Post-FOMC Reactions, Market Thoughts & Stacked Lineup From Yeet, Story, Eigen, DWF, Chainlink, Talus

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the back. [Music] How about the I'm the [Music] JP Morgan, Black Rockck, 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. You said it. You finally said it. So, he's bullish. I'm bullish. We're boys. [Music] [Music] How about the

[Music] above the B. [Music] How the [ __ ]

[Music] is heading to the top? If we're not already at the top, we're going to the top. We're on fourth floor today. We're going to be on floor one and then we're headed straight to the moon, boys. >> Um Andy, why is everyone in bullish ETH all of a sudden? >> We're so back. It's so over. We're so back. It's so over. We're so back. It's so over. It is so over. We're so back. It's so over. We're so back. It's so over.

>> Bart is back. Who liked the caps? Bart is back. If you like the Simpson Sims, Bart is back. Bar is back. Welcome to 2018, COMRADES OF CRYPTO TWITTER. >> I missed the parts. >> Yeah, it's [ __ ] god damn the hell's going on? >> Well, the market makers got liquidated, so now we end up with Simpson Bart. Bart's the only market maker left in town.

Wow. Um, man, it's almost like when you it I I this is what breeds disbelief because now you get the sense of one when it goes up and it just goes sideways and it prepares for a Bart. You have ultimate disbelief. You can't fathom. You know it's going to Bart down every single time until it's the boy who cried wolf. >> I'm choosing to be a cockroach. >> Probably the right choice. uh cockroaching has made it uh got us this far.

But I will say despite terrible sentiment across the board, people are bullish ETH. >> Have you seen this? >> Yeah, >> the bullish ETH complex. >> I have. I think there's actually um Yeah. Well, let's talk about it. Let's get the uh let's get some um content up on the screen and let's let's let's talk about what's happening in the market a bit. So um yeah, so I think bullish ETH is kind of related to what you're saying. Um but I think this is what's important.

>> Coinbase institution speculative excess has been flushed out. We saw retail get flushed out during 1010. Our systemic leverage ratio which tracks purely speculative positioning has stabilized at about 4% to 5% of total market cap down from 10% this summer. >> Lower leverage equals healthier market structure. So why are we seeing Barts and less vulnerability to sharp draw downs heading into year end? >> I I think we're seeing Barts because 1010 absolutely >> lower leverage equals healthier market structure. You're saying Barts are healthier market structure.

>> I'm saying I think I think um I'm saying I think that 1010 cooked a lot of market makers. >> I think 1010 cooked retail >> That's what I'm saying. >> Yeah. I don't think I think I don't think too many institutional market makers uh bailed out on 1010. >> I think I think a lot >> I think a lot of retail got hurt and I think we're no longer seeing the acceleration take place on either of these moves up or down. I think we're seeing a crab market. It's pretty much sideways and rangebound and I think we're going to see an institutional bid. >> Yeah. Okay.

>> And I think that's what we're seeing here. And there's another tweet actually, I don't know if we have it, uh, but you brought it up yesterday on the stream, >> which was that smart money or institutional money >> bought something like two and a half. >> Oh yeah, dude. That's a crazy one. >> I'll get that one up. But yeah, it it it's basically that like the whales are selling and the or sorry the whales are buying and the and the retail >> I think that's what uh is happening still. I think that is what happened on 1010. I think retail was forced sellers.

Maybe there was I'm sure there was some smaller market makers that got carried out. But yeah, I do think what we're what we're seeing is that retail is essentially washed. Uh they're not they're either trying to do leverage trading or they're trying to make it on alts. both of which are uh a recipe for disaster. And the cockroaches are the institutions coin complex. >> I like the altcoin. >> The cockroaches are the institutions. >> These are not guys that are trading on incredible leverage. And these are not guys that are dipping into the the high-risisk altcoin markets. These are guys that know what they're doing and they're built to stick around. And we've seen that and we know the assets that

they're planning on bidding and we know how they're planning on bidding. They're not going to use leverage. They're going to systemically bid these major coins. >> Bitcoin, ETH, things with revenue, things with real business models. >> Those are the things that are anticipatory of the next wave. I mean, we saw it, we were in New York, we saw the institutional cycle take place. >> We did. It is a super cycle happening and it is literally >> and so I think we have to recognize which assets are positioned to benefit the most from the type of institutional capital that we anticipate to come into the space. We've already seen it come into the space. The most incredible statistic of 2025 is that Black Rockck

highest line item on its revenue balance sheet is IBIT is Bitcoin ETFs and crypto ETFs are the hot rant. Rob, tell them. But I'm telling >> I do you not find that like incredible that like these these ETFs the product that is one to two years old for an 80 to 100 year old company the product that they launched less than two years ago is their highest revenue producing product. I find that incredible and it signals to me that this is something that they're gonna really really load into and they're not gonna just they're not gonna like see this as

a flash in the pan. No, if this is something that is making them money, something that's a century old, they're going to try to build up this product so that it lasts for another century, they can continue making money. I just think I just think there's no reason to overthink it. I think if you look at what um what is happening uh you see the people who are in power with control over uh the money printer essentially you know how this game goes.

>> Yeah. >> I mean you don't see like the president's family buying Bitcoin and then think oh I'm going to fade that. No. Like these are guys that have the ability to like create their own success. They have the institution partnerships. They have networking relationships. I think the major coins are the ones that are poised to do really well. >> I do agree with you. Um but >> confused. >> Yeah. So here's kind of like the important take here. Um that is whales are loading up on ETH retail selling.

Wales are loading up on 934,000 ETH, about three billion dollars over the past three weeks, while retail dumped a thousand ETH. >> Yeah. >> So, >> make this make sense. >> Make it make sense. >> I I I think the most important thing is the delta in time horizons between retail and institutional. Institutional has the bias towards patients. They have an edge in patience >> because they they're they're not strapped for cash. Institutions are good. They're fine. They've been around a long time. They're super lendy.

They'll continue to be around a long time. They're thinking in terms of decades. >> Yeah. >> Retail is thinking in terms of like making and you see it on crypto Twitter. It's like I was told there was a Santa rally. My girlfriend wants to go on vacation. I need to make money now to go and afford a vacation. >> I saw that tweet. It was pretty funny. There's so many memes about this and this is the sentiment. Retail needs to make money now. They're trying to find a 10x. Meanwhile, there was a 10x that happened like a natural organic 10x that happened in the market. It was an AI coin called Pippen. I >> Yeah, I saw that.

>> Which is incredible. That's a whole that's maybe a different conversation. So, there is secular bull trends that are out there. You can like find these diamonds in the rough and I think you probably have a better chance at making it like that. But again, that is gambling. If you don't have an edge, if you really do your research, you can probably get a pretty good edge in the altcoin markets that are deep deep deep down, but it's like finding a needle in a hay stack. >> The alternative is is leverage trading, which is just the same as going to a casino. Okay, so here's my take on this, though. Like I get that we're in a per a permabull super cycle, but like there's there's nothing stopping uh this market from from pulling back to like I like

I've said to lower levels first and like that draw down is gnarly and I do not really want to be a part of that. You know what I mean? And so like I don't know man if if we do get a gnarly draw down in December into Jan like like that will ruin your holidays. I'm taking a breather. I'm on a breather vibe. I'm happy to be on a breather. I'm chilling. Um still very exposed. Comfy though. >> Look that that sounds very cozy. >> Yes. >> And I think it makes sense. >> Yes.

>> I think I think about this maybe two different ways. >> One is >> like you said time horizon, event horizon. And I I'd be curious to get your perspective on this as well is that look December, January, maybe we go down, maybe we go all the way down to 75K, maybe even in the 60s, right? And ETH, you know, breaks 3K, maybe breaks 2500, maybe lower. >> Yes. >> You know, hypothetically that happens first half of Q1, January, maybe even February right? >> Yes. >> Imagine this, right? Uh Trump announces new Fed chair and we pump to all-time highs. Bitcoin 150 from 75 >> uh ETH to >> five >> that could happen this that could happen this month >> that could happen this month but just

playing out this hypothetical right let's say we dump this month we dump into January February comes they make the new Fed announcement and then we rock it to to all-time highs right like you know the beginning of Q2 >> if you looked from now and then you looked at the beginning of Q2 right you went into a coma for Q1 >> you would wake up and you would see Bitcoin and ETH at alltime highs it' like oh great right I if but but what is happening in between is this this downside and so I think the patience to withstand that is one way of looking at the market right >> yes but it's also just like personal portfolio allocations people don't understand this they always nobody on crypto Twitter understands your personal

portfolio better than you >> correct >> and so you have to be the one who's able to navigate that so guys let's hop off this tweet um We we'll get ready for our boy Mando. He's coming in. Um and yeah, he's co-founder of Ye. We'll get his take. I know he's got um a lot of takes. And yeah, should be a good one. >> Oh yeah. Um >> market does not look good after after FOMC though. I'll tell you that. E down 5%.

>> It's too early. like this FOMC thing is always like, you know, it takes some time to play out before you can really look at price action. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> All right, I think we got Mando in the back. Let's bring him up. >> Yeah, man. Let's We'll just continue this conversation speculating over where the price is going to go in the next tick in the next one second chart. Mando, what's up, man? >> Hey guys, how you doing? >> Good, good, man. >> Welcome to the show. >> Pretty pretty well. I saw your boy uh for rope just dropped a Tom Lee episode.

That guy is the biggest ETH bull I think I've ever seen in my life. >> Yeah, I think he's still calling for like 200 bit 200k Bitcoin by year end. He said giga pump to 50k by year end. >> Oh man. So, he's got this private like uh newsletter thing or a private like webinar group and I remember back in August I I was hanging out with some friends and we were watching and he was so so certain on 16K by the end of the year. Um unfortunately it's not going to happen but but but Eth is showing some strength against Bitcoin though for the first time in a while.

It's good to see. What's your read out there, man? Uh how are you positioned? How are you thinking about things? Um, I don't want to rain on people's parade, but I have been let I have been a little bit more cautious since since we kind of broke down below 100K. I've definitely felt as though I was I you know I was very bullish. I was the the idea that we were deorrelated from gold, from bitco uh from stocks and you had all this money coming in from the ETFs and the DATs. It just felt like what is going on here? and and we just keep on uh keep on going lower or that correlation just never really came back.

And I'm just kind of like respecting the market a little bit here. I just I just don't know if we're immediately going to just rip back and get uh those sort of bull market expectations here. I think we could be in for a bit of a chop down. I don't know if we're gonna like this is some like a cycle top or anything like that, but I do think I do think we're gonna have at least one more test of 80k or around that sort of region before we work out if that's going to be a um like a a strong bottom with which we're going to rally off. So, for now, I'm just a little bit more cautious. I think the stock market, at least tech stocks, look like they may have done a little bit of a double top if you bring up like the

NASDAQ and and I just think yeah, it's not a it's not a market to do to be that aggressive, let's say, in your positioning. >> Yeah, it's a bit unpredictable. And, you know, we we've kind of been looking at this a couple different ways. There's, you know, potential catalysts, right? Like there's this new Fed chair. We just had the FOMC. You can kind of expect that when this comes out, you know, maybe that's a catalyst. Um and then we've and and you've got institutional both buying and selling. Uh and then you know on the other side we've got you know a technical analysis perspective that says look like the yearly opened at like 935 right on.

>> Yeah it's right on the year. It's crazy. >> It's right on the year. And so I think >> you know from my perspective it's like it's like okay are we going to finish above or below the end of the year? And usually these things tend to be really interesting because it usually makes a a run at it or a play at whatever that yearly bar is. And I don't know, like if you pull up a yearly yearly chart, which I don't do very often, but at the end of the year, it's kind of nice to watch. It's a I mean, it's a dogee, right? That's a candle pattern where it's like just it's just a huge wick and it's like that little sliver of a candle bar and it's a matter of is is that thing going to turn green or red. So man, are you

more of a guy or a fundamentals guy? I >> I mean, I guess I'm I'm I'm a lot more of the fundamentals, but I do think that that level of around 93 to 94K, we've seen we've touched it about three or four times and we keep on being rejected around that sort of level. So I do think it's important. >> I think there are big ALGO style funds which look at this sort of stuff. So for example, we had that dump on like the 1st of December uh just after midnight and that was to me that was very clearly just like uh monthly uh alos being like right we sell because it looks like a trend is broken. I think similarly that could be important for some of these um algo trading style funds that are are trading on Bitcoin. I I I think that will continue to be an

area of supply like you just said. Um, and I think even if you're bullish, I think you need to we you need to see that like retest to be like, right, this is actually this is going to be what we really bounce off. Otherwise, like I don't really think like, yeah, we rally to 100K. Does that really help you? That would look like a a lower high and then a little bit of a worrying kind of like it would be the same setup almost. Like I think we need to form a really strong bottom here. So I I do think we're going to we're going to get that and I don't think it's a bad thing basically. But I I also don't think we're going to go below 80k by the end of this this year. I think we could touch it and then very similarly we

could have a run at 93 to to 94k and who knows where we end up on on the yearly. So, I'm um >> I think if I zoom out, I I just don't I'm not like that thrilled about the opportunity set right now because what I'm telling you is the upside, I think, is like 100K and the downside is like 75K and that's like uh 8% versus or like what 10% versus 15% kind of >> pretty much a coin flip. >> Yeah, >> the riskreward is like basically one to one. There's really not much edge either way. I want Tom Lee saying we're going to go to 16K on ETH. It feels as though we're not air right now. It feels like we're in this sort of oh, you know, we're just hoping that it isn't over,

right? >> Yeah, that's not a good place to be. >> And the bulls are like I think we can get above the yearly at 93 and a halfk, you know. >> Yeah, it's not exactly the most promising. Well, it just I just think that sometimes in these sort of markets you can get really bored and you can be like right, you know, because we, as you know, everyone tunes in every day to see what the hell happens on CT, although it has gotten a bit quieter recently and sometimes that can be really dangerous over these periods because you make a big deal over actually pretty >> over nothing. >> Mando, how do you how do you rationalize this? Like what do you do for fun? Like how how do you you know keep busy? What do you do with your time? Like in a really boring

