🟢 LIVE From The Tower: More Volatility, Invesco x Superstate, Action in D.C., Bitget COO Joins

Transcript

[music] [music] [music] [music] Thank [music] Lord. [music] We'll see you around the timeline.

Feels good to be back. >> I think The Rollup is one of the [music] most premier media brands in crypto and Andy and Robbie are great experts at everything they talk about and it's my favorite podcast. [music] into my library every day. >> Potentially multi-chain deployments. We are at [music] the connect day one here. I'm guessing from base. [music] [music] Heat. [music]

[music] Heat. >> [music] [music] [music] >> 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 bullish. It >> is bullish. I'm bullish. We're bullish. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music]

[music] Heat. [music] Heat. [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music]

>> Corola is headed to the top. If we're not already at the top, we're going to the tongue. >> 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. [music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music]

>> Zoom out. The institutions aren't coming. They're simply here. It's the golden age of crypto, guys. Get right. Let's go. [music] >> What is the next? See you on the show. >> Let's get it. Happy Monday, baby. Welcome to the tokenization tower nest broadcasting live. >> We are back. >> Yes. >> Welcome to the market. >> How was your weekend, Rob?

>> Oh, it was pretty good. Got outside, got a little sun. It's very sunny in uh South Florida today, >> so no complaints there. It feels like we are fully out of the winter. We're fully entrenched in spring. Summer is right around the corner >> and it's warm and it feels good. Feels good to be outside. I saw the cows. >> Saw the cows this weekend. >> I did. I sent you a picture. Happy old cow. >> Nice. I started watching the like 20 minutes of the first Euphoria uh rerun. There's a new show or a new season of this show. first 20 minutes was um this the girl Rue running Mexican cartel

human putting stuff down her throat going driving across the border putting it out the other side fell asleep halfway in. It was uh other than that I just kind of took it easy. >> Congrats to Rory. >> Yeah, watched the Masters as well. That was uh that was a good win. I mean he had it all the way. Dude, Scotty down the stretch is just >> came out of nowhere. >> Insane to watch. You can never count it out. >> Couldn't get it um going in the first nine and so he had a bogey free round but couldn't get, you know, any birdies in there.

>> Yeah. You know, can never count him out. And uh it it's it's pretty incredible that because what I mean it was a par 71. They play four rounds. So they're looking at like 280 strokes or so throughout, you know, the tournament and it comes down to one stroke. Like these guys tap something >> and he just missed that putt. >> Yes. On 17 or 18. Yeah. >> And Justin Rose blew it as well. Justin Rose had an eagle opportunity. He was 10 under. Three putted that hole. End up with a par.

>> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. He he he blew that one. >> Yeah. No, Rory, congrats to him, man. two years in a row. It's pretty pretty insane. He got over the hump. He had like nothing going and then uh he won the first Masters last year and now he's just he's just on a roll. >> Yep. >> All the Liv guys have fallen off. That >> Yeah, that that whole concept just kind of fell off. >> I mean, those guys are starting to come back and now, you know, Bryson stunk it up. I think the whole thing was that, you know, these guys weren't uh they didn't have any competition over there. They were signing big checks, uh, playing for fun, but when it comes to like playing real golf against real competition, these guys just, you know, you don't practice against the best and,

uh, you know, you end up struggling when you play the best. >> Well guys, we're in the tokenization tower. Shout out to Plume, the mass powering our lovely studio here and more. Guys are absolutely cooking on an offsite right now. Got to give him some love building the infrastructure for onchain asset management. Let's give Plume some love. Rob, it's Monday. We've got Alvin Khan of BitGet. Let's get into what we got on the agenda for today. Um, obviously the markets are green. We're live from from the tokenization tower. Rob from his tropical Miami paradise.

We've got the markets and weather uh live from New York and Bitwallets COO joining the show. Um, lot to talk about there. I think we're supposed to have him on with D. Missed that. had uh had a couple couple folks move some things around today. So, we're going to rock with what we got. Shout out to Treasure. Our topics today are powered by Treasure. Use code rollup10 at treasure.io to get that started. Let's get into the markets and weather. Before we do, let us tell you about FRA. [screaming] Building infrastructure for the in for the future of digital money, open, stable, and borderless. Frack is a genius compliant stable coin FRXUSD.

It is a beauty. It truly is a beauty. >> Some people were surprised that uh Poly Market did not choose Fracks as their stable coin of choice. >> Uh you know, we heard the the news last week Poly Market is go getting into the stable coin game. I think we saw $500 million of stable coins held in balances on their platform and uh right now USDC is capturing all of that net interest income. Fracks uh as a genius compatible stable coin felt like the natural choice as Poly Market enters the US market. Um bit peculiar there. Maybe there's a late run that Fracks can uh can make that make a stab at that one.

>> Uh wow, it's >> 69 degrees >> sunny over there. >> It's 20 20 mph winds. Sunny here in the tokenization tower in New York. I walked out today with my uh with my full-on, you know, trench coat and everything and I did not need it at all. >> By the way, today is not a trench coat day. >> It it it was chilly in in the morning. >> It's almost time to retire the trench coat for the >> I think this trench coat season is over. I think we can firmly declare New York City. >> Come on. Trench coat. Give some love, man.

>> Trench coat. >> I got a lot of love for that trench coat, man. The two little pocket things on the top right. I got a logo for that >> if I'm not mistaken. Andy >> powered by Relay. Relay.Link. Execute your crosschain swaps today using >> powers the trench coat >> on relay. >> Official trench coat sponsor. >> Official official Dior trench coat sponsor. Relay.Link. Let's get into the markets, guys. It's green. I'm watching Hyperlid take a stab at 43. Bitcoin back above 72.

Man, it's green today. It's green today. I do feel like the bottom three pairs here, they consistently stay about where they're at. Feel like near's been hovering around this 1.3 now closer to 1.4 mark. Chain link still around that $9 mark. Salon around that $80 mark. Bitcoin and ETH are pushing though. Um, man, it looks better than what I've seen in a long time for the market. Just in terms of basing out, in terms of not going down, in terms of not reacting negatively to bad news, Bitcoin is definitely still rangebound, right?

Tracking macro. But yeah, I mean, we had a kind of a reversal in the straight in the blockade and the mines this weekend. And I don't know, nor Bitcoin nor stocks seem to care. Uh indexes are green, Bitcoin's green, uh commodities are green. So I I think we might be through the point of maximum fear on the war side unless it escalates like to an extreme level. >> So yeah, I mean, should we get on our macro geopolitical armchairs?

>> Armchairs. Yeah. I mean, I feel like you're the guy for it. So, where we at? >> I I don't have any intel that you don't have. I'm just looking at my market news feed. I'm looking at the commentary on Twitter and I'm just thinking that, you know, Trump uh well the the news if we're just recounting I don't have any any commentary yet, but if we're just recounting the facts from over the weekend yeah >> uh JD Vance came home to the US after a 21-hour negotiation uh I believe in Islamabad uh and they came out without a deal. And so my understanding is that there are certain red lines that America is not willing to accept. One of those is nuclear uh for uh Iran and this is the hard line. Iran is saying uh you know

that they're not willing to negotiate on this and so this is where we've reached a stallmate >> uh between the US and Iran. Ultimately someone is going to have to capitulate >> on this particular red line. All the other ones, you know, there was this 10-point plan that was drafted. Yep. >> Eight of those 10 >> seemed relatively easy to overcome. Uh, Israel's been more chill with Lebanon, I think. Uh, and that was holding up the negotiations in the initial ceasefire, but it feels like we've overcome that market has bounced. It feels like the market's just learning to cope with this ongoing potent this this tension in the Middle East. Um, ultimately oil is flowing, but they're paying tolls. Trump

doesn't want them to pay tolls. That feels like a good negotiation tactic. Um, and so where we're at today is I saw that Iran uh informed Pakistan that they were going to be willing to engage in good faith negotiation as long as the US does not uh ask for illegal uh negotiation points. >> Um, and so it feels like nuclear is the the thing that's holding this up. Uh US officials say that talks with Iran are ongoing with the aim of reaching an agreement and the US blockade in Iran has been activated. So the market seems to like the blockade despite oil and I think this is something that we learned

from the Catrini research piece which is kind of where I'll leave off here which is that >> uh we're probably entering the era that people didn't really think was going to happen. It feels very contradictory where oil goes up and the markets go up. >> Yeah. I mean, if oil stays high, obviously we're going to have inflation happening for a longer period than than I think any of us want. So, that's kind of like the longer term worry as the numbers come in for the in the coming months. Um, I think more kind of specifically within crypto, I put out this tweet that I think is super super super apparent. The next bull market has already begun. It's just not what you're used to. It's happening in tokens that look and operate more like public

equities than traditional governance tokens. Uh Yano and Blockworks is pushing on investor relations hardcore here. The and I say this market is is demanding cash flows, programmatic buybacks. Even EtherFi and Sky have been kind of like like dillydallying on changing the buybacks and like the market is reacting to it. uh transparent in public accounting and real onchain business model forecasting with path to s path to sustainable revenues. Welcome to the new era. Um so I think that's kind of like where we're at. Like if you look at hype, if you look at lit, if you look at some of these cash flowing tokens, people that we've had on the show talking about them, they've been doing well. Uh it's just kind of these

maybe it's like that sector plus this kind of AI sector is is doing well. Um, the rest seems to be kind of still just in the much more of like a bottoming phase rather than an actual leading the market phase. I think it's pretty clear that Hype, Zcash, couple of these others will probably reach all-time highs very very quickly, like before a lot of these other assets do. I mean, right now, it looks like it looks like some of these altcoins could actually beat Bitcoin to alltime highs, which would be an interesting sign. >> Yeah. Uh, keep an eye on ETH Bitcoin, that ratio there. Couple more things um >> that I think are willing to mention. I wish we do we have a breaking news.

