when it comes to peaks that delta is still massive for us. Like we know what it looks like to I I have a vision for what it looks like to to be the payments layer for for money going into blockchains. That's massive. Like that world is going to grow by a thousandx and our product can get 100x better to serve that. And so I haven't really felt the like peaks yet. >> I'll let you know, you know, like when we're crushing it. I'm psyched for those peaks. But yeah, no, it's just like focus execute ship do act.

>> Beautiful. All right. Kind of shifting back towards the fun business. As we kind of come to a close here, one of the things we didn't talk about was the rise of the agentic side of the payment economy and the agentic economy. I actually just saw today there was a company called Liquid. They put out this like trading UI that allows you to like trade from an LLM directly and it trades on Hyperlquid for you. We're going to see more of this like, hey, you know, take money from my bank and put it into Kraken and go on Poly Market. Like literally like deposit money from my Wells Fargo into Poly Market and bet on the Knicks to win the finals. Like do it now. Go. Right. like how how how does the agentic economy change the vision or

the kind of broader TAM for what you guys are doing, right? Like this is going to scale. There's going to be a lot of micro payments, a lot of like people just like trying these things to start and and and then I think it's really going to snowball. Like are you guys prepared for the agent economy? What does that even mean? Like what does that look like? >> Yeah, it's it's a good question. So I I guess I'll separate this into two parts. I'll directly answer the question like how are we thinking about it? But then I think what's almost more important is kind of the meta answer to the question. How do we approach answering answering this question? So in in terms of what we do today like a lot of our flows, we're very good at abstracting essentially like actions and complexities. So we're

very good at saying here's an action on a blockchain and how do you originate that action from a bank account over here? And so it's a very natural product to plug into Agentic Workflows, right? It's a very natural API to do. With that being said, we're not going on podcasts and ripping about our agentic workflows. It's kind of the same concept with commerce. We're not speculators. That's just not how we run our business. We are the type of company that has a customer in mind and we will sit down with that customer and we try to really empathize and understand what they are trying to solve for, craft a solution with them and then go from there. So we haven't yet seen at scale applications using agentic workflows that have real

kind of users at the other end where there isn't any kind of like token incentive stuff and so we are kind of at the front lines waiting for that to happen and we want to serve those teams. Um but the way we're going to craft the solution is in partnership with with a partner as opposed to us kind of sitting around and and thinking about what it should be. M and then kind of the meta answer here of like you know what's happening could you speak to a bit of kind of what you're seeing from your founder friends from your investors from customers like what is the what is the level of demand for this aic payments what are the blockers right now what's working like give us a bit of a lay of the land stable coins agents what's what's actually happening >> yeah I mean to be honest we we haven't

seen a ton from customers or clients on like hey how do we implement agentic workflows into into our current experience like it's just not something that has come up a ton. Um so it's something we're monitoring but we we haven't seen a ton of data on it so far. >> So are you a personal believer of this kind of like onchain agentic economy x42 like this whole like matrimony holy matrimony between stable coins and blockchains and AI for kind of this ideal future of the internet was built with a fatal flaw. It didn't have a monetary system attached. Now we have it. Are you a believer in this?

>> For sure. I mean AI is is going to be massive. It is already massive. >> It is obvious that there is no way for an AI to move money that is not blockchains. Like it's 100% going to be on blockchains. Like that is going to be the backbone. Um so I I think that's absolutely where the future is going. Got it. Alex, last thing for me is what's what what's what's next? What are you guys primarily focused on? We're what is it? May 26 today. We're almost halfway through the year, which is bonkers. Um, what's the second half of the year look like? What are the main priorities? What are your KPIs?

>> I mean, it's it's all about people. Everything we're focused on, I'm calling it like internally the fintech 50 and we're about 30ome now. I want, you know, if you think about the intersection of three things. You think about the intersection of being very product focused, want to build something for consumers, you like to solve very hard technical problems, right? And then you have a deep passion for capital markets like you are a believer that capitalism creates a lot of good. You take stable coins, US dollars, US economy, US markets, western markets, you bring those around the world that creates a lot of good. I believe that creates a tremendous amount of good. If you're kind of at that intersection, there aren't that many really super sexy

places to go where you are really at that cutting edge and pushing all three of those really far. And so if we think about the next half of the year, it's it's really, you know, for for the people who are at that intersection, it is it is forming, you know, it's finding like the top 50 people in that world and and uh building the best team. >> Beautiful. Ladies and gentlemen, that has been Alex Fine on Stabled Up episode number 34, live from the tokenization tower here, the Empire State Building. Alex, that was great, man. Thanks for coming on. Um, and guys, we'll be right back with Omnia from Kinetic talking liquid staking on Hyperlid. Their token launches tomorrow. Hype's absolutely flying. And then we have Kaleo to give us a little bit of markets update as well. Don't go anywhere, guys. Thanks,

Alex. >> Appreciate it. Hey.

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pretty crazy conversation with, uh, Alex from Fun. They raised 70 million and, uh, guy's 26, dropped out of college like me. He's pretty, uh, pretty funny guy. So, that was interesting for sure. >> That must be incredibly validating for you and your college dropout story. >> Not not really looking for validation anymore. Just looking for per to rip. Um, we got uh, Open Router announcing $13 million series B led by Capital JVC. Over the last six months, weekly volume of Open Router grew from five trillion to 25 trillion tokens as AI rapidly shifts from experimentation into production. We're excited for what comes next. Uh this company is ripping and Venice is like the easy comparable to this one. So Venice is doing like 70

billion tokens a week. Um these guys are doing five trillion and then 25 trillion. So that puts it at like uh 20x, 100x, 500x or so on what Venice is doing open rounder and they raised $13 million on a series B. So you're probably thinking maybe like a I don't know one to two billion dollar valuation. I'm not sure if the valuation is leaked. So yeah, pretty pretty awesome that the AI capex just continues to uh accelerate and our coins are not getting any benefit from.