>> There you go. I'm a different stage of my life I think to you. Like I've got I've got an unbelievable amount of stuff to do and then obviously I've got the businesses that we do. So >> Oh yeah, of course. >> Um I got ye and I've got uh WCT and I've got uh all the podcasts and newsletters. So in in more neutral maybe boring market conditions you find yourself orienting more around businesses and growing and this sort of thing rather than trading >> for you guys surely right like one thing I that what got me through the last like bare market it was like I knew I was turning up each day and just like having some fun with my friends and you have this idea that you're building a fun business and you guys have obviously built a great little platform here. So I

think it's um I think it's like the best thing to do. They always say that like bare markets or or quiet markets for builders. It is true like the only people that stay stick around and are engaged are the people still building stuff every single day. So, and that can be media too. Although, yeah, the stories get a little bit little bit quieter. in terms of markets, if you're looking for markets that are breaking out, >> like I said, this AI trade obviously looks like it it's a little bit more precarious now um just because of that oracle earnings and and but this whole idea like the world is collapsing and you need to own hard assets, I think is is still like a trade. You've seen like some of the precious metals continuing to hit alltime highs. It's just been surprising that Bitcoin hasn't been part

of that. So, I still think you can have that top down view on the world and get involved in some of those markets. But, yeah, it's it's boring for me, too. It's a little bit you have to just stick it like um stick to your guns that you shouldn't be big and you shouldn't be like a lot of people lose quite a bit before this sort of period and then they go, "Right, it's going to have the same opportunity set for me to make it back." And actually, the opportunity set to make it back might not be for six months. Yeah. >> Like, >> yep, totally. I totally hear you. I I' I'd like to get your take on some of the uh culture stuff as of recent. I think you know, you and the wreck guys and you know, your your kind of main group that

that you guys have built over the last couple years is very in tune with a lot of the culture stuff. Um you know, I I I saw a clip from yesterday's show with thread about how how articles are like this like just written by other authors so they can praise each other and kind of circle jerk each other. I thought that was pretty funny and accurate. also have not really found myself reading articles on CT for a long time. Maybe that's the intention span question. Maybe that's just because I I just do so much podcasting. Um but but but the the the evolution of this space has really has really um happened, right? and you've been around for at least 5 years or so and uh you know you've seen it and and I think the driving force this time has been just like this institutional

capital allocation has made people feel a bit more apathetic towards like their chance to make it in the space. The altcoin market obviously like the altcoin complex has been decimated. So that's really gotten to people's heads. You also have this kind of like uh AI going to make the world meaningless. we got to get rich now complex happening more broadly outside crypto and inside and then you've got like the crime cycle of all these founders doing all this crazy stuff this cycle so there's a lot of like these factors that have really changed crypto's culture um I guess 30,000 foot view how do you think about this right now uh in terms of where we are at in the in the culture and where we go from here um as far as some of

like the core ideologies or just the way that the community shapes up etc. >> Yeah, I guess whatever cycle you joined, you have like rose tinted spectacles about it and you're like that that was the best cycle. But I joined during the NFT boom, right? And maybe just before that. And I I remember thinking at that time it was a really interesting time to be involved in crypto. You suddenly had all these finance people, all these like um libertarians and all these like art and culture people all coming in at the same time. And there was a lot of lappiness, but like it really did feel like, wow, like this is kind of cool to see all these different people come in.

I have to say this cycle has kind of felt more like we're an extension of the banking system. Um, and that's permeated through to everything like uh for for like from the media to the to the conferences to the um the the main Kos like it feels a bit more like that. Um and I think there has been a little bit of a reaction to that though. Uh like there was this whole thing like we really want the institutions to come, governments to come and then now it started to be a bit more like well we've lost a bit of the essence of why we're here. Um and I think at least in the last couple of months or few months with the whole privacy narrative coming back

and also just the general sense that maybe we've gone a bit too corporate. um in embracing uh governments, let's say, and and Tradfi that that we're going to we're going to wrestle it back a little bit. I hope that it keeps that sort of element to it as well. Like I do think it has been a it was a little bit weird to see like how many Bitcoin OGs were like just I can't wait to see how much the US government owns owns Bitcoin and how how much um how much we can get into a DAT on the NASDAQ. just it all just felt a little bit like maybe we'd um lost sight of why a lot of people got in there in the first place. And I think

it's is because a lot of that has kind of blown up slightly or or maybe not as been as great as people thought it would be. I think people are now starting to realize, okay, actually know, we can be our own thing again. So, I would like to see that sort of counterculture come back to crypto a little bit, that sort of like renegade uh atmosphere to it. Um, and I think we will see stuff around that. >> Mando, can I ask you what your best trade ever has been? >> Best trade ever? >> Yeah. What's been your best investment of your entire career, crypto or non-crypto? And it could just be the equity that you've built in ye and in REC.

>> Uh, I've had a few in crypto which have probably been my best trades. So, um, we I mean, one night when I first got into crypto was was NFTTS, right? So I um and that journey uh I in January of 2021 I was like I wanted to invest I was investing in art and and wine and whiskey at the time and I was like I found about crypto art and at that time I invested in 15 one of ones um from like top artists. like X copies, um, Hackattow, Coldi, all these like OGs. And I remember thinking, I'm going to own them for like five years, 10 years, and maybe they go up like the

normal art market. They go up like 10% a year or something like that. And then within a month or two, they that bag just like 5xed um, 10x. I remember I bought a piece for 15K and sold it for 230K in less than a month. It was just like it was wild that sort of time. And then later that year, I then used the profits from that to buy one night, emptied my savings account, my wife's savings account, and and bought 89 bought apes in one night at two to three ETH. And we that was an investment of around 600K and we exited that for about $20 million all in. Um, >> bro, what cycle? Yeah,

>> dude. Are you >> Wow. What gave you the confidence to put 600k empty your savings account into board apes at 2 to3? >> It was in an ISA. We have ISIS in the UK which like taxree and it was only like at the time rates were low and I was like this is going to 3x. I thought that was this is before I mean if you know anything about NFTs I thought hey this is going to they're going to do the mutants. This thing is going to do a 3x. I think this is like an all-in sort of trade. So I just I just bought them all and then they just kept on going higher and they kept on going higher and then by the end of that year they were starting talking about the coin and then the coin came the next year and we sold

the coin. Um at that time obviously then I I created a fund with OSF but we we sold all the coin for about uh eight or nine and then um we sold all the NFTts to Matchy Big Brother in one clip if um uh on Blur during the Blur farming uh days. Um so we sold all all 72 of them and then we had all the land and all the >> all the mutants and coders and all this sort of stuff. So all in it was around 19 to20 million. Yeah. So that was a big trade and then and then actually we turned around and me and Obie bought a trillion dollars of Pepe very early on.

So me and him both uh were very early to Pepe when that became big. Um so that was a very big trade for us and then since then I've just kind of been uh big pup trader. So um yeah it's been it's been a good crypto's been good >> dude. Awesome. That's incredible man. I remember uh being so active in DeFi like DeFi summer yield farming and then seeing NFTTS and I had ran up the like you know a good ETH stack at that point and I was like there's no way I'm going to give my ETH to the freaking NFTTS pretty big fumble. I could have you know did pretty well in 2020 uh to to 21 but could have been like generational. So props to you for seeing that and moving on that similar question kind of back to

the fundamentals question with regards to how the culture has evolved. What have been some of your biggest like breakthroughs on wrecked or yeet or FOMO hour? Like you know how did you go you know like what were some either a story or a moment or a a lesson something that you can share with us that has led to your success in building these brands? I think it's a different kind of uh you know speculative element than than trading but it's also still kind of speculative and it's a journey in of itself. um you know what were some of the biggest wins that you guys had there and or just like breakthroughs or learnings that you can share with us?

Building a business in crypto has never been as easy actually. Like uh the trading side of stuff, I've been a trader all my life. So like that's sort of stuff came naturally. Building a business in crypto is very difficult particularly ones with tokens attached to them. Like it's very difficult to keep the prices high. Very difficult to keep the community engaged. With recy was actually like almost a response to a project that we' done before which didn't actually go that well. And then we did recy it all for free. That's all been for free since the start. So the NFT was free was free. the coin's been free, the equity was free, everything's been done um that sort of way almost because it was so difficult once you start selling things in crypto that like they own you like uh very very quickly.

Um so it's always been yeah it's always been a little bit difficult from that perspective. Um, I don't know what the big wi big wins. I I think sticking around. People like to see that you're genuine and that you are crypto volatility and the idea that everything feels over is a feature, not a bug for crypto. So like the people that stick around and continue to give facetime and show leadership particularly for projects but even just in terms of media during that time and build a platform during that time it does really um become very fruitful. We didn't we did the podcast I quit my job in 2021 um at the end of 2021 and we

started doing the podcast and about five months after I quit my job the price of ETH dropped like 80%. And I was like, "Oh god, um, this is this is going to be tough." And building that platform was like a really valuable thing. I think everyone's kind of done it now with the Kaio era, but building a platform for yourself in this space, I think, can lead to just so many different opportunities. Yeah, people look at the small stuff often, which is like, oh, I got a sponsorship for this for this, you know, you know, the Kao style stuff, or, you know, I can I got a paid tweet.

We we saw that and said actually we're going to build businesses off the back of it. So we've built React um we've built we've built E and arguably those will end up being much bigger than any trade or anything that we ever did um apart from that. So I think the real thing is is building using platforms that you build you you do not to just build a better X profile but to build a business um or a product. Yeah, that's incredible advice and I think Andy and I realized that uh early on as well and started our entrepreneurial journey in the space. Man, if you don't mind, I'd love to just circle back because the question comes to mind again on the emptying, you know, you and your wife's

savings accounts to buy board apes at 2 to three ETH. What was your wife's reaction when you told her that you were going to empty her savings account to go all in on board apes? She I she she just trusts me with this sort of trading stuff. She I don't think she still isn't really quite cognizant of like what all this sort of stuff was at the time. I was like, "Look, I think this is a really good trade. I think I can make a lot from it." I remember it's quite a funny story because I was working as a trader at the time. So I would and I would go to work and then when the mutants came out, I was I was like said to her, "Look, you're going to have to sell some of these because I think they're going to dip after mutants." So

she at one stage was selling some of them on OpenC for me while I was at work and I was like directing her to do it. Um and we sold like 10 of them and I was like actually these are going higher don't sell anymore. So she was kind of semi- involved at the time but then uh yeah look I I just have a lot of conviction sometimes in some of these sort of trades. I think I spoke about it even yesterday on on Fred Guys uh stream, but there there is that good Stan Stan Duckham Miller quote which is it's not about whether you're right or wrong. It's how much you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong. And if you have a lot of if you think you you really like a trade, you should try and make as much

money from it as possible. Particularly if you have a very high conviction. And I think that you have to be honest with yourself and say those sort of things only come up like once a year, but when they come up, you got to make sure you're going to make a lot of money from asymmetric asymmetrical bets. So my view is that they were going to 3 to 5x and why wouldn't I put as much capital as possible into that trade? Um, now I had a job at the time, so like I could and I had money to to and I'd had some good trades before that, but I'm definitely of of the view that if that one time of the year happens, you like this is going to happen. This is going to 3 to 5x. Had a similar sort of feeling around Zcash.

Um, recently I was like, there's no way this is going lower. When it was like 100, 150, I was like, there's too many people suddenly behind this. Uh, I think you can really trust yourself. Um, so yeah, I'm a I'm a big I'm a big believer in in high conviction concentrated bets. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's I mean it's funny how everything in crypto kind of moves together anyways. Um, so you know, distributing out your portfolio is actually kind of silly in some sense. Uh, let's talk a bit about bit more about Yeetman. Um you guys have been kind of building out this uh kind of onchain uh you know gaming kind of arcade kind of like uh mix of like prediction markets betting gaming uh

like kind of like very UK oriented there's a lot of lossless lotteryies in the UK there there's a cool culture there around I've got a bunch of buddies from Bristol and Manchester and such >> they talk about it so you know very >> culture in the UK is like you grow up gambling you go like you're up um it. Sports betting has been with us for for forever. Um, and it's very ingrained in the culture. Like I remember the first bet I ever put on was on like the Grand National, which is like a very famous foot horse race out there, and everyone in the country would put one on, you know what I mean? It's not like it's very and football ingrained with football as well. But yeah, we've was a project. We started getting sponsored actually by and this is a good idea for you guys. Uh we started getting

sponsored by Crypto Casinos early in our um in our time doing the sort of podcasts and we had a look at those businesses and we were like um you know why don't we create one of these like a sports book and um >> and that was perhaps a little simplified because then it took absolute age to build and we built it all from the ground up. But uh yeah, it's now we've been open for seven or eight months now. We've just done $1.1 billion dollars of volume. Um, it's from people that you kind of know and like have heard of in the space. Uh, we have Ben Lamb who's professional poker player. It's keyboard monkey. It's myself. Um, and a bunch of kind of that that um kind of related to the rec community, but but similar sort

of people. And yeah, the idea was to be slightly different like a bit more led by like crypto natives. Stake for example, like absolutely massive. Probably the biggest online casino in the world. And I don't see them anywhere on crypto Twitter. Um I don't I don't know anyone who's sponsored by stake. And a lot of the other ones kind of came from gaming or CSGO and kind of came in and tried to do that. So we were like, right, we'll build one. Um it fits with our content anyway because we're risk takers and KBM's been a big sports uh better for a while. And then yeah, we've built it out from there.

I do think that I'm a big believer in yeah this is going to be a massive trend in society. You can already see this with prediction markets right like the the world is is trend this sort of way and we yeah we want to go into all of this sort of stuff. So I think uh we're going to move horizontally but yeah go check out the platform. I know we're we're sponsoring you guys. I the great thing about this as well is that I guess I got to just sponsor all the the >> shows that you like very easy. I was like, "Right, okay." Um, and that's often where I felt like a lot of these other guys who came in here got it wrong. They would sponsor like known scammers or ruggers and and then they would be >> Yeah. Bit Boy was sponsored by stake in

the chat. >> Exactly. >> That comes in handy. >> No one wants to That's the wrong move. So the idea was that we were we we want to um because everyone knows us, we want to have people that we would also really want to respect and and trust with it. So I I it's great. I've been able to um help support a bunch of different shows in the space and you guys have soared it feels like this year as well. So congrats to you guys. >> Yeah, appreciate it, man. >> Appreciate you saying that, man. It's been a fun ride. We're not going anywhere.

>> Yeah, I saw you guys in Argentina. How how was that? How was the vibe? >> It was great. >> It was great. I mean, builders are always so like uh completely insensitive to price action, >> you know, and that they're just like so deep in the trenches. >> Um, good times in chat. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I mean it was good. It was fun. And I think that the Ethereum community is experiencing a revival in a way. Um, which I think is really good to see from the foundation level. So that's that's cool. We kind of got our roots into Ethereum, but it sense kind of like moved away from just Ethereum content.