>> That's sports center. But if we had a breaking news um >> let's go Todd. >> So Trump >> There we go. That that'll work for today. We're going to tighten that one up. Um and so I think you know the market's particularly surging now in the last you know hour or so. Trump says that he was called this morning by Iran. They want repeal. >> Yes. And so >> he just tweeted that or he just put that on true social. >> Uh I think he's giving an interview, one of these press conferences where he stands on the lawn wearing a hat blowing in the wind. Uh and these are the things that he's saying coming down the wire.

Um so yeah, there is posit there's I'm not going to say positivity, but there's things in motion. You know, we're progressing towards a resolution or some more clarity of sorts. Um which I think the market seems to enjoy. Uh the other thing uh happening here is I guess on the macro side you know I saw a tweet I think it was Stanley Drunken Miller it was a quote of his and he says that every time we're t taking a trade we're taking an embedded trade within it and I felt like this was this was particularly uh true as of recent times. He said essentially and it varies depending on sector but you've got 40% is a sectorbased trade. You know, you could look at the fundamentals of something, you could look at the business model and

you could you could say, "Okay, this this thing is undervalued, overvalued." And then 30% is an embedded macro trade. And he gave the example of airliners and how if you're betting on airliners, you're making an embedded trade on oil. If oil goes up, people are the gas prices, the fuel prices of of uh airlines are going to go up as well. And so people are going to take less flights. And so there's these embedded trades. And right now, everything seems to be correlated. Everything has this embedded macro trade which is why I think it is important to at least >> be aware of what is happening, how these things could shake up.

>> I'm sure actually I sent you uh so I know you I know that you saw this uh uh you know the next stage in the um >> in the Trump negotiation this sevenstep plan if we want to just rattle through these these seven steps real quick. First step, ask for the moon, right? And so we already asked, you know, Iran, you know, take over, change the regime, shut down the straight, no nuclear weapons. Step two, whip out the big button. Big button is big bombs dropping on their head, decapitating their leader. Step three is punch someone in the mouth.

That's infrastructure day. [laughter] Step four, break bread, make friends, you know. Okay, your 10-point plan is a basis for a negotiation. >> Yes. Yes. >> Yes. your 10 points have been on my desk for the last two weeks and the hours before your se your your deadline is up, that's when I come and say that it's okay and this is a basis for negotiation. >> Yes. >> Um and so what we have next is step five. Step five is going to be uh leave them at the altar. Leave the bride at the altar, which hasn't uh we haven't quite seen happen yet, but you could have said happened over the weekend with JD Vance >> JD Vance uh these negotiations.

>> That is exactly what happened. I think that's exactly that step. >> I think so too. And it's interesting. This this post over the weekend came before that was taken, but now we've seen that play out. Step six is kiss and makeup. And so now it feels like, oh, they called this morning. Think about it. It's like day after. Do I text her? Do I not? >> They called the morning. You know, they're going to go get brunch. >> And so [laughter] and and Trump just just posted, right, that that they had the call. Um, again, I don't know if he posted it or if it was just said in an interview.

>> Gotcha. >> But, uh, this is what is coming down the wire. And then step seven is make a deal. Uh, and then obviously when the deal is ultimately made, um, it's going to be the biggest, the best, and the most grandiose deal that has ever been struck. >> And I think that's what the markets are pricing in. Um, and I think that's where we're at is like we're at that final step. That's kind of why I'm like I think the point of maximum fear is beyond us. >> I could see it >> um on on this war and I think that this is like the best that these markets have looked in a long time. Um in a long time. So shout out to Zama powering today's digital assets market prices.

Let's give them some love. The geopolitical armchair of today's episode. Shout out to Zama. >> Yes. All right, guys. Let's move on into some of the news and topics that we want to cover today. Before we do, let me tell you about our leading AI partner, Near, getting some love, getting some traction. The blockchain design for AI native applications and autonomous agents. Start developing at near.org. Check out near.ai andne.com as well. So, we had a somewhat sarcastic post this week. And I know we want to get into this, but I have to say one more thing, which is that Trump is getting this giving this interview in real time. This is coming straight from

the wire. He says, "We may stop by Cuba after we're finished with Iran." >> Yes, there it is. I mean, I've we've we've we've heard that now for several weeks to months. The guys just >> going on a world tour. >> The guys lost it. Um, so we got a sarcastic thread here on World Liberty Finance and the Trump ties that absolutely blew up. I quote tweeted that said I was going to stay stay away from all this stuff with a 10-ft pole. Not sure I really fully realized it was peak sarcasm until I actually looked at this. >> I looked at this guy's account and um this guy tweets these sarcastic tweets about all these different companies as if he was like a leading part of it. Um,

and so in this case, he talked about revenue sharing, memecoin profits, the Witco family involvement, and then Zack Witoff actually tried to kind of like dispute it in the comments. Not sure if he realized it was satire either. Um, and then World Liberty 5 goes out and puts out a tweet saying, "Is anyone going to believe Justin's son?" Because Justin's son's like, "Look, I've got $70 million locked in this lending protocol." his excellency. >> We don't need to get too deep into this. Um, obviously this market is colliding with politics in real time. That's been a very common thing in this administration so far. And yeah, I mean I I'm not touching WLFI,

the markets, the that entire I'm not putting any capital near there, not even associated with anything that's happening there. Um, it is it is a bit of a mess over there. >> Yeah. Yeah, I think this was a pretty hilarious tweet if you read all the way through it. The guy just has a knockout punch uh line after everything. Let's just scroll down a little bit here. >> U is my best work. And then he goes on to say all of these things are unrelated. Justin Sun invested $75 million. He was facing SEC fraud charges. The SEC dropped the case. He is now our adviser. These events are unrelated. Let's keep Let's [laughter] keep going. There are some absolute

bangers in here. Uh CZ pleaded guilty to moneyaundering, had a presidentential pardon, SEC dropped the lawsuit. Same week he listed the stable coin. These events are unrelated. And so just goes on to show the absolute uh nuts and bolts of how, you know, there are involvements with World Liberty Fi. There's concessions that are made. There's pardons that are issued. There's money that changes hands. However, Andy, say it with me.

>> All these events, >> these events are unrelated. It's so true. I mean, it's like I read this and I was like, hm. It's like the biggest conspiracy corruption political tweet for Trump ever. Came at a perfect time, too, with Justin Sun and War Liberty Fly going back and forth as well. >> I I have to. Okay. So, so putting if you want to take the tinfoil hat off and you want to put on like maybe a more a more serious hat on, >> the Democrats are going to go after this in full force. Um, it it's looking like there's going to be a blue wave and we can check the poly market on on what the the elections are looking like for the midterms, but the consensus opinion is that there's going to be uh seats that

are flipped. Democrats are going to take the majority and then they're if they have the Congress and they have the Senate, then there are significant lawsuits and lawfare that could be coming after Trump and could be coming after the the crypto complex as a whole. And I think that is kind of the important, you know, if you're going to make a a take on the market and try to like prepare for what could be coming. Obviously, this is hilarious the way that this is framed, but how and I I I I mean, how should we as an industry be preparing for the onslaught of lawfare that could be coming for us in as early as 2027, if not the presidential election in 2028?

