The Rollup TV: Hyperliquid USDH Stablecoin Special

Transcript

Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat.

Hey, hey, hey. [Music] $50 US for one unit of Hyperlid.

>> Are you showing your bags on the show again? Is that what's happening? >> Oh, I'm giving a little sneak peek with this headline. They don't know what's about to come up. Good morning. Happy Monday, Andy. How was the surf this weekend? >> Uh, it was pretty great. I'm pretty tired. Um, we surfed all day yesterday and twice on Saturday through a party on Friday. Good weekend, man. I worked too. I got some sick guests for us lined up. I think we're pretty close to getting uh I got Arthur Hayes lined up for a Singapore in person show. We got Paulo from Tether going to do a virtual show.

>> Nice. Very nice. >> Uh, we got Ryan Watkins coming on sometime soon and I'm working on Kathy. So, how's my weekend for you, buddy? It's a good morning here in Florida or in Hawaii. >> One of those two for sure. >> What's going on today, Rob? >> Well, we've got uh several hyperlquid bowls on the docket. >> Oh, yeah. >> You look you look a little zoomed out, but I think that's okay. We're gonna get zoomed in. But I think yours is zoomed in. >> If I'm zoomed out, you're zoomed in.

>> We'll let the producers handle that behind the scenes. >> I spent my weekend reading proposals about stable coin issuance. >> Okay, nice. How'd that go? >> So, it went quite well. I think um the really 90% of these proposals are relatively similar across the board. I read Agora, I read FRA, and I read Paxos. >> I also read Jeremy Aair's blog post from two months ago that wasn't really a proposal, but he threw it in the mix.

>> I think Moon Overlord had the best response to that blog post. He said, >> "Jeremy, this is a mistake, and you have three days to fix it, now two days, because that is when the USDH deadline for proposals has passed. So, we're going to hear from each of these stable coin issuers, uh, FRA, Agora, and Paxos. All of them are coming on the show here, one after another, starting in just a couple of minutes. We're going to start off with uh with the Agora proposal.

Um, USDH has spurred Hyperlid to all-time highs. >> Yeah. >> Uh, which is pretty exciting. We saw multiple uh liquid funds including shout out our guy Mike Dudos of Sixman Ventures did not participate uh early on in the hyperlquid ecosystem but has since uh purchased a uh sizable position in hype and I think there was uh the name escapes me but there was another fund that did the same thing. Uh so now we're seeing how this stable coin uh request for proposal has led to an an additional revenue stream or at least a potential revenue stream for Hyper Liquid. Um I think by the math that was

in some of these proposals currently they're leaving about $220 million in revenue per year on the table. uh as a result of using USDC as the quote asset for the uh hyperlquid spot markets. In reality, it's a lot bigger because the $220 million is uh that number we arrived there based on the amount of Hyperlid uh excuse me, the amount of stable coins that are currently on Hyperlid's books. I think it's about five and a half billion dollars. And so currently treasury treasury rate in T bills uh is about 4%.

And so if Hyperliquid had custody and ownership over all of the stable coins uh in its platform, it would be able to obviously issue the stable coin based off of those reserves and then capitalize on the interest uh that the T bills offer, which currently would add about 220 million. All of the proposals so far have suggested uh buying back hype and redistributing it for a variety of reasons. Uh that's what they would do with the revenue. Uh some of them have various fees. There's not a ton of fees associated with most of these issuance processes. So this is a pretty it's a no-brainer from Hyperlid's case. I think the biggest L so far is Circle. If they

are to lose the US uh DC that they currently have on Hyperlid, um there's a lot of nuance that's going on in this conversation. I'm excited to talk to the people that are building at the frontier and uh working on the issuance of a native Hyperlquid stable coin. I think one interesting fact here, there's several, is that there's already native stable coins on Hyperlquid. It's a permissionless L1. Some might disagree with that. Some call it an arbitum L3, but for the purposes of this show, we're going to call it an L1. And there's already native stable coins on there, but they just don't have the backing of Hyperlid in the sense that uh Hyperlid is using the native stable coin as its

quote assets quote asset for spot and perpetual markets, which would then collateralize all of the positions on Hyperlid. That's what we're looking to uh select a winning proposal. Now, so Andy, from your research over the weekend, you've spoken to people. You're obviously terminally online and on this on this subject. What has been your perception and impression of the issue so far? >> I mean, I think the biggest point that you mentioned is this idea that there's a you couple hundred million on the table. I think that's the I think that's the key idea here is that whoever is going to whoever's going to win this ticker race, which is just a ticker

race, but I think the core idea here is that there's there's there's I think there's around $200 million of USDC uh you know that could be wrong on the Hyperlquid chain on Hyper Core and that could be earning yield and that could be earning yield and getting uh p passing the the yield back to hype stakers um and uh or you know contributing to buybacks and burns and so or just buybacks. So I mean look I think that this is a the biggest trend that I'm seeing from this is the bending the knee of massive institutional capital players in the space to hyperlquid coming on um you know you've got institutions VCs buying bags you've got people lobbying

the community might I remind you that the community is a lot of airdrop farmers who who were our OG perpetrators who farmed points when nobody believed in the project and now and now there now they're kind of have a a position of power and so it's a very interesting dynamic to follow as we as we unveil this. I think we have Nick in the back ready to to rock and roll. Nick will be our first guest of the day. Um Nick is representing Agora. Uh so Agora is a stablecoin uh project as well. They have a USD. Um we saw Nick's proposal yesterday.

uh in his proposal uh he wrote about um basically the the idea that they had um uh you know all that it looks like Hyper Collective is going to host a stable coin showdown Twitter spaces so you guys can check out that as well but basically Nick wrote that they want to use a Agora stablecoin infra to power USDH um >> Andy I'd like to double click on something that you said before Nick comes comes up which is the cultural footprint of hyperlquid.

>> Yeah. >> Because it's majority farmers, people that actually use the product right? >> I think that is distinct from these corporate chains, some of the more traditional financial institutions. Circle is probably the best example of this. Someone had a really funny tweet uh that you know to be the intern that had to tell Jeremy Aair that 10% of his uh business was staked on this thing called Hyperlquid over the weekend. >> Yeah. Exactly. like that I think just epitomizes like the separation and the cognitive dissonance in the mind of a lot of these traditional financial institutions and the executives that run these institutions and the underbelly of

crypto born out of the trenches and and really building it for the people who are using it. Um, that is the that is the distinction. And so I wouldn't be surprised and I'm curious about your take on this. If the community as a result of the culture that they have at Hyperlid goes into a direction that's more cryptonative. To me, there are proposals on the table here that come from more h from more cryptonnative teams and less corporate teams. And I think that could >> the other side of this is of course corporate teams are going to have more buttoned up. they're going to have maybe more professional banking relationships.

There's there's legitimacy and experience that comes along with that. But I think from a cultural alignment standpoint, you have to look at some of the cryptonative teams and and really take them seriously when they when they put their proposal forth. Well, we've got Nick in the back and um you know, I was just looking at the latest from him and and there's some interesting uh specifics that I think that we ought to get into from from the perspective of of Agora and kind of their partners. So, look, Rob, what what we're going to do today is we're going to have a very streamlined set of questions for each of these people. try to make it very very uh objective and fair for everybody and uh just simply have some fun, hear some pitches and learn about what what these teams are

are doing. I think uh this is all in the spirit of you know community of decentralization of the the success of Hyperlid and just you know the stable coin super cycle. So guys we are gonna get Nick up uh move in and talk about the Gora USD proposal. Nick, looks like you're in a cubicle in New York City. That's what I expect. Good. It's good to see you, man. >> Yeah, thank you guys for having me. >> Absolutely. Welcome to the show. It's an exciting time. I think the USDH showdown has taken over the timeline. And so, uh, yeah, we're in a position now where we can platform you guys. We're going to have a couple of the other proposed issuers on the show a little bit later.

We're going to hear from each of you. And, uh, it's really exciting to put all these proposals on the table. I think this is democracy meritocracy in action and no better place for it than crypto. So um >> and it's fun. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. >> Yes. I'm happy to like start and give context on our proposal and you know sort of like what we're trying to accomplish but you guys let me know where you want to >> exactly please opening remarks just kind of I just want to understand and I think the community wants to understand kind of your perspective of writing the proposal where you guys are coming from uh and just kind of your opening statement here and then we got a couple good questions for you.

>> Yeah. So I was going to the office on Friday you know little to my own knowledge that my weekend would get totally blown up by this. Um, yes. So, I first got someone sent me a DM and said, "Hey, uh, you know, this has come out. They're going to release the USDH ticker. There's already sort of been this like pre-baked proposal, um, suggested, you know, you guys should should throw your hat in the ring." Um, and so, you know, we immediately jumped on it. I would say, you know, I had a stack day on Friday with calls. So, I actually started drafting our proposal at like 5:30 p.m. on on Friday. Um and the only proposal that was up at the time uh was I think the native markets proposal um you know which was a a good

proposal obviously like super community aligned team you know but I think one of the advantages that we have is we're an issuer so like all we do is think the challenges um of scaling a stable coin solution to deliver I would say the best economics for the community right like I think the native markets proposal was most like hey like let's just make this a public good right that was always uh an intention that we had at Agora is like actually our original slogan was digital dollars are public goods and you know we want to actually highlight um some of the most important things when

running like a very large institutional stable coin right USDC supply on on uh hyperlquid is like at 5 billion or six billion give or take like that is like like real size right and so one of the things that we wanted to call out um at least in in one of the proposals is that like outsourcing it entirely to like a third party where this isn't their core business I think puts a lot of inserts a lot of risk into um into the system um and so you know we we called that out and then I you know I think one is just sort of upping to 100% uh revenue kickback and then three like trying to actually build a coalition around this to make it successful right a lot of the other proposals were like

you know single issuer focused immediately what we did and I think this is just kind of how we operate is we you know pinged a lot of infrastructure partners that we thought would be super helpful said hey we're going to put this proposal together you know would love to have your guys support with USDH right and you know rain jumped on super fast so did layer zero um as well as uh etherf and a number of people just you know over the last 24 hours have continued to to ping me directly. Um, and I think, you know, while they wouldn't be like exclusive to just us and and nor should they be, right? I think obviously if someone else wins, like they should support uh USDH, you know, they want to work with a team that they respect, have good communication with, and feel like they can execute

with, right, which is I think what what we bring to the table. And yeah, this all happened like very quickly. Like it's funny, you know, funny getting some of these questions in Twitter and and in the Discord, you know, oh, have you thought about this or you thought about this? Like, how are you thinking about this? I'm like, some of them are like, honestly, like we don't know, right? Like, you know, we want to be committed to giving like a 100% of the revenue back, but we want to hear from the community on like, okay, do you orient that towards stakers? Do you buy back hype? Like, what do you want us to do? And so, something I was spitballing earlier this morning is like, well, maybe we we actually just do like a quarterly governance vote. It's like how do you want to, you know, spend

the the revenue from USDH, right? And maybe that's just like the best way to do it versus like saying, you know, in this proposal, you know, we're going to do this for, you know, forever, right? Which is probably not the smart thing to do, right? It gives you no no flexibility. Um, and so, yeah, there's a few more days. I expect there will be a few more proposals. Um, but I think ultimately like this is bringing a lot of really good attention to the hyper hyperlquid. Um and you know has kind of led to the best economics for the community. So it's pretty fun to watch. >> Yeah, absolutely. Um I think one thing that >> all time highs this morning guys like it absolutely has.