There's a lot out there. So, yeah. >> Yeah. Also, being in Argentina, it felt like crypto was important for a reason beyond speculation. Like, they have faced hyperinflation for so many years that this was truly a way out. And we we heard stories of people relying on crypto to help their themselves and their families. So it gave like kind of an extra layer to why we're really doing this and and you know found that really meaningful. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. It's interesting that I remember speaking to somebody else about that just in from a business perspective and he was like oh why is South America so such a big deal? I was like well often crypto is like a lifeline to so many countries that you know um have had

failed failed currencies for like many many years. So, it's true. Argentina, I remember speaking to somebody about all the different countries in Latin America when it comes to crypto and it's like Argentina is just the biggest. Um, like they are far and far and away the biggest even though they may not be the biggest economy. Like they they're just so huge because of, you know, the currencies been such a uh disaster. >> I agree with what you said there as well. It does feel like ETH ETH having a bit of a re revival right now, which is which is cool to see. Um it one thing about ETH it gets it gets a lot of flak but it has staying power it feels like.

>> Um and that that can be worth a lot. I think there is this big debate now about the value acrruel back to L1's. >> Y >> and you know are these all inflated and we had that there was a bit of a public debate about that recently and I do think that L1's always have to have in their mind that they're a currency rather than on the fees and I think ETH ETH has had that in its mind far more than some of the other high throughput L1s. It's always been like right um I mean it kind of has lower inflation than Bitcoin right at the moment.

>> Yeah, >> it just depends on on on the fees but I think you're right. I think all the all the souls suis you know IP aptos all these are going to be looked at by institutional investors like okay what is you know Santi's whole like proof of or you know uh PE ratio PS ratio that's going to apply to all these other L1s and right now yeah they don't have a lot to show for it in L2s just any chain in general I think honestly >> yeah it it's difficult to attribute monetary premium to the alternative L1 ones, >> but ETH has kind of got it now.

>> ETH has it and I think the reason I think the reason ETH has it is because of DeFi. I think ETH is used as collateral and that's what gives it monetary premium and it's collateral in DeFi markets for the most part and even starting to become collateral in some regulated markets. I think whether it was Paul Atkins or one of the you know regulators in America recently said that they'll start to use crypto as collateral in derivatives markets on regulated exchanges which I think will help the monetary view p and perception of and premium of of ETH but not other L1s. I don't think other L1s are going to are going to find themselves as collateral in as many places.

>> Yeah, I think that's true. I just think that that also just what you define your chain about should always At the end of the day, like people talk about the the for the apps, it's always about how much you buying back. Like what is the what is the uh multiple of that for a for a L1 currency? It should really be about emissions versus let's say burnt by one of these um sort of gas burns. And ETH is the best at that. is actually the best out of any chain apart from Hyperlquid if you there's big debate about whether that's more like an app or a chain at this stage but it does feel like there is that has long-term value um

uh the compounding effect of of 3 to 5% inflation versus 0.3 is huge absolutely massive >> so so you don't hold much Bitcoin it sounds like >> I hold a lot of Bitcoin is still my it's still my trade, but right now I don't hold I'm a bit more bearish, honestly, man. I think the market could be headed a little bit lower. >> Thank you. Somebody who agrees with my perspective. I've just been butting heads here with Robbie for the last two weeks. We had the framework we had the framework guys on uh yesterday and I just >> I threw Andy under the bus.

>> Framework guys were uh they were bullish. I'm bullish. >> Uh I got a [ __ ] you higher hat up here. Why don't we >> Let's see this. put it on. >> I just think like it's fair to be bullish for like end of the year next year or something like that, but it's hard to see it right now, man. It is hard. >> Like Soul looks ready for freaking >> soul looks like it's going to goblin town to me. >> Soul looks ready for under 100. >> I think Bitcoin ETH are really look I we already tapped 80K. I don't think we get that much lower, but I could see us hanging out around there. And then yeah, I do think there's going to be some catalysts that are going to send us a bit higher. But I look, we've already been in this bare trend, bare market, if

you, you know, you could even call it that, for three months, right? So it's like, at what point does this become a bare market, right? Is it a price depreciation or is it a length of time? Everyone's got different time horizons. >> Yeah. What if it already is a bare market? Well, then I think you're closer to the bottom than, you know, than otherwise because then it's like, well, if we've already had the most of the bare market, the time to sell was three months ago. Now would be the time to buy as we kind of like round out the bottom of the bare market and, you know, start the new cycle.

>> As a trader, I'm like I I just have to have the discipline around it. And like I was I was sounding just like you up until we broke below this 50WE moving average and then I'm just like, you know what? I'm not going to keep on doing this. I'm just going to respect it now. So if we we go above the 100k and we sustained then we're back to it. But where's bitcoin's like 92k like I don't need to to like risk it. You know what I mean? I don't need to risk I agree completely% like I might as well just wait to see. >> I completely agree and the draw down is just not worth it. the draw down is not worth the let me ask you you know you mentioned that you know obviously did extremely well in the NFT era and then

now are you know you're you're on pers but I'd imagine you also hold some spot are you moving your spot around in these in these you know mid to near-term fluctuations I okay sold a lot of a lot of Bitcoin when we dropped below 100k yeah so I did I did I did sell um having thought that you know the four this four year cycle was going to extend and you know that we we were going to have a very strong period um and I held it from that was my the whole period from my 125 to 100 I was like no this is going to be held this is going to be held and then it wasn't so I am slightly talking my own book maybe like mentally I'm like I don't you know only if it

goes back above that level will I get back in but I also just think that as as Andy is saying like the mentality about it like you've got to have your own lines in the sand sometimes or can they can be really painful. >> I I think >> what I do think of this sort of market as we just kind of saw with Zcash too is that you can get like unbelievable runners during periods like this >> because >> the amount of money coming into crypto is >> kind of neutral. But some of these stuff can can um when it's just all of us still here and we're like chasing that one thing that's happening, >> everyone throws their money at it because >> yeah, >> everyone on these sort of shows is the

only thing to talk about. It's like what we're going to talk about is the one runner that happened and everyone else is down. So I do think those ones can move unbelievably during these sort of periods and ZCAST is having another like run uh right now. >> Yeah. and you kind of sometimes it's like that like one is one coin is doing really well and everything else is just getting [ __ ] decimated. >> I think we could see a bit more of those. So like it's not that I don't want to I think you can keep your your your powder somewhat dry also for for those sort of trades. But um >> yeah, I just if I was to rate the market right now, I just don't think >> and it's a very different strategy between PERS and taking some of those swing trades versus versus spot and you

know uh portfolio management. >> Amanda Appreciate you, man. Absolute pleasure. Uh thank you for sponsoring the show. Uh you guys are doing great work. You're a legend in the game and uh yeah, appreciate you coming on as always. >> I'd love to come on more. Yeah, whenever. Um great to see you guys and uh keep up. Merry Christmas, man. >> Christmas, guys. >> Thanks, sir. >> We'll see you next time. Happy holidays. Cheers man. >> Peace. >> All right. Well, good to good to know that somebody's also uh thinking the same way as as old boy here. So, good to hear that. He probably sold a little bit higher than than I did as far as the majority, but yeah, man. Uh >> 20 million on board affairs. Insane

trade. >> Insane number. >> Yeah, >> that is incredible. That is so that is so >> Can't believe that that happened. >> Yeah, 20 mil on board aes is pretty is pretty insane. So, I totally agree. All right guys, we got uh Shirram and Andrea. They are working on some really interesting verifiable AI. I just had a really good uh show with um uh Tang Yan, a ex deli researcher today about AI. Um it it was a really good chat. So excited to have Shamro and Andrea up on the show. It's been a little bit of time since the last one. So let's get the boys up. Um and we will get started talking about what they're doing together as well as just some general updates on the state of affairs. Um, Rob, did you try Near's private AI uh

chat box? >> Yeah, I have. Um, it's pretty cool. You can choose from a few different models. They're all open source models. Um, feels cool, man. It feels cool to like write anything in there and know that like cryptographically you're private and no no authority can get access to it. No entity is going to use it to train against you. It's pretty freaking cool, man. especially as you see what's happening outside of the private AI space and you see like okay they're going to start sponsoring advertisements they're going to uh you know basically sell your chat history to advertisers that they can target you with advertisements the black box is just a deep deep hole black hole and um and I think it's really really important that

we have alternatives near is doing incredible things in the private AI space we have you know seen their chat product. Uh, everyone can check that out at near.ai. And then, you know, we've got Siri Ramy here who's gonna who's going to tell us even more about uh how I layer is helping verifiability and AI and how again we can help to unveil what's happening inside of these black boxes so that we can understand exactly what is being done with our chat history, what is what is happening with our data. And I think ultimately this is going to lead to an to a a renaissance in the AI space.

>> Let's do it. >> Let's get him up here, guys. >> What is possible with these these AI models? >> Here we go. >> Here we go. >> What's up, guys? >> Hey guys, great. Andrea, good to see you. Andre, it was good to see you in Buenosarus. Thanks for coming to the event. It was fun. >> Thank you for organizing that amazing event. It was definitely one of the best ones. And the food was really good. >> Yes. Yes. Good time. Granted, we weren't in Buenosirus, but still, you know, uh it was a a really classy event. So, thanks for inviting me. >> Yeah, man. No worries. >> Looking forward to the next one. >> Shamro, good to see you as well, man. I I know you've been quite busy. Uh a lot going on in the in the AI world. How's things holding up there?

I love it. Well, I think it's uh I think it's interesting that you guys are on here together uh because you know, I layer obviously has uh has done incredible things in the AI space with IEN cloud and now Andrea, you know, coming from the story, the IP side of things. This feels like a match made in heaven. Maybe you guys can talk about more, you know, why exactly this is uh a good a good fit. >> Yeah. Uh Shamro, I can give my version and then I'd love to hear your version. Uh yeah, so it it kind of all started pretty organically. Uh I was tweeting and ranting. Sometimes they overlap, often they overlap. And I was

just using, you know, chat chhatt. And I asked Chad PT to give me information on um on like a spec on how it was trained for a specific topic. In this case, I chose the most random topic possible, which was the Navier Stokes existence and smoothness problem. Uh, and because I wanted something that was specific enough that there weren't like a thousand sources for it. And I asked Chad to give me like, okay, like what list of documents did you use to train on this, right? Like, how can I verify that you know this topic? and and it just it just responded with the generic answer um you know like oh I can't I I can give you information about this problem but I can't give you any um data

set ids document list file names URLs you know the usual filter right and yeah I just felt kind And that kind of was the inception in my mind of like, okay, this doesn't have to be the case. The black box doesn't necessarily have to be the case. And this is also what you were talking about

earlier in the stream, right? Um like private AI and and and and so like I was thinking, okay, well there's different stack training data that goes into a model, there's the model and then there's the inference that comes out of a model, right? And these are like the three main life cycles of AI in a way. Um, so how do you train the model with with what and then what do you output from the model and how? And if if you think about it, when you use enthropic chatpt today, you have no guarantee that that the prompt that you write is actually the prompt that hits the model and you don't even have a guarantee what model is being hit, right? Because they're abstracting it more and more away behind the scenes. Um and so you

know I en fixing exactly that on the model and and compute and inference side uh with IEN cloud and IE AI and stories is is doing attribution and and um just verifiability on training data and we can get more into it uh later. And I was like, well, this seems like all three pieces starting to fit together. And I just Yeah. And when I when I tweeted that, Sheram reached out and it was, "Yeah, let's let's work on this together." And and we just published a piece this morning around u end toend verifiable intelligence and we can dive into it if we want later, but yeah, I'll I'll hand it over to Shriram to kind of

give his take too. Yeah, super excited about this uh collaboration on verifiable intelligence. So what we had been doing at IGEN is um you know we we think of like when you look at the cloud today you have mostly people use it for data for compute and for inference right how do you make all of these things uh verifiable if your data is verifiable if your compute is verifiable your uh you know inference is verifiable you can build very powerful verifiable agents and you need trust and verifiability when your agents are not doing something lightweight when they're doing something important, right? They're taking actions. They're moving your money.

They're like, you know, paying out for people who contributed to it and so on. So, whenever there is consequential like actions is not as simple as a chatbot, you want verifiability and trust baked into the stack. And the thing that we okay so if that's the high level context and if you want to build a world with open verifiable intelligence um the thing that obviously is the most valuable and what we're seeing right now is you know saturation everybody is training on the same set of data which is available on the internet right so you you look at where that's going the the if the data is the same you're going

to get very similar results you're not going to get some unique results by using the same data because the algorithms are pretty much similar. So you need to to to offer new insights, new models, new specialization, new context, new expertise, you need new kinds of data and new kinds of IP. And so this matching of hey if you had a registry where people can register like their uh intellectual property and use that and contribute that for various you know actions whether it is hey I'm contributing this data for training so when you think about this particular problem I contribute data for training all data is not made equal right think of an autonomous car right is driving

and an autonomous car driving uh you want things which are somewhat exception events. You want the person driving in snow. You want the person driving like you know off the highway. You want like some crazy event happening. Those are the more valuable data items. Just driving regularly is not the highly valuable data item. So we we want people to contribute data but want to contribute them in a way that all data is not valued equally. So then the question comes who values the data? If there's a verifiable algorithm that can actually value this data, then that can be really powerful, right? So that that combination of you have some IP and I want to earn from this IP going into AI

models. Talking we're just talking about one example here of training. But the category of things is I put up an IP and then I say hey you know here is an IP and this IP can be used in certain kinds of agentic flows whether it's training whether it is in inference time whether it's in a game that I'm using this character it gets synthesized in a certain way like all kinds of things you can imagine like some combination of an IP going into an AI or an agent and then producing some outcomes and outputs you know valuable experiences valuable intelligence for users gets valued correctly, right? Because I need to know that the the system is actually valuing my IP contribution correctly. And that's

a superpower that I think we found this. It's almost like we'd been like, you know, this big elephant and we are kind of like, you know, I'm near the trunk and he's near the the legs and so on. And then we just figured out, okay, this is how these things fit together. So, I was super excited to like write this uh uh position paper together. So, so when we're thinking about this uh kind of removing the the black box, right? And Andre, I think you alluded to this and Shirro kind of explained how there's there's this kind of intricate leveling of uh sophistication in terms of like what type of autonomous, you know, beings like, you know, there's level one and it goes all the way to, you know, thousands and thousands of levels of

difficulty. So there's this kind of like providence layer and then there's like this verifiable computation layer and this is kind of where the uh two of you guys interact to build this intelligence stack. Um so we can understand a bit of like the why and so you know you want this transparent open economy. Could you maybe explain a bit deeper on the how like how exactly do we take apart what currently exists? what kind of technical uh undergoings need to happen in order for for this verifiable transparent uh AI economy happens. Um because I think we we can all kind of get behind the message but a bit more on the how would be awesome.