>> These are some of the things that I think, you know, founders and investors should be considering. Maybe it doesn't mean just, you know, donating to Democrats. I don't know if that's going to be enough. Obviously, we want to get the Clarity Act through and instantiate it into [clears throat] law. But I think you're right. I think distancing from the World Liberty Finance Project is a good start and starting to really tighten up what the foundation token model tag equity, you know, labs model, what that looks like when ultimately these things are unified. >> The SEC, CFDC is doing a great job. I would, if I'm a founder and builder, I would get as close to the SEC and CFTC as possible because they might have longer term limits than uh the current

Congress and Senate. And they have the carveouts for innovation councils, innovation committees. You constantly see them going on these road shows. They want to talk to founders and they want to talk to builders and companies. And I think you can get more prepared and out in front of a lot of the Democratic law fair that could be coming if you're close to the regulatory agencies themselves. >> Yeah. I mean, I'm going to go to that Salana Policy Institute event today. It's going to be kind of the SEC uh meets Wall Street type of vibe. So, we'll report back tomorrow on on anything there. I generally agree. So, let's move on from world from world liberty. I don't really have much to add here. I think these guys are in an interesting spot. If if I was on that

team, I bet that there's a lot of internal war room going on. Good. Alexander put out a tweet. I feel like this just makes sense. Um, lately I've been buying projects where the founder hasn't quit. The GitHub is active and the token is down 90% plus. I actually had the uh head the the CIO of um Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions in here on Thursday or Friday last week and he actually said the same thing. He was like there are companies that have a very active GitHub and and he was actually looking at the quality of the GitHub uh contributors and so I think that he probably agrees with good

Alexander here. I actually think relatively disgusting disgusting amounts of money to be made before the inevitable collapse in 2028. We've heard this a lot in the sense of like, oh, there's going to be one final cycle, one final pump. Um, a lot of these projects are left for dead. They've been rebuilding, launching new products. Uh, one of our portfolio companies, Plasma, is a great example of this probably where down 98% at the absolute lows. Chart looks way better now. Plasma One, their card, and Neo Bank is launching in partnership with what they do with Tether. Um, and so like I think there's probably a lot of these out there that, um, even just a small mean reversion on some of these assets is going to

generate like a multiples of a return. So, I think Plasma is a great call out. Obviously, we're invested. Uh, it's important to disclose that. Um, I I did do some research based on this tweet because I, you know, had a great chat with Good Alexander and his brother when we were in in Singapore. Uh, he's obviously very focused on AI. Good Alexander's ex palunteer and so, you know, guy is extremely smart. I tend to take his word on this. Um, I did some research. I asked Grock, hey, what projects could he be talking about? Follow this investment logic. Let's do some research here. Initially, Grock just found, you know, the ones that people were calling out in the comments.

I said, no, no, no. I don't want, you know, I don't want Twitter comment warriors. I want, you know, proven research. The two that I found, >> Akos, who actually was on the uh show last week, >> a Greg is, you know, we see him at all these conferences. We see him in the AI circuit. He's coming on the show. Um, and so we I mean, I wasn't bagged up until I saw this tweet. Akos came on the show last week. I said, "This timing just feels too right." And he's just so smart. And so given the AI overlap with good Alex and then also uh Greg from Akos I I went in I I bought a bag of AOS feeling good about it. Um the other one is Fala. Fala I had not heard about it's down it's a much lower mark. I think

it's like four market cap 400 or 500 in in there. >> I sat next to a guy that worked for Fala on the plane to a conference. I think it might have been Korea. if if he's listening to this, I'm sorry, but the guy talked my ear off. It was insane. This guy >> in AI too, right? >> In AI. Yes. And like unpacked the entire trillemma of TEES, ZK, and and explained how some of these things are good for some things. You can pair some of them up. You can kind of have two out of the three like the typical trilmma.

Guy was so smart, so extremely dialed. talked about how a lot of the current players that are actually using this technology in practice are relying on Fala 4 infrastructure. I think Zama and Fer are the two leaders in some of this. But Fala is more on the TE side. Zama obviously in more the FHE side. But the the simple thing here is that these tokens are down a lot but they're extremely active and they're >> in GitHub >> extremely active in GitHub. They're still building. They haven't laid people off. They've got a lot of runway still left and they have so much specific domain expertise that if you're bullish on these technologies as a concept, these guys are the market leaders and

you and I know that the power law suggests that these guys will just continue to lead. And so as these categories continue to expand, the idea is that these again it might just be simple mean reversion or these technologies zkes actually do find significant product market fit and and these these leaders continue to lead. >> Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Uh and so you bought follow as well. >> I didn't buy follow. I'm I'm talking before I filled. So I I still think that one is a is a good find. Um, but I I loaded up on AOS and and I think Paul is my next.

>> Nice. All right, guys. I I think we have our first guest ready. Uh, Alvin from Bit Wallet. Um, we're going to talk about what they're doing at at Bit Wallet. I think there's going to be some uh AI agents conversations to be had here. Interesting to hear about um Fala and um and Akos. I I wouldn't have put those two together, but it I I find it really interesting that that good Alexander is tweeting about the GitHub and the head of Franklin Templeton investment solutions is also talking about GitHub.

>> Look, Andy, I think this is >> being that being like, yeah. >> Yeah. I I just to say I think this is our unique vantage point, right? We talked to so many people. We have such a broad perspective on the space as a whole that we can just connect like when the Franklin Templeton chief investment officer and ex Palunteer good Alexander when those guys agree like there's something going on there. >> Something's there and there is an opportunity there which is what you're saying. So interesting. All right let's give let's give Allen the air time. Let's get him up and let's talk about what's going on at Bitcat Wallet. What's going on with uh everything that he's working on. Alan, what's going on, man?

missed you in New York >> a couple weeks back, but it's uh good to have you. >> Cool. Cool. Well, thanks for having me here. Um so would like to talk more about Bigat Wallet. Um so we are a we're building a truly borderless wallet for everyday Finance and what that means is, you know, you can save, pay, and grow, you know, your crypto and stable coin assets all in one single app itself. So we've been uh you know, we were founded since seven years ago um and still building Sh. >> Yeah. I mean, Alvin, I got to ask you, do we even need wallets for agents?

Like, in a future where, you know, 99% of of transactions are done on chain. I think the chief product officer at Salana came on our show during DS and said that exact line. You know, whether he's his prediction is right or not. You know, what are what are wallets going to look like in the agentic era? Why do we need wallets? >> Yeah. Well, you know, take agents aside, right? Say you have an employee, right, and you want them to do something. They need to pay for for things, right? It's that simple. And if you want AI agents to be useful and productive, they need a wallet to pay for stuff. And I think wallets have to evolve in a way where uh in the short term, I think the humans are still going to be the users, right?

AIS will execute things on the stuff. Um but in the longer run, they would have to have more control. And this is where I think wallets would play that part where um there would be a policy or permissions layer right for humans to actually um kind of dictate right what are sub what are kind of the permissions you would allow the agent to use you know for example the frequency of payments what kind of uh uh merchants that you want to pay to how much uh is the limit per transaction and so on and then the agents would pay them I do think we're we're still quite you know far from that uh for now we do have uh you know tools for example when this whole thing came about We launched what we call big wallet scale. So you can plug that into clot uh you know open

claw and so on. So your agents can now do the same things that a human can do on the wallet. Um but the permissions layer I think that will still take some time to come. >> You know Alvin for for a long time the debate was between the fat application thesis and the fat wallet thesis or excuse I give away there the fat protocol thesis and fat application thesis. More recently it's like everything is about distribution. We want to own the relationship with the end customer. And so wallets are currently in the position where they own a lot of these customer relationships. They understand the consumer behavior.

And so there's this new term, the fat wallet thesis, which >> everyone loves. Who doesn't love a fat wallet, right? And so do you think that this is ultimately where the value tends to acrue? It's no longer, you know, gas fees and the infrastructure at the bare metal layer. It's no longer, you know, the application that is transmitting maybe liquidity back and forth. It is those who own the end customer because they can charge the first fee. Everything else is downstream. Would you agree this is the value acrruel layer? >> Um I would say increasingly yes. uh although I think a lot of value is still shared say between the wallet and the protocols themselves but we have seen a trend where say you know seven eight years ago when we were founded right um

at that time like the blockchains own everything right that's why it's called a fat protocol but since then uh it's been very obvious that users want they are demanding more and more features within the wallet itself right all right I can go to a dex to trade but hey you know I don't mind you know whether it's paying a little more or stuff like that but I want more experiences native within the wallet so that it's easier and more convenient for me. And this is why um many people didn't know but big wallet was the first self-custody wallet to introduce crosschain swaps. You could have done it on a Dex or bridge, right?

But people just want it natively within the app. And then after that, you know, earn came about as well. Same thing. You you can go to RV or somewhere else, right? Just go to the website and deposit it, but people want it more natively within the wallet. Why? because it's just so much simpler and also safer, right, to operate within a familiar UI, especially in crypto where hey, you go to a website, is it a fishing website? You don't know, right? And so, it's just more trusted to do it within one single familiar environment. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I I think the the case to be made for distribution as like the main primary driver of value rests on the fact of whatever it is that you're distribution or that you are

distributing is valuable. Um I'm curious when it comes to bit wallet itself are most of the people coming in and using it and downloading it are they in a specific region of the world? like do you guys have a dominant uh regional presence? And then like what is it that most people are using the BitGet wallet for? Like why and and like what is that like demographic to use case kind of look like? >> Yeah, interesting you as a question because we've seen a big evolution and shift uh in the last few years. Um let's talk about geography first, right? So we were very strong in Asia when we first started um you know in the first few years.