>> So I think an open router doesn't have a liquid token out there. >> Actually, I don't know. I swear I've heard of them before. >> Open router, >> but no, I think they're I think they're just like a normal company. >> A normal company. >> Yeah, like a normal company. >> I think so as well. >> Yeah, they are. Series B funding 113 million. 25 trillion tokens per week. Pretty epic. >> 25 trillion tokens per week. And how many tokens per week did you say Venice is doing? >> About 80 billion. >> 80 billion per week. >> Yeah.

>> Got it. >> So they got I mean let's say let's call it they're at 100 soonish. Um then they've got what 250x to get to $25 trillion a week. >> Yeah. I'm counting 25 trillion divided by 0.08 uh about a 312 312 and a halfx. >> Yeah. Yeah. So they got a ways to go but I mean that's the comparable right like that's the trady or you know tradi comparable.

>> Do we know the valuation of this company or we just know that? >> We just know that they raised 113 million but we don't know what >> what valuation >> more than doubles valuation. 1.3 billion. Yeah, >> it's only a $1.3 billion valuation. >> That's right. Venice is had two bill or 1.75 >> and they're doing 130th the amount of tokens. >> Dude, it's the Eric V. He's premium. >> I mean, if we're just looking at, you know, obviously so, so the amount of tokens that you're doing gives you a sense of the market share.

>> Dude, this is private uncensorable chachi BT versus >> I like that distinction. Ventures A16Zbacked open router data farm. >> I like that distinction because um not all tokens are created equal. Confidential private tokens, one could argue, are more valuable than data farm leech your data off of you tokens. >> It's got the uh it's got the token premium. It's got the token premium. >> It's got the uh the privacy premium, I believe. Two Knicks Courtzside NBA final stick is sell for $279,000 on StubHub. Ladies and gentlemen, the wealth gap is growing. Stick to the rollup. We will help you make it. I

think we've got Omnia from our lovely friends at Kinetic joining shortly. Uh Omnia is the co-founder of Kinetic. Also friends from different previous iterations of the space. Um, and yeah, I mean, Kinetic is doing a token launch tomorrow. I believe they hold 70 76% of Hyperlquid LSTs with 1.1K hype billion dollars of TVL. And yeah, they just announced their listing tomorrow on Kraken if I'm not mistaken.

So Kinetic is Ket will be listed on Kraken tomorrow. KNTQ and they're the fourth largest LST globally. Actually, sorry. The TG is already um uh live. Um and let's see where they're at, Rob. I haven't actually checked them out. >> Yeah, I'm looking at a market cap fully diluted about 200 million. >> Yeah. >> Uh good amount of Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There we go.

>> A billion TVL. >> There we go. >> Hyperlid's ripping. These guys are kind of like a really nice I don't know. You could say they're a nice like beta play to Hyperlquid. I mean, the chart looks pretty good. Guys are building strong. Tons of TVL. Alltime highs. I think we're what 26 cents. So, we're not far off. >> Well, uh, we bring him up and we learn a little bit more about it. See, uh, >> yo, there is man, >> what's going on? >> How are you? >> All good. You're like the uh >> Naruto space kinetic creature here. >> Yeah, we uh we remixed the color a little bit. I enjoyed this one.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Good to be on, guys. Thanks for the time. >> It's good to hear from you, man. It's been a while. >> It's been like different iterations. I'm glad you found a strong strong home at Kinetic. You guys are doing great work. I mean, we'll get into it, man. But like the hell's going on with Hyperlid, man. What a run. ETFs, everything, man. How's it been from your side? It's been hectic. >> It's been very interesting. Obviously, Hyperlid's great place to be. We've been using the platform for a few years now and uh you know a little bit over a year and a half ago started thinking about how we can actually go way way deeper you know before hypervm went live and shortly after they announced what is now the new consensus mechanism in production called hyperbft etc etc. Uh,

you know, we thought at the end of summer 2024 there was a good opportunity to do something really interesting for the ecosystem far before a token was even confirmed or announced. And here we are now. We make up 83% of the liquid staking market on Hyperlid, 2% of the global liquid staking market and we're less than a year old with an asset that's way younger than Ethan Soul. So yeah, it's um it's a great place to be for sure. >> Beautiful. Omnia, could you give us a sense of the liquid staking market on Hyperlid? Obviously, you know, I think our audience is quite familiar with what liquid staking looks like on Ethereum.

Uh, obviously, you know, economic proof ofstake protocol. We have ETH locked in validators. Uh, and then we want to make that liquid and composable with the rest of the DeFi ecosystem. So, you know, we issue a receipt token that is a liquid staking token that's free to be used, transferred, uh, restst uh, all kinds of things. What are the similarities with the Hyperlid ecosystem? Can you can you just walk us through, you know, the purpose of staking hype and what the current liquid staking uh ecosystem looks like on Hyperlid?

>> Yeah. So, I'm going to take it a step back and actually talk about how uh hard Hyperlid is fighting gravity here. So, for those that aren't aware, Hyperlid is its own custom L1 effectively and really not meant for any sort of general purpose DeFi activity. at least hyper core the actual you know performance engine where all the trading takes place. So Hyper EVM was built to effectively accommodate such activity. So so that hyper hyperlquid could have DeFi and you know people could do things like what we do with liquid staking or we do with um you know anything that we we've done today right. So we have several liquid staking products but you see other things like options protocols AMMs money markets etc. And I've talked

about this for quite some time, but I do believe that what Hyperliquid's accomplished has ultimately been the holy grail in terms of what centralized exchanges could just never do. And to give some color as to what I'm talking about, you see every large centralized exchange usually go for having their own corresponding L2. these L2s usually the the the worst of these situations uh end up having their own tokens as well and or other ecosystems and really just become fragmented from the centralized exchange component because of jurisdictional complications. So Hyperlid has been able to kind of unify this under one umbrella which again like I said fighting gravity. So going back to the the trading >> can I can I ask you a quick quick question there? Yeah. When you talk about the centralized exchange L2 uh