>> Yeah. >> Sorry. Go ahead. >> No, I mean that that it's ob there's obviously a lot of demand here. I mean Hyperliquid's one of the mo most forward-looking teams just to consider how much money that they were leaving on the table and now going through this open process rather than doing this behind closed doors. I think it it presents the best of why we're in this industry and that's healthy competition. And so I think it's it's really really cool to see play out. Um, one of the things that I I was curious about is and we were talking a little a little bit about this before you hopped on, which is that, you know, th this uh proposal is for this ticker, this USDH ticker, and then it's really like the work just begins. and and I've seen a lot of these proposals talk about, okay, no matter

what, we're going to contribute and be active participants in the hyperlquid ecosystem as well as be shepherds for this USDH stable coin beyond just letting it be the quote asset for Hyperlquid's markets. So, I'm curious, what would Agora do to help broaden USDH beyond just Hyperlquid? and and what other things do you have in mind to become active and more active participants in the hyperlquid ecosystem? >> Yeah, I think it's a it's a great question and it's like the work really does begin. And I think like a lot of people have sort of um put a lot more weight on this than right it is just a ticker so it is just the beginning. But for us like we wanted to really open up

you we view this as a way one to you know distribute revenue back to the community but two open up hyperlquid assets to places where they haven't been exposed before. Right? It's why we reach out to Rain. They support you know 150 plus countries you know two you know billions of merchants. you get access to Visa rails and all the payment rails that they're integrated in. With us, you have access to institutional grade banking, um, you know, Swift, SEPA, AC, wire, all of this. Uh, with, you know, other partners like Moon as well.

They're connected to every like pretty much every wallet in crypto. You know, we've had a war room chat going with them and thinking like, okay, how can we integrate some of the builder codes direct to Moonpay's wallet clients? Uh, and so I think it's it's really broadening up the distribution of USDH beyond just yeah the hyper the hyperlquid ecosystem. And so we'd work with like I would say a lot of the best-in-class you know either infrastructure or applications sort of outside the hyperlquid ecosystem to you know really broaden up uh up exposure. I would say within like hyperlquid it's all about seeding liquidity early and working with a bunch of partners. We've had a number of apps reach out over the last 24 hours that are interested to not only just see

liquidity uh but also you seed some incentives. We've had one counterparty reach out that wants to seed it with you nine figures of TVL and get some vaults going as soon as this launches. You know, I think it's funny. Someone uh actually in the discord uh community was like, you know, why um you know, why will this be successful? Like why will USDH be more successful than like some of these other you stable coins or white label stable coins? I'm like because this is like really owned by the community and like the hyperlquid community is like so much bigger than I think a lot of people realize, right? It's you know, you go to Binance or OKX or someone they're like, "Okay, you know, it's going to be this to list me." We have people saying, "Oh, we'll do all this stuff for free,

right?" Because they know that the demand is going to be there. And so, look, I think we're going to do an excellent job executing with some of the best partners in the space. I think there's a number of other great propos proposals out there as well. Um, you know, what I would hate to see though is that like that this effectively goes to, you know, sort of a competitive firm and a competitive issuer that has their own own chain and own ecosystem and and might like, you know, really look to use this to sort of vampire tax them of hyperlquid, which is kind of what we called out in in our post originally. >> Okay. So, um, when you guys are looking at at this entire landscape and kind of trying to figure out the best way to

navigate the community, you guys have been getting slapped around a bit by some anan on Twitter who probably got a massive hyperlquid airdrop who won't leave you guys alone about Michael Seagull's uh, the CFA of a different Van kind of arm, if you will. >> Oh, Matt's tweets about Hyperlid. Uh so there's been some some some push back from the hyperlook community with regards to the way that people within the the VANC organization have addressed the platform in the past. I just want to give you a chance to kind of speak on that uh and kind of address how VANC works and kind of how either the views of you know one person or within the or don't represent all people in the or just kind of give your take on that

because I think that the community is going to want to hear a genuine response to this kind of push back. >> Yeah, I think I think it's a good call out, right? I think uh the way that Matt Matt probably could have been a little bit more generous in in how he engaged with the community then like it was frankly like personally speaking it's pretty painful to watch uh you know for me when it was happening and I kind of hoped people would memory hole it and I also know it was like painful for other people in the van team right like it's it's a 500 plus person organization it's $30 billion asset manager there's many different teams right you have the research team the venture team the trading team you ETF team, right? And uh I would say particularly on like the

venture team and the trading team side, like they're very active with many of the teams in the hyperlquid community. They know them. Um you know, many people at Van are users of Hyperlid, right? Uh either professionally or, you know, personally, but I can't comment, you know, on that. Um and yeah, it is what it is. Look, I mean like it's good, I think, also for uh you to have independent voices um that may like be open to a lot of criticism, which he clearly is. Um so that's kind of like how, you know, how I feel about that. You know, I don't work there. I don't control them, right? So it's kind of unrelated to me. I understand like if people have like an issue with, you know, supportive of other proposals, they may want to pin that on me, but

like I have I have zero control over that. Um you know, do I wish it didn't happen? Yeah, of course. Like it's annoying, right? Hyperlid aside, I just generally think like kind of acting like that is obtuse, but >> again, that's kind of it. >> All righty. All righty. Um, guys, so FRA 35 minutes ago has just updated their proposal. Um, so Nick, I'm not sure if you if you've had a chance to look at this and I appreciate the response there. I think the community uh I think a lot of people doubted Hyperlquid and it's one of the very first kind of projects in the space that has really flipped the switch or flipped the script per se on uh uh kind of gave a bunch of these young maybe communityoriented folk

that aren't like prominent in the space big air drops became powerful in the space you know and now and now it's like the tables at turning you've got Van coming for uh you know to participate in this ecosystem. It's like the institutions are coming for us or it's like the big players want to participate in what we've built. I think it's a really strong sign of product market fit, but I also think it comes with a lot of that kind of like tribalism that you see early communities have success with. But kind of switching to what FRA has just done, they've uh announced that they are establishing a FRA USDH alliance with a federally regulated US bank issuer. This bank is prepared to issue USDH if we are selected with

contracts under review. Um 100% to hyperlquid hypercore ready yada yada. Nick, what is your take on the competitive landscape right now? Is Paxos missing the beat with 95% of revenue only? Is FRA now going to be uh more competitive with this new announcement? generally maybe how are you seeing this landscape within the realm of being hyperlquid aligned like when you're looking at the other proposals and your own I'm curious what you think hyperlquid native or align means to you uh you know in the landscape of this current situation given the other proposals

>> yeah it's interesting right because uh specifically for this product too like uh as an issuer right everyone else has almost been frozen out of hyperl liquid um because you know when the project started right it was like you know USDC right and so there was actually no way for like other issuers to be in involved um so it's interesting right you could sort of have like the community led ones where I think they're sort of outsourcing the operations you know stable coin regulation entirely to someone else and saying like hey we come from the community but we're going to outsource this to someone that we think could maybe do a good job Right. And so I think those are the ones that are really indexing on on community, but like that brings a lot of risks to the

table, right? Because then you basically have a team that isn't an issuer doesn't maybe understand the ins and outs, right, of of how to run these financial products. Um, and then has a lot of dependencies on one provider to the table, right? Then I would say you sort of have, you know, us, Paxos, FRA, I'm sure a bunch of other people are going to come in, right, that have said, "Hey, we've operated this type of business for a long time. like we know how to do it well um and we want to broaden broaden really actually the aperture of of hyperlquid to all these other ecosystems that we either participate in or traditional financial rails right so I would say like from our perspective um the way that like you know many of us have been involved is is primarily been personally and talking to teams whether

they're hyperlquid native or actually came from other ecosystems and then have started uh you either pivoted or sort of added their product you know into the hyper ecosystem Uh, and so working very closely with them to get lending and and index markets stood up as soon as possible, um, would be a priority of ours. But I'd say in terms of like alignment, right, like our objective, and I think everyone, uh, objective is to how do you make USDH a huge success, >> right? And clearly there's going to be a tremendous amount of support within the Hyperl Hyperlid ecosystem. And so from our perspective, we're like, okay, well, what else can we bring to bear that like Hyperlid doesn't have today, right? It's Visa Rails, access to, you know, millions of merchants globally, you

know, access to exchangees, you know, bringing traditional institutional spot products into the Hyper EVM. So, you know, we've been talking with a number of, you know, centrifuge, you know, came out yesterday. We're talking with a number of providers. I would love to say more about Van, but unfortunately they are very much a tr firm and will not let me say anything publicly but look you can imagine we would have conversations with them Black Rockck everyone else right to really bring these guys to the table because if we think about like Hyperlid you know it's obviously been a tremendous step but this is like still early innings right like if you look at like Binance OI or like the trading volumes of traditional exchanges like if you ask Jeff that's probably his north star right and so you need to

bring institutional partners and assets to this ecosystem if you really want it really want it to scale right and I think that's where we can come in and really add a tremendous amount of value look I think probably the ideal scenario is you have a number of these proposals that can sort of come together in in some form some shape or another um because like you bring like the whole weight of of some of these to bear and it's going to be nothing but good uh for for the hyperlquid ecosystem And so that's like where I would say like we we slot in. Obviously like there's a matrix of you know who's maybe more community oriented versus maybe who's the the safer operator and and who's done this and can maybe bring other institutions.

So it'll be up to the community to to sort of see what they want, right? that you want to index on uh teams that can bring a lot of domain expertise to this specific product and a lot of other support or index towards community teams that have been with Hyperlid for a very very long time are super dedicated to the ecosystem but might be outsourcing this product. So, we'll see. But it'll be fun. >> Yeah, absolutely. Uh Nick, we just got a few minutes left before we keep it rolling here and I wanted to give you a chance to expand on what I thought was a pretty important part of the proposal.

You mentioned it again here and it's the potential conflict of interest from an entity that comes in and issues the stable coin as a method to vampire attack a lot of stable coins away from Hyperlid's ecosystem and and take it onto onto one of its own competing products. And you know I think you made kind of a subtle nod to this in your proposal. You know, you said AORE is a neutral is issuer without its own settlement network or brokerage, eg Paxos. Like, is that what you're kind of pointing at is the potential conflict of interest here? And and and why is it such a potential like such a concern that you know Paxos has its own brokerage? What what how do you think that might play out?