>> Yeah, for sure. Um so on on the how the the the good news is like all the building blocks are already in place, right? like it's it's not like this esoteric thing that oh this is a cool idea let's potentially build this in the future. Um it really is just assembling Lego pieces that are already there. So I think you've you've talked to SY recently right? Um Andy and Rob like um he he mentioned Poseidon. So, Poseidon is a ecosystem app that uh is is is a story incubated application um and they've they're basically applying crypto incentives to gather massive

amounts of training data that is hard to get on the internet, right? Because if uh I'm sure everyone's heard of the dead internet theory. I'm introducing a new theory which is like the scraped internet theory, right? which is like you we should just assume that everything on the internet is scraped and now the only rare data is stuff that can't be scraped right and going back to what Sirron was saying if we want people to continue to contribute data especially data that can't be easily found there needs to be some sort of incentive model and the good news is that crypto offers a great incentive model for uh crowdsourced u information right it could be training data it could be uh behaviors it could be um anything right like internet uh like with uh you know there's hivemapper

there's there's so many examples of crypto incentives in action um and and so to to answer your your your your question very practically right uh if the training data that users want to contribute right uh is registered on story then that data can be seamlessly licensed through story and then used to train in a model on ien And then anytime and that and and that can be proved right you can prove that specific data was used and inputed into a model and then you can also verify what model you're using through IGEN and you can also verify that the inference that comes out of an IGEN AI output is

um is using a specific prompt with a specific model and so you have attribution and proof uh end to end right and um but you you do bring up a very good point and I think Shirram We we should probably work on like a a technical MVP that that that people can fork and and run with. I think we Yeah, that's that's that that's that's definitely an action item on our end. But the the good news is I just want to reemphasize is the building blocks are already in place. >> And it's one of those use cases that makes sense to do with crypto, right?

Yeah. Um >> Yeah. >> Especially Yeah. Sorry, I I I I don't want to hog the conversation, but like one gripe I have with crypto is sometimes it's kind of pressed. It's like a a square trying to get pressed into a a circular hole when it shouldn't really be used. Uh right, I I think IP is a great use case for crypto because you have an immutable registry that anyone can contribute to, but not just anyone can can uh change, right? And I think aligning incentives is also a great use case for crypto. Um, so yeah, I'm I'm very bullish on AI and crypto in general because I think it's a it's a good use case of the technology and it's not just looking for a solution to a

problem um or looking for a problem to a solution we built. >> Shom, a bit on the how from your side please. That'd be great. >> Yeah. um the um the the idea of like registering the IP right and then paying out for people who contributed the IP that's kind of like what stories kind of like core forte is you know you come in you register your IP whether it is you know data whether it is you know uh specific characters you know uh all these kinds of IP right so you have that on the one side what are what is the how for ien cloud right so you can run AI or computation verifiably, right? So, and you know, so

what what does verifiability mean? If you run the computation, you know that the specific model ran and the specific algorithm ran and gave you this answer. And these, like I said, are most useful when they are going to make consequential decisions, right? I don't know if you want your chatbot to be end to end verifiable, but when I'm using an algorithm to distribute, you know, rewards to various data contributors, that algorithm better be verifiable, right? When I'm distributing uh, you know, hey, your uh IP, your character was used in this game like 3,000 times and therefore I'm going to pay you 3,000 times. better that computation be verifiable because now I can contribute

my data without actually needing to worry that somebody is going to take advantage of my data without actually paying me for it. So that's the the two parts. So you you put your IP on like the story protocol the computation I cloud like uh is is chain agnostic right? So it just runs and brings the results back to any chain. So you know in this kind of like model what would happen is you put your IP there you register it and you say here are the conditions you know that algorithm can run and distribute to me money uh as much as the data is useful for training um and uh you know all that runs on cloud it provide pro provides a verifiable certificate your data was used like 30 times or like you know it improved the the training or the

objective function or performance this much therefore you're going to get paid out this much and that signal comes back to the story chain and it can actually settle that. So the connection is data computation payment right so data and payment happen on story and like the computation inference that happens on uh IGEN and that's end to end verifiable and now that creates this fully incentivized permissionless open verifiable intelligence stack. So we're calling it verifiable intelligence. This is one of the things when you think about crypto and AI a lot of people approach it with the lens of crypto means decentralization right that's where they start right crypto means

decentralization I think we start with a slightly different view right like cloud's branded as verifiable cloud and we think verifiability is the bigger value proposition of crypto decentralization is an input verifiability is the output right even in the history of like the internet you see like there were very early decentralized systems like bit torrent you know you can send videos data all around the world and it was I think in 2008 it was like 40% of the internet was just bit torrent so was a played a big role but very little in terms of value uh you know acred and created because you know decentralization is one aspect when you have end to-end verifiability

bitcoin is a verifiable kind of like decentralized stack once you have end to-end verifiability that gives you a different kind of value Right? Because and and that's the same approach we're taking in crypto AI. A lot of the initial approaches were more related to decentralized AI. Oh, can I get many nodes to participate like all all those kinds of things but the the place where we think decentralization matters is it's open permissionless data contributions, right? Anybody can contribute data. And why would they contribute data? Because they don't need to trust Andrea or me that like we're going to do something correctly. they they just need to understand that the system verifiably enforces that payment condition based on whatever rules that have already been set. So that's that's

the new angle that we have and I think we're super excited about it. >> Yeah. And >> yeah. >> Yeah. Please Andrea. >> No, sorry. I just wanted to ask something super quickly. Um I think it's it's I think did a good point did a good job kind of painting the incentive layer. I do think in everyday use cases, not just in data contribution, but also in using AI, going back to the consequential decision- making, right? Like imagine an agent doing shopping for us. I I would very much like to prove and be sure that that agent is not, you know, doing some form of advertising behind the hood, right? is choosing certain vendors because they've paid, you know, it's like the the new version of of Google page rank where you you

optimize your search engine results. Um, like if the more we rely on agents, the more we should be able to trust them and and and so like this goes way beyond just data contribution incentives. Obviously, that's a huge part because that's how AI will continue to get better. Uh but the more we lean on agents to do stuff for us every day, the more we need to be able to trust them fully. >> Yeah. So one other example on this like uh uh beyond like training data contribution is you go to chat GPD and say like hey you know convert my image to look like Bradpit or something he'll say no I can't do it right but imagine Bradpit opted in and he said like whenever somebody asks me like you know each time you make an image in kind of

like whatever cross or something give me like you know one cent $1 whatever the payout is. Now if this algorithm is running in a verifiable way, I can just say okay you know here is my like you know all all the people who have opted in to to do this every time that agent that uh system actually does those actions you can just get paid out for all of those use cases. So the the family of things that can be done when you have end-to-end verifiability of a agent and intelligence system combining that with you know uh it uh whether it's training data whether it's intellectual property whether it's use of my copyrights you know the the club clubbing between these two is you know

really really powerful. Um, Shirum, building on this autonomous idea that that you kind of keep talking about, tweeting about um, and here today, is is there something of of an affinity that you have with this idea of autonomizing a lot of things? Like, like what is it with you and autonomous vehicles, self-driving cars, robots, like what what's going on here, man? >> It's a it's almost a descriptive understanding of the world. The the thing that's happening is these agents are getting smarter, right? And as these agents get smarter, the nominal thing is they become firstly entrusted with more

and more actions. So we call them verifiable agents, right? So agents that are trustworthy that are verifiable. So you don't need to worry about like you know what what actions you know it takes. One example that I just want to give is we did a thing with Poly Market and Kai. Poly market had this concept called you know a mind share market who's going to have the most mind share among all projects in 2026 right and but mind share is a amorphous concept right what is mind share do you count every tweet I'm talking about ethereum but I'm talking about story is it about story you need some intelligence to like evaluate how much like this tweet should count right as an example and so there's some algorithm and kao for example has

pioneered a lot of algorithms for analyzing these kinds of data and then like presenting mind share scores but it's a black box it's opaque and then like people complain hey you know kao did this maybe they changed the scores you know I should be really getting more yaps you know we've all seen this kind of stuff but once you make that verifiable right you say like you know what what we did in that collaboration is kai uses iiggon AI in the back end to resolve this market to compute mind share now you know this AI is running in this particular way using these data and then resolving it. Right? So, it's an example of a verifiable agent and because the agent's resolving a prediction market where there may be millions, you know, hopefully billions

of dollars bet in the future, you want to make sure that that is done absolutely correctly, right? So, that's that's the utility of this verifiable uh verifiable AI and agents. But the next era that we are envisioning beyond just verifiability is autonomy or sovereignity, right? And sovereignty is an agent has its own money. It does its own actions. You know, you know, people like us may just be owning shares in this agent or income shares or wealth shares, but it is its own kind of being.

It just makes its own decisions. The the the crazy thing is there is no other substrate for building a fully sovereign unstoppable agent. Like this is not a thing that's like possible outside of crypto. And people like you know at a very high level intuited this and they say things like oh you know if you give an agent an Ethereum key then you know it's it's kind of like um secure or like it can it can be sovereign. But that's not really true because if you give an agent like a uh Ethereum key, where is this agent running? Is it running in your desktop? You know, is it running in some server? Is it like wherever it's running, the key is there? It's a

custodial agent, right? Whoever controls the key is like the Lord of the Rings, right? So the the ring is the key. So you control the key, you control the agent. So you can't really build a sovereign agent. But this is the idea of smart contracts. A smart contract is a program that can own property, right? It's a program that is living on the internet that can own property like the IGEN layer program owns 12 billion dollar of property, right? I mean it it because it's a specific program, it only spends that money in the specific way it's designed to. But think of hot swapping layer out and putting an AI in, right? If I can just take an AI agent, make it like a smart contract and slam it in, suddenly you have an agent owning property. This is unbelievably cool.

This is not a thing that has ever existed till now. And I think very very very few people even understand something like this is possible. I'm talking about you know in in this year right in 2025 maybe like $500 billion is spent on AGI right general intelligence is going to take over everything we need to like but nobody knows that very few people know. In fact, there's a very cool interview with the Microsoft CEO Satya where you know he's asked like is AI a new species and then Satya says no no it's not a new species because you know they can't own property they can't have take liabilities they can't start companies it's only humans that can do all these things because of our legal infrastructure but that's precisely what

we we do what blockchains do is like break those constraints and then suddenly you can have and imagine an autonomous AI scientist creates new like discoveries and patents and throws throws it on story right you know it has an IP that it's protected you know it has a patent that it makes money off right so you can create very very interesting configurations so that's that's the kind of thing where he said >> and and I know for a fact just to add on to the you know going back to what Sacha said like the um agents don't have an identity don't have can't own a bank account etc etc I know for a fact that several governments are working on legislation around sovereignty and

identity. >> That's crazy, man. That is that is bonkers. >> Wow. >> And it's Yeah, >> we're going to need a story. I'll tell you that much. >> Or else we're going to get I can cloud in right in the face. Boom. Robot cop. Oh boy, that's nuts. Please, please continue. >> Oh no, that was it. Um >> Yeah. Yeah. It's exciting times ahead. Exciting times ahead. >> Shirro, uh, what's your timeline for autonomous? Um, uh, okay. So, I was talking to this guy, uh, Tang um, Tang today about when will I be able to have an agent in the normal world that is just going to be able to

book my flight and like book my reservation and like call that Uber for me, you know, that these types of things. He was like some he he was like 2026. He was like 2022 is the year of the agent. I think it's like firmly up. This autonomous agent that you're describing seems to be like the next order of thinking past that. What would be like your estimated timeline or like how do we get there? >> Yeah, I think it's uh less than two years out when agents like are fully sovereign they are and they have enough money. I have a bet in 10 years uh fully sovereign agents will own more than $1 trillion.

10 years fully sovereign agents around trillion dollars. Um the u the uh well the the comparing like a booking agent to like a sovereign agent seems like the sovereign agent needs to be much much more you know powerful but it's not really true. >> It's just a different axis, right? A personal agent needs to know everything about Andy and like needs to have a lot of your personal context to actually be a personal agent. But an agent that just does music or like and and you know just uh creates record hits on Spotify, an agent that creates like you know um new like code or proves new math or like other things doesn't need to know

anything much about you and me and doesn't need to have the hooks into our personal context. >> Yeah. >> So it could even be much earlier than when you have a ticket. makes sense >> because the ticket booking agent is bound by our existing software and data and where it's sitting whereas a new intelligence that'll just do something and the other thing is even comparing general intelligence right so people talk about AGI ASI artificial general intelligence super intelligence right general intelligence is intelligence across the board but like a sovereign agent might be hyper specialized a super artist who just knows one thing but that thing so well that they can make a lot of money off it.