bifurcation, you're talking about the likes of Coinbase and Bass uh Kraken and Inc. uh Binance and Binance Smart Chain the these sorts of things. Could you just describe what like what is the issue with that and you know how does Hyperlid help overcome those issues? >> Yeah, I mean there's a general issue from a jurisdictional perspective, right? It's uh the the exchanges will try to introduce DeFi to their users on the centralized exchange via those L2s, right? Uh in effort to kind of uh unify the entire experience, but it's really difficult to do, right? You're introducing this kind of non KYC DeFi environment with protocols that can deploy permissionlessly and have to kind of beg the exchange for support or incentives and whatnot to a KYC and AML

user base. It's just pretty messy, right? is the is the idea and you have this again these jurisdictional concerns where a separate operating team needs to manage this and it's very odd right and this is what's happened for years now right like you said with Bet Smart Chain and almost every other um centralized exchange has opted to launch their own chain or L2 of some kind whether successful or not uh from T2s to even T3 exchanges right so uh yeah it's not an abnormal thing and you know when I saw Hyperl doing this in early 2024 I was like okay like this is you know if a if accomplished this is going to do things that are you know really not possible today where you can unify the entire experience. So to to give an example of what kinetic has been able to redefine

and make possible on hyperlquid is you know hyperlquid you could look at as two separate environments that live kind of within the same state if you will and hyper core overall doesn't support like I said defi activity in any way shape or form this is just where the trading occurs it also houses kind of the staking module where if you have hype tokens you can stake them natively and earn yield but again you run into the same problem like you were mentioning Robbie where you have these tokens that are locked up effectively. And again, the liquid staking solution is just absolutely necessary, especially when you have a corresponding DeFi ecosystem.

But what Kinetic does differently to every other protocol is it effectively makes fully onchain liquid staking uh composable with hyper core through one unified smart contract where all of the stake is basically housed and 100% of the stake at kinetic is staked at all times. So it is basically staked to the native chain itself. Uh you could think of it as the same way as like Lido does with uh Ethereum and then issues this receipt token on HyperVm where people can go and take Khip which is our LST and go do whatever they want. They can uh put it onto money markets and borrow against it. They can go trade yield on it on Pendle. They can go LP it on several uh DEX AMMs.

>> So that's the idea. I mean another really interesting development too has been being able to use it as collateral to buy and sell options with on HyperVM protocols. So yeah, the reality is, you know, we make up the entirety essentially of the liquid staking market, uh, even post TGE, post incentives, which has been really interesting to see. >> Um, and overall, we've now sprung out into even more products outside of just the general purpose LST. For me, like plain Jane liquid staking business is extremely boring to be completely honest. And uh, that's been the case for the entire team, right? just liquid staking really sucks but just doing liquid staking on on hyperlquid of all places would be like a huge waste. So we've expanded to several things we have

the earn vault that at one point was one of the largest vaults if not the largest in defi uh we run this with vetal labs you know kinetic is not even a vault product but our vault is the largest on hypervm by you know a huge magnitude uh so we have about $50 million deposited there of the nearly 1.2 two billion in kinetic that's managed by Veta. You get the best risk adjusted yield depositing your hype there. Uh we have an institutional offering where several public companies stake with us. So that's like Hyperion DeFi in the US Hopq strategy in Canada. Uh several regulated market makers. You can effectively deploy a custom and fully compliant LST with us through the same architecture.

>> And then finally we've launched KM hype as well which powers the HIPP3 decks that kinetic markets operate. So yeah, I I I I'm sure you know Andy and myself, we both want to get into how Hyperlid is building this comprehensive financial ecosystem, how you can serve some of these digital asset treasury companies and ETF issuers by, you know, supplementing what they can do with their hype. But but first I have just a basic question more about staking. You know, we kind of talked about how everyone's accustomed to Ethereum staking. Uh given the proof ofstake protocol, you can stake your ETH. It economically secures the network.

Essentially, if you stake you, you know, and you run uh validator with 32 ETH, you know, you're putting your ETH at risk of being slashed if you mismanage your validator. Uh but you are earning staking rewards while doing that. Um >> what is the purpose of staking hype uh in Hyperlid? >> It's a good question. I think it's going to evolve over time, but uh today slashing isn't particularly live uh in any way, shape, or form. Remember the hyper liquid network is especially young especially in the form of decentralization. Uh there's only 24 active validators in the set today that are going to be expanded now to 27. So the reality is the functionality isn't massive and I think the staking yield reflects this. It only pays about 2.2% a year in hype which is extremely minimal

inflation. And even if they you know you know tripled that the assistance fund buyback rate would offset that in a very short period of time. So it's a unique ecosystem for sure. But today there's not a massive amount of utility in staking outside of just ensuring that you're not diluted by 2.2% a year and then getting the uh access to several D5 protocols through our liquid staking offering. So yeah, slashing will go live at some point, but there are no details on that today outside of slashing for HIP 3 deployers, which uh again there's no real concrete details around anyway, but that is much more serious because there are traders that can basically go and trade on one of six or seven dexes that exist today. And if there's any sort of malicious activity or just pure

incompetence that leads to users getting wrecked for whatever reason, then a slashing event of the 500,000 hype could occur. So that is more explicit right now than just like plain staking, but I expect that to change over time as the network grows and decentralizes and you know eventually becomes who knows maybe even open source. I I I don't particularly have a thought as to when that happens but uh you know following the path of maybe other networks here. It is a possibility. Yeah, man. I'm especially interested in you know obviously 2.2% 2% yield isn't isn't crazy, but you guys still have done a pretty decent job of making money and you guys been doing some token buybacks.