>> So, I actually don't think Paxos is really like the real threat here because similar to us, they don't have their own chain or or ecosystem. They of course have their brokerage product, but like being intellectually honest, I don't really think that competes uh with Hyperlid spot markets even though it, you know, does a little bit of the same stuff, right? What I was really actually calling out was like Stripe, >> right? Like Tempo just was announced last week like these guys are planning to win, >> right? They put on like a happy face. You know, we want to, you know, work with a bunch of different, you know, parties and build this multi-party network. you know, we're not uh we're not like the bad guys. Anyone that comes from like fintech or Silicon Valley will

tell you that the Stripe team is like the most ruthless people in fintech. >> And I wanted to really just call that out like it's like, okay, like you're going to seed potentially the biggest asset in your ecosystem to someone that is a direct competitor and has a conflict. And I think we sort of and like really the the other considerations of other proposals we outlined was really at at that, right? Um, and so maybe even like going back to just like you the community alignment. I think the native markets team is super community aligned. You know, I said this in another post this morning. What I would encourage them to do if they win is to actually maybe work with someone that is a bit more neutral, has gibs, uh, and and has much more robust financial

service infrastructure. Look, it could be us, it could be Paxos, it could be someone else, I don't care. Like this is something that it was really important to get right. Yeah. And so like I would really urge the native markets team to maybe rethink uh who they're using on the financial infrastructure side. Um and so that's that's really what it was it was focus focused on. Um you know I think it's time for people to wake up otherwise like all of crypto is going to be owned by one company and and I don't want that to happen. So would you say that that Paxus and Agora are are better positioned than Fracks to to to do US?

>> I think we well we're regulated ourselves. We have bank accounts in our own name. So from a financial operations perspective, I think that's that's certainly certainly the case. >> Okay. Um the there's a there's some weird comments going around about Dragonfly being investors in Rain and Agora and this guy Alex. Again, this guy keeps giving you a lot a whole handful, but he's saying um >> this guy really doesn't like us. I don't know like what like it's funny. It's either us or Matt Seagull. I don't know what it but it's funny. >> I know.

>> Trying to be polite with him. >> Yeah. And Rob from Dragonfly stood up for you guys and whatnot. But um yeah, basically I mean I I just think that that uh you know you know that's that. But there were some interesting comments on this in and one was about changing the structure or the rev share in the future. Let's say you guys win. How dedicated are you to keeping 100% of the rev share to hyperlquid? Is there plans to change that? >> We don't we don't we don't plan to make any money on this. Like and people are kind of like oh the net revenue revenue.

>> We are not making money on this. 100% of the revenue would go back to the community in in some form of another. I think what would be really cool is to do this on like a quarterly governance vote, right? It's like because you can really clearly like we can, you know, we have accounting team. We do this in a very rigid way. It's like this is what we made every single day from USDH and vote on it. Where how should this get sliced and diced like 20% go to the assistance funds, 60% of ST, right? stakers is all like I think it's it's up in the air but we are 100% committed to giving 100% of the revenue you know back back to the community um in whatever form you know form the governance you know governance sort of decides >> and maybe that's what we do is we do set

up quarterly um yeah for us like this is clearly we just want to run it as a public good and deliver maximum value back to the community >> yeah and and so this is obviously a win for Hyperlid because of you know kind of bringing this into their own stack >> it's great like native markets I think going to do like 50% and then Paxos and us came in and we're like no like >> 95 100% are bust and so no one's making money on this no one should make money on this at this point right >> and and so at this point so how how does this benefit whoever ends up winning let's say it is Agora right you guys aren't going to be making anything from the net revenue but how does it help advance Agora's interests >> look I think for us obviously like it's

an opportunity to pro like for me it's personally very cool like the reason like I've been in crypto since 2016 uh the reason I left to start my own company is I feel like we're in a once in a generation transformation of financial markets and and payment rails right it's going to last for 30 years very similar to like cloud software is just eaten on prem and human driven workflows the last 30 years and like I just want to spend my life being a part of that so for me personally it would just be an incredible opportunity I think to do like a public good service you know I think for like the company itself obviously like many um people within the firm interact with hyper for liquid or you know you know have friends that are in the community or run companies or you know uh validators

within the community and so for them it's like personally very very fun as well and then obviously it's great brand value right like Hyperlid is the most important perex in crypto right like by far and so you know us I think proving you know that our battle tested infrastructure can support something like hyperlquid would be a huge win for And so that's that's how I see it. Um, you know, I think there's you we have a great proposal. I think there's some other great proposals out there. I think at the end of the day, you know, it's great that Hyperlid is going to get 100% of the revenue or should, right, given the the proposals and, you know, that it's generated so much uh interest in the community.

>> Awesome. Well, Nick, thanks so much for coming on, man. Um, >> one last thing for you. >> Yeah, go was uh just if >> so, you know, I saw Mike Dudas and Sixman Ventures went out and said that they just bought a ton of hype over the last I don't know some some time period. Um ho how will how will your personal uh or you know how will the the people around you's uh contributions to the hype ecosystem in terms of actually owning the asset participating in the hypervm uh and kind of seeding that ecosystem be affected if you guys win this?

>> Yeah. So Mike obviously worked at Paxos, right? Um but uh for us I mean I think Paradigm is probably like the biggest holder of like hype on earth right and and they just let our seed round and are you know one of the most involved parties in Agora. Uh Dragonfly is also super involved and then you know again like I don't work at Van but they are definitely involved and are actively working with teams in the in the space. Um, you know, unfortunately they're a little bit more trady, so they're making me keep a lid on it, but >> I got everyone we know.

>> All right, man. >> Yeah, dude. Just call. Let's go. >> You know, these guys, you know, Gabe, you know, just call them, >> please. Like, >> you know, I've been asking the last 12 hours to stay more and you know, compliance is saying no. So, you know, it is what it is. But like, that's that's you know, how you operate a real business actually, too, is is uh keeping mom on on certain things that you're doing. But that's that's how we're uh we're involved. A lot of the people people around us are involved and you they'll continue to be >> beautiful. Nick, that's all I had. Uh, thanks for your time, man. Looking forward to hopping in on some of these spaces later this week and thanks for sharing your perspective and your insights and for the the weekend proposal. I know it's a it's a journey,

but I I hope it works out for you and uh and uh thanks for coming. >> Thanks, guys. It's been fun. >> All right, Nick. See you soon, buddy. >> Cheers. All right, Rob, initial takeaways, thoughts on Nick. Uh, what's your what's your take? >> What I'm trying to take away from each of these is the unique advantage that each of them serve to the hyperlquid ecosystem. >> Um, I think Nick is very keyed in on his relationship with some of the institutional partners. Rain is a big one.

>> I I don't know if RAIN is a unique differentiator to Agora's proposal. I think a couple couple of the other proposals also mentioned that they work with Rain and so >> you know RAIN is obviously important because their debit card uh infrastructure spans multiple continents several countries and they're they're tight with Visa. So USDH can then span globally and scale with Visa's network as a result of working with an issuer that has a nice relationship with Rain. But again, I don't think that's a unique differentiator for Agora. One thing that he mentioned was um that they have partners that are looking to commit nine figures, so hund00 million of uh capital on day one in liquidity.

>> I think that that's pretty unique. I don't know if these other issuers are looking at something similar. >> Well, the reason why I asked that question at the end was just like I don't I was trying to figure out like if they win, are they just going to be massive stewards of the hype liquid ecosystem and uh you know basically buy more hype? But, you know, obviously he can't just answer that straight up. But, all right, we got Bo in the background. Bo is the co-founder of Paxos Labs. Um, it's funny that I just asked Nick about Mike Dudis' take and then he's like, yeah, he's he used to work at Paxos.

Classic Mike. Gotta love it. We got Bo in the background. We'll get him up uh and we'll talk all things Paxos proposals uh and more. Bo, welcome to the show. And, uh, I'm sure it's been a busy weekend. Andy, Rob, thanks for having me. And uh it has been uh uh the team and I were actually doing our offsite down in uh Mexico and we were all flying back on Saturday and so Friday night we like went to dinner and then it was like heads down. We saw the proposal came out uh moved quickly. Uh we're scrambling at the airport getting proposals out Discord comments up. Um it was crazy but a lot of fun.

>> Yeah, man. It's pretty convenient to have a war room spun up in Mexico City, >> right? Yeah, it was actually great. We were all there together. Um, you know, we like took one break to go get dinner and then we were like back at it around the dining table. Uh, it's actually a lot of fun. >> Yeah. >> Crazy, but a lot of fun. >> Well, Bo, I want to give you the chance to open up, right? Opening kind of statement here, you from Paxers Lab's perspective. Obviously, you guys decided that this was a a venture worth uh endeavoring on on the weekend. um you know talk to us about your perspective.

Give us the Paxos Labs viewpoint on why Paxos Labs is the right fit for this uh kind of USDH stable coin and just kind of walk us through some of your you know storyline to getting to this point. >> Yeah, totally. And and I think um this proposal like seems like it came out of the blue for a lot of people, but I will say it's something that you know Hyperlquid as an ecosystem is something we've been thinking about and obviously Paxos has been doing stable coins for a really long time. Um but the background is right like Paxos um started in 2012 and and the position was always hey there's like a better financial system to be had. Um and and really the thought was our belief was that that better financial system was going to be served

through the existing winning platforms, right? We're going to go work with the platforms that have the users and help them build on top of our infrastructure. And specifically, we believed that that infrastructure needed to be regulated infrastructure. Um the hypothesis was like, hey, like to really bring on billions of users onto cryptonative rails, um that's not going to happen in a completely unregulated way, right? And so Paxos has done the hard work um you know was the first crypto company to get um a charter from the NYDFS. Um you know we have our New York state charter. We've issued stable coins out of Singapore, the EU, Abu Dhabi. Um we are the only globally regulated issu issuer.

Um but we've learned a lot over the last kind of 10 years of issuing stable coins. Um and one of the things that we really learned was it is very hard to do stable coin issuance right. um regulated um safe stable coin issuance that enterprises will work with, right? Um but what we learned, you know, through all of the launches, we did the Binance stable coin, we did PayPal stable coin, we've done USDG most recently with Robin Hood, Kraken, Anchorage, a few others, is that launching is just day one. And this has kind of come up in a lot of different conversations like people are so um concerned with the details of like which regulator are you going to use, how's this going to work, how's that going to work and it's getting to launch is really hard, don't get me wrong, but it's like what happens after that? And

so we actually started on this kind of journey um end of last year. Um so I was the product lead for launching several Paxos stable coins. I worked on PYUSD. I worked on USDL which is our yield bearing stable coin. I worked on USDG. And time and time again the same problem came up. It's like we do this really hard work of getting regulated, getting the banking infrastructure set up, but then what right and what we started to like think about was like hey like a lot of the growth today is coming from onchain um onchain native ecosystems right and obviously hyperlid was blowing up and so we had our eyes on that and so what we actually decided to do um at the start of last year is um start this Paxos labs initiative um and the entirety of the Paxos Labs initiative was how do we go grow stable coins and

stable coin adoption and kind of more cryptoc. So we started working on this initiative at the end of last year. Um at the start of this year um we got you know the opportunity to meet um molecular labs which is a team that's been building in the hyperlid ecosystem from day one. They're the infrastructure behind LHY and WHLP. um you know their vision of kind of like building utility tokenized asset utility in ecosystems really align with what we were looking to do um and so we entered an agreement um to acquire them um I want to say in June uh and we've been in kind of in the closing

process we were going to do an announcement but obviously like this whole thing came out of the blue and we had to um you know cats out of the bag now um but we have an awesome team that's been building in Hyperlid since day one and so you know our position is like hey like bringing together Paxos's regular ated expertise of doing all the hard stuff that takes you to get to day one with the team that we brought on in Paxos Labs, we can actually help USDH scale beyond just kind of like, hey, we have a regulated >> issuance. Yeah, I mean you guys mentioned across the board some of the Genius Act compliance, um, you know, some of the other key benefits in the actual proposal and I think Rob's probably got that up. While while Rob's scoping some of the deeps on

on that, just kind of more broad question following this opening statement vibe, per se, is uh just curious like why like what this ticker in particular means to Paxos Labs and to yourself, Bo. You know, there's there's no reason why you can't bid for a different ticker later and still get a lot of the same perks in the Hyperlid ecosystem. Spot code assets, per margin, access, these types of things. uh why does this USDH ticker matter to you specifically and and then I think we'll dive into some of the nitty-gritty of your proposal and look at the others and and see what the community uh has to say.