Ever since then we have expanded a lot globally. Um but still I think most of the growth comes from emerging markets like Latin America most recently. Uh before that we had Africa especially during the TAN and Telegram days uh we saw a lot of folks coming in from CIS and Africa regions. Um so along the emerging regions I think is where we uh have been growing a lot. Now in terms of use cases, this is where it gets interesting because you know four or five years ago you would have a lot of airdrop farmers right crypto folks who want to trade and then meme coins came about say you know 3 four years ago. Um in the last two years we have seen a big shift um not or an expansion into a new um profile we call the stable coin adopters. So there's the crypto traders

and then there's the stable coin adopters. And what these people want sometimes they've been giving us feedback. I don't want to use I don't want to see the term crypto, right? I want things to be really really simple. I don't want to see things like gas. I don't really understand what it is, but I want access to a global digital uh dollar account because it is very hard to get digital dollars in many parts of the world. And so what these people are using us for is as simple as you know making payments for meta ads, right? If if you're in developed countries buying, you know, Facebook ads and stuff that's easy, right? But you need a USD account.

And in many other places if you want to do that it's it's difficult or it's more expensive way more expensive. So meta ads um paying for AI subscriptions you know they're not denominated in US dollars um these are all advantages to if you have a USD card but how do you even get a USD card account in the first place right and stable coin um car products becomes a shortcut for that. >> Are you guys launching a car product? Is that what you're saying? >> Uh we already have it. We we have it in 50 of markets. Yeah. >> Oh, awesome. And and there's so many different cards right now, Allan.

Etherfi has got a big one. Um, a couple other large kind of players have them. Um, and a lot of them seem to be kind of competing on like cashback, um, you know, rewards, membership rewards, just like these different small offerings that like make a really good card. A lot of them seem to be quite similar. Um, and a lot of them I also feel are targeting the kind of crypto wealthy or the active crypto users versus trying to go more like very broad user base. When it comes to kind of like Latin America and these, you know, kind of more developing regions that you're saying that you guys are getting a lot of uptick in, what does that look like?

Are they just using stable coins? Are they using the card? Are they doing DeFi? Are they doing trading? um what what are some of the behaviors that you've seen on these upcoming kind of regions and then how how how do they kind of use the card? Is that being used? Talk to us about kind of like their user behavior. I >> I think you [snorts] mentioned one thing about cash back which I agree uh if every card just competes on cash back it's going to be it's going to be how would I put it? Uh it wouldn't end well. I think in you know in financial threat fire world you have already seen this where you know cards fighting on cash backs uh they don't turn out well and they become unprofitable. I think in the end what will matter is the overall experience that that a user can get. Now

it's important to note that this is you know in a way a financial account which means money is the core theme here and money is a productive asset. So you don't want a case where you you have one wallet for storing your assets, one place for earning your yield on the asset and one place for paying because when that happens what it means is that all right you can have a wallet that's very great in payments but when you top it up right with money and it's not being used for payments it's just left idle there. So then you want to combine earn features into it. But the problem then is do you have the you know multi-chain aggregators um the right infra to make this wallet work for you.

So for example in big wallet what we've done is all right we've laid out you know the different places you can get yield right and then we'll present the best opportunity to you bas based on you know where is the highest yield and so on so that when you when you are not making a payment you're earning yield on your money right and when when you want to use it it's a simple deduction from your balance and so the ability to provide this holistic experience to users I think that's what people are looking for now you mentioned then there are there are two profiles here right the crypto folks they want to be able to do everything So they have crypto they used to trading they want to trade uh meme coins some nowadays they're trading into pers as well um so you can short

along and Apple stock or oil um but then at the same wallet they want to be able to spend their stable coins now on the other hand what I call the stable coin adopters they may not want to do all the speculative stuff right so what they want is um I want to be able to spend my USD because I want a digital dollar account I want to be able to earn yield right very very simply I don't want to go into all right there's 10 protocols Who should I choose from? I want to click a button that says stablecoin earn you plus, right? Just one product and click on it and get it without worrying about gas. >> Awesome.

>> Yeah. I uh you know obviously Bit has got a full suite of products including the wallet which you you're in charge of but also the centralized exchange also the card product. H how do you think of BitArt as this holistic thing? You know, given that the centralized exchange, you guys, I was just looking here. You guys are number crypto market share and centralized exchanges, you guys are number six, uh actually just just in front of Coinbase, uh from what I'm seeing here. And so, you know, do you see yourself as sort of internally competing to try to get users off of the centralized exchange of Bitcut onto the decentralized, you know, more of the wallet layer? Do you guys kind of have some competition internally

at BitCat? You know, how how do these things sort of come together as a whole versus, you know, ultimately you're trying to bring people more into the wallet product, put them on chain. How does that customer flow look like? >> Yeah. Well, firstly, everyone is going to go on chain. Traffy is going on chain, right? So, even exchanges are going um one thing I want to clarify here. So, big get exchange and big wallet are entirely separate apps, separate entities, and separate teams. So um so I'm only dedicated to the wallet side. I can comment too much on the exchange.

>> Um but having said that um we we don't really see this as competition. Uh we actually have a B2B um API product, right? Where we allow exchanges um to offer onchain products. So for example, if you're on an exchange like Bigat, right, and you want to trade meme coins that are, you know, onchain, they launched like maybe in the yesterday or so on. Um there is an on-chain product and that's powered by a B2B API, right? And we want to bring this to all the other exchanges as well. Like you mentioned, everyone is going to go on chain, like it or not. >> Yeah. I mean, right now, as you said, we're seeing these institutions come on chain. I'm curious if you've like thought more about how Bitad's going to orient around um being like an institutional friendly product, right?

Like I think a lot of these institutional allocators are going to want um to be able to allocate in a very safe, you know, custodial manner. probably not as much go on chain like do you do you think of bit wallet as being supportive for kind of larger allocators? Is there any plan that you're kind of taking to uh kind of uh be able to um you know attract them and have them use your product like like how are you thinking about not just the retail side of non-custodial onchain transactions like like just generally how you're thinking about how some of these larger firms may come on chain and what you guys are doing to perhaps you know help them and support that.

>> Yeah. No, it's a debate we often have from time to time, right? Because these are large allocators with huge amounts we we can work with. Um, but ultimately, I think, you know, our vision is to bring crypto to everyone in the world. Uh, we feel that we're still quite far from the vision, right, of a billion plus users and so on. So, we're still going to be very focused on the retail side of things. Um having said that why we built the B2B API is because we have seen this trend uh where more and more websites whether you're expedia.com uh whether you're Walmart.com or stuff like that you want to start to own your own wallet experience and I think that's why we see a lot of uh you know web two commercial apps building their own wallets but they don't want to deal with

you know the crosschain stuff they don't want to deal with liquidity what they want is I just want people to be able to swap stable coins like USDC to you know certain tokens that can be used on my app, right? And that's what we're providing through this API. >> How much uh how much inspiration did you take from some of the other, you know, exchanges out there that have sort of built out more of their decentralized uh product suite as well? The example that comes to mind is like a Coinbase, you know, has has sort of stood up the Coinbase wallet, uh the base app, and then, you know, the base L2. Are you kind of following the same playbook? I'm sure, you know, there's others, you know, that have also kind of stood up.

Kraken has also kind of stood up their wallet as well as their crack neo. Are you kind of is every exchange kind of following the same playbook here to kind of round out a verticalized suite? How much inspiration have you taken from this? What do you think they did well and and how how do you differentiate? >> Yeah. Um, I do think every exchange is going to build their own onchain stuff. Um I I'll leave it to big to to kind of comment on their strategy there. But I do think if if you like Kraken for example, right, they have Inc. which is the chain. Um they have crack which is the app. And I think this is because the this is because of the evolution of uh stable coins, right? I think stable coins have proven one thing which is payments uh in the future is going to be

the dominant use case of crypto. Um but five years ago if you were to ask what was the dominant use case, it was speculative trading, right? So things have changed. uh and with payments what this means is then people need a wallet right to be able to do stuff and all these things are on chain um and that's what we've been building so I would say we we get some inspiration but um a lot of it is just through our observation of the trends and what our users are telling us since about two years ago uh we at big wallet we made a very um significant pivot um where we said that all right we do think payments is going to be a significant dominant use case right in crypto and so we started this whole payi road map of How do we allow people to use stable coins for payments

around the world? Um, and of course the starting use case would be for people who have crypto, right? Like like we like us. So for example, today now in the streets of, you know, Bangkok or Vietnam, right? You're able to just whip out your big wallet, go to any store uh in Vietnam or Thailand, right? And just scan the QR code and you're able to just convert your crypto in your wallet directly to payments, right? Just like that in a few seconds. uh in in Nigeria or Africa for example now they don't do it by you know credit card payments or uh QR payments they do it by bank transfers right and so people are doing bank transfers um to when when you go to the counter in Nigeria they will give you all right this is my bank account