Like, give us the kinetic token thesis. Like, what is the not financial advice here? Yeah. >> You know, we're big hype holders, bulls. We've been I mean, holding for so long and uh just honestly just been like wanting to see this thing win. Don't hold any kinetic right now. You know, we have people watching the audience who probably, you know, kind of wondering the same like why, you know, it chartwise looks pretty good, token looks good, numbers look good, but like what is the KNTQ thesis for hyperlquid bulls? Why why kind of look into this?

>> It's a good question. So the most interesting part about K2Q was like being the antithesis to what liquid staking to tokens have traditionally been and the consensus across CT and I guess in general anyone who's touched a liquid staking token for is that they're generally horrible tokens to own and I realized okay it's the same thing you know as the liquid staking business by itself right like usually you have this staking component the token TGES and and there's not really any reason to kind of be a part of the protocol or the store in any way shape or form after It's just stake, you get extra yield and like that's kind of it. And again, going back to the kind of purpose around what we've built far beyond liquid staking, we're super bored by just pure liquid staking.

Liquid staking as a means to an end is again extremely uninspiring. But liquid staking as a means to become a very very profitable and scalable business built on top of hyperlquids rails. Now that is very exciting, right? So what we've done and ultimately have been able to loop in every single point of of value acrruel that kinetic does generate today into K&DQ has allowed us to build things like the hip 3 decks for example using our staking offering as well. So we've brought in 700,000 hype roughly uh for this which equates to what you know 30 or 40 plus million that now powers the exchange. These guys get a a guaranteed share of the exchange revenue and then a guaranteed share of the exchange revenue programmatically buys the K&Q token and

programmatically buys hype for the stakers. So again, this is a first of its kind not only liquid staking but on hyperlquid. Uh on that point as well we have several frontends that we operate. So we operate a mobile app that just went live thankfully went viral a couple weeks ago with a little bit over 10 million views. That was a really fun video and you know again signed up you know several thousand users and every single trade that's made on that application again is is powering K&Q yield on a real-time programmatic basis. Uh so we we've extended so so far beyond pure liquid staking but now to touch on that part which by itself is interesting and the primary bread winner still for the business today you know we generate you know a 10% rake from that 2.2% 2% that's that's emitted on an annual basis

and 70% of that is programmatically generating uh buybacks via hyper core directly in the order books that anybody could track in real time uh of the K&Q token and 30% is retained by kinetic for operations and this already alone puts us in a very very different league of liquid staking tokens because the only other buyback uh program that another liquid staking token uh has is like very contingent on specific KPIs that the business needs to go through whereas us, it doesn't matter. We could have $1,000 in TVL or 10 billion in TVL and 70% of our cut is going into the token. So, we took the inspiration from Hyperlid and having very very explicit rules for how value is distributed and how the K&Q token must play a central role in the

kinetic ecosystem regardless of our product suite. So everything from staking to the trading and front-end operation is acrewing value to K&Q directly and there's no kind of meddling between kinetic as a token and all markets the front end should have its own like no it's all one unified system that's operated by kinetic and you know governed by K&Q. So yeah that is the primary uh point I would say. Um so yeah a lot of things have obviously taken inspiration from hype but you could think of kinetic and markets as effectively the most scalable uh businesses uh within the hyperlid ecosystem using its rails explicitly is is our view and kinetic is the way to express that view. We ran a very very

straightforward and simple points program last year uh called kpoints this morning. We also announced the end of uh the second round of kpoints later this year. So yeah, we've been extremely explicit about not drawing things out longer than they need to be, which hasn't really been a common theme in the Hyperlid ecosystem and has led to a lot of user frustration. So again, we've just uh effectively tried to push a new standard overall as Hyperl did within the ecosystem tokens uh you know within crypto like general L1s and and especially perplexes. We believe we can do with liquid staking tokens and the hyperremium ecosystem that we operate within. So yeah, that's a very high level. I can literally spend the rest of the the call going through this. But

yeah, >> we we've uh you know, we've only got a few minutes here, but what I what I'd love to dig into is a couple more of these concrete examples for how kinetic fits into your vision and and and how uh you see Hyperlid evolving. You mentioned, you know, right now uh liquid staking powers this hit three decks. Um I'm curious like what are some of the more creative things that that you have in mind for how you can grow this protocol? Uh given that we have HIP 4 coming uh it's it's you know we're we're seeing more and more about about it. Uh we're just talking about the uh the oracle design choices earlier on the show. Uh we see ETFs, we see treasury companies, all of these guys are buying

hype the asset stockpiling it. they want to ultimately do more with their hype. Uh, liquid staking helps them do that. In addition to this DEX that you have powering HIP 3 markets, how else do you foresee Kinetic playing a role in the hyperlquid ecosystem? >> Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, obviously there's really huge doubts out there, right? hyperlink strategies alone would double the TVL of the kinetic protocol today all overall by themselves on top of the ETFs that are coming and you know thankfully we're in in conversation with every possible ETF to make sense out of uh them being able to actually generate a higher return for their ETF depositors >> quick question are are they're currently

getting diluted at 2.2% 2% or or are any of them currently staking? They're hype. >> If they're not staking, then yes, they are. And what I can say is that ETF issuers are very very excited to just beat the quote unquote benchmark of the just pure staking yield, right? Really only Oh, absolutely. I mean, 2.2% is really not enough to get out of bed, but you just want to make sure that you are staking so you're not getting diluted by 2.2% a year. But the buybacks on hype alone justify not necessarily needing to be in a rush to stake, right, to get some value from the protocol. It's not like Salana or Ethereum where the network is inflating by between 3 and 8% or more sometimes a year.