>> Yeah. >> Right. So the sovereign aent takeoff can be much earlier than like general intelligence or super intelligence in a general way. >> Yeah. And and just to build off of that we've been talking about IP going into training data, right? But as agents get specialized similar to how Shriram is describing, right? we get more and more dedicated models creating more and more fine-tuned and dedicated agents to do very specific tasks. They they become IP themselves, right? and agents that do have hooks into your life and become your personal assistants will need to delegate actions to specialized agents and that's where the IP will need to be

licensed and will need to be exchanged and there will need to be transactions on right and and and so I think autonomous agents and fully sovereign agents is also correlated with an agentic economy of agents transacting amongst themselves. Um and and some of those transactions can be very simple just fungeible tokens whether it's dollars or crypto but also nonfgeible like skills knowhow right it's like hey could I borrow your trading algorithm >> to help my client yes you can use it according to these terms and and that's a license right yeah >> so like there's a infinite amount of of uh of use for yeah just

IP in the realm of AI and agents are going to be probably the biggest power users of it. >> Well, gentlemen, you've outdone yourselves. Once again, what's what's new there? Thanks for joining us. Uh congratulations on the uh collaboration and on the continuous growth for both of your teams and protocols. Uh it's been a pleasure. Uh this is this world is accelerating so fast, Rob. um we started to use. Yeah, >> this is really exciting because a lot of times we have a guest come on, they talk about AI as like this mystical concept that is really intangible and difficult for people to grasp and you guys came on and you said, you know, here's the why, here's the how, and here are some concrete examples on how it could improve our lives or potentially go

catastrophically wrong. And I'm glad you you guys are the good guys and uh doing the good work. So, thank >> Sham. We got to get you on a pod with uh E-mod. I I think we almost did it in Singapore that one year, but that would be just that would be gnarly. That would be true. >> So, Andrea, guys, thank you so much. Um, best of luck. >> Looking forward to the next one, guys. >> H happy holidays. >> Yep. >> Talk to you soon, guys. >> Bye, guys. >> Robbie, Andrea, >> cheers. >> Bye, Rob. >> All righty. Up next, we've got our boy Andre uh from the lovely uh DWF and Falcon Finance. Um I think we're going to talk a lot about market cycles, where we're

at in the uh general market making world as well as RWA landscape. So, we we're gonna fire that one right on up and get Andre up here when he's ready. >> Yeah, >> that was a fun episode. That was a fun uh fun little segment there. >> Yeah, that was great. I I mean those guys were two of the guys that I mean they make AI much more approachable and it like really makes you think, you know, because it's like oh well, you know, if the Google CEO or Microsoft Satia is saying, you know, well AI isn't a new species because it can't own property and SAM comes on like wait AI can actually own property.

Well, what does that mean about AI being a new species? Well, we've got a a space, sorry, we've got data centers in space coming. >> So, that's going to be a journey. So, guys, we'll take a quick break and we'll get Andre right up. See you guys in just a sec. Yeet is built for big moments. The most fun you'll ever have with your crypto. Go to yeet.com to yeet into your next game.

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>> Yeah. Oh, good. Thanks for having me today here. Yeah. >> Yeah, man. Yeah, man. It's a It's been a crazy crazy couple weeks in in the market. Um I saw you were you just at uh Binance Blockchain Week or I saw you at some conference recently on Twitter. I was in Dubai last week. Uh yeah, participate in Binance Blockchain Week. Yeah. >> How was the how was the sentiment in the crowd? H how was the you know general feel of the market? Was it really pessimistic? How was it? >> Yeah, look the market while the market is very pessimistic, right? That there there were a lot of you know expensive advertising, a lot of nice cars, you know, a lot of people, right?

uh they discussed like a lot of things like LWA or crypto and center right uh from my point of view the sentiment was very good you know and now we see that 90 95k one BTC right and I cannot say that is like bearish market it's like BTC almost 100 >> I know right it's crazy bitcoin at 100k and people are people are like oh my gosh the world's falling and it's because of it's because of their altcoin portfolios it's because of the of the performance. So, >> because of a lot of things. Well, what do you what do you think? What Andre, what why do you why do you think this is? You know, people are driving in nice cars. Bitcoin is almost 100K, but people are upset. Why?

>> I don't know. Look, uh I think the thing is right that on the crypto space, right, uh people are happy when everything is going up. You know, everything is going up and it's very certain, right? I buy some things today and it will go up tomorrow, right? I found some, you know, old advertising in my iPhone, right? That I kind of uh made the picture like a few years ago in Asia, right? And it was something like this that Bitcoin appreciated another 10% this week. Let's uh work, right? But it's great, but now everything is also great, right? It's just doesn't meet the people expectation, I would.

>> Yeah. Yeah, man. Well, man, you are a extreme sports activist, I assume. Uh some skiing in there. I don't know if you're a big snowboarder or a skier. I assume so. Uh considering your uh your profile picture and your uh background as well as just kind of being in Europe in the Alps at times. Uh I want to talk about that. But you are also the a dog lover and the head of DWF Labs as well as Falcon Stable. Lot going on there, man. What does a day in the life of Andre Gratchev look like? Talk to us about kind of what your kind of day-to-day is. What you you know the people that you're managing, the companies that you're overseeing. What does a day in the life look like?

>> Uh look, the first of all, right, I have way kind of strict sleeping schedule, right? I always sleep like at least eight hours a day and go to bed at 10 and wake up at six. It's like since years, right? because I do believe that it's uh it helps to keep performance at very high level right then of course like a lot of work since early morning because we're very like focused on Asia and also in other like middle east countries has working time there right and basically having calls like from like 6:30 and 7 a.m. my time till like let's say 12 1 p.m. then some gym some other uh sporty stuff right then some uh

more operational work like with papers with uh I don't know some uh good comm conversations with colleagues right and then end of the day you know it depends today I have interview with you guys right then I have like four calls today till like night time right because there are a lot of things going with the people who are based in uh the American time zone. Yeah, just like this. >> Yeah, it's pretty. >> No, no weekends probably frankly. We work like with >> no weekends.

>> Yeah, >> there we go. All right, man. Well, um you guys have been doing some really interesting work in the RWA space. Um let's start with this this uh stablecoin product USDF that you guys have um you know built out from from the Falcon perspective. you guys have have have brought in a couple inst institutional grade RWAS. We'll get into that. Talk to us about what USDF is, what kind of the inspiration behind this product was. Um, and just generally like what this what Falcon's role is with USDF. >> Yeah. Regarding expiration, inspiration, right? Uh like uh you know, we do trading, right? And we do market making since like years, trading since like many many many years, right? And like a

few years ago especially like and in 2024 we started receiving a lot of requests from uh our clients to manage their assets. For example, a foundation has coins, right? They want to have yel on these coins, right? And they wanted us to manage it, right? And basically, we realized that our uh main expertise is how to manage the risk and how to identify let's say fair dollar value of like any asset, right? And we can price it nicely and that's how Falcom finance idea appeared, right? Because we realize that okay we have prop trading style arm we have client facing arm like market

making liquidity provision invest right but we also want to have something like uh let's say asset manager arm like falcon finance and we've built it in this February and from zero to 2.5 billion today we grew like in the last like 10 months right uh and basically the idea is very simple you have assets an asset that is uh not your bearing you put it into the falcon finance product and you get USDF and you have dollar y that's basically very simple idea right and you can adjust what kind of upside you want to have from your asset what

kind of downside uh like liquidation uh you want to have with your assets basically like this uh this is uh the file confinance and USDF is our synthetic dollar which represents like dollar value of your assets and of yacht and you can redeem USDT, USDC or whatever stable coin you want from us or you can even redeem fiat uh to your bank account. Yeah, >> got it. >> Cool. Okay. And so you guys brought in the a couple of these in institutional products J AA JT RSY. What are these RWAs and and how does you know thinking about bringing high quality credit

onchain unlock better yield for this USDF product? You know we got um Jerome Pal has cut the rates by 25 basis points. You know the yields are going down for stable coin yields. You really need to go out and find different types of product to provide this consistent yield. talk to us about like how bringing this this private credit markets onchain unlock better yield um better liquidity for this product and kind of how this worked. Um basically uh the sale word assets and private credit. It is like uh a huge market on traditional finance, right?

And uh this asset that you mentioned is tokenized private credit, right? With good onchain liquidity because we work with the like thisization platform, right? And they can uh redeem cash like almost instantly for these assets, right? And it generates yield. And we believe that okay now you have this uh tenized depth let's say like this right and you can have some yield on this right but then you also may have a need in terms of liquidity and some other for flexibility with your assets and then Falcon is more than happy to accept your tokenized depth and give you some USDF

against it then you don't lose your kind of depth but you have liquidity if you want or if you want to increase your uh earnings you can do some defy strategies with USDF or just take it and get y it's basically uh the idea behind it and we believe that market uh will be bigger and bigger in the crypto space and we want to build an infrastructure that will be ready and we will b battle test it when uh more institutions uh join uh the crypto market here.

>> I'm curious from your experience as a market maker and after launching all of these products, you've worked with, you know, several uh dozens of companies that are in, you know, the top 10 20, top 50, top 100 of Coin Market Cap. Um what would you say separates like a good, you know, obviously everyone wants charts to go up and to the right, right? Not everyone can get what they want, but um what would you say separates a good market maker from a poor market maker? like you know we see different teams have you know these spikes call them crime pumps where like it's very obvious that like teams are just trying to get out as much as they can and extract >> in fact we've heard of people trying to acquire certain companies just because they have a special pump market

manipulation process that that they can do on Binance just to get out. It's very it's been very very interesting year. >> Yeah. And so there's tactics, but to do things the right way and also for the collective overall good of the people that get involved early, the people that are building the product, you know, everyone should reap the rewards of a successful product. How do you execute these strategies tactically as a market maker? >> No, basically look um considering the strategies that you mention right the first of all right I do believe that it is a not sustainable business model. it it probably may work for a short period of time but it's not sustainable and it

carries a lot of future risks right because you never know when uh some investigation will happen when some uh I know bad thing will happen right and that's why we stay away from this stuff but definitely we trade all the coins because we do HFT right and in terms of definition between good and bad market maker I would say that you know market making itself like liquidity provision in the current stage of the market right it's a very common and very simple thing basically almost any company can run this you can buy some software right and run your market making business by yourself it's uh not a big deal right I think we are on that stage of the market

right when the market makers should uh kind of decide what kind of role they want to uh play in the market right if you are HF and you trade like on the exchanges globally and contribute liquidity to the global exch right as traditional space it's one story right then if you work with projects right what you offer if you offer just liquidity okay that's this market is very competitive uh there is almost no margin now right and uh I think this is a very weak point from a business standpoint because if you don't make money from trading you can rely on your marketmaking portfolio But given that increased competition

uh margin of course decreasing right and I feel and I know that many companies have like uh big big troubles now because they relied on crazy margin that's market making business had like years ago but now it is not like this and the and it's not enough to say hey I provide liquidity I provide reports and I can make like a fortune from it. No, it's it's the end, right? And then a definition between a good and bad market maker. I think it's more about if you work with a tool, right? And then no difference if you buy your software or if you hire a market maker or if you work with a partner, right? And we believe that good market maker, right?

that can kind of help you to push your chart as you said right up and right uh is the company that can that know how to go with go to market strategy how to work with sp how to work with user acquisition has partners has connections has I know a a circle of VCs or uh other important counterparties in the space right that can help you to grow your product that grow your market share right and then the token performance will fall off right because I don't really believe in this manipulation stuff right because market is very smart now there are a lot of professional

traders right even us we do this right because when you see that something is pumping just with with no reason right >> if you trade properly right your algorithms will say that it's something like >> that can could not happen if you should sell it right yes And then uh basically you those people who try to replicate these stories right uh they lose money right I also know heard a lot of stories but then we did some market research it's all marketing it's all you know fake right >> yeah I'm curious um there's there's you know in the same lens there's been so many of these liquidity wars in 2025 whether it be incentive mining airdrop

farming points programs uh market makers creating you know different dynamics. You know we're kind of entering this new uh market environment here where people are looking for fundamentals like Hyperlid has done so well this year because of this revenue and this buyback. You know people are excited about other tokens that are you know have this better stronger value here. Um you know from your perspective what do you look at to evaluate whether a protocol or a token has real economic durability? uh what kind of metrics, numbers, stats and when you're kind of assessing the probability of success of a given protocol, what are you looking for?

>> Oh, look, uh basically uh it should be useful product, right? It's not only about tokconomics when you explain that okay people may use my token and my product and then the token will go up because people may not use your product at all, right? Because it's useless, right? It should solve some real solve some real problem right? What real problems we have of the market? It is trading. It will always be on the market. It is lending and money markets. It is payments. It is uh investments and basically some form of infrastructure.

This is a kind of uh and yields. Yes. And this is like permanent narratives, right? And then uh we see if this project can play around these narratives and solve some problems, right? And if the team can really get the uh users, right? And if the answers are yes, yes, uh we are in, right? If the answers are no, we need to see, right? if we can help because some things they may be so innovative that make sense to join even if they are kind of unrealistic now because this is like how venture business works right but in general if we are talking about a kind of

scientific approach uh you should rely on like product that really has users and these users are not using this product because of the airdrop right and uh it should not be a product around token right token should be a nice uh thing on top of that but it should not be carbon stock this basically like this >> great example is hyperlquid right people started trading it before token and they contribute a lot of to before token >> are you uh are you um are you very very bullish on a certain category right now or a certain set of tokens like what are you what are you looking like are you accumulating any new assets dur in this downturn specifically a set of assets

um from the uh you know marketmaking fund perspective. I know you guys raised like a $75 million uh DeFi fund which I'd like to talk about too, but is there any particular set of of of assets or bucket of of kind of like general um categories that you're excited about? Um for now we're more focused on kind of investments in uh developing projects and uh incubating them and helping them to grow instead of buying you know like cheap tokens on the market because basically you know that fact that the coin uh pri was priced let's say two times higher a month ago doesn't make this coin cheap now. Maybe it will be

cheaper in one month. Right? We need to see the fundamentals, right? But uh yeah, we we bought some coins, right? Of course, we bought BTC, a lot of BTC, right? When it was like 82 plus K. Uh >> okay, nice. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Do you think that we um do you think that we see new all-time highs in 2026 or do you think that we get more of a bearish market? >> Uh I believe in new alltime highs. I really believe >> in first half of the year or second half of the year, which I think first half of the year.

>> Wow. Awesome. Awesome. >> It's my opinion, right? >> No, of course. Not financial advice, but And why do you feel that way? Is the is just like the market structure that you're seeing? You know, I was looking at um Coinbase's Coinbase put out this little uh post that was like um speculative access has been flushed out. Our our systematic leverage ratio which tracks purely speculative positioning has stabilized at about four to 5% of the total market cap down from about 10% from this summer. Lower leverage equals healthier market structure plus less vulnerability to downside risk going into the end of the year. That's just from now until the end of the year. Is that a similar kind of idea that that

you guys have? >> Yeah, basically it's a very similar idea, right? uh a lot of leverage got decreased plus a lot of leverage got liquidated in last months. uh and uh frankly a lot of great things happened and basically the whole market situation is is bullish right there is nothing bad uh there is only bullish regulation right uh there is even yesterday right or today uh SEC chairman announced that ICO is not like a subject of SACE uh and kind of uh supervision right and I think uh everything should be fine Right. But plus also uh two billions on fiat

markets and the global kind of uh inflation of fiat currencies uh will make uh crypto and especially Bitcoin stronger, right? I think >> you don't believe in the four-year cycle then you don't believe in the four-year cycle. The four year cycle is done. >> Uh I don't really believe in four year cycle right? >> Yeah. Yeah. We we also you know we believe that you know the four-year cycle was very important when the block reward and the h happening was very significant uh portion of bitcoin supply but as the block reward diminishes down it becomes a less significant impact on the supply of bitcoin uh and therefore less significant impact on the price.