transfer the money to me and it works right so we have this feature for people to key in the bank accounts and pay with crypto um and then in places like uh in Bangladesh I think we released this a few weeks ago so they have mobile e-wallets called uh BK cash in the guard and this is your equivalent of PayPal and cash app right in Bangladesh and users are able to pay out from crypto from their wallet directly to their mobile wallets uh in local currency and that allows them then to pay their bills and so on >> and and so given that you know kind of this this landscape all of these you know centralized exchanges have these wallets how do you differentiate there's a lot of wallets out there right some of them have been around for a long time they've got some market share when it

comes to navigating onchain uh others you know like you're and have more dominance when it comes to making real payments at some of these merchants. Um, how how do you differentiate, you know, the BitGet wallet? >> Yep. So, on two levels, right? Let's talk about payments first, right? A wallet that allows you to use a stable coin everywhere. Um, is there any other wallet that allows you to pay by, you know, again, QR payments in Southeast Asia, bank transfers in Africa, you know, card payments in the Western world, um, even payouts to your, you know, equivalents of PayPal in Bangladesh? I I would think there is none right now. And this is why uh we launched what we call the onchain payments network. This was a few uh weeks ago in in New York. Uh we talked about this concept where we are

integrating right um and connecting all the different parts of this payment network. Whether you're a payment service provider, uh you're one of the banking partners, you're a blockchain um all these things will come together into a coordination network. And then what it means is then a user wants to make a simple payment, right? This is all powered by this connection network. they don't have to go through all the different hoops. We have already done it for them. So I think one is you need to be able to make payments uh in every part of the world. And one thing I want to say here is um in the old DeFi world uh when you integrate a D5 protocol like a DEX for example now that access is permissionless around the world right whether you're in Bangladesh or in US you get the same access no problem. Now

in payments it doesn't work that way right you want to you want to make a payment through a certain corridor like remittance for example you need to work with a different partner for every different corridor um and this is what we're building through the onchain payments network now then the second layer of the competitiveness is like I mentioned money is a productive asset you don't want a wallet where you know you have a one wallet for trading one wallet for earn one wallet for storing then it becomes very unproductive right if you have your trading in the same um wallet as your earning uh or payment What it means is you can collateralize some of your assets that you have bought right directly and maybe borrow it to spam. So this again then means you need to be able to build a wallet that has

all these different features but not very cluttered right in a way that is that makes sense to the user and that's what we're building. >> Yeah. Yeah. This is the financial super app thesis. Um and so >> I think every app is going to go that way. >> Yeah. They are they're trying to at least. >> Yeah. Alvin, you spent 10 years at LinkedIn. Um, almost. >> What did you learn at at LinkedIn that carried over to building a wallet or, you know, just building in crypto? What were some of the >> breakthroughs, thoughts, lessons? What did you learn kind of in the early days of a social media network that applies to building an application in in digital assets?

>> Yeah, I think it's scale and customization. So I joined LinkedIn when they were first starting out in Asia Pac. uh I was one of the first few you know founding members in Asia and at that time you know they tried to treat you know every member and customer over here uh the same way they were treating us and then very quickly you realize that wow it's pretty wrong and and not just that like a a user right in whether you're in Singapore in Bangladesh in India in Australia they're all very different cultures uh different way of doing businesses and different demands from users um and so this is what I've brought uh too big at wallet because the same thing right we deal a lot with all these emerging markets and they're all

very different even in Southeast Asia right there's 11 12 countries they're all very very different whether it's in language I think language is already one big thing right um are you able to provide that kind of customized language support all the way from customer support right to your features um to your notifications and one thing I want to say is this like many wallets are starting to become like new banks right um but it's not easy. I mean, offering the features is the first step and that's probably one of the easiest things. Now, if you want to support it well, right? Things like customer support becomes really really essential down to the language that you support in, right? The the SLA that you can provide and that's something that, you know, Trapfi has and DeFi is just

starting to learn. >> Yeah. Um, Alvin, the last question I have for you kind of rounds out maybe some of the things that we've been talking about today is uh h do you think we might end up in a world where you know you have a feed like an onchain wallet that gives you a feed almost like a social media algorithm. It's like, hey, because there's thousands of tokens out there, right? And you know, you're collecting data presumably on some of the users on this application, you could suggest, hey, here are some recommended tokens for you. Here are some recommended vaults. Here are some recommended yield sources. Do you think, you know, Bit Wallet might one day kind of implement a for you feed for DeFi?

>> Yeah. So, you you probably read our strategy document somewhere. [laughter] >> Okay. >> That that's one of the first few things I brought over from LinkedIn, right? I remember in my first few weeks I was discussing with the CEO like should we because we are becoming uh a new kind of a new bank right or at least a super app and if you're able to do all these things then should the homepage be a wallet tab page or should it be something that feeds you what you you know care about the most um I think we were one of the first few wallets to introduce a homepage concept uh I know on the exchange side they always had it but on the wallet side uh I think we're one of the first where we showed you all right where is the latest and and

biggest yield out there. Uh what are some of the hot meme coins that are trending right now? Um and now because of uh thanks to AI, we have been able to generate articles very very quickly that we can surface on the homepage as well, right? For example, already Iran war is happening and what this means, what happened in the last 24 hours because people can trade oil and commodities on on the wallet right now. So yes, I do think that's going to happen and more wallets are going to follow that. >> Yeah. Alvin, what about trading noncrypto assets on chain? Are you guys able to plug into Hyperlquid or Lighter or any of kind of XStocks on those uh onchain tokens or dinaris? Like are you offering noncrypto assets to to your users now? What's kind of your thought

process and strategy on what that may look like going forward? >> It it is actually one of the fastest growing segments uh or use case for us, especially among the stable coin adopters that don't really want to trade these speculative meme coins. Um so yes we were actually the first wallet partner I think trust wallet was there as well so two wallet partners were witho when they launched it um so we've been offering that um so today on big wallet other than memecoins and tokens right you can um basically buy any US equity stocks uh that are tokenized on true um you can also long or short um you know true ps on hyperlquid as well so we've integrated them about two three months ago so you can do all those things and and then the question is then

Um why would people want to trade all these things? Um and one is people who are the stable coin adopters, they want to hold certain investments, right? Because they pump money and they want to hold digital dollars. These could be freelancers, right? Who just deposit all of their um you know money that they earn into the wallet itself and they want to be able to hold gold or tokenized gold or tokenized oil. Um and then on the other hand, um what we've seen is there is a bigger demand for PPS in RWA than holding spot in RWA. Um it could be because people already have local brokerages, right? To buy and hold, um US equities. Um but I think PPS is one of the biggest innovations to hit um the financial world, right? Forget about web two or web 3. Like for me,

I've tried CFDs in the past, right? And to be able to short something uh you really need to be quite um sophisticated u um through CFDs or through you know different kind of hedging but you know pubs is so so simple. >> Yeah incredible Alvin thank you so much man for joining us I think uh the only response there is hyperlquid period that's it um guys I mean incredible bit wallet uh Alvin thanks so much for joining and where can uh where can people download the download the wallet? Yeah. So, go to web3.bigget.com um and download it. It's on Android.

It's on iOS. So, go for it. >> There we go. Go to bigget. Okay. Alvin, thanks so much, man. We will see you next time. Thanks for coming on. >> Later, >> thank you. >> Peace. All righty, guys. That is Alvin Khan of Bit. Guys, we're going to take a super quick break. We got a ton of other news to cover. Someone in the chat just said that that that we should cover that Jeff article from Colossus. I thought that was pretty cool, too. Guys, we'll be right back in just a second and we'll have tons coming for you guys. Hey,

hey hey. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N. Get out of here.

Heat. Heat. N. Hell yeah.

Hey, hey hey. Okay. Okay.

Hot take. There isn't a lack of VC money in crypto. In fact, I'd argue there's still an overupp of capital that needs to bag that that needs to buy my bags. What's lacking is courage. Courage to build something that defines a new unproven category. Right now, I'm mostly seeing copycats chasing what's already working. Poly market, morpho, read. Pay one because they were early to new categories before they came. obvious. Look, I saw another tweet from Hib about this that was saying that crypto's easy mode is just over now. I think it [clears throat] was totally spot on.