>> Yeah. So, in full transparency, we've already bought tickers that um we plan to we were already planning to launch a stable coin hyperlquid, right? Um and so um I think with this USDH proposal like our hope was like we could bring the community with us, right? um there wasn't really an opportunity to kind of like put our foot forward and and kind of explain like how we thought we could bring a great stable coin to Hyperlquid. This was kind of like the perfect opportunity. We've already bought tickers. We've already been doing work in the background. Um and so regardless of where this vote goes, we're bringing a stable coin to Hyperlquid. >> And so, uh this is kind of a great opportunity to do it with the community.

And honestly, one of my favorite parts about this whole process has been there's been great questions in the Discord. There's been great questions on Twitter. And um as someone has like that has built products and ship stable coins um getting feedback before you launch is the best thing you could possibly ask for, right? Because you do all this work, you launch this, you might have built a bunch of stuff that people don't actually want or doesn't address kind of the needs of the community. And so this proposal process is an awesome way for us to connect with the community, understand what they really want, and build the right product for them, right? And build a product that serves hyperlquid. And so um yes, you're right.

It's just a ticker. Um, but we see it as an opportunity of like, great, if we get this ticker and and we can really build this with the community. Amazing. If not, we're still going to bring a stablecoin to Hyperlquid. And, you know, we welcome the community to give us feedback. We want to build the thing that makes sense, that benefits the holders of hype, benefits the ecosystem, benefits everyone building on Hyperlid, whether it's with this ticker or not. >> Yeah. One of one of the things that we're we're trying to do on this on this show today is is identify the unique value propositions that each of these proposals bring. Um, one of the things that sticks out is the multiple billions of dollars in stable coins that you guys have launched so far. Mentioned PayPal USD BinanceUSD you know, there's there's several others

as well. And so I'm I'm curious, how does the the network effects and the and the and the liquidity in stable coins that you've already launched, not just the experience because I think a lot of the the issue the proposed issuers have experience launching stable coins, but they haven't quite launched them at the scale that you have stable coins in existing circulation. So is there benefits that you can provide through linking together these stable coins? Is it greater clearing? Is it settlement?

Is it lower fees? Like is there general network effects that you can bring as a result of having this network of stable coins that is alreadycliped billions of dollars? >> 100%. Right. And and that's part of the vision and and I'll give some concrete examples here. Right. So, uh USDG and I heard you guys talking about RAIN before I jumped on. Um not only does RAIN accept USDG, but USDG can be settled with Visa. Visa accepts USDG as a settlement asset. Now if we are the issuer of USDG and USDH right and it's all on Paxos infrastructure we can enable one to one interop right because if you think about any if if these are two different issuers right the only way you can have true interop is like the underlying base layer of

banking needs to talk to each other >> again then you're back to kind of like existing banking rails but really in this world we're just moving between our own bank accounts right our own custodians and so we can offer true onetoone interop not only between USDH and USDG but any of our other stable coins. And the reason we think the hyperlquid ecosystem is so interesting is we do think it's different. It's kind of like a disjoint uh addressable market than like who we typically work with. And our view is like we can be the perfect connectivity point between kind of this really cryptonnative hyperlquid ecosystem and the enterprises we work with, right? Whether that's Visa, whether that's Mastercard, PayPal, Interactive Brokers, I can go on and on and like kind of the huge list of enterprise names.

And so it's not just about launching the USDH token into the hyperlquid ecosystem. It's like, hey, we're going to go connect this and make this the connection point between the entire financial system, right? And I think that's where it gets really compelling. You're absolutely right, like network effects of this thing, especially as we're the issuer of multiple assets across multiple um kind of like corners of the financial system. We can connect all of this together and create kind of a a bigger outcome for everyone. >> Yeah. Well then, Bo, I just have to counter that with just a more you very objective question here, which is if you feel so strongly about this. Um, you know, the other the other proposals are not taking any cut. They're giving everything back to the ecosystem. you

guys are the only one that is is doing a 5% or 95% uh you know retribution to the community, 5% not. If you feel so strongly about this, why is this the case? Why not just give all of the revenues from the stable coin back to the community um and kind of be in the same league as the other two major proposals today? >> Totally. Uh and I think it's a fair question. What I will say is I think incentives are a very powerful thing and I actually think it's not good if the issuer of this doesn't make any money from it because what's going to happen is if it really is not driving the business for the issuer in any way, right? It becomes very likely they walk

away from this and it doesn't actually become something they support for a long time, right? Um, look, we want to give as much away to the community, to the validators, to hypeolders as we possibly can. Um, but I think, you know, we need to have some skin in the game, honestly, right? and and I think there's a couple ways to do that, right? It's it's from the revenue from the stable coin itself. We plan on obtaining some hype for our own balance sheet, right? And we can kind of contribute that way. Um there >> we're not we're not um tied to the model and again like part of this is like you know one of the pieces feedback and I'll just come out and say it is like there's been so much around like why isn't this going to the assistant fund, right?

>> I think that's been some great feedback and we are going to iterate on that and include that in our updated proposal. It is something we're completely open to doing, right? Um, with that said, I think the issuer needs some skin in the game, but also the the platforms or the ecosystem players that are going to integrate USDH need some skin in the game. They need some incentive, right? And this is again like from all the learning we have from our stable coin issuance, right? People don't just like flip their entire platform to something else overnight, right? And you need to have some sort of incentive to drive that. And really our goal is like hey if we can get USDH integrated into the entire ecosystem very quickly we'll move to like 100% to AF great like right or like 99% to AF like amazing right and so

>> love the idea of it going to assistant fund um I think we need to be like pragmatic about like how do we actually get this thing to grow and be big um and become kind of the standard stable coin in the ecosystem. Um so hopefully that answers your question. Yeah. And I mean I think it totally makes sense. Uh you know I can imagine that in any sort of business line if it's just of a expense or a red line on the on the balance sheet it you know there's only so much that one can do in the sake of like alignment or whatever it is per per se. Uh but it seems like Agora and Fracks don't really care. It seems like they're willing to eat that. So, I'm curious to see what your update proposal has has kind of uh built into it.

>> And it and it seems that these other proposals, they're they're bent on getting some indirect benefit as a result of just broadening their stable coin issuance, >> right? Like Nick was saying like, oh, don't trust the chain, like if there's already a chain that wants a vampire attack into Hyperlid. And I think he was talking about tempo maybe was alluding to fracks a bit but it seems like Paxos and and um and Agora are kind of separate from that. >> So Bo I wanted to kind of frame this question. How does it work with some of the existing stable coins that you guys have launched? Take one, you know, for example, maybe you can explain a couple of the different structures. Do you guys take you know fees from those guys and that's how you're monetizing it? or if you're not, how do you monetize a an

asset where you you have all this issuance but you're not directly collecting fees? >> Yeah, I mean ultimately like the business model here is asset management, right? Um and so you're taking um BIPS off of kind of the man the kind of like yield generated by the asset. In almost all of our issuances, we share the majority of the benefit with um our issuance partner. Um but yeah, that's that's our business model, right? It's asset management plus technology on top and and and all wrapped with um uh regulatory compliance. Um and so so that's the business model. Um and you know that that I think like anyone that's in this business will tell you like you know that's kind of how it goes. The interesting development has been like you know Tether obviously keeps

everything right. I think Tether is in like a unique position. Uh, I don't think it makes sense over like a medium to long-term time frame that stable coin economics don't look like dollar economics, right? In in in a world where like if there's dollars out there and people are getting nothing, I don't think that makes sense, right? But I think there is like it it looks a lot more like kind of asset management on on you know tokenized money market funds or money market funds generally. Mhm. And another unique value proposition that I saw in your proposal that I didn't see in others was the second to last paragraph and and it says that you plan to add support for hype as an asset within Paxos's brokerage infrastructure powers crypto trading for platforms such as PayPal, Venmo, several others,

Interactive Brokers. And so these other these other issuers, they don't have their own brokerage. How could that help the Hyperlquid ecosystem by getting added into Paxos's brokerage? Yeah. So the Paxos um runs crypto brokerage as a service, right? So we don't have a brokerage offering that is directly trying to go get end users or compete with, you know, whatever uh hyperlquid or even like the Krakens and the Binance of the world. It's crypto brokers as a service, right? And the idea is like, hey, you know, on on the PayPal app, on the Venmo app, on the new bank app, customers want to buy Bitcoin, customers want to buy ETH. Um and we power that.

And we actually route some of our flow yes to our own exchange, but we also work with a bunch of different exchanges. And so it's really like a brokerage as a service offering. Um, and the idea here is like yes, we're going to add support for hype to our infrastructure. Does that mean everyone turns it on on day one? No. But like look, if you believe hype is like one of the three blue chip tokens in the world, those people are going to want to turn it on, right? Because their customers are going to want access to it. And at the end of the day, everyone is customerled. So, um, by us adding support for Hype to our crypto brokerage as a service offering, everyone that uses us as, um, as a crypto brokerage platform can now enable their users to buy and hold Hype. And so, um,

obviously, you know, we've got existing massive players on this. Everyone from Ricardo Libre to Venmo to Interactive Brokers. But what I will say is over the last six months, this business has completely taken off and some of the largest names in finance um, are integrating today with Paxos Crypto Brokerage. And so, um, I think that's going to be even bigger. And the benefit to the community is like, hey, we're increasing the amount of people that can access hype, right? Um, and they can access it in their everyday apps, right? They don't need to be cryptonative to get it, right? They can access it in their mobile apps. They can access it in their payment apps. Um, and I think that's a really compelling use case because um, you you know, those are people that probably wouldn't have access to it otherwise.

>> Yeah. Bo, real quick, you put out a tweet saying about how you guys didn't mention any of the um partners that you guys were were going to work with. I hear now from you that you're going to uh take the kind of feedback from the community as well as some internal discussions and do another proposal. What are the core changes that you aim to make in that proposal and which partners will be included? Yeah, look, I I think um I don't think we're going to come back with a proposal that lists a bunch of partner names. Um we we have a ton of partners, right? Um we work with RAIN, we work with Layer Zero, we work with uh you like we work with everyone.