You mentioned that last month there was a lot of bullish things that happened. I mean are you referring to 1010? What what are some of the things that you know you mention and you say yeah like over the last month we have the SEC. Was there anything else that you saw in the market or in the flows that leads you to believe that you know this is something that is positive accumulation for Bitcoin and the broader market going into 2026? >> Okay. uh basically uh the uh kind of nuclear bomb that uh uh collapsed in October, right? All this leverage collapsed right?

>> On the one hand, it was a very better event because it ran a lot of liquidity. On the other hand, it made the market much healthy because no leverage, right? Uh and we found a kind of bottom line of it, right? Of course, it is kind of virtual bottom line, but it is a bottom line. And now uh those bitcoins that could be sold they sold right and I'm not talking about alcoins right I'm also talking about BTC right and a lot of positive things happens in the kind of the global space what I mean more BTC regulation in UAE right more BTC uh regulation in chi in the US right China uh launched their mining machines again

right in Sichuan region and uh it it is happening right pension funds accumulating BTC right it's all bullish if you can imagine that even one of this news would happen in let's say 2021 we would see like bitcoin I know 1 million I think right but now uh because of the overall crash and the amount of fresh money is kind of very small we need to just wait when more money will come and uh the assets prices will go up right? It will happen. Uh and I also believe that it will happen first half of the 2026 because a lot of institutions especially in the US and uh

like basically globally they have uh December uh the end of the financial year right and nobody wants to kind of affect their P&L uh in the end of the year. uh people wait till January and then they can deploy again because now it would affect bonuses, it would affect some P&L calculations etc. Nobody wants to do it. >> Yeah. >> So basically take it easy, enjoy the holidays, make sure you've got your your you know cozy in spot and strap in boys because uh Q1 Q2 is going to be electric. I think we see clarity act. We see institutions coming on board. Let me flip the like the so the bare case is the technicals, right? You've got the

bull case being these liquidity um uh impacts. You've got the regulatory impacts. You've got rate cuts. You've got a new Fed chair. You've got Trump just taking control of the Fed basically. And might as well just put them all into one because Trump's just gonna select somebody who wants to do what he wants to do. And what he wants to do is stimulate the economy. >> Yeah. >> So you've got like they're going to run this thing hot next year, right? You got that happening, but then you look at the charts and you know, Bitcoin has been in a four month downtrend. It is falling through key key levels. It's it's now testing, you know, previous uh supports as resistances. A lot of altcoins or, you know, non Bitcoin tokens are really really looking bad. Their structures

have been broken. You know, uh it's hard to look at the charts right now and be like, I want to be allocating. you know, it seems like it makes more sense to kind of wait until a more positive development happens and and kind of reallocate on the way up rather than kind of um you know, perhaps before another drop. So, you've got this kind of technical element that's fighting against this like more fundamental liquidity element and you're just saying look technicals are technicals but all these other factors are going to outweigh um kind of what the charts are saying.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And uh those companies and people who have money and have like enough uh market experience right I think they are buying bitcoin right because it's a good entry point for now uh but uh when the bitcoin offering will be decreased right prices will go up and others will join this space yeah always happens like this you know the crowd buys when the bitc price is going up >> nobody not Many people bought BTC when it crashed to 15K in 2020.

>> And do you think that the digital asset treasury companies are safe? Do you think that that we're in a good spot there? Or how do you think about that with regards to to the market structure? Let's just focus on Bitcoin and and ETH. >> Yeah, let's focus on ETH. Right. Look basically um I think this market with Bitcoin D that's mark and if uh will exist right but it uh it it will be a little bit changed I don't know how but it must be changed to survive right because uh for me that that market it was like ICOs in 2017 you know uh we had just a few ICOs like ETH and central

in 2015, right? Uh you can name it Micro Strategy, right? They were the first and then uh we had like a lot of ICOs in 2017, right? Starts from April 2017, you could run any [ __ ] and name it ICO and raise a lot. But in September 2017, you couldn't do this, right? And in November 2017, you would be highly likely beaten for offering the ICO, right? And the same situation with the D, right? Uh yes, they raised a lot of money, but uh the premium, this MNAF premium uh play kind of exhaustive, right? And this market should offer something, right?

What this could be? I know maybe y maybe something structured products, right? It must be developed somehow else, right? But the overall situation is that a lot of people and a lot of companies lost money on the dots. They will exit then uh prices will stabilize at some point, right? It will it should be consolidation. Some M and days should happen, right? Because it's good to buy Bitcoin with uh discounts, right? Then for example, distribute treasuries, it it will also happen, I do believe. And then some other models uh will appear and someone will raise some more money for for kind of that 2.0 or right let's name it like this we don't know how it

will look like and then this market will grow up again and you remember how crypto grew from 2017 in 2020 I think we should expect something like this >> and maybe it's a little bit too early to determine whether you know what exactly this new catalyst is but generally would you would you say that that is going to come from inside the core crypto industry because Andy and I talk a lot about what is currently happening on the periphery like we went to New York and we saw Fidelity, Black Rockck, a lot of financial institutions are coming in. A lot of Silicon Valley techn uh you know more fintech web 2 technology companies are coming in. We you know we were

around in 2017. We saw ICOs. We saw unis swap v2 amm like yeah in inventions core web 3 primitives was a result a catalyst of of things that we went out and we went and we grew the space outward now it feels like we're getting more money coming in to the existing primitives. So from your estimation, do you think the next catalyst is going to be the institutional capital coming in to the to the primitives that we already have or do you think we're going to see some sort of invention, some new primitive that is going to attract a lot more of this capital?

>> I think crypto market is uh kind of developed. I mean in terms of products and I think it it will not be just one flow but definitely it will be institutions right that they will definitely join and I do believe through some structured products right and also thanks to some you know mass adoption tools for example uh Xiaomi announced that they will pre-install SE wallet into each new Xiaomi smartphone Which means that a lot of people will know uh that say exists right it's not about say it's about crypto right and when uh people would know this it would

be some like conversion rate and then more users will come and I think it's like very you know kind of native process it's just a point of time when the people will come but we have a lot of great products of course they must have maybe new primitives we don't know what kind of primitives There will be some invention, right? But we already have enough of things to play with like >> Yeah. >> quite a lot. >> Yeah. Andrea, as we wrap up, man, are you skiing this winter? What's your what's your skill?

>> Snowboarding. >> Snowboarding. >> Yeah. >> How's the snow out there? >> H It's It's okay. I did a bit of snowboarding this weekend. Yeah. >> Oh, yeah. Sick. >> Super sick, man. All right, man. Well, hey, thank you for joining us. It's been a pleasure. Um, appreciate you uh answering our direct tell me where the market's going questions. Uh, but I appreciate your insight. So, thanks for joining us, man. And congratulations on the success that you've had. You've built one of the largest two largest, you know, companies in the space. Very well known. So, uh, very much appreciate man.

>> Thank you so much. And thanks for your time, guys. Great. >> Appreciate it, man. We'll see you next time. [Music] Yeet is built for big moments. The most fun you'll ever have with your crypto. Go to yeet.com to yeet into your next game. Not your keys, not your coins. From the team that pioneered cold storage, Treasure has just released its new wallet. Guys, if you are still using hot wallets in 2025, 2026, you are missing the entire point. Secure your coins. Get a treasure at treasure.io.

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Go to habachi.xyz to start trading today. Looking for you. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. That was Andre from DWF who is very bullish. Uh he basically is like, "Stay the course, guys. We're gonna go higher. We're bottomed. Uh institutions are here. Don't listen to CT." >> This guy's got tons of market making experience in the space.

>> You really had the audacity to ask him about the shenanigans knowing that there's shenanigans happening everywhere. >> Of course, because he's still around. And I think you got to look at the the people that have been around long enough to know where the shenanigans happens tend to stay away from it because they know if they get involved in the shenanigans, that's how people blow up. >> Stay around. Yeah, exactly. >> Stay around. >> So, >> well, we got big news today. We got Coinbase and chain link CCIP. Coinbase is selecting CCIP as the exclusive partner to move Coinbase's assets crosschain amongst other use cases.

We're going to hear about that directly from Will. Let's get Will Riley up, the head of CFI sales, strategy, and more at Chainlink Labs. He's right in the back. We'll bring him up right in a second. Let's talk about this news today. Rollup TV live Thursday, December 11th. We're in Florida. We're having a good time. Let's get Will up on stage. Here we go. Will, what's up, man? >> Hey guys, good to see you. >> Good to have you, man. >> How does it feel, man? How does it feel? >> Uh, it feels great. Some some exciting news came out today obviously uh chain link CCIP uh selected by Coinbase to supercharge their uh CB assets and bring them to you know a multi-chain world and bring them crosschain uh using highly

secure and reliable systems such as CCIP. Um super pumped about this. um long time coming. Been working with the Coinbase team for uh many months uh practically a year on this >> and incorporated um you know I think you guys probably saw last week um they also selected chain link CCIP to be the independent verification layer of their base Salana Bridge which is also very exciting. >> Yeah man, can I ask something about that? Will before we get into the CCIP Coinbase uh wrapped assets announcement, >> do you think Bass is trying to vampire attack Salana?

>> Vampire attack. I think what they're trying to do is create a more unified world on chain. Uh quite honestly, I mean, look, everybody's got liquidity parked somewhere. Um, in the end state, um, I think at the end of the day, folks don't really mind what chain they're on. They they care about a very smooth, uh, and powerful UX. And honestly, I think that's how we get to uh, mass adoption. >> Beautiful, beautiful. Good answer. Good answer. Very diplomatic answer there, Will. All right. Right. So, Coinbase, the leading publicly listed firm for digital assets and Chainlink, the industry standard oracle platform, today announced a selection of Chainlink CCIP protocol as the exclusive bridging

solution for all of Coinbase wrapped assets. They currently have an aggregate market cap of approximately 7 billion. Will, why does Coinbase need to use Chain Link for um and CCIP for moving their wrapped assets around? Why couldn't they just use some something else? Why is it so important for Coinbase to get this one right? >> Yeah. So, look, um they they really took their time. Uh they really did their homework. They really looked at the market as a whole. And when you are an institution, uh like Coinbase, uh security, reliability, doing things like making sure they get it right, like you said, is of utmost importance. I mean,

this is a publicly traded company. Um, so when you look at selecting somebody in market to perform with them side by side, you know, um, I think you guys, uh, joined us out at SmartCon, which was great. Oh, yeah. But I mean, you know, we had the likes of, uh, JP Morgan, DTCC, Swift, you know, these types of entities. They're also, um, you know, looking at and testing and utilizing CCIP in many ways. Um, honestly, just kind of when Coinbase is playing in that type of arena, you know, they want a system that has that level of security and reliability. Um, you can't be as a publicly traded company, you can't be putting your your user base at risk.

>> Yeah, that that's what it's all about. Like you said, uh, CCIP was selected by Coinbase for their crosschain needs due to CCIP security and reliability. As a leading publicly listed firm for digital assets, Coinbase takes security and reliability for their products seriously. excited about accelerating the growth of Coinbase's wrapped assets. I want to ask you about the growth in particular. How will this partnership, the security, the reliability of CCIP from Chainlink help accelerate these assets, the adoption of these assets and and the ubiquity on chain?

>> Yeah, great question. So, right now CV assets are only minted on a few chains. Um for instance, if we look at CBBTC, this is natively minted on Ethereum uh base of course as well as Salana today. Now when um you really want to uh expand these assets out into new um maybe quote unquote exotic uh chains or day one chains, you you really want to take again that security uh focus um in their lens as a first step. So utilizing CCIP, they're going to be allowed uh or enabled to wrap bridge wrap via CCIP these assets to nason chains that they

don't have native minting on available today. This allows that ecosystem to start adopting something like CBBTC and incorporating it into their DeFi environment. And when the time is right and when the infrastructure is in place on Coinbase's side, there is also a feature set within CCIP where they can natively upgrade into a native issuance on that chain. Um so if we look at the you know the the many proliferation of chains that are coming out today um specifically the D5 focused ones, this is where you're going to see CB assets that weren't there are going to start popping up and even be a part of day one launches as well.