>> So yeah, they are uh you know there's no particular quote unquote rush. But the other side of it too is kinetic has taken a lot of steps to ensure that we are really the only option when it comes to staking outside of the native staking component which can be complicated. So for example before custodians supported uh hyper core staking kinetic was really the only opportunity and option for institutions to access uh any form of staked hype because hyper core is such a bespoke network integration. There's no EVM framework to just go off of that you just simply pay a fee and get integrated with. I think another thing people don't realize too is that Hyperlid does not pay for any integrations at all. It has to come from the uh direct and sole desire from that integrating team to

integrate Hyperlid because they may be missing out on so much business if not >> that that that has kind of thrown kinks in many processes in terms of infrastructure and tooling. So this is where Kinetic initially operated by filling a lot of gaps for sure outside of just offering the uh overall liquid staking component. But the other side of this too is you know as hyperlquid furthers its its own product suite from hip 4 to expanding the builder code offering uh expanding the validator set etc. you know kinetic is the sole and primary in my opinion beneficiary from this. I'll give you an example. Uh never before in the history of liquid staking protocols have validators really uh economically bought into an active set of a liquid staking protocol. Today the

kinetic active set is made up of 13 validators who have committed to taking 50% of their commissions and purchasing the K&TQ token with that not in their possession. They send it to the K&Q deployer and they basically buy their way into the kinetic active set. This has never happened before. So the amount of alignment that kinetic has been able to create between the network meaning its validators and the protocol meaning its depositors or uh token holders is just never really seen before. Right? So the Lindy effect is growing. Of course, the trust and I guess you could say also the reputation of the protocol is growing. It really makes kinetic the only option for institutions who are looking to kind of uh take their hyperlid exposure to the next level. Um yeah, not to mention, you know, how

liquid funds look at hyperlquid as well, which is also very interesting. But yeah, the the point being that that's how we've looked at it and how that's how we've positioned kinetic and do believe that there is going to be significant amounts of institutions who are like okay you know we are now comfortable with this network over x amount of time let's do more right let's go and and get uh you know yield on selling options on our hype or let's go and provide liquidity for arbitrageers etc etc right so this is uh this is what we've seen play out this the interest that we've seen happen uh and kind of like manifest in the recent months. But yeah, as usual, these things usually hockey stick, so I expect a lot more pretty soon. But yeah, >> where do you uh where do you think hype

goes from here next uh like throughout the rest of the year? >> Interesting. Yeah. Uh I think it's really funny. If if hype does nothing from here and just stays and stays at this price while other assets melt, I think that already is like a base case for me personally. But I believe if we have like a similar I mean just going to change hats for a moment to like more of the trader side I guess uh and try to look at it from a different perspective. But if we really do run back the BNB or ETH fractal of a few years before as people realize that Hyperlid, by the way, this is a probably unpopular take. But Hyperlid is extremely extremely illquid compared to

the traditional kind of majors, right? And what I mean by this is again I'm going to go back to the point of Hyperlid does not pay for any integrations. They don't pay market makers to make markets for their token on any exchange. You know, the the primary trading venue for hype today is Hyperlquid itself, and it is far more illquid for its market capitalization and fully diluted valuation than something like a Soul, ETH, uh, or even tokens that are worth less than it, right? That that are significantly more liquid. So, that contributes a lot to the volatility of hype and therefore it can do a lot of really interesting things in both directions, right? Like it's very easy to move down in price, but it's also extremely easy to move to several hundred in my opinion as well.

Um, so yeah, do I have a particularly concrete target as to what happens this year? Let's just say >> up or down. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think we've seen all the down action for the rest of the year. Uh, at least personally, unless something absolutely ridiculous happens 1010 style, but I do believe that as more and more institution uh kind of like get ridiculously interested in hyperlquid, we probably see anywhere between 100 and 200 bucks by the end of Q3. And if we get some really ridiculous action, then you know it probably goes even higher than that. I mean, Filecoin went to like 500 billion diluted in 2021 or something. So, yeah, that was that was >> We're the only we're the only show

that's bullish still. >> Really? >> The only bullish show, >> I think. I >> Yeah, like I don't think it's popular to not be bullish on Hyperl, but it's also kind of popular to on Hyperl at the same time. It's weird. >> Yeah. uh and hyperlquid is a bit uh uncorrelated from the rest of the market these days. So when people are you know having their broad takes it it is a bit a bit separate uh from their hyperlquid thesis. I think you make a great point about the uh the illquid nature of hyperlquid relative to coins or or companies at at a similar market cap and how that that adds uh reflexivity and volatility. Um >> yeah yeah yeah it's a very hard token to

trade on >> pers in many ways because of this >> because it is >> significantly affected by news um at least many of the times I don't know it like the hit rate on trading this token is like very um I don't know if I could say low but like it's it's riskier to kind of trade your hype position because you know you can be left behind very very quickly >> or you or like I don't know maybe two out of 10 times you may get super lucky and be able to buy a lot more lower. Uh so it's it's a tricky uh situation, but I think >> it's for the better.

>> Yeah. And like what I've been talking about since Hype DGE has been that >> it's always been better for Hyperliquid that the main trading venue is not Binance or >> Coinbase or or wherever else. And they kind of prefer that as well. Even if that means that it's harder for institutions to buy because those that can buy, I mean, there's friction to purchase hype, right? That's the good news. It's not even listed on Binance spot yet, right? >> Yeah. So, and and it is also kind of funny just to throw this in there that you know, Binance has to pay market makers to to list hype on spot because uh you know, Hyperlink is not going to pay them. So, that is that's always been like a really funny thing to me.

>> Well, I'm congrats on the success of of Kinetic and the launch of Markets.xyz. Um stoked to have you on. I've really just wanted to catch up and get an understanding of what this what this asset is doing and what you guys are building so I can get a better understanding of kind of portfolio allocations for ourselves and for our for our audience. So, appreciate you, man. And uh keep up the good work and hopefully you guys get Bitwise 21 shares and all the rest to get in there and liquid stake their hype, man. >> Appreciate it, guys. Thanks for the time. Good to see you. >> Cheers, man. >> Congrats, man.