Like the easy mode is over in terms of um the winners, the poly markets, the base, the tether, the circle, the Ethereum, the Salana, the hyperlquids, the lighters. They've been entrenched and they are clearly winning now. And so you can't just raise money to try to take down an incumbent when it's very clearly that that they're already established market leaders. Previous couple years we didn't really have that. It was still kind of, you know, being developed. Now, it's like very very firmly clear that there are seats at the table that are being set and these seats are going uh to just continue to be further and further entrenched, making

it harder for new seats to be uh taken. And yeah, I mean, there's this whole conversation right now going on about does is the VC market like cooked in crypto? I put out a chart from Block Works. It it's been down only since 2021, 2022. It's looking like it's stabling out a bit as far as like total VC dollars, but here Richard's basically saying, "Look, I'm I'm not seeing anything good enough to invest in." I think, look, we've kind of seen a similar a similar, you know, state of affairs. We haven't really done any new angel investments from our fund side in a while. We've seen a ton of new types of decks, but a lot of them are like

prediction market spin-offs. Um, some different Neo Bank spin-off, um, a new gambling app or something in that kind of like vicinity. There's been a couple new like credit vehicles that we've seen that have came out, uh, that Christine from Apollo was talking about in con on our panel. I think that was cool. But yeah, I mean at the end of the day, it's just kind of it's it's a little bit slow out there on new ideas, but this is a good thing. Like this is a this is a crypto is maturing thing. And so that that would be that'd be my angle here is that like you know the big picture is that it's shifting from capital to ideas, imagination, new ideas, new primitives and and yeah I mean I feel

like the the industry is so focused on like the tokenization the tradification of this industry that there's not like a a lot of new net new coming right now for for VCs. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I agree with that. I'll I'll build on it by saying, you know, that there is broad consensus of the way that crypto is heading. Uh it's heading, you know, digital assets, tokenization, institutional capital allocation, these sorts of things. Unfortunately, venture just missed the boat on all of those because these institutions have been companies, they've been around for hundreds of years. Uh so it's not like these venture uh capitalists can invest into uh these at an early stage and

there's no uh startups that are going to compete with you know a black rock at scale where I think uh you know there is opportunities for new entrance into the market uh is going to be these onchain credit protocols that are starting to look at exogenous yield sources. Um I think Santi is is approaching this the right way. I saw an investor update from him. Obviously the role of his investors uh in inversion he's looking at acquiring businesses uh and then making them more efficient using blockchain rails and then uh you know obviously pocketing uh and doing quite well as a result of that. I think that is where we're going to see more uh we're going to have to just like

>> right now the infrastructure has to go out to find new users. Yeah, >> the venture firms are going to have to go out into what might look like more kind of like non-cryptonative businesses, make investments there and then either scale those using the technology or bring them over to crypto maybe the stable and that's effectively the same thing. That's pretty much bringing them into the technology after you know uh making the initial investment. Um I think that's happening. I think also there's kind of this event that's looming. This is a little bit further out. Um, but I think the accredited investor laws are starting to shift. I think we're going to see them

codified. Uh, but I think even before that happens, we're starting to see access open up for a broader swath of the population. There's less like qualified investors, accredited investors. There's more angel investing. There's more uh crowdfunding. A lot of this is still happening even if you know the laws and regulations aren't changed. And I think that's causing more competition in the VC and investment allocation area. You know, the ignorant take here would be, oh, these people, they're not accredited. They don't really know what they're talking about.

But these guy, I mean, we've seen how adamant some of these trenchers are. Like, these are people that are willing to do research. Everyone has AI at their fingertips. Everyone's got a plethora of information that they have access to that they can use to make sophisticated investment decisions. It might be a high schooler in their basement outperforming some VC funds in terms of access because they've been able to do the research and find some of these new entrance. So I think >> I mean I think >> yeah I I think there's going to be more competition and that's going to again I I I think Hib's take is great. The easy mode for this is over. We're now on difficult. Well, it's also just there's less money and there's less deals being funded. So, there's less actual capital

coming in and there's less deals being funded right now. I don't know if the capital part is going to change anytime soon unless we get a raging bull, which I think we're actually closer to being on the precipice of than in the last 6 months. Um, but I think like the quantity of deals will start to rise for sure because there is a lot of capital inside the space. So it's a good good good opportunity for early stage funds who can identify uh you know some early winners. There's not a lot of competition. There's not a lot of people who are doing deals. Let's move on from Richard's take here. Crypto doesn't lack money. It lacks courage and get on to Salana. Whether working with the largest financial institutions or new startups, they're always gravitating towards the

Salon ecosystem and that just continues to compound. Uh so Salana's attracting both major institutions and fintech giants. This modern treasury uh fellow here kind of speaks about how uh there's this developer retention that is driving significant amounts of traction as well. So why don't we just uh play this video in and see what is going on that's looking for issuance infrastructure or looking for assets or looking for wild infrastructure. For us, it has we found it to be by far the most robust and um uh uh kind of ecosystem that's full of developers and always new activity. So whether we're working with the largest

financial institutions or new startups uh spinning out of bigger companies or starting their first company, they always are gravitating towards the Salana ecosystem and that just continues and continues to compound. Um and so we get a lot of value in both directions where we're able to provide you know infrastructure of a great you know technology but also we get the benefit of all of like the inbound and all of the new interest that's coming into the Solana ecosystem that's looking for issuance infrastructure or looking for assets or looking for wild infrastructure. For us, it has we found it to be by far the most robust and um uh uh kind of ecosystem that's full of developers and always new activity. So

whether we're working with the largest financial >> the beginning of the video again, new startup, >> frankly, I just >> I just don't think so. I I think this I'm not gonna say this guy's full of but like I I just don't think that the institutional capital allocators are looking at Salana and they're thinking to themselves, "Yes, I want to deploy my trillion dollars of capital right next to Drift, right next to meme coins." I think it still has this trenchers mindset, this trenchers brand image and I just don't see the kind of adoption from large institutions that is changing my mind.

>> Yeah, your Ethereum bags are showing. I I I also just like don't really have a take on the point here other than like man I am hearing developer activity GitHubs as like a way that these larger allocators are thinking about allocating to the companies more than I ever have before and then of course we got good Alexander coming out and saying it as well. Something to note uh that these large firms are paying attention to the developer quantity retention GitHub repo uh inputs more than more than I think cryptonatives are.

>> Yeah, it's interesting. >> I and you know there might be a I I think there is a developer community on Salana because it it's in Rust and so that you know is able to kind of drive a moat around this because Rust is a very popular language. >> Yes. I and and so there's some truth to that aspect of this. I just am I way off here? Like is is the brand perception of Solana really like this like this like this airtight secure you know? >> Yeah. Know [clears throat] >> it's fast and and you know it's got like memecoins on it. I mean, look, I think it is going to be continuously positioned towards being the kind of

next generation fintech infrastructure blockchain. And so, I expect them to keep kind of pushing that forward at the very least. So, anyway, let's move on from Salana. I'm heading out to the SPI uh event here after the show. Should be pretty interesting. I think that they got a pretty good crowd. >> Let's not trash too too hard. SPI is a friend of the show. >> Is Quantum Progress being hidden? Ian Smith, the co-founder of BIP361, reveals a frightening truth about governmentf funed quantum projects, under reportported or obscured, let's find out. Ian Smith is potentially discussing a threat to Bitcoin signature scheme um and wanting to focus on

quantum safe forks and more. Let's see what Ian has to say here. People want these like hard and fast like help me understand this in five minutes and tell me when this is a threat. Number one, the companies are not telling us and if they have any cooperation with the National Security Agency, they can't tell us. But because Bitcoin, you know, maxis aren't being told on a regular memo of exactly all of their top secret clearance information. They're just saying, "Oh, it doesn't exist, people."

>> Oh my goodness. So basically he's saying because because there's no leakage of like very confidential and secret top top of a classification list information about quantum coming out that a lot of these Bitcoin maxis are just ignoring them. Shout out to Nick Carter. This guy's been not ignoring this stuff and he's been absolutely dialing the the horn on, hey guys, we need to pay attention to quantum. It's happening. I'm on team Nick here. I think this guy while he is kind of pushing some FUD and you know kind of you know giving his take and kind of frightening people I think he's probably right. I think ignoring is not the is not the option.

Brian Armstrong also recently came out with some types of uh guidance and a new project or a idea that he's working on around quantum. So clearly he cares. Uh also he's been notably pro Bitcoin comparatively to Ethereum uh in the past years. If you listen to Ethereum people, they will tell you that he's a Bitcoin maxi. Um, and yeah, I mean, the uncertainty is enough to force Bitcoin to make a change. We we'll I mean, we'll be we'll be shocked if Bitcoin actually has any sort of change to it. Like shocked. Like I'd be I'd be shocked. So I I don't express or I don't expect

Bitcoin to actually have any changes. Um, but I I'd be shocked. I'd be shocked. I mean, until it's forced to, right? >> Right. >> Um, >> that's kind of what I mean. Like, preemptively, I just don't see it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, obviously any updates to Bitcoin's code could create a new vulnerability. Um, there's all kinds of hacks happening these days. I mean, AI is just accelerating this. uh it doesn't seem like we're really using AI to tighten our own best practices, but the hackers and the exploiters are using it >> for their own.

>> And so, yeah, look, I I think quantum is going to continue to progress probably even faster because AI is going to help us on the research front. >> Um there are strides being made every day on how many uh cubits are necessary. And there's all all of these mathematical optimizations that are being done as to how long it will take for some of the uh the quantum readiness uh in terms of what kind of signature scheme uh is going to be hacked uh Bitcoin included.