Yeah. Um, well, I'm curious, you know, a a as the Chainlink Protocol and organization has really came into its full force uh into the institutional world. I, you know, I saw uh Chris and some of the others were out in DC this pack this past week uh for for the uh DC gala. there was a tons of there was ton of policy makers pushing on this market structure bill that is seemingly uh within 24 hours of of having a lot of big changes on it uh or you know some sort of next uh big you know kind of push forward that in in one realm then you've got Sergey really coming into his own into uh the institutional realm as well as the kind of uh uh policym realm h how much do you think the brand uh

evolution of chain link has influenced uh decision makers from publicly traded companies like Coinbase to to to feel comfortable with um you know using CCIP using chain link for a variety of different needs. How much of it is brand versus how much of it is the reliability of of the tech? >> I think it goes hand in hand. You don't build a brand that is unreliable. You don't build a brand um that is involved in these um fly by night um exercises. I think kind of like before I joined you guys were talking about you know being in the space long enough which I've been in around 8 years you know you've seen enough booms and bust uh happening and when you participate in those type of um

I guess less savory business practices um this this ultimately tapes your your brand also if you look at a technical track record things like hacks things like failures things like multi-million dollar or billion explosions which we've seen on bridges before. Um these things are extremely scary to publicly traded companies as they should be. Um this is why if you want to build a brand that kind of chain link has over the years you have to have a foundational route in you know advanced technology and a security focused tech. But when you're dealing with infrastructure um such as chain link I mean you can look at all of the TVL that's stored on chain today. Uh chain link secures 70% of it. So chain

link has no room for error. Now when you incorporate that with policy makers, they're looking to expand and start delivering data on chain. Uh similarly like we're we're bringing like um the department of commerce data to chain. We're speaking to another uh uh a number of other agencies looking to bring their data on chain as well. Um these folks are looking at can they actually be associated with this brand? Can they actually rely on the tech or will it create a stain on them in retrospect? Um when you know you have folks like Brian, have folks like Sergey uh standing next to uh you know the president while he's signing things like the Genius Act. Um I

think that all kind of uh that mixture starts uh you know proof is in the pudding at that point. >> Yeah, most definitely. Um, so Will, when you're thinking about the the evolution of the of the Chainlink product suite going forward for some of these more institutional uh, you know, types of players that are entering this industry. Is is CCIP the the main product that these institutions are interested in? Is it the Oracle product? What is kind of like the I don't know like like you know on Amazon there's like bestsellers like what is the chain link institutional bestsellers? Oh yeah. So CCIP out of the gate is definitely um the flavor of choice. Outside of that we have

Chainlink runtime environment. Um I think I had the the good fortune to touch on this last time I spoke with you guys but chain link runtime environment is a next level architecture for chain link and it was really de developed with institutional adoption in mind. So, this allows for um hands-on development of custom Oracle products that even allows folks at these institutions, at these banks to dive right in and start building their own Oracle products that are built on chain link tech. So, they get all that trust, all that reliability, all that track record that they've seen over the years in the palm of their hands and they kind of now get to make the world their own, which is very important uh for these institutions

as well. So to answer your question, CCIP and often uh its companion CRA and having those actually work side by side for many use cases. um we've really seen this um kind of proliferate in terms of adoption from institutes with with CRA they're able to coordinate actions with CCIP ingest data whether it's external data or internal data and then produce onchain uh actions as well directly on multiple blockchains or even their private blockchain >> and what what are the categories that you're targeting for these products uh for instance like you know we something that I think is a really big deal that kind seems to be flying under the radar

is that the SEC and you know their regulatory counterparts are are saying now that crypto can be collateral for regulated derivatives markets which is a trillion multiple trillion dollar industry. Now crypto can be collateral. We can you know you use that uh basically as money to back a lot of these markets. And to me this is a perfect placement for chain link because you have to unite these two worlds these regulated derivatives market traditional financial world with the new DeFi world. What are is are these kind of the categories? what you know if it comes to CR if it comes to CCIP broadly not you know particular companies that maybe you have in the works but broadly what are the categories that you're targeting

>> yeah so if you want to look at like short medium and long-term uh categories I think short-term categories such as you're describing right now allowing for crypto collateral I think this is like toes in the water uh for a lot of folks this is now crypto is starting to become a thing for them the next kind of form there I think is adoption of stable coins even at the exchange level. These large exchanges that operate in traditional finance markets today, I think this really unlocks things like overnight trading um really allow uh allows for weekendbased trading allows for yield opportunities as well. Outside of that, if you want to look into more of a medium uh term uh time frame, this is where tokenization is going to be

huge. And this is a very uh focused vertical for chain link. This is where things like CRV which can be used as an engine for bringing assets on chain and tokenizing them um as well as um having embedded uh compliance and privacy uh baked into this. Once you have that um you're able to deliver those crosschain via CCIP. So it's kind of one stack meets all your needs out of the box. um tokenization um we're also seeing um a very large growth in adoption in the payments vertical um and this is again where uh crossber payments or um remittances or even just um how can I get my current

retail base to allow to use stable coins to go buy a cup of coffee without um like ruining their privacy. Um these are I would say medium to long term but it's also on I would say a very focused roadmap for 2026. >> Yeah. Beautiful. Um will I I I got to ask uh h how did this deal happen? H how long did it take? Um you know I know dealing with publicly traded companies requires a bureaucratic sense of decision-m uh as well as PR as well as all of these kind of factors. Uh kind of closing out here. what was the process to get this deal done? Um, and what's your what's your special sauce, man?

>> Yeah, for sure. Thanks, man. So, ultimately, um, I'd say end to end, this was about a 12-month exercise. >> Um, it took many different flavors and forms as we kept going back on technical requirements uh, with Coinbase trying to really understand their needs. um doing custom design work um specifically for uh their bridge. Um this was something that took uh many months of relationship development. Um one of the fortunate things ha I have um as kind of a head of CFI at Chainlink is I've been engaged with um exchanges across the world for many years and I have uh been had the

good fortune to work with uh the folks over at Coinbase uh for quite some time. So naturally them having an established relationship with us um and getting interested in the bridging landscape um this was kind of like uh one of their first stops. They just picked up the phone, gave me a shout and uh you know we started cooking together. >> Awesome. Will well hey man thanks for joining for uh us today. It's been a pleasure and congratulations um like everything it's happening. So look forward to having you on again man.

It was a pleasure to meet you in person, man. You're uh you're a nice guy, man. >> I appreciate it. You you as well, Andy, Rob, fellow Florida uh guys just like myself. So, always a pleasure to see you and thanks for coming on. >> Congrats on a long journey, man. 12 month sales cycle. Sounds about right. S, I'm sure you've got yourself in in the middle of many multimonth and multi-year ones currently. So, we'll let you get back to it. >> Yes, sir. And we'll be back on soon. Thank you. >> Exciting times. Thanks, Will. All right. Well, All right, man.

>> What do What do we say? Chain link is dominating the institutional realm. What's new there, >> dude? Payments, tokenization, stable coins. >> Payments, tokenization, stable coins. >> These are the verticals that are getting all the attention and all of the institutional bid. >> Institutional T-W according to uh our global institutional tap. >> Chainlink's at the center of it. Look, Neoank Cambrian explosion, new generation of fintech. We're seeing it happen right before our eyes. We're seeing the categories that the market is excited about. And it's the it it's different categories than we've seen in crypto natively over the last couple

years. They're on the outside. They're looking at this and they're looking at it pragmatically. Dude, return of fundamentals, payments, tokenization, stable coins, DeFi, and chain link is the infrastructure that's underpinning the rise of payments, tokenization, and stable coins. It they definitely are. They've built their brand on reliability. Similar to how um Stani from A was mentioning that they built their brand on resiliency, I think Chainlink has built theirs on reliability. Um guys, we're gonna cover some more of the things that we wanted to cover in the beginning of the show while wait for our next guest, Mike. Uh I think we've got the biggest IPO ever to cover. Market prediction drama as

well. So, um yeah, we'll we'll we'll pull these up and and talk about them. I think the biggest IPO ever is the SpaceX one. >> Yeah. >> Um >> I've got a buddy at SpaceX that >> Yeah. How's the How's the morale? I mean, as you can expect, I'd imagine morale is high. I haven't had I have not had a chance to talk to him about it, but um he did say that I saw him a few months ago and he kind of explained how um the unlocks work. Uh and so each time uh you know in startups and even though SpaceX is a giant company um they they uh you know still operate as a startup and so they're giving away

equity you know as a as part of the compensation package to a lot of their employees. And so apparently the way that this works is that each time SpaceX raises a new round, they're able to um they're able to sell a little bit OTC to the incoming investors, right? And so you have this option. Usually you get advanced notice maybe like a month or two in advance and they they send out this companywide email and they say, "Hey, do you want to sell part of your equity package, some of your options, your stock options as part of this next fundraising round?" Um, and everyone, you know, everyone kind of has a chance to do that, but as of recently, people have been reluctant to do that because they knew that the IPO was coming up >> at a $ 1.5 trillion valuation, mind you.

>> Exactly. And so, >> wait, so basically, whenever you join the company, you get some options, then you can sell them every time there's another raise. >> So, yeah. So, uh, you know, if the company goes public, then you still have the option to buy the equity at, you know, maybe whatever it is, $5 a share, and then the I the IPO at, you know, $200 a share, you're gonna you're going to exercise your option, right? And so, in each of these fundraising rounds, there's not a liquid market, but if you want to get some liquidity from for your stock option, you can sell the option, >> right? and the company will exercise it themselves and then they'll sell the uh the equity to the incoming investor. Um but they're about to go public. You know, valuations are being rumored at,

you know, one and a half trillion and so no one's no one's going to be selling their stock. >> What does your buddy do at SpaceX? >> He's an engineer, I think. So, he explained it to me. He specifically works on the the load balancer for one particular part of the wing. Um and it's like the Falcon Heavy rocket. And so, you know, every every time they test one of these things, they're basically throwing as much as they can at it to see if it's going to blow up. That's how you know that something something works is you get it to blow up and then you go a little bit less than that. >> Yeah.

>> So, >> yeah. So, here and here's a here's a tweet, right? So, >> that's pretty funny. He's he's basically uh working on one particular part that is like uh however much it is. It's like you know a lot of pounds of stainless steel and he's basically testing how much weight or force this this part this steel can handle before it blows up. I wonder what the uh SpaceX funding like original round was because that is pretty insane to launch out of 1.5 trill >> public valuation. Second largest IPO ever.

>> Last confirm funding round was around $750 million in 2023. >> That was the last one though, not the first one. >> Yeah. >> Well, Elon started this a while ago and they have tons of revenue. They've raised 11.9 billion over 31 rounds. Yeah. They raised a $12 million series A in 2002. >> Yeah. >> Wow. Founders fund the series C in 2008. Google Fidelity in 2015, the series F. Yo, these guys raised a series a seed all the way to a series a series J. What crypto companies do you think are sustainable enough to raise a series J?

>> I don't know. Probably chain link. They they raised from the Ontario teachers pension plan in Canada in 200 200 on >> Ontario teachers are about to get >> those teachers are about to get a bump in their salary. Well, the way that the pensions work in Canada is that the teachers get paid in perpetuity after they retire. >> Right. Right. >> So, whatever your your salary is, you just you get >> keep getting that. >> Yeah. You keep getting that after you retire if you work a certain amount of years.

>> There's some careers, some unions in America, like I probably cops, police officers have pensions. >> Yeah. >> Um more companies used to have pensions, but companies Yeah. But we got rid of that. >> Companies didn't want to pay the pension. So >> they, you know, disbanded the unions. Um, but you know, there are there are companies that that still do that or careers that still pay pensions. Uh, but not not teachers, at least not not in uh not in Florida. >> Yeah. Not not in the States, I don't think, in general, actually. So So this is huge, man. This is the state of the a sign of the times. I >> Well, yeah, because it's IPO season. You know, IPOs were kind of dead there for a

little while. Um, >> it's also M&A season, right? >> They were. Sign of the times. >> Um, and so I think Elon is going to be a trillionaire in 2026 is the way it's shaping up. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't I don't know how much equity he owns, but is he's definitely he's not a trillionaire yet, right? >> No, he's not. But he did get a pay package >> for a trillion for a trillion if he hits all of the the milestones according to that benefit compensation. crazy too, right?

>> I mean, there was a big debate on whether or not like, you know, the shareholders of Tesla were going to approve that. >> Yeah. >> But if I'm a shareholder of Tesla, I want someone to be incentivized to hit milestones. >> Like, it's not like it was just a salary bump. >> Yeah. No, I mean, I it it's pretty big milestone, though. It's pretty big pay package for some big milestones. pretty sure he has to successfully deploy quite a few more rockets and do quite a few other things. >> I was the pay package was for Tesla, so I don't think it was tied to to rocket milestones, but I'm going to I'm going to look it up.

>> Maybe it's probably tied to humanoids. You ought to think it's tied to humanoids. No, some sort of robotic blew my mind with the uh the AI AI being a new species. >> Oh, it is. It's the craziest part, isn't it? Um yeah, let's see what um the milestones as part of the uh Tesla Elon pay package, especially the newly approved one, could be worth up to $1 trillion over the next decade. >> Um Tesla's board design Musk's compensation entirely as performance-based.

>> Yeah. Receives no salary or cash bonus. Stock awards vest only when Tesla hits both market value and operational targets. Um, okay. So, it's divided into 12 trunches. This is how we're going to trunch our employees compensation compensation packages. Uh, market cap trillion >> market cap thresholds. If Tesla achieves two trillion dollar market cap >> uh up to eight and a half and then it's it rises in $500 billion increments up to eight and a half trillion. Uh, here's here's what I was curious about. Uh, operational and product milestones. Here are here are the milestones.

>> Yeah. >> Uh delivering 20 million Tesla vehicles. >> Okay. >> Not sure how far he is on that uh on that road map. Deploying 1 million robo taxis to commercial service, >> autonomous ride hailing vehicles. >> Uh delivering 1 million Optimus robots, >> humanoid humanoid robots, achieving at least 10 million paid uh subscriptions to full self-driving. >> Okay. >> And remember this is all over the next decade. He has up to 10 >> in the next decade. >> He has to he has up to 10 years to achieve all milestones for full vesting of all 12 tranches.

>> Uh wow. >> If some goals are missed by the deadline, he forfeits the corresponding shares. >> Wow. >> Uh the last is sustaining high profits measured by Ibida or similar metrics. So on the screen here we've got uh Jez tweeting a much larger issue here is that both Cal and Poly Market report volume on notional not actual dollars traded. If you buy a one if you buy a 1% chance for 1 cent it shows up as $1 of volume. Prediction markets are potentially misreporting volumes by 100x not 2x.

>> If you scroll down he kind of was like memeing it and he was like a maybe it is just 2x blah blah blah. But essentially there is people saying that poly market is mis misreporting their volume and over reporting their volumes just coming from the cowi paradigm and then the poly market people are like no no no you guys are just uh basically not reporting it correctly. >> Um and so Jez and John Wang and some of these others are kind of in a bit of a brawl right now. We'll have to get the the we'll have to get the update, but there's a lot of conflict on trying to understand what's going on. Um yeah, like with the prediction market

volumes basically. Um so individual trades can be a thousandx exaggerated. Um there's double counting happening with prediction market volumes. So, I just Yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know. It's It's just a bit weird that there's this double counting error and that that when you take a certain strike, um they count the other side, too. >> Um also, I think when you buy and sell, maybe they count it as two different things, which is fine.

I mean, look, prediction markets and per platforms are a lot more similar than meets the eye because remember on Per platforms, you've basically got a gigantic pile of cash and then you're trading paper contracts. >> Yeah. Yeah. But on pers like if you trade $100,000, you know, at a 10x, you trade a million dollars of volume. >> Emotional, right? >> Right. But in prediction markets, if you trade 1 cent, 5 cent, 90 cent, or 10 cents, they're all reported as a dollar of volume >> because the potential outcome for that contract is $1. I agree with I I agree that's wrong, right? Yeah.