Like I I really want to keep the focus on this to like, hey, we're trying to build USDH to be this kind of like neutral base layer asset in the hyperlquid ecosystem and the focus should be on that. Um yeah, >> we can talk about partners totally work with all those guys. They're awesome. you know, we talk to them all the time. Um, but I don't think our proposal needs to focus on that in my opinion. Um, and just because the feedback we from the community we've gotten hasn't been like, oh, who's your, you know, on-ramp partner, who's your debit card issuer? It's really more been around like, hey, how are how are you going to ensure you stay aligned with the community? How do you think about kind of some of this assistant fund stuff? And so, um, I I think some of our our iteration will

really be around kind of, um, showing the community the balance in our thinking of we want hypeolders to benefit. And so, we can talk about this AF thing, but really outlining kind of like our perspective and learnings really of like how do we grow this thing because you're right, it's just a ticker. You know, we can go build it and launch it and it sputters out and it's like it was a waste of everyone's time. You know, if we're going to go build this, we want this to be the asset. We want this to be a multi-billion dollar10 billion asset. And I I want to make sure the community understands like our approach here, right? It's like this is not just about us being like, oh, it's 95% or 97%. It's like we have a plan of how we're going to make this really big.

>> The end goal of this fully benefiting the community and hypeolders, right? And and like outlining that. I don't think we did, to be honest, the best job of outlining that journey we want to go on in our initial proposal. So, I think a lot of the focus will be around that. Yeah, I think that's a really good kind of follow-up uh point here because Rob and I have been in the hyper liquid community for some time now. You know, we were talking to our team in summer of 23 uh all the way into the token launch and have uh you know, been been big investors into the token um and just kind of like wanted to represent the community today. And I think like the main question that that that some of the prominent members of the community wanted us to ask uh is kind of aligned

with what you're just saying which is okay you guys have a plan you guys want to grow this thing but what is this like what in this lens of your growth vision what is being hyperlquid native or aligned mean to you and Paxos and and how is how important is that versus being like big company big institutional focused how do you guys kind of navigate this uh kind of the position of two different types of communities and character archetypes and all of that and you know how how what is being hyperlquid native and aligned mean to you in this lens of growth >> totally and I think a lot of this is why we uh created an entire new team this is why Paxos labs exist um to embody some of this kind of um you know different

ethos that you might see in in in a hyperlquid like community than you might see like when you're working with giant enterprises and and I think you know I can't point to anything else besides like the team that is actually working on this has been on hyperlquid since day one right they are they have been the the team that's built infrastructure behind LHype with behind WHLP has actually worked with multiple stable coins in the ecosystem including UST0 including USDHL um as a part of the WHLP product um and so this team has been building um in Hyperlid since day one and that's why we brought them on we want that DNA we want that team to be a part of the team that goes on this USDH journey and So, um, we get to benefit from a lot of Paxos's expertise,

background history regulatory compliance legal banking everything that you would want from a world-class issuer. But we have a dedicated team. I'm here in the office with them in Williamsburg. We we have like our own spot, Paxos Labs. Um, we're together every day in person. And, um, you know, this team like kind of lives and breathes this ecosystem. And, um, hopefully, um, the community can see that with all the contributions they've had to date. >> Yeah. Uh, one last thing in in your proposal, the last paragraph says, you know, regardless of the outcome of this community vote, you're committed to continue building in the hyperlquid ecosystem, stay aligned with the ecosystemled philosophy. And so, you know, obviously the the uh partnership that you mentioned with the team there.

Uh, is there anything else that you have in mind? You know, for if the the vote doesn't go your way, what else do you have here that you have in mind as far as like how you're going to continue to support the ecosystem? anything that you haven't mentioned already? >> Yeah, I mean look, I think um and this is why kind of like we think stable coins are so important is like we think they're the foundational asset in any ecosystem. Um you know, we still plan on bringing a stable coin to hyperlquid regardless how this goes. But >> again, like to my point in the beginning like Paxus has a lot of experience issuing stable coins. I think the thing that we really want to show is like the and then what right and we're going to build products around that stable coin whether that's unique yield bearing

products, whether that's different ways to kind of take out leverage. I I think there's like the utility on the stable coin after is just as important as like getting to that day one of compliant regulated stable coin issuance again which we are very good at and we have the best track record in the world of doing. Um but what we're out to here out here to prove is like we are going to build products that complement and grow that asset even further and grow stable coins in the ecosystem. Um and so that that's what we're really looking to do and that's kind of what Paxos Labs is all about and um that's that's why Paxos created Paxos Labs.

And um Bo, when it comes to actually seeing the the fruits of the stable coin kind of like growth here, what would you say is your multi-year vision for this stable coin? Like Hyperlid is is aiming to be the the chain to house all finance kind of TM, right? soon. TM, um, what is the one, three, five year potential kind of outlook for where you think Paxos can take USDH and thus how you can help impact the community over the next one to three years.

>> Yeah, totally. And I think this is honestly the strength of Paxos's proposal, right? It's how do we take this beyond just an exchange asset? How do we take this beyond just an asset that you trade with? Um, I mentioned before, right? Like some of our stable coins are already settled by Visa. you know, we're working with the largest payment networks. We're working with the largest payment processors. We have on and off rampant providers in every corner of the world. And so the the goal is like yes, this is going to be a core asset on Hyperlquid and the exchange, but how do we get to a world where um you know, people are getting paid in USDH? How do we get to a world where people are buying their groceries with USDH? How do we get to a world where people are saving in USDH? Um and and by

people, I don't just mean cryptonative users. I mean the, you know, the user that doesn't even know there's a stable coin in the background, right? They're using their mobile app in some developing country. How do we get USDH to be the asset behind that, right? And again, like the value prop there is like not only are we giving people something they want, the demand for tokenized dollars is massive, we're driving the benefit of that adoption and distribution back to the Hyperlid ecosystem, right? And hopefully creating a really virtuous flywheel. um because we agree, we think Hyperlquid is going to be a central part of um kind of the financial system of tomorrow and and that's why we're here and that's why we're going to keep building.

>> And just one last thing for you, you mentioned that um some of the thought process was okay, we want to further allocate into this space uh into Hyperlid. uh you know is is there anything that you can kind of share on that at least what's going on in your in the in the background or at least kind of in your thought processes as to all right we want to be owners of this ecosystem as well and participate in you know hyper EVM the the DeFi apps there as well as be users of hyper core when you mentioned that you know you you guys want to come in you know with some size into the ecosystem you know maybe you could just elaborate on that a bit >> yeah um so we have our existing products

right now with LHY and WHLP and we're going to keep investing in those and growing those assets. Um I I think what we really are interested in doing, you know, beyond the stable coin stuff, um I do think there's some interesting partners that we're talking to right now in the hyperlquid ecosystem, um where we build um utility on top of either hype or hype stable coins, right? Um, and so again, like this goes back to kind of the mission of Paxos Labs and why it was created is like we're here to kind of like build the like utility that comes after having the asset, right? And so a lot of the conversations we're having with the ecosystem are around that, right? Like unique yield opportunities on stable coins, unique looping strategies around hype, and I think

taking kind of like great, you have the base asset, how do I do some more stuff with that? Um, is kind of where where our heads are at. >> Yeah. So certainly a massive opportunity here like NASDAQ and you know is talking about bringing all all of these markets onchain and hyperlquid is a great destination for a lot of those markets to land. So it's five half billion dollars of stablecoin liquidity in hyperlquid markets now. Who knows where this is going to end up 6 12 18 months from now. Um best of luck in the proposal and thank you so much for >> Yeah. But actually one last thing for you uh Rob if you don't mind. Um, Agore was getting a lot of push back about uh kind of like this Dragonfly influence then have them having their own stable coin uh some of their team kind of

giving uh you know giving push back to Hyperlid in the early days. I know we're all friends here. we're all in the same industry, but but do you feel that that Agora has been unfairly kind of singled out on the timeline or or do you think that there's some that there's kind of some substance to uh you know there being a lot of moving parts behind the scenes of their proposal? >> Look, I I think uh I think to a certain extent they have been unfairly singled out, right? I think uh there are a lot of like everyone is invested in everyone and everyone works with everyone in this >> Yeah. In the space. Yeah. Exactly. It's like anyone can dig up a conflict of interest if they dig deep enough kind of thing. And so, look, you know, I know Nick and and the Goro team, I think they

mean well, they've got like kind of the right mission. Um, I know the Dragonfly team and I think they they really are believers in this. And so, to a certain extent, yes, maybe they've been um unfairly called out, but you know, that's just kind of like the world of world of Twitter today. It's like someone finds a thread and they they pull it until >> can't be pulled in. >> Yeah. All right, Bo. Thank you for your time, man. I appreciate it. We'll we'll see you soon and uh enjoy the week. I know it's going to be slammed. >> It'll be a fun one. Take care, guys. >> Well, Rob, thoughts, >> takeaways.

>> I I think Paxos has a strong proposal. >> Yeah. Yeah. That that their stable coin um their stable coin success in the past. I just they should have just done 100%. I don't get why they not just did 100%. >> Yeah. I mean how significant I guess when we when we extrapolate out I mean five and a half again five and a half billion dollars of stable coin liquidity now this is going to end up doubling tripling quadrupling in the near future. >> Yeah. How much does it really matter? Right. So we said there's 200 million on Hyperlid right or something right now I think half billion dollars of USDC. Yes.

Primarily st uh USDC on Hyperlid now for they're it once they launch USDH all that's going to get collateralized. are going to generate interest on the reserve >> on the 5 and a half billion. >> Exactly. 4% of that is going to give them about 220 million. I think that's math >> per year. >> Yeah. >> No, that Yeah. Yeah. 4% >> of five and a half billion. Someone someone with a calculator you can see that. >> Come on, dude. You're the math guy. Up next, we have Sam. Um, get back to us on that, Rob. Sam is is the FRA uh FRA founder who has just updated their

proposal. We we we got the um updated link here from one guy on the FRA team. I I I believe it was their head of comms. Um and yeah, we saw some of the updates really the big thing being the federal regulated bank issuers. So guys, you know the vibes. Uh we are going to roll into Sam's opening remarks. Give them a chance to kind of open up and then and then get into the questions that we've asked each guest here. We're just going to give Rob one more second to give us the the final calculation here. I think he's dialed in right now.

Uh Sam, good to have you. >> 220 million. We are doing math. >> Okay. Good, good, good. Well, that's a lot of profit to be made. So, Sam, good to have you. >> Welcome to the show. >> What's up, guys? Happy Monday. It's good to be back. >> Yeah, man. Busy weekend for you. I bet. >> A lot. Yeah. Well, exciting weekend. Um there's a there's so much stuff going on with this that like I I'm almost like um like holy crap. It's going to be uh like every day there's going to be a bunch of stuff coming out and then it's going to be over before everyone even knows it, you know?

>> Yeah. I was talking to Rob from Dragonfly about it and he was like, "Yeah, it's just going to only get more dramatic." And I think part of that is you guys changed your proposal today or updated it. Let's say Paxus B just came on saying that they're going to update their proposal shortly and release that. So we've started the first two with just kind of an opening remarks. Would love to get your perspective for FRA's US vision kind of how like what the storyline is for uh kind of inserting or you know entering up proposal here and just kind of open open the uh the air for us here.