>> Thanks, guys. >> All righty. Up next, we've got Kale, the co-founder of Ledger. Frankly, just an absolute absolute gigabable. He remains bullish in this market. And boy oh boy, he's wearing an OKC hat. Little does he know >> little does he know that the Knicks are coming in strong at the start there because uh I don't know if this guy's ready for Jaylen Brunson after a sweep. His his Thunder are probably going to go to game six at least. He's got to get he's got to get by Webyama first.

>> In fact, they're definitely going to game six just by pure math. >> So, I mean, it could be game seven. Knicks are going to get a lot of rest. I don't know if the Thunder are going to be ready for a rested Knicks team, especially if they go to seven. I was watching the playoffs with Kale last year. Let's bring him up here. Let's get the Gigab Bull up on stage. Get him on the show. What's going on, man? >> Thunder up, baby. Look at that. >> Thunder up >> for you. >> Oh my goodness. Bring out the big guns. >> That's the good luck hat, too. The good luck hat. We have not lost a game this playoffs when I've worn the hat. So, I'm like, I'm not taking it off during game day anymore.

>> Okay, >> we're sleeping. We're sleeping in the hat. We're showering in the hat. The hat stays on. >> The hat stays on. I mean, dude, people are saying that the East Coast has no chance against the West Coast regardless who wins. But, I don't know. Those Knicks are looking strong this year, man. I posted something about that yesterday and I I kind of see it like Indie last year where Indie was hot ending the season and they were hot throughout the playoffs too. But everybody said, you know, myself included at that point in time. I was like, there's no way that Indie matches up well with OKC whenever playoffs, you know, whenever the finals get there. And like I I think y'all are even hotter

than Indie was at that point. And I I honestly think you have a better starting five. So, >> and Indie took him to seven games last year right? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that that's my whole point. It's like I don't think that >> I think the Knicks could surprise some people. I still think the West wins whether it's OKC or the Spurs. Um but, you know, I think the Knicks are going to push it a lot further than people gave it credit for going into the playoffs. So, you know, I don't think it's a a pushover. >> Well, I was in the city. Well, I'm in the city now and I was here last night for the game and place was just I mean in it was a zoo. It was a Monday night like 10:30 p.m. was a zoo on the streets.

>> I can imagine, man. I can only imagine. I know what it was like when I was up there when y'all were not good. So, I can only imagine like I say that because it was electric when y'all were not good. Um and I So, I can only imagine what it's like right now. >> Yeah, man. Well, hey, we've been we've been harping on this kind of secular bull market happening. We had Arthur Hayes come on yesterday and drop the show and you know, he's all hype near Zcash. There's this Venice rally happening. There's this privacy AI rally. We're just kind of like, all right, look, there's these pockets of opportunity. There's these sectors in the market really just praying for Bitcoin not to just have the have the

bottom fall out because then the party's going to end. Um, man, where we at, Kaleo? It's been a hell of a hell of a seven months, eight months now. I mean, what we're end of May, beginning of October kind of topped us out 1010. It's been a it's been a journey to say the least. Um, and I think you kind of have different camps of people thinking that we go a little bit lower to the end of the year and then that is kind of where our bottom is. I think you're more bullish. Just uh I mean broad strokes here, man. What are you seeing out there? We lose Kaleio.

>> Yell. >> Well, first and foremost, I apologize if I've got any crappy Wi-Fi right now is messing with that connection. I like I'm moving tomorrow. So, y'all are giving me a break in between the move and I have had issues with the with the connection here for a minute. But what I'm seeing in the market, dude, I I think we're kind of like September 2020 is what I would like to say where, you know, September 2020, there were you look back at it, the markets were ripping across the board, right? Like the S&P 500, QQQ were just absolutely printing. And in crypto, it was

relatively boring unless you were in the right pocket. in the right pocket throughout that summer leading up to it was DeFi, right? You had the new innovation of DeFi where it really was, you know, there were a lot of earlier forms of it, but it just never really reached, you know, it had its breakthrough moment at that point. And that's kind of what I look like uh right now with the market with crypto. you know, you've got these random pockets where you've had the obviously everything with Hyperlid that's been taking off, right? Like you've had um the the privacy narrative is one that I'm still just debating on, man. I've just

seen it so many times that I want to be sold on it. I've wanted to be sold on it forever, but I feel like it like that that's a different conversation. But one way or another, the privacy narrative, it's happening, right? And then the last one is the AI narrative, right? And if you are in those pockets right now, you're doing well. You're in a bull market. You're printing. And if you're not in those pockets, >> you're like, crypto is the worst asset possible. And it kind of is. And you know, outside of software, because it's basically like, you know, look at the Bitcoin chart and then look at a bunch of these different software companies that are out there like type in Adobe.

And I feel like the price action for the past few weeks for Bitcoin has basically mirrored that. So that is what the market is treating it as right now. So I think it eventually turns around. Um but you know like right now that's where we are. I think we're kind of in that pre the the boring the calm before the storm. >> So So then what's your bare case like? Like like what would what would the most bearish outcome for the rest of this school quarter into Q3 really look like for you?

most bearish outcome is, you know, equities do top, right? like you know I think right now we are in a bit of a bubble and nobody really knows how Worsh for instance is going to really whether or not he's actually going to be pumps Trump or Trump's puppet or um you know whether there are some other factors whether it's an escalation with you know I I feel like with Trump you never really know what the next black swan event could Right. So, if there's something that somehow does top out equities as a whole, and Bitcoin's as weak as it is right now, um, you know, >> it's GG's then.