>> So, >> and that is what happening. >> What what I'm saying is that >> and then it's $2 after you double count it apparently where it's like so you can have >> that would be 200x fact. They they would be wrong by a factor of 200x. Yeah, >> because you could have a cent round it up to a dollar that's 100x wrong and then you could double that when you double count it. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I I'm I'm saying that volume is not the correct metric to measure prediction markets. >> Okay. >> They're a lot more similar to to per platforms and how we measure per platforms is open interest >> and and the reason is because it is effectively just a big pile of cash that you're you're shifting between accounts of of traders. And so, you know, you

you're right, you can lever up on purp you're trading these uh paper contracts. Yeah. And if they expire correctly, then, you know, it'll it'll go to the other person. But there's no um there's no real volume metrics here. It's just a bunch of cash that you're shifting from one trader to another. And so, the right way to and and all of these, look, back when Poly Market used to use an AMM, >> Yeah. >> you would track this differently. you you could track volume but now that all of the prediction markets at least call and poly market are using order books the right way to track the adoption and activity on these markets is open interest a lot >> so you're saying that prediction market

volumes are misleading >> yes I am >> yeah okay interesting and you think it's not just like a a poly market thing it's just a general thing >> I think it's a general thing I think volume is the wrong uh metric to to track this. I think because uh prediction markets and per operate the same way. They have a big balance sheet of cash and they're just shifting the cash between different accounts based on the winners and the losers. >> The right way to track this is the order interest that you have resting on the books, >> right? The amount of like that you can't have two order. If you have uh $1, you can't put $2 of orders in the books and have it sit there and have both execute.

>> Yeah. You can't. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And And it actually shows how much people are willing to use your platform. Um how much uh they're willing to hold on the platform. >> Um and yeah, just how much is actually being wagered, >> right? Yeah. Exactly. And so that is the proper metric to track. I'd be curious to see some open interest uh metrics on prediction markets. If any of our onchain sleuths are out there and they have some data sources, I'd be curious to see. >> Cool. All right, I think Mike from Talis is going to join us here in just a short sec. Um, so we will we we we will get him on our our last guest of the day.

Um, he is uh probably tired, fresh off of uh um token launch. Um, and yeah, should be good to go for a congratulatory stream, reflectionary stream, and our last guest of of the day. So, we're gonna have Mike coming up. Mike, what's up, man? Welcome, welcome, welcome. We'll get you up in just a short sec. I know you've had a long couple days, I'm sure. Um, congrats on on the token launch here. And yeah, Rob, AI crypto.

>> I love it. It's great. We're gonna bring Mike up in just a moment. Uh I think we're hearing a lot more about There he is. There's Mike. Uh welcome to the show, brother. Congrats. >> Thank you guys. Thank you. It was great seeing you guys in Buenosirus few weeks ago and it's been a grind since then. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, man. I feel like you haven't really slept since then. >> No. >> Yeah. >> Not this last week. It's been it's been some crazy times, but it you know finally happy to be across the line and you know good good things coming. Tell us >> yeah tell us what the last 24 hours has been like. You know we we speak with you know a handful of founders that you know they come to market they come to mainet it's always a variety of reactions. Some

you know sometimes you know people are ready for a break sometimes job's not finished. >> What has your last 24 hours been like >> man? So yesterday I for the past week I've been waking up at 6 am just because you know I I open my eyes and I feel like I have work to do. So I ju just >> got out of bed and then yesterday I went out of bed at 6 a.m. >> and then I just worked until like 10 p.m.ish. Then I took like an hour and a half break and then I worked through the whole night. And it's like operations, coordination, making sure like a lot of little details are covered.

>> Um, and you know, I couldn't have done it without the amazing team that I have behind me or in my side. >> Yeah. How's Ben doing? >> Pretty good, man. Ben's been also pretty busy. We've been all over the place, man, these past months. >> Good, man. Good. Good. Good. So, uh, US token launch, um, you know, building this protocol out to enable autonomous agents, you know, talk to us about what what the what the US token allows you to do with your current protocol, how it helps you advance what you're trying to achieve with Talis, um, you know, and kind of what that, you know, uh, network connection looks like between the token and the protocol.

So yeah, the the the Talis token is kind of like the the web that brings everything together in the protocol. You could think about it as the main gas payment. So anytime you're going to run a workflow or anytime you're going to execute an agent, uh you have to pay in in the US token. We also have the ability to integrate different tools and each tool will have their own like security and the ability to do these or enabling these tools and have them be secured. You have to like stake. Um so ultimately the stakers could end up receiving rewards from the tool providers that actually charge and earn revenue. Uh so

people deploy agents, the agents get usage, then this usage you know translates to the different tool owners and then the tool owners distribute to the token holders. Um so you get this kind of like circular economy where you know the more agents, the more tools, the more usage and all network effects. >> Cool. Um, and what was the process of having to navigate exchanges here? We've heard a lot of push back from Binance, from a lot of protocols, as well as just the general process of launching a token change over the last several months to year. Um, what was your experience like from a founder perspective navigating

this launch and negotiating with exchanges? I know you probably can't talk too much about it um but but just kind of generally how how did that process unfold for you? >> Yeah, I think the the biggest or the most important thing is to kind of like map the landscape like you know identify which type of exchanges you're aligned with like uh understand like where your target markets and then you know you have different types of exchanges different regions and so on and so forth. Uh then you have to like reach out direct connections. It's kind of like this like dating game. I'd say similar to like you go and like fund raise capital, you have to sell your ideas, you have to sell your product. Um then you know conversations, applications, it's it's really a long process uh to say the least. It like

takes a couple weeks. Um but ideally you want to have exchanges that are aligned with you that uh you know could make you be successful and uh you know how the industry goes. I think the past couple weeks have been quite quite tricky with the market. Uh, ever since like the October 10th, uh, I think liquidity uh, dried out specifically like in the onchain market. So, uh, it's it's been quite tricky. I'm not going to lie. Uh, but I think we got over the line with like all the effort that we put in and we're really happy with with our results at least on on day one. Um, and I think what's what's to come is like just making sure to get bigger like post-launch partnerships, make sure that

you know we could get more exposure, make sure that we can bring more users and ultimately bring you know the token and the product to more to a broader audience. >> And you guys chose to launch the token on SUI, right? Could you describe that choice? Why did you guys launch on SUI? What was it about the chain that drew you in and how how much are you taking a multi-chain strategy versus focusing on the sweet ecosystem? >> Yeah, very very good question, Rob. Like we've always been like sui maxis. Uh we think that you know the parallel execution that sui has high throughput um these things actually enable talis to run the infrastructure at the scale that

it needs to run. Uh so that's why we decided to build specifically on sui. Um so you know our tokens we have a lot of like ecosystem support from them uh which has been you know amazing. We also have like the move language uh which I guess you guys are familiar with. It's more secure. So there's a lot of like technical alignment on that side of things uh like ecosystem alignment and tech alignment. Um and then yeah like I think down the line yes at some point we're going to be looking at multi-chain support for agents. I I've always been the person that believes that blockchains should be looked as like a whole. And then, you know, you're going to have different opportunities in different places. So, you're just going to want to have exposure to different

places and make sure that you can, you know, if you're trading on one chain and then you see an arbitrage opportunity on another, you would want to have an agent uh go and and take advantage of those opportunities. So ultimately, yes, I think we're going to like agents are going to be a multi-chain technology and we plan to adapt for that down the line. >> And prediction markets is also a pretty important piece of the strategy as I understand it because we had Ben on, he was talking about how the autonomous agents are going to compete in some prediction market contests. And so, you know, Andy and I were just talking about prediction markets before this and how I I tend to think, you know, they're having some issues uh understanding the right way to measure volume when it

comes to these prediction markets. I tend to think because these are order books, you know, open interest is the right metric. What do you think about the prediction market meta happening right now? People call it a super cycle. Is it overblown? You guys have bet quite a significant piece of your strategy and in invested into this category. What's your what's your temp check on prediction markets at this stage? >> Yeah, so you said you said it right like prediction mark markets are a core to the first incubated application that is going to be built on Talis which is idle fun where you said agents compete against one another and then humans can speculate on on the outcomes. uh that is

going to be the first application built on Talos and we've been you know doing a lot of research and part of this it's like okay you're going to have these agents even create you know hundreds of markets uh ideally per hour or per day. Um and then these markets need to have like the right liquidity. You need to make sure that uh you know they're actually efficient and that if you're you know having hundreds of of parties trading that like there has to be liquidity in the market. So, we've been like exploring multiple technologies to like fit this. Um, we have some partnerships coming out in in the past in the next couple weeks that I want to uh probably reserve my right uh to say right now, but it's it's really interesting how the meta has been

playing out. I think just the fact that to be able to like get information from these novel type of DeFi mechanisms uh versus just traditional media on how it like used to be a few, you know, years ago before like poly market was invented is is crazy. like we saw with the elections last year, we're seeing it with sports. Uh now we're seeing like different types of prediction markets. And I think that Meta is going to like keep changing and as we saw improvements on, for example, Dexus, we're going to keep seeing improvements on these new DeFi primitives for, you know, prediction. And ultimately, you could think about them as like betting, but I like to think about them as more of like sourcing information, trying to make sure like that you could get the right

inputs to make any type of decision. >> I I think you're thinking about it the right way. I mean, we had Siri from IEL. We had Andrea on from Story. They were on just about an hour ago. And they're talking about the rise of truly sovereign autonomous agents over the next two years doing things bigger than just, you know, booking travel for us, but, you know, making consequential decisions, buying things from one another. And it only makes sense that agents are the ones to pro to use prediction markets more so than humans. Yeah. to really understand the depth of the probability of certain outcomes happening, taking certain actions as a result of these things happening. And so, you know, if we see truly sovereign autonomous agents within two years, maybe it's three or four or five years,

but it it makes sense that agents will become the dominant traders of prediction markets more so than humans. >> Yeah, agents are going to be everywhere. Like they're going to be the creator of markets and then they're going to be the traders. I also like to think about like agents creating the events in a way where they communicate against one another, they compete against one another and they ultimately create the outcomes because it's it's a novel type of entertainment that we have not seen before. >> Like right now every prediction market that exists it's based on real life events but not this virtual economy.

>> Yeah. >> Meta that we've been seeing. >> And and Mike, you you mentioned how you know AI can be the originator of these markets. They can also be the trader and we'll probably end up uh heading there at some point soon. But the third piece of that is the resolver of these markets. And I think when it comes to how we're really going to arbitrate truth, because ultimately people are going to think one thing is true, another set of people are going to think another thing is true, the way in which we really arrive at what is true and what is not is probably some prediction market traded by AIS. And that, you know, however that resolves is what the AIs will believe. Mhm.

>> Yeah. I it's well yeah what the AI will believe and what the AI will be able to achieve as well right like you if you have a specific competition no let's say AI is trying to figure out a cryptographic puzzle and one wins and you could like verify it uh you know people could speculate on that and like what agent is smarter than the other uh and then if you take it another level which is more relatable to humans these agents will have personalities uh they'll behave like Elon Musk us. They'll behave like Donald Trump. They'll behave like, you know, Andy and Rob, and people will be able to like follow them and and, you know, just get their perspectives, understand them, and just bet on their

outcomes. >> Mike, what's next for you guys as you come into the holidays here into Q1? Um, now now that this milestone is behind you, what's the, you know, uh, uh, expect the time for Idol.fund to come out, other apps for Talis under development? What's kind of what's next? >> Yeah, our our main focus is like keep pushing the product, making sure that it's at the right level that it needs to be to gain wider ecosystem adoption. Uh launching out a lot of fun in Q1. Uh making sure, you know, we can build a a solid business around it and that people actually find novel ways of like entertainment and interaction with AI.

Uh and then, you know, just like keep building ecosystem, keep building the community, um striking great partnerships. We have a lot of things in line and we're really excited to make these things happen. Uh it's been a wild ride. I'm not going to lie. The past like two years you guys have known me since >> y >> a while and you know uh I think we're here and we're we're going to keep pushing and making sure that we execute properly. >> Well Mike man we know you're you're pretty gassed and I'm sure you've got a ton of more things in front of you and navigating conversations and I I'm not jealous of of your telegram right now. So we'll let you go man. Uh thank you for being a part of the show. Congrats on the token launch.

>> We're we're doing some uh special holiday awards this season and uh I think you're in nomination for best chest hair. So just keep uh keep an eye out for that one. >> Okay. Uh thank you guys. We'll we'll talk soon and yeah, we'll stay in touch. Have a great >> Sounds good. >> Congrats, man. >> See you next time. >> Byebye. >> All right, man. >> All righty, guys. That about does it for the boys today. The best chest hair, huh? I think it's an honorable mention. All right, Rob, great stream. Um, lots there, lots to unpack still. And, uh, you know, I like that we had some differing market opinions today. We had some bulls, we had some bears, we had

some interesting legislation just recently announced as well, actually. >> Oh, let's hear about that. >> I know. I just saw Frank tweet about it >> while you're while you're pulling that up. Um, yeah. I I think where I'm at on the market side of things is really trying to balance time horizons, short time horizon, long time horizon, and try to balance tech uh sorry, TA and fundamentals. >> It it feels like this is where people diverge >> and we get some mixed mixed opinions. Some people tend to look at TA. Other people tend to look at the fundamental catalysts.

Kind of kind of pick, you know, one or the other or, you know, figure out which one is more significant to look at. And then the other is time horizons, right? Are you looking at a short time horizon or a long time horizon? >> And so I I think oftentimes it's just it's easy to talk past one another. You you and I do it, we do it with guests on the show as well. And I think it's just more effective to make sure that, you know, we're talking about the same thing when uh when we're talking about the market. >> I hear you, buddy. Yeah. So, US regulator clears banks to act as crypto intermediaries in riskless transactions.

Seems meaningful. Now, every Wall Street bank can act as a as a crypto broker. So, pretty I saw PNC Bank uh announced something with Coinbase about this um >> where they'll give you an interface to hold crypto. >> Yeah. >> So the banks are coming, the institutions are here, guys. >> This is like Vanguard, right? This is like, you know, centralized exchange lets you withdraw to a hot wallet. Well, if you're van if you buy something on Vanguard, you know, you're going to want to withdraw that potentially and have hold that right next to your checking and savings account.

>> Yeah. >> So, just building out >> they're going to put them all into one interface. I think your stocks, your tokenized equities, everything, your freaking metal notes, whatever it is. This is the super the super app thesis, the financial super app thesis. the >> real thesis. >> I think so too. I think this is the new barbell. This is the new mental model to understand the next crop of sustainable successful apps in crypto is you know you could call them web 2.5 because you know they kind of connect pretty closely with the legacy banking infrastructure.

It it really feels like it's a melding and this integration of two worlds. >> It really is. >> I think it's again >> I think it's bullish. I think so, too. >> All right, guys. See you tomorrow. Much love. Great stream. Peace. [Music]