>> Yeah, for sure. So, so let me actually give some some background of like how we we got here as as like FRA. As a lot of people might know from like last uh cycle, FRA uh is one of the biggest decentralized stable coins when we when we launched, right? The original FRA uh decentralized like dollar stable coin. We went all the way up to three billion or just under total supply. So, we really do have the infrastructure, knowledge, engineering, integrations to run a multi-billion dollar uh stable coin. We actually started moving more towards a uh regulated and genius compliant model as you guys know with FRAXUSD, FRXUSD which we started actually working on this uh in 2024

before like the genius act or the name or whatever uh actually even became a uh a big thing because we believe that the base underlying uh digital dollar of like an ecosystem should be basically risk-f free. You can build the yield stuff on top of it. Um I think that structural bet uh looks like it's probably correct because you can see um Athena also having USDTB which is really cool right if if you didn't need that right why would you even um have like an underlying base right like risk-free fiatcoin essentially right um and one of the cool things was when the genius bill started to take form right with the new administration uh I actually went to DC uh with Travis my co-founder and we actually helped directly do a lot of the

um the the definition of a genius stable coin, a payment stable coin, all of this stuff. And we've been very very active uh actually in the regulatory space. So we built this infrastructure for FRAUSD. We have a full 20 chain mesh coverage, right? That that's powered underlying by layer zero, but it's a a sovereign hosted version where the OFTs everything they're underlying owned by whichever entity that they want. We own the FRA USD USDH can be owned by Hyperlquid uh you know hypeolder stakers and um the interesting thing is we thought well we have this infrastructure we have the engineering and and the name brand and the Lindy and the resources that uh was previously a3 billion

uh dollar decentralized stable coin that everyone knows as a household name in DeFi. why not open this up and allow other stable coins to actually be uh used and issued through this infrastructure and with our partners, right? And so when we started working on FRA USD, we obviously approached institutional RWA issuers that are genius compliant uh institutions that can actually issue uh different kinds of genius compliant collateral like 28-7 money market fund securities, treasury bills, all of these things that are required to have a fully risk-free compliant fiatcoin, right? And so we have these relationships, this infrastructure, the audited smart contracts, all of it. And so we said, well, this doesn't only have to be for FRAUSD, right? Like we don't have to

just actually uh do all this work for just FRAUSD. And so we started actually thinking, what are the entities? And this is a few months ago, by the way. We had no idea the US thing. I don't think many people did uh that was going to come up uh last week or whatever a few days ago. Um and so we started approaching different um entities like hey we can actually uh help you issue your own and have it be onetoone uh composable with all of the underlying fracks. USD is another stable coin, right? One:1 composable, all of these RWAs that are genius compliant, right?

Um like USB from Superstate and uh Fidelity, Black Rockck, B all of these things, right? And so we can connect all this infrastructure in a onetoone way. It's audited. It's it's FRA is like a a prestigious and pristine history of no no funds lost in any of our uh history, right? Like our fiveyear history. And so why not open this up, right? This is valuable infrastructure and being able to actually have multiple stable coins be onetoone fungeible with each other is actually a unique value of money, right? The whole point of money is the more funible and liquid it is between all the other things, the next marginal uh user that accepts it or or holds it uh is is more has more utility, right, for for that person. And so um

that was basically our our vision. And so when this came out, uh, obviously it it surprised us this because I actually had talked to, um, Julian, I I believe he's like one of the Hyperlid core team members a long time ago, like I think over six months ago about some like this where I was like, what is Hyperlid's uh, you know, view on stable coins? You guys obviously are a huge huge user of USDC. I don't know like uh you know what one of my original thoughts to be honest was like maybe Jeff and Jeremy have some kind of like NDA and like secret like deal of like there just is share I can't imagine you you know mid nine figures of of like annual revenue you're just like nah whatever right so like I I was like

I would love to help if I could just know I'm not here to sell you anything in fact like I I want to know what like a visionary guy like Jeff or you guys at Hyperlid what are you guys think? How are you guys thinking about it? Like how like uh educate me and it didn't seem like at least from what I was told obviously like they might have, you know, internal plans or something. I don't know. Um now actually it seems like they're totally true and transparent is like they're like we're not thinking about it right now when we're thinking about coin stuff. You'll know and obviously uh I think now >> 200 million is on the table >> at current. Uh well the yeah well 200 million for the the hyperlquid community as it should be right and so that that's

actually kind of important because I think fra was the first one um if I remember to just be like 100% no uh no yield share like intake right and um and I think like that is kind of important because I think you were asking Bo uh who I love we we've talked a lot actually we trying to figure out how we can work together. I've like this is one of the things that I I was figuring out in terms of like philosophically this stuff obviously hyperlquid is the biggest prize but like because it's obviously one of the biggest L1s and ecosystems in in the crypto world but I was thinking about it more generally from like a economic perspective and I was like you know if here's a thought

experiment if if you had the the right to issue all like genius compliance stable coins like like Robbie and and Andy like let's say for some reason like amazing the law kind of gave that to you for in exchange you cannot take any any revenue yield share from it okay or nor can you charge like redemption you know mint fees or whatever just just nothing from it kind of you you are in trying to give this as a public uh good so to speak okay would you take it would would you accept that and and everyone had to go through you, right? This is the thought experiment, right? The deal is >> they go through you guys, okay? They you you are the only issuer allowed to do

this like you know in a uh regulated manner because that's sort of you know de facto what's going on here even though you know they're like this the USDH ticker there will be other stable coins of course there will but like the reason everyone is so gung-ho about like pushing and competing here is like this is most likely going to be the hyperlquid stable coin right unless Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, we would, right? >> Would you take the the actual uh right to issue it? And and I I would if if I was like Sam is the only one that can issue uh genius compliant stable coins.

You you are not allowed to legally take any any revenue or mint redeem fees, right? But you're close to all of the flows. You're close to all of the flows that come in and out. you are essentially the clearing house for all uh genius compliant stable coins. Would you take it, but you're not allowed to take any revenue from it? I would. I don't know. Maybe some people would be like, "Oh, no. Like the only reason I would ever be interested in this is like if I can skim some T- bill yield off from the top or something like that." Um that that's also like a legitimate potentially answer, but I would take it.

M >> so Sam you're saying the fulfillment doing something meaningful providing this service to the entire ecosystem a very valuable service that philosophically is enough for you to commit time effort resources or are you saying there's another method another an alternative way to monetize the flows and that is how you're able to capitalize on on providing this service >> both right like this is not like a like a like a charity I'm not saying like that, right? But what I'm saying is the clearly clearly like just logically thinking about it, everyone is giving either 95 or something close to that or like 100 like even the first one just say 100

>> getting to be the in and out of the flows of one of the most important economic L1s >> is by itself uh valuable, right? And so that's actually what I was trying to say online as well is like one of the most who is actually a responsible steward and like who actually um what will they do with it right will they actually help onboard more people that they you know wouldn't necessarily come to hyperlquid like a lot of a lot of the things is like like you know frack is very very good at defi right I think everyone knows that in fact like one of the first times when uh pyd launched um from paxos and paypal We actually help them figure out how to navigate all the curve and

DeFi stuff. And so I think one of the first PYUSD pools was actually a FRA and PYUSD stable coin uh pool actually. Uh and and so we are always at the forefront of like DeFi stuff. Obviously now it's more we've leaned in on the frontier of like regulated payments like like risk digital dollars as well. Um I think obviously other just being transparent other teams might have like a stronger background in that area right because they they've started from there but I think DeFi crypto engineering getting builders that would not otherwise come somewhere are unmatched from the other you know um the other guys. This is something we were talking

about before we had any guests on today, which was that the cultural fingerprint of like the cultural identity of Hyperlid is one of airdrop farmers, power users. These are people that are engaged in onchain DeFi. And I think that suits a a cryptonative company at the frontier of DeFi more so than it might suit a more buttoned up corporate company. Even though there might be more experience there, it actually al more aligns with the community to go after and partner with a company that's more cryptonative and it's done this before on these rails rather than done it in the more regulated compliant way.

>> Yeah. And but but at the same time should Yes, that that's correct. And but I'd go even a step further too and say like it's interesting because how fast the proposal stuff is going because on another level like when we uh gave our like revised proposal today like we actually clarified about how we would work with uh chartered bank issuer to to issue this and then we obviously we work with stripe and bridge they've been our orchestration partner right same with I think stripe and bridge works with uh front the frontier markets team I think that they were one of the for the the original um proposal by um Max Fij I think. Um and the what I was thinking the other hour was like

>> a lot of these partners regardless of who wins, right? Who who's like name >> it's not like they would refuse to like participate, right? So like if we win, right, Stripe and Bridge will will work with us because they're already working with us. if they win, I think they would work with it. And and I know certain people have different payment processor preferences or or whatever and there's like different concerns here or there, but the point is if you ask, right, the point is they're all uh interested in being close to the flows, right? >> Of course.

>> Yeah. And so the the real thing you have to ask is who's going to be a responsible steward of being close to the flows? And is there anything unique between any of the current ones that uh are some intangible strengths like getting builders to come that would not have otherwise came or would there be um I don't know e extra things that other uh partners would not actually be able to do right because I think all of us can make it genius compant for us is like compliant we we're working with actually like a issuer that will announce We we this has happened so fast that we we can't actually uh say everything that that we

want to. But I think genius compliance is is like done is done deal if like you're competent like the Paxos guys the world class uh you know everyone else we know what to do. That's not really like that big of a deal. It's like table stakes. Right. >> Right. >> With 100% yield share. That's kind of table stakes. Okay. 95% I don't think that's going to be make or break or or anything. you know, that's why we even said 100 because I'm like, why why even be asked like the last five five bips or something, right? Um the most important thing is who can actually bring a coalition uh essentially a coalition of the willing of builders uh regulated entities which I think everyone can

payment processors which I think most people can just because it's hyperlquid and who can actually create new innovative ways of making the most value for the hyperlquid community by being close uh stewards to the to the flows. Right. >> Right. And so when you when you're talking about being a steward of the flows, this is essentially scaling hyperlquid beyond and and USDH beyond its current capacity. And so how would you and just for to frame this completely we've I think both of the issue proposed issuers that came on earlier in the show uh Nick from Agora and Bo from Paxos has both talked about Rain as a debit card partner to like

they you know they're plugged in with Visa. that can help expand that network. Is there a unique value proposition that you got how will you guys steward USDH to help expand USDH beyond the Hyperl liquid ecosystem and essentially grow this pie so that the flows are greater than what Hyperlids already built themselves? >> Yeah. So, so here's the first question I' I'd pose back first before answering. Have we gotten the RAIN guys who are an awesome team to say, "Hey, if uh if Agora doesn't win, we refuse to work with USDH because >> I don't think that that's they're going to say anything like that." Right.