>> Yeah. >> And that is becoming shorter and shorter of a timeline. What's not getting shorter is the hardware aspect of this. There's a hardware uh path and there's a software path. They're making all these optimizations on uh these logical cubits, but you still need to manufacture the actual cubit itself. Um and so uh yeah, look, if we start to get an increase in manufacturing power and we see AI start to spill over into the world of atoms, then I think this thing comes very very quickly. Uh but this is a reality in the next four to five years and Bitcoin has been shown that it's extremely slow and so yeah now is the time to start thinking about this. I I

think we agree on this one. >> All right guys, let's move on from Quantum. I think we're going to have a Alex Prudin on this week. >> Oh, he's a guy. Colossus Mag put out this post about Hyperlid's Jeffrey Yan. Um they hit $900 million in profit with just 11 employees. Jeff turned down a hundred million dollar bag at a1 billion dollar valuation when they were just started. Uh four trillion dollars processed in three years. Founder story was insane. He allotted his girlfriend 30 minutes of attention per day when he was starting this. He was living out of a hotel in Puerto Rico. Um I mean absolutely insane. I mean, I I actually

saw another tweet from Good Alexander saying, "Everyone is uh riding Jeff and you know, like you're buying a perplex at 41 uh billion dollar FDV. You're not curing cancer." Of course, Flood was in there in the comments snapping back. Uh I mean, this is just crazy. Self-funded, no VCs, no insider allocations, once got 2% of the oil futures markets traded. I mean this is one of the best the best stories in crypto. HIP3 specifically is the growth story right now in crypto markets. The ability to trade 24/7 tokenized uh equities, commodities uh and any other stratifi instrument on

chain has captured the hearts and minds of those in Wall Street. I've been talking to them on the show, been talking to him to them behind closed doors, guys. They are paying attention to this. they are talking about this and it is it has caught them off guard. Um and so this entire article was I think about three years in the works. Rob and you know he Jeff had done really well with HFT trading had done very well on his own decided to to start Hyperlquid and I mean look at the token today it's at 43 what is that 43.4 for breaking out to new highs. I mean, this is probably

going to be the leader of the market for a while. Um, it it just shows what the power of onchain is. And I mean I mean, you know, founders that are like one in a million, one in a billion. So, >> it's pretty incredible. Um, especially because he kind of came out of nowhere. Like you can see, I mean, he might have just had like that it factor, right? like didn't pick up a physics book until 16, two years later competing in the International Physics Olympiad. >> Um I talked to a buddy of mine who works at Hudson River Trading or worked at at HRT. Uh Jeff worked there for about a year before founding Hyperlid and he was like, "Yeah, kind of just a regular guy." So there was something that came

out of him and once he just sat down and decided, "Hey, I'm going to embark on this entrepreneurial journey." Look, it takes a special person to not take to turn down hund00 million in VC funding. Like we want to build this Satoshi's way, you know, like I think Jeff might have a touch of the tism in the best way possible. Like I think he's just got a little bit of a thing about him where it's like, look, I don't really care about the right way. Like, you know, people are going to call him crazy. Like the guy cuts his own hair. like there's things about him that are just a little bit odd, but that's kind of what you're looking for in a founder, right? Like you want someone with a little bit like kind of a screw loose in a certain way

and that means that they're just so dialed in in the other way. So I think look, it's no doubt what Jeff has built is just it's no it's just incredible. It's incredible that he's been able to scale this. I think part of this is very path dependent. He's done it the right way. Yeah, >> if they had taken a single VC dollar, I think maybe things would have been different. Um, there's a reason Satoshi didn't take VC funding either, right? >> So, yeah. No, it's it's it's amazing. I mean, shout out to Jeff. Um, and you know, he hasn't sacrificed on his values even as Hyperlid has reached the level of success that it is today. They haven't scaled the team, but the way that David Shamus from Hyperlquid Strategies talked to me about it was

basically like the way that it's set up is like you can think of Trade XYZ as its own team. Yeah. >> Right. Like sure it's not like directly under the hyperlquid organization, but it's like its own team. You can think of unit and the and you know kind of being part of Trade XYZ as their own team. You can think of this, you know, now this policy engine, this policy group that they have as their own team. So it's like there's often like this like oh 11 employees but it's really like you know there's there's dozens and dozens of subgroups and organizations and teams that are all kind of building out the larger picture. I think trade XYZ is probably the most underrated underhyped thing to be trading on right now for a

potential token. I think they are literally uh the definition of the growth story right now in onchain trading. I [snorts] think they're completely underrepresented in terms of the talk under underfarmed and I think that's going to deliver a massive massive win. Massive massive liquidity event to the hyperlquid ecosystem. I think trade XYZ is going to be massive. Um and so I would not fade that if I was watching this. Shout out to the Colossus as well for putting on this piece of Jeff. I I I know it's not easy to kind of lean into the depths of crypto, but here we are. So, let's move on from Jeff into our

Neo Finance announcement. Invesco joined Superstate's $82 million series B. They expand their partnership with uh Superstate. So during last week, guys, if you remember, Invesco announced that they're taking over Superstate's $900 million USB fund uh and basically bringing that in-house within Invesco and now they're uh strategically invest investing in Superstate themselves. Um so Invesco has about $2.2 trillion of AUM. Uh they are now, as mentioned, the investment manager of USB's uh which is the TI bill fund. Um and basically this is the next level of

conviction and and uh investment into superstate from Invesco. I think it's super bullish. This is how Tradi is going to come on chain. Not by replacing itself in this kind of way that many of us early kind of adopters thought just like this like allout revolution. No, simply just plugging into crypto rails directly upgrading the back end of Invesco itself, doing it in a better, more streamlined way, using an onchain product like USDB. Um, they did not really I don't think they unveiled how much the investment was, but it was at that same valuation that that $82.5 million uh series B was at, which I'm also not sure. Uh, but you

got you you know, you ought to think it was in the hundreds of millions or billions. uh valuation. I wouldn't be surprised if it was around that $1 billion mark. So, congrats to Superstate. Let's give them some love. They're doing great, man. Uh them and security just going banan for ban all the time. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Um I mean, Invesco is one of the biggest in the game. Neo Finance continues to win. Uh Invesco becoming a strategic investor in Super State reflects the depth of their shared conviction. Tokenization is the future of investment products and we're building it together. That was according to Robert Leshner, CEO of Superstate. Uh, and then over at Invesco, I mean, Superstate's onchain infrastructure expands Invesco's ability to scale its digital asset strategy and

advances our tokenized product offerings. Um, I was recently just kind of just kind of looking at, you know, what what was uh kind of rising through the the coin market caps uh of the world. Um, and so if you scroll down, you've got the superstate uh, US Treasury Fund around number 79. >> Yeah. What is that at just over a billion now, right? >> Uh, yes. >> No, no, 800 813 million. >> H, >> the thing >> Jim was telling me that it was over a billion now, but maybe something different.

>> Look, Coin Coin Gecko might not have, you know, the the most up-to-date information here. there might be, you know, commits uh still coming in. 813 million according to uh Coin Gecko here. >> The thing is that like the chart is literally literally just up and to the right. >> Yeah. I mean, it's so funny. The the best charts right now in crypto are all these RWA like stable coin tokenized T bills, money market charts. They're literally like the best charts. >> I mean 6% gain thing has literally never gone down. >> Yeah. I I I ultimately, you know, tokenization is going to be the wave that brings a lot of these investment products on chain.

>> Yes. >> The top 10 to 25, it's going to look very different. And I think there's going to be this non-speculative category and there's going to be the speculative category. >> Yeah. >> Um and obviously treasury bonds, treasury funds are going to be like one of the largest in the non-speculative. And then we're just going to continue to see what these charts look like over time. >> Yep. Congrats to Superstate and Invesco. Both awesome friends at the show. Um, love love them both. Glad to see Invesco really getting in. I mean, they are a absolute trfied Goliath. So, got to love it. Let's move on here into more Neo Finance uh which is a centrifuge conversation with Christine from Apollo who has been limiting her public

appearances in the midst of the private credit cracks. However, she's uh reluctantly reminded me that there is a lot of different types of private credit and that you shouldn't just bucket them all into one. Let's hear what they have to say about the RWA hype uh fading to AI. >> Since I've been working in this since 2016, every two years or so, there's always this the institutions are here and it's going to happen and usually I'm heads down and I'm like, is it really going to happen? It feels really far away. It's been taking a long time, but we persist because this is like my life's work. But I feel like at this point, we are at this inflection point where I'm starting to see people care less about, hey, let's try to do this

prototype and experiment and then ship this press release to let people know how innovative we are. The whole innovation theater has moved on and hopefully it's moved to AI. So anyone who's still building on blockchain right now, anyone who's still doing anything with tokenization or stablecoin, it's not about the theater. It's actually wait, how do we build durable, scalable businesses that matter since I've been >> Yep. I mean, I completely agree. I mean, it is it is neverending uh kind of like we are maturing as an industry. I mean, Christine's right. I mean there has been these institutional PC's for like how many years Rob have we heard about the enterprise chains when a lot of this started enterprise