>> Yeah. >> So, I mean, I feel like that's the main bare case that I have toward it. But um outside of that I think as long as equities remain strong right now a lot of the narrative that has driven down different things you know like you've seen a bunch of the different exploits across old you know DeFi infrastructure within crypto recently and we saw by far the highest number of attacks and the largest amount of capital um that was, you know, taken over the course of the past several months. And I think at a certain point though, that escalation,

it goes up and up and up. But at a certain point, I think that it does the opposite. And even though we started, you know, right here um and then went way up here. I think eventually at a certain point you know AI infrastructure gets good enough that it actually does make things more secure and it makes the use case for crypto being frictionless p or payments for AI infrastructure and for all those other you know I think it does make the overall infrastructure of the crypto space as a whole better but you know you got to go through a little bit of the pain before you get to that point and I think that's really what we've been in the process of doing and well understandably nobody wants to park a

huge sum of capital into a bunch of these different projects and a bunch of these different protocols whenever you know whatever the next evolution of mythos is what effect it might have. >> Yeah, there are some very very real uh considerations and I think people understand the power of AI uh both positive and negative and so right now it's better to be on the side of it rather than against it. uh we see where DeFi is and it's mostly against uh AI and and there are assets that are performing quite well on the side of AI.

Um Kayla, you mentioned, you know, still somewhat skeptical around the privacy narrative. You know, Zcash gets gets kind of wrapped up in that. Uh and then, you know, we've got AI. Uh we're seeing some some some hot coins in terms of Near and VVV. Um and then you've got kind of this return to fundamentals, this hyperlid. Uh, and there's some other ones in there that do well, you know, given that you're skeptic skeptical on, you know, the the the privacy side of things. Where are you most concentrated right now? Is it equities? Is it, you know, more on the AI side? How how are you navigating uh, you know, the current the current somewhat secular market

structure? >> I I've been the most boring that I have ever been is the honest response to that. I you know I'm not really actively trading right now. Um so it makes it a lot easier to look at a bunch of this these intraday moves and a bunch of this board and it actually is something that's encouraging to me from the building point of view. I love to see things flat right now because I want to spend as much time as I can positioning myself for what I feel like is the inevitable move higher.

>> And I know you probably brought me on from the trading perspective, from the whatever. So, I I I like to still keep up with it. I I like to still look at the charts, but it's a lot easier to not get focused on I think I saw somebody earlier like thread guy posted something. I know that 15minute candle with Bitcoin so many people this morning and it's just >> I don't really see things that way anymore. You know, it was like a 1% move like each direction and it's just one of those things where what does that really matter in the short term? So, you know, I think that's been the biggest shift for me is rather than just focusing on the volatility that crypto brings, it's focusing on the potential that it can bring down the

road. So, you know, I have not done I am embarrassed to say it. I haven't done nearly as good of a job as I should have allocating myself to the different trending sections, right? you know, I've been a little bit more boring where, you know, it's been a lot of just Bitcoin and unfortunately some ETH, you know, like and then some other assets that it's just it hasn't done what I want it to do yet, but you know, I'm punting on some narratives that I think could take off, right? Some other hyperp um L1s. I I think investing some in those ecos and parking a little bit of capital and if they ever take off, those are the type of things where right now

nobody wants to touch, >> right? Looking for the areas of the market that nobody wants to touch and then really saying, okay, like at what point because again, most things in crypto go like this until they they go like that. And at the point where they start that ramp up, it's really difficult to catch up to the narrative. >> Yeah. And it's we've we've had this conversation before where it's effectively like all the gains are made in you know 15 days throughout the entire year. You just don't know which 15 days. So you kind of have to be in position for whenever that may happen and capture that upside because it's it's difficult to jump in after that move. And so you know given that you you've kind of placed some chips but but mostly staying patient.

>> What is it that you're keeping an eye out there for? Obviously, not 15-minute candles breaking, you know, technical analysis formations. Is there, and you mentioned Kevin Walsh kind of feeling out, you know, will he be Trump's puppet? I think the next Fed meeting is in about 3 weeks. So, we do have some time before we really get an indication of his hawkishness or dovishness. What are you looking out out for? Uh, and what kind of signals are are you looking for to tell you, okay, you know, this is confirming the thesis. we are going to go higher or you know maybe you know Worsh isn't uh going to cut rates anytime soon. We're going to go lower.

>> I I still think Bitcoin breaking 100K is a huge one. I I'll probably be willing to be more risk on and we'll focus a little bit more attention actively trading and looking for some of those trending. Um but I I don't really think easy mode hits the market until that happens. Bitcoin is still king at the end of the day. Um, and you know, again, I not discounting any of the other narratives. I think the other narratives are incredibly bullish and they have had an insane bull market by themselves. And I wish that I was along for that ride.

And honestly, there probably is quite a bit bit of momentum that does continue to follow that. But as far as the broader crypto market is concerned, >> I think it's important for Bitcoin to reclaim 100K, start closing back in on all-time highs. And if you look historically, a lot of the time whenever alts start to take off, it's whenever Bitcoin starts to gain, you know, like 2021 for instance, um, alts didn't really take off until Bitcoin got just up to that point and it was, you know, January of 2021 or and Bitcoin had just broken all-time highs, you know, December 2020, if I'm remembering correct, I should pull up the chart, right? And you know, you could say the same thing even back to

the previous cycle when you're talking about like in 2017 where Bitcoin started to break out is where a bunch of the different alts, you know, the ETH ecosystem started to rip and the ICO narrative started to rip. So I look at it again with this cycle and I'm like man whenever Bitcoin makes that clean break again and whenever it starts approaching it is if you're really looking at from a trading perspective and where you have to stay locked in 247 to every single thing that's shifting and things speed up. It's whenever Bitcoin starts to really approach the previous all-time highs. So what is going to drive that I haven't really been focusing on as much and I'm not going to like sit there and BS and say I know exactly what it is, right? I wish I did. If I did know exactly what it is,

then I would still be trading with I leverage and pushing all the chips on the table at the right time. But I I think right now it's just important. It's like positioning yourself and you know for me right now a lot of that time is just spent really building and you know learning how to grow skills where it's not just about creating content and sharing a narrative and betting on the narrative but it's like how can I be a part of building something around that narrative you know whenever it does happen and yeah so >> yeah have you been doing any of the um AI trade at all equity side like have you been doing any of those memory stocks or semiconductors or any of that

type of trades that I' I would have made like a hundred. >> Yeah, cuz you're like >> 21 man >> you'll buy some ridiculous calls or something. I I would have and you know I I hate to come on here and just be this boring person preservation >> because you know like a huge thing that just clicked for me along the way post FTX and post all that drama, right? Like I made a lot of money really quickly and I lost a lot of money really quickly and I did that several times around, right?