>> Right. So that's not right. So they, you know, both of these guys said it, which makes it not unique. So they're it's almost like we're looking at these proposals and and we're looking at the check box. It's like, okay, well, they both have that, they both have that, they both have 100%. It's all Genius compliant. So where's the uniqueness in these in these proposals? >> Yeah. Well, I I'll I'll tell you some examples where the the uniqueness of these proposals. For example, what if one of uh these proposals like FRA, maybe someone else, maybe like Athena seems like they're going to propose something I' I've heard the rumblings of. What if they what if our idea for USDH is close to a consortium based issuer so that we first start right as if if we win for example the proposal

but then we actually get as many uh issuers in a novel genius compliant structure to be able to actually uh plug into USDH and and as a as as a uh extension the hyperlquid network right because they have to add uh hyperlquid support all this stuff so that it is kind of like even a better Libra right? Like which which everyone's talking about recently because of like tempo and this and that and they they build it in a way where you use hyperlquids uh distribution and size to push the frontier of like a specific design where you can get as many uh issuers to on board be able to mint and redeem to be able to get additional DeFi people to deploy on Hyperlid because of

this structure getting unique flywheel incentives for example that that we're known for but obviously Athena is is even bigger right now, right? To to be transparent, right? They're known for it as well, right? And so these are the things that are intangible, right? That that are unique if you dig through the proposals between each other, right? >> Right. These are like between the lines of like you have to kind of imagine what what would stuff look like in a year, right? If if like if if Paxos won or Tracks won or Athena, I think they're going to announce whatever they're going to do uh soon, right? And if FRA wins, I think what the one thing to take away is that we would be trying to align as much of the participants as

possible in an area where they integrate Hyperlquid as a network. They integrate USDH across a wide range of places in in ways that like for example native consortium mint redeems with genius compliant issuers, right? additional DeFi that we don't see for example on Hyper EVM but that we have connections to in our wide uh DeFi network right those kind of things are kind of the intangible uh things that like just putting up a bunch of logos uh is not just going to is not going to do >> right Sam what is mean what is being hyperlquid native or aligned mean to you guys and how important is that versus being a kind of big company

institutional focus And and and I asked this in a more pointed way, which is that there has been push back from Paxos and Agora about other teams that have their own chain or ecosystem or products trying to come in and kind of like vampire attack some of what Hyperlid has already built. You know, what is your vision for being Hyperlid native and aligned and and kind of how do you how do you fend off uh this kind of vampire attack accusation? Um, that's an interesting question because I would love to actually ask how would that even be possible like like h how exactly what would we even say to get people to leave the largest per like exchange ecosystem and and like that

that's kind of what I mean in terms of like uh being responsible stewards because it's like that that's so like interesting but egregious that it's I I I feel like it would we we would not no one would be that that stupid to even kind of try to do anything like that because the whole point of this is like the more value you can create by being responsible stewards to to the flows in and out of Hyperlquid, the the more everyone benefits, right? the more everyone can come to Hyperlquid, the more hype token integrations there are in different places. Like the the mere fact that like you know people are like oh uh Stripe just announced Tempo and

stuff but Stripe is totally willing to literally integrate like Bridge the Bridge guys, right? They're willing to integrate anything with like USDH and stuff and work with them. Just shows like everyone wants to integrate this. You just need a responsible like like group of people at the top. >> Yeah. >> Top to make sure everyone is aligned. That's that's the real uh thing that I think the uh proposal needs to look for is like a responsible steward and and the and the other thing I'll say about this is like I I thought about this uh last night where let's say FRA doesn't win. Okay, great. Like you know someone else I'm amazing. Like I'm very happy for whoever wins. um we would still love to work with them in in a structure that we're like we're

envisioning. So hopefully they envision the same thing and and like positive sum of bringing as many people in like a coalition to to responsibly like look over and build around the massive flows. Um but obviously then that's their choice, right? Whoever wins like they they could decide no like you know that we have a different view of like how this will work, right? And so, um, one of the things that I think is really important is how can we get the most number of of people to responsibly work together to increase the size of the hyperlquid pie for hypeolders, right? if that if this is the ecosystem that we're all very excited to actually build on and and

actually make bigger because of how special it is, how big it is, how wide of a distribution it has, how amazing of a of a deep product it has in hyper core with the perex. >> Yeah. And just one last thing for you, Sam, why is this ticker in particular important to you guys? Like theoretically you can spin you can uh buy a different ticker in the future for you know and get all the same perks per margin access spot pricing uh markets. Why is this USDH ticker uh important to FRA? Honestly, the ticker is not that important like like uh to to be completely clear and I know the hyper uh uh liquid guys like made as oh this just just for the ticker or whatever like

guys don't you know no one get too flustered like there's going to be a bunch of other stable coins we all love each other you know yada yada yada I think like the important like clear thing there's a reason everyone you guys are having like an immediate like emergency live cast of this competition all is that is is de facto the hyperl liquid stable coin. Uh you know the ticker could be whatever else too, right? It could be mudang or whatever USD, right? So like but but the the main thing is the alignment of the entire hyperlquid the the foundation the core team this stuff the community right this is basically a massive shelling point right this event is a massive shelling point uh and and king like legitimacy like event of who actually is

the socially agreed on steward to to the flows and stuff we don't actually mind what the what the ticker is in fact like I was saying I was talking to Julian um and some people from Hyperlid months ago months months ago about what's your guys's strategy? And so the the feeling I got was that they're still figuring it out and the transparently that's what it sounded like they they were saying the truth like they they'll figure it out later and this is seems like is what what they're going with which is really cool. I actually think this regardless of who wins this will actually set a very very uh great precedent of how to do these things. Like earlier today I I saw um Athena and Mega ETH. I don't know if you guys saw that they announced like

USDM. >> Yeah. And that's super cool and that's awesome and actually um somewhat jealous of guy. Good good work. >> Like like a I am I am an investor in Athena. Full disclosure. So I'm at the >> at at the same time though I was like well if we knew that existed uh why I wish the Mega ETH team did something similar to like Hyperlid. Why why not just be like, "Hey guys, like we're thinking about this instead of doing this like behind the scenes or whatever." Uh >> yeah. Just put it out there for everybody to to to you know get the best deal.

>> Exactly. Exactly. >> Give us some entertainment while you're at it. You know what I mean? I I think it's preceded setting uh event for I think you know everyone can probably think of obviously like no one is as big and systemically important as Hyperl it's like a top 10 coin the biggest like like uh decks in in in the entire world this is like the S tier of like it's like the Super Bowl of stable coin issuance competitions right but I think there will be uh you know um like like NCAA championship kind of case as well.

>> Yeah, like bracket style. No, I mean look, I think there going to be a couple more entrance. You know, you mentioned Athena. Maybe we get one or two, but the time's coming up. I mean, we're about 48 hours away from the proposal being, you know, set set on. So >> Sam, I >> I just got one last thing for you and we hadn't asked the other two uh uh potential issuers this, but I I think we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about Circle a little bit and what Jeremy Lair put up on on Twitter and kind of reposted a blog post from a couple months ago. Any any thoughts? I don't want to put you on the spot, but I am just curious like it it seemed like his proposal kind of fell flat. People were saying, "You made a mistake. You got a

couple days to fix it." They're in the position where you know they've got the five and a half billion. They're they've got the foothold, but they're at risk of losing it. If you're Jeremy Aair, what what do you do? >> I I would love this is why I started talking to the Hyper Liquid team like months ago because I was like honestly at first I was like, do these guys just have a secret deal with like Circle to just like yield share almost all of the thing. But the condition is like sign this NDA and don't tell everyone because then everyone will go to Circle and be like do it for us because you did it for them. Uh, I guess it it does not appear that they do or they might actually and they might use this competition to go back and be like, "Yo, like actually uh

we want 100% or like you know, you're you're screwed, right?" But I would actually love to see Jeremy uh just come out and be like, "Okay guys, like you uh you know, you're upping the ante. Circle will just give, you know, 100% 90 95% or whatever and see what happens." I I would actually love to see Circle commit like nearly 100% or close to 100% yield share the same way they have we know they have it with Coinbase, right? USDC on the Coinbase platform. Coinbase gets 100% of that, right? And again, good example. Look at how beneficial that is. I know people look at the the S1 filings and stuff being like look how much they're paying to Coinbase, but Coinbase king made USDC by

having the basically the official onoff ramp for dollars in in and out of USDC, right? And so like that's a perfect example of like look there's a there's a deal that Circle doesn't get any like revenue from, but clearly it's it's symbiotically beneficial. Clearly, no, no one would say Circle is not benefiting from that in some way, right? >> If Hyperlink could make Circle bend the knee like that, it would just be the most the just epitome of DeFi's power uh and just in in just of the of the status that they've reached as a as a chain, as a protocol. Sam, just closing thoughts.

We're running low here >> for sure. So last thing to reply to you and then closing thoughts is I think that's a good way to take it. But from if if you if everyone says it like that, I think Jeremy wouldn't >> wouldn't do it. Yeah. So maybe that's not the right way to say it, >> right? So So the way that I would say it is like like Jeremy would come out and and like basically uh Mortal Kombat KO combo KO everyone >> absolutely destroy everyone. Yeah. >> Yeah. I would love to see that. But anyway, the closing thoughts uh I think I I would um leave everyone with is the most important thing is is not the genius compliance because I think everyone uh that is in the short list is is competent enough when they say

they're going to do it. They're they're going to work it with the proper structures. The other thing is not obviously the yield share because 95 100% completely uh that everyone is basically matched or thinking they're going to be matched and and I don't think that five bips is going to be the thing that's going to you know uh the last straw that's going to break the camel's back. The most important thing is what are the intangibles, right? every everything that looks uh kind of different on on paper like oh they have like rain cards great but I'm pretty sure rain cards would would integrate this right as well same thing with us we work with stripe and bridge but then so does uh the other um proposal earlier and then maybe maybe another proposal

later right and bridge is going to be willing to be the integrator the most important thing that I leave everyone with is who is going to be the most responsible stu stewards positive sum of the flows in and out of one of the most important uh ecosystems to ever exist in crypto and will increase and maximize the coalition that feels they they have a have a stake in making this the biggest pie possible. Right. And whoever the the hyperlquid community, the validators and and and the hypeolders vote um regardless of whether it's frags or not, the point is we would love to work with them if we don't win because again our vision is we want to actually be a part of making sure that this is

one of the the best the most positive sum in and outflows of USD uh regulated stables in in the world. >> Beautiful. Sam, thanks for your time and look forward to the next 48 hours. I know it's gonna be crazy for you. >> Awesome. Thanks. >> We're rooting for you, Sam. Thanks, man. >> Speak soon. >> See you. >> Alrighty, Rob. Quick quick uh turnaround here. We got David uh ready to join, but uh yeah, man. What is your now that we've gone through all of the three main proposals outside of Max, we're still missing the native markets one. What is your quick objective takeaway and then we'll get David up.

>> Man, I'm uh I'm bullish hype. I'm bullish stable coins and bullish hype. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't even matter who wins honestly. >> No, I think I think Sam made a pretty pretty good point. Like, look, we've got um all of these infrastructure partners that are battling it out. Most of the ones aside from the issuers are are going to win regardless. Layer zero, Rain, Ether, the all the issuers, Paxos, Fracks, um Agora, they're all talking about using the same infrastructure partners. And I think I think Sam makes a good point that even if someone like Agora wins or or Paxos or FRA, whichever one of them wins, the other issuers can still play a role in this ecosystem as supporting consortium partners.