blockchain consortium chain >> yeah the PC's and all this but the thing she said there was that we're moving past innovation theater I totally agree with that uh scalable revenue generating use cases we're going to see more of this she's right I think I think tokenization is getting up there in terms of the hype with AI Like you're you're hearing Jamie Diamond talk about it. You're hearing uh Larry Frink go on TV talk about it. Like you're hearing large large mainstream media cover this idea of tokenization. And I think we're not very far from tokenized 247 trading to be a massive massive subject as well. Shout out to Christine and Baji here. Um, I agree

it's a sophistication and maturation and this tokenization stable coin RWA kind of confluence is is frankly where a lot of the capital is and and is where a lot of the attention uh is as well. And honestly, it's sometimes not the most exciting like tokenizing T bills. It's like nothing crazy if you you know especially if you've been here since DeFi summer but it's like these like this interim step where you get all these SS on chain. Then the exciting part to me is when you start to think about and I've just harped on this is that the valuation metrics for DeFi protocols are just wrong right now. Like when you think about what's exciting about this, sure, tokenizing the T bills and making some money, Robin, you know,

maybe it's not the most exciting thing, but tokenizing all these different opportunities, putting them into Morphova, putting them into a collateral, having them be swapped on major AMMs like aerodrome and unis swap, putting them into your favorite blockchains and 10, 50, 100xing the TVL and economic activity on individual blockchains as well as individual protocols, reshaping the way you think about what the valuation is for these protocols and chains are just for crypto assets. No, no, no, no. They're for tokenized assets of any type. Oh, okay. Then then we start thinking about hundreds of trillions of dollars on Ethereum, on Salana, on Canton, on any blockchain. And then you start thinking

about the DeFi protocols on top of them, the all the ones that I've mentioned. And you start to think about, wow, is that, you know, $800 million to$2 billion valuation for a lot of these things. Is that range cheap? Like I if if a and morpher are fighting headtohead to become the future of the world's credit layer, like what is the world's credit layer worth? And so look, we're still early on a lot of these things, guys. But I think that's the exciting part about this tokenization, stable coin, RWA push. It's not tokenizing T bills like great, let's do it. Awesome.

Sign up here. Let's go, guys. But it's like what happens to your priors? You need to reset your priors about the valuation methodologies for some of your favorite DeFi apps and blockchains. If we get hundreds of trillions of dollars of tokenized assets on chain, this is the next major unlock. This is the only way that Ethereum is getting to 20K. >> What happens to your bags? >> I mean, you hinted you hinted at it there at the end. I mean, the valuation heristic is is just completely completely >> it's just wrong.

>> It's just diff it's just absolutely different than what it was prior. Um and so yeah, absolutely resetting this. And look, I mean, this is the same logic that Arthur Hayes used to underpin his uh investment thesis of hyperlquid to what >> 5,000 >> 5,000500 something like that. >> And and it was born of the same basis. It said, "Hey, we're getting stable coins to three trillion." That's according to the US Treasury Secretary Scott Besson himself, the guy who's literally in charge of printing the money at the Treasury and selling the debt to the stable coin issuance protocols. And so according to the guy

that's in charge, we're going to get to this three trillion stable coin number after that. Where do the stable coins go? Well, yeah, they go into banks and they go into here. and they go to the protocols and they go into all of the DeFi apps that they're already going into. Those numbers just get bigger. And you make the point that it's not just stable coins. It's billions and billions of dollars in US treasuries, in private credit, in different loan obligations, in different debt instruments, in different credit instruments. All of these things ultimately make their way into the same primitives and protocols that they've already been flowing into.

It is the most natural logical step for tokenized products to flow into onchain protocols. It is much more natural than these things getting off-ramped, getting offboarded offchain and going into some fiat uh protocol. That's not what is going to happen. They're going to if that happens, it's going to pass through onchain protocols first and foremost. And I think that's absolutely true. We I I think you and I agree wholeheartedly on this on this topic that if the premise is correct >> and the tokenization thesis is correct then you ultimately get stable coins and US treasuries and all sorts of instruments that flood these DeFi protocols. This is NEO finance and this rerates and rerices

these D5 apps and these protocols. you pick, right? What is I mean you can just start and you can look at the moon math that that some of these people have done and I think that is a valuation horistic that all of us should be following. >> All right guys, let's move on from this. Uh I love it. I agree. It's a valuation um math here. Circle CEO Jamie Lair says Circle only freezes USDC under legal orders, not discretion, saying that balancing compliance versus expectations to intervene in hacks and exploits is extremely important for Circle. Criticism comes after these large exploits, notably Drift, with $230

million or so exploited and bridged over without a froze or without a a freezing. Um, look, people are pushing for a legal safe harbor um, under the Clarity Act for proactive freezing. And yeah, I mean, Zack XBT has been absolutely going at Jeremy and the entire circle team condemning the company for not freezing the reported $230 million worth of USDC from Drift. And yeah, I mean, this is just this is hard. This is really hard. The only thing that I'll I'll say here is is just in reaction to what Zach XPTt is saying here is that apparently Circle had frozen or locked like seven or eight

accounts a month ago with no clear reason as to why. And I think it's contradictory to think, you know, why those accounts were locked, but this one, which seemed pretty obvious, >> why this one wasn't frozen. Now it's a moral quandry. But back then, look, if what Jeremy Lair is saying is true, there must have been some sort of legal obligation to freeze these accounts. You know, thinking back a month or two ago, Zack Xp was harping on this. >> Yes. >> Yeah. You can't do one and not the other. Um, probably going to look at regulators. I mean, look, Circle's a public company and so >> they're playing on a different ball game man.

>> Yeah. It's just, you know, they they've got to navigate all of that complexity. >> The thinking is that, you know, you'd be, you know, freezing is going to be better than not freezing. You can always unfreeze, right? Like if >> Yes. But you remember what Tay was saying about how when you freeze funds, um, when you freeze funds, it's almost as bad as stealing. Like, it's almost as um it's almost theft when you freeze funds that shouldn't be frozen. I mean, it is basically theft.

>> Maybe it depends how long. >> Yeah. You know, if you're going to lock someone up for years, they don't have access to their money, like they just write it off. But if you freeze someone for like couple of hours, you set some sort of rate limits, like think about like the current banking system. There's all kinds of limits put in place, you know, you can't withdraw this much money, you can't wire more than this. Like >> if you do, you need to do some extra two-factor. You need to go in person to do the thing. >> Yeah. >> Like maybe just some extra guard rails would be best practice here.

All right, guys. Let's move on from circle um into I think our friends from the clarity act. Uh V VX send VC for real says Senate just announced to restart crypto market structure negotiations today. It's finally happening. Let's go ahead and play this video. Um and nothing is new from today, but just restarting. Let's see. >> You you've made America the digital asset capital of the world. We did the genius act for stable coins. Many of the people standing up here are working on the clarity bill to make our boy Scott >> and we're bringing us best practices to an exciting the new industry digital

assets innovation and it spreads everywhere. So the US >> and do you agree that you >> Yeah. And Trump says I hope it gets done. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everybody everybody in DC wants to get it done. I mean, that's clear, right? >> Yeah. We've got three months or so to get it done. >> Three months by by by like Julyish, right?

>> Uh yeah, like the end of July, I think, is when everyone sort of packs up from DC. >> Yeah. So, we have three months. >> Yep. Three and a half. We'll see, man. Look, um, this [snorts] World Liberty Finance stuff does not help. >> Not at all. >> Um, in order for this to get done, we know that Democrats are going to need to make concessions >> and be on board >> and be on board. Like, you need Democrats to be on board in order for this to get through. >> And I think right now, like, >> if you're a Democrat and you see this, you're, you know, then seen as supporting this crypto thing and Trump is going to profit from it >> there. It It's unlikely in my opinion.

>> Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, I think that's the show for today. Uh we have an amazing week here. Let me just read off some of the guests that you guys can expect from us this week. Uh we got Bal from Paxus Labs, Alex Prudin, Thomas Dunlevy, we've got Sammy, my AI friend, Los from 1KX, a lot of VCs this week. the virtuals team, Corey from Swan, Mert. Uh, Charles Hoskinson, Wyatt from Van, >> Charles Hoskinson, how did that one happen Andy?

>> Jeff from Chapter One to Bing from Mega E and a couple other special ones. So guys, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for rocking with us. Rob, guys, >> happy Monday. >> Let us know what we should ask Charles Hoskinson please. >> Yeah, please, please tell us. Uranium looks great. Copper looks great. The commodities are coming back up. I don't know why commodities dumped from the oil trade. They're always going to follow oil. Tax day is on Wednesday. >> Yeah.

>> Uh not great for the boys. >> Um Hyperlid looks great. I currently do not want to sell any of my positions to pay taxes. Um gonna have to though, of course. I think Rob's already out in front of it, per usual. Um, yeah. >> Do what we got to do. Andy, great show. >> I'm headed over to the Salana Policy Institute. >> Let us know about in uh in New York. >> Enjoy. I'm going to go put some shorts on.

>> All right, lads. See you guys tomorrow. Have a great day. Thanks for watching the roll, baby. [music]