And I did it in both equities and with trading purps. Um, and I, you know, in a trending market, I feel like I can, you know, I can out, I can push the table or the chips on the table faster than anybody, compound it faster than anybody. But again, with that, I think I realized a weakness of mine is I just don't have the discipline whenever I am have that mindset to take the chips off the table at the right time. Um, and I I think that's an important lesson for a lot of the people listening on here. It's like I obviously had a ton of success doing that, right? And, you know, it brought a lot of attention and I still enjoy looking at the charts,

but being able to take a step back from that and then just focus more on the broader ecosystem itself and not like, you know, a shift back to the fundamentals rather than rather than like, dude, get away from leverage. It's the biggest thing. It clears your head. It does. It clears your head. Um, you'll have time to be able to focus on everything else. And, you know, that's kind of where I am right now. It's just realizing that, you know, trying to make money slowly is more fun than trying to make it fast.

And maybe that's my boomer side coming out of me, you know. >> Well, it's it's also more difficult. >> It is. It is. So, yeah. You know, I I wish I I I wish I could come on here and tell you the perfect answer for how to do it, right? Like it's one of the things I'm trying to figure out right now. I like I am spending shoot it feels like 12 hours a day right now just trying to, you know, a lot of it started as just AI, right? where I didn't know how to code at all and it was AI pushing stuff but then it was parsing through the lines of code and like reading and learning the structure behind it and then learning structure of like full

stack infrastructure and going through that process then comparing a bunch of the actual you know the actual tech of a bunch of the different chains and saying how do different things work well with the different architecture of different chain pains and then you know like it makes it has given me new life as far as the way that I view crypto in general and the way that I view the market. It it gives patience because I'm still very confident that the market eventually is going to have that moment where it is up only and you're not going to be able to step away from the screen.

>> What g what gives you that confidence? Is it is it you know the the the thesis the vision has not changed. You know obviously Federal Reserve this money is still printed out of thin air. That train is not slowing down. Politicians the only tool that they have at their disposal is printing money to solve their problems. Bitcoin is there's only 21 million. You know smart contracts decentralization. It it's the the you know fundamentally this industry is still on a path to success. or is there something else in the water that says to you, hey, you know, we're on the right track. Ultimately, this thing is inevitable.

>> Frictionless finance. I think that money flows to where there's less friction, right? Like it eventually has gravity. And when you look at crypto in general, it is about, you know, like the essence of everything. Whether it truly is decentralized for some of these different L1s that are taking off. I mean, it's frictionless finance. Money flows to the easiest path. And when you look at crypto and the infrastructure in general, I think it's inevitable that whether or not it's going to be the degenerate side of things that we see or not, like it's going to continue to work itself more synergistically with traditional systems. And it's also a

really really easy and intuitive layer for the average person as a bunch of these different user like talking about fun for instance and the innovations that they're doing making payments and onboarding and off-ramping on ramping off ramping a lot easier there's a lot of that even the NFT side of things I I like I look at digital collectibles and it's a frictionless form of collecting and I do think that there is something that's going to rotate back toward that. The same way that you could talk about how different trading cards and whatever, well, I could easily print off something that looks basically the same as that. What does a sheet of paper really do for you? I think the digital collectibles are another thing that as

these different ecosystems and assets continue to gain providence and continue to gain momentum, naturally some of the higher beta plays like the assets on those chains are going to be the beneficiaries. So, >> yeah. Um, I mean, Kayla, just to close you out here, man, I know you got a big move. Do you thinking are you thinking Spurs in six or Spurs in seven or what do you >> Oh, dude, it depends on uh do we get either JDub or AJ back healthy? I'd rather have AJ. Uh, neither of them. It might be six or seven Spurs if we get one of them. If we get AJ back. Well, AJ's out tonight, so I don't know.

JDub's still like it sounds bad. He just doesn't have the chemistry. But of a coin flip, I'm going OKC in I'm still going OKC 7. >> I think it goes to seven regardless of who wins. I don't know who wins in seven, but I think it goes seven. >> Yeah. >> Well, Kaleo, it sounds like you're in capital preservation mode and building mode, which I think is the right way to be thinking about things right now. It's been a, you know, what this is your third cycle. So, you know, that's a very like third cycle thing, you know what I mean? Like first cycle you lose 90%, second cycle you lose like 70%.

>> And then third cycle you, you know, you you end up doing pretty well. So, >> yeah. So, hey, it's boring for now, but naturally, if you're just along for the ride, the market won't let it stay boring for long. So, >> well, if we do get a uh OKC Knicks finals, I will be expecting you in New York, man, for at least one of the games. I know it's going to be epic. >> All right. Well, I appreciate y'all having me on. >> Thanks for coming, brother. >> Best of luck in the move, man. >> Hope everything goes well. >> We'll see you next time. All right, Kelly.

>> All right. Later. >> Cheers, buddy. >> The capital preservation mode, Rob. >> So, that's third cycle vibes. What's fourth cycle, >> dude? Fourth cycle is like post economics. >> That's like uh like think about the crowd of people who are in their fourth cycle, right? It's like Gibbisk Kobe. >> Yeah. >> A lot of those guys are a lot less active. >> Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's definitely post post economic vibes. Totally metallic energy. We'll see. Each cycle kind of delivers I don't know slightly less and less it seems, but still a lot of opportunity. So, >> yeah, >> Rob, that's been the show today. Uh, great show.

>> Feels good to be back. >> Big week, big Memorial Day weekend. We're back. We'll see you guys live tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. Eastern. Another great show. Rob, enjoy. Enjoy. Stay safe out there. No, no leverage. All right. No leverage.