>> It will be very interesting to see if Jeremy Aair comes out w with anything. We've got David Grider, head of >> Have to make a stronger >> finality. We're going to get his take start this off as well. His first time on on the show. Let's get him up here. Um and yeah, man. Let's talk. Let's talk crypto. David, good to see you, man. >> Hey, Andy. >> Good to have you on. It's a busy week in the hyperlid ecosystem. Happy all-time high day to those who celebrate. I don't know uh your your position in this matter, but we can discuss. But man, I'm sure you've seen some of the stable coin uh chat so far with USDH on the timeline. Uh Hyperlid wanting to expand to its own native stable coin. Um, first and foremost, we'd love to just get a a

brief introduction about yourself, but super curious to hear your thoughts about some of these L1s adopting their own native stable coins. Mega ETH came out today and said, "Look, we're going to work with Athena to build MUSD. Very clearly the stable coin trade, the stable coin investment happening." Um, so we'd love to hear your take on that. But first, who's David? How'd you get involved? And welcome to the show for the first time. >> Yeah, absolutely. And there's going to be a lot of great topics to touch on. Yeah. So, uh I run the liquid hedge fund at Fenity Capital and um you know uh I say we're we're not a crypto fund but we're a hedge fund that invests across digital asset industry whether it's in the commodities like Bitcoin ETH other tokens Salana Hype or uh the derivatives

could be the equities the companies you know Coinbase Bit mine or it could be DTOR equity across the capstack. Uh so we're pretty broad in that universe both crypto and tradi. And then, you know, I've been in crypto a while personally since 2015. Uh started a small fund in 2017 18. Was head of crypto research uh for Tom Lee uh at Fundstrat. Um I know Bitmine's all the rage today too with some of these recent deals that were announced. >> Uh I was head of research at Grayscale. Uh I've been investing at other funds as well for a while. And uh yeah, so run the liquid fund at Finity. So all things kind of liquid are our our domain.

>> Amazing. Um yeah on on the hype point look I think you know the most interesting thing that's you bring up a bigger topic really which is the most interesting thing that's happening in crypto is this trady convergence and the unshackling of regulation and that's what's allowed all these companies to do DATs and that's what's allowing you know hype to get their own stable coin um and I mean really that's also what's allowing um you know whether it's the tokenization you're seeing today with NASDAQ I think that's pretty exciting for everybody. I mean, it's, you know, it's going to be good. It's good for hype, potentially bad for Circle. You know, Circle has some other things. I think it's 10, you know, 10% of, you know, USDC is unhype.

I don't think it's going to go away. You know, I think there's going to be uh different trust vectors that, you know, people are going to want to, you know, own different stable coins for. So, you know, it's going to be a competitive market. I mean, you always knew there was going to be more stable coins issued both from the banks that are going to still be continuing to come. Uh, but also, you know, it's interesting to see the DeFi natives getting out there and issuing stable coins. So, you know, I think it it makes sense for them and I think it's um it's good for the ecosystem as a whole.

>> Yeah, it's really it's really just uh a big race right now for Hyperlid. Um, and I mentioned Mega ETH and this entire stable coin trade. And then, you know, the the big outlier here is XPL trading premarkets right now on Hyperlid at $9 billion FTV. You know, I mean, that that thing's going to launch soon and that's like this, you know, pseudo Tether equity play. So, we saw Circle IPO be all the rage for a bit and now I think we'll see this plasma token launch be all the rage. There's just a very clear demand for this business model and for investors to get exposure to this business model.

>> Yes. I mean, look, Tom Lee said it best. Stable coins are the chat GPT moment for crypto. Uh, you know, we have a venture fund as well, I should mention, and we were I think we were seed investors in Athena. That's been a huge win for us. uh and you know we're still there and that's obviously performing really well on the back of the stablecoin narrative on the back of this stratfire convergence with the DATs and uh you know obviously it's got a lot of partnership integrations as well. So yeah it's it's it's it's the place traditional finance wants to move into and play and it's it's great. >> I'm curious from a more general standpoint on the liquid market. We've talked at length about the return to fundamentals, also about this revenue meta and how a lot of these tokens that are doing well now, Hyperlid is is

certainly one of them. Pump Fund also had another another uh big big jump. You know, they're they're pro projects, protocols that have real revenue and they're using that to pass value back to the token holders. Um there's only a select few of those tokens that exist on the market today. How much do you prioritize the real revenue of today? Is this just kind of a a fad in the current timeline or do you think this is going to be something that sustains and we're really not going to see significant upward movement in in things that don't have a real revenue source right now?

>> Well, I yeah, I think no, I think it's I think it's a real thing. Uh it's it's obviously becoming much more, you know, the industry is maturing, right? you're going from being startups to being more mature businesses and then naturally the the capital that comes in is going to demand more fundamentals, more product market fit, more not just more revenue, right? Like I think you know it's interesting you say revenue, right? The first thing we want is product market fit, users and transactions. >> Next thing we want is is is actual monetization, right? Turn on the fee switch and generate some revenue. But the next thing you really need to have you know is um you know people want like buybacks and economics but also the next thing you have to have on top of that is what is your actual net free cash flow

your profitability because you issue all these tokens on the other side. So your supply demand picture even on that isn't strong right and then finally like the thing that you actually need to get to to really you know loop all that in and have a good multiple that you can apply to any of these things is durability right so even if you have you know revenue right do how how durable is that revenue and like that's one reason why you know D5 protocols will trade at a much lower revenue multiple than a traditional you know uh business like an exchange like a Robin Hood or whatever ever because of the durability of the regulatory mode and uh you know it's kind of the same thing even in minors right like the you know they have lower multiples they're really just data

centers than the data center plays but the you know the variability with that the durability of the of the income of the earning stream is so you get lower multiples so I mean I think that you've seen it in the performance of the tokens like there you know there's data that shows the baskets of fundamental tokens tend to outperform the non-fundamental tokens and you know like I'm a fundamental investor I talked to talk to and know all the other liquid fundamental funds and you know I know how those guys think and how they look at different projects uh and and and that's really the key in this market right and I think the other thing that can't be overlooked is um is going to be this governance piece and the fact that you know um before you wanted to invest

in crypto the only way you could do it was to buy tokens because you couldn't get access really in the public markets right because you because it was all closed out, right? So, you had to buy tokens. Now, you have companies that you can wrap a blockchain crypto protocol into a company. What's a good example of that? You have Okay, so think about like um think about like um Lido, right? They have a they've got they got an LST, right? That's that's great. And they're they're a DAO with a token. Well, you know what? You know who else has an LST?

Defi DevCore for Salana. They have a LST. Oh, but they're actually a company with corporate governance and the cash flows go to the shareholders and you know you have reporting and it's like you know the in so like there's the next thing that people really care about is going to be this like governance meta and you want to want to feel good about like insiders aren't selling on you OTC when you're not supposed to like there's actual restrictions and disclosures. So circle all this back to say there's now in trady.

>> Yeah. It's not just revenue. It's like okay revenue and like hey not all all the shady stuff that's been happening in the space the last six years isn't happening here either. It's like this it's it is a direct you know combination there. >> Yeah. It's better from an investor standpoint right. You can argue some of these things are inflated or this and that. you don't like the structure, but like at least it's disclosed and people aren't, you know, they're following what they >> I saw you put out a tweet uh I think uh it was about Bit Miner some uh two things. One being about or Bit Mine was about the NASDAQ tighter rules giving Bit Mine some sort of competition uh or competitive moat, let's say. And then

you also kind of then flip-flopped with something with when BMR dipped, you wrote that he's either dead in the water or it's a great buying opportunity. Kind of I think we're getting close to Tom Lee and Bitmine having that $10 billion uh uh capital value of ETH the asset meaning that theoretically they could then start to lend or sorry borrow from large commercial banks and issue some of these convertible debt notes i.e. micro strategy sailor tactics. You know, this could then extend his buying power with Bitine then leading to a more positive flywheel extending this ETH trade maybe, you know, to 7 8 9K or, you know, he's calling for outrageous targets, but I

think I think we can see it get there. You know, what is your take here on Bitmindine now? Is it a is it dead? Is it buying opportunity? What has your h how has your views changed? and maybe just uh educate our community a bit about how the NASDAQ rules have made BitMine potentially a better opportunity than some of the other ETH stats if that's the case. Uh generally curious here. >> Yeah, I mean just to start full disclosure, we did invest in the the private first round of of BitMine and it's done really well for us and um you know I think the reason it's done well is because they've executed so well on growing the ETH per share. I think there was like $4 per share when we did it.

It's probably 40 today or around that. Uh you can tack in a few more, you know, maybe four bucks more for this deal they did that uh in this new AI company led by Dan Ives, the world one. But um you know that and that that really is the key for all of the uh all of the the DATs, right? Is is how much can you grow the NAB per share? And the way that they've done that really well is they've run this you know the ATM and uh the ATM is an at the market offering. It just means the company is selling shares into the market. Generally that that is a function of how much volume you generate because you can only sell you know if you can't if you sell 100% of your volume or you know whatever 50 80 90 is you then you're

going to crush the stock. But he's so liquid. The stock is so liquid. these guys are raising I don't know call it 100 million to 200 to 300 million a day sometimes uh to buy ETH and um you know so the the the rule with the NASDAQ or at least the the concern that was raised by an article put out in the information uh was that the NASDAQ is going to tighten the rules on >> uh debts for issuing and selling shares and require them to um get shareholder approval before selling shares to buy crypto.

Now, it turns out that there's still a lot of things that are up in the air about that, but it actually I don't think it applies to this for the existing DATs. The thing that they're trying to stop is um it's going to be for the new ones launching. The problem that or that happened was uh story IP that you know that token that and horses back they backed that they put a bunch of ink kind I believe in it and that really created maybe a sour taste because you know what you have is you know you have a VC going to a company negotiating a deal putting a bunch of inkind lock tokens in existing shareholders that are you know getting diluted on that deal and they have you know they think they have a pharmaceutical business they end up with an IP story discounted token debt right

overnight and they don't really know about it. Um, you know, the that's what they're trying to stop on that new issue front. So, there's like, you know, it doesn't it I don't think it's going to stop the D. I think it's just like there's going to be limits on maybe 20% can be unkind and this and that uh on kind of the the change of business for these before they require approval. Uh, and I generally also don't think that they'll impact the existing ones or the ones that go out via specs. >> Dude, uh, 1.65 65 billion in cash put aside for the Salana Treasury that launched I think it was announced last week.

>> He's coming for you >> money. Yeah, he's he's the leader over there and uh they've publicly said that they're just going to basically ape all all billion and a half of this into Solana. Um what's your reaction? >> We called Rob. We called this a month ago. We tweeted about it. We told people about it. We knew it was happening. Yeah, >> the rumor mill is strong on the rollup. And so now, now that this is public information, David, I'm curious to get your reaction on it. >> Look, I think that uh you know, I mean, where's the stock trading today? I think it's up 50%.

>> What's that? Soul. Soul's up four and a half. No, >> no, no. >> Yeah, the ticker for uh Salana Salana Strategies. >> That's the uh for Ford Industries. That's the that was the Galaxy multicoin. Look, I think the thing that you have to do. All right. So, there's there's in the sequencing of these there's two things. You raise the initial capital and then you buy the initial soul. The market has kind of front run that to a degree, right? Because everyone kind of knew this the billion and a half buy was coming for weeks now, >> several weeks, right? Uh it's everywhere. And you know, when they execute on it, you know, it takes a couple days for the transaction to close. So maybe like they can buy by Thursday when the cash comes in or something like that. you know, I'm not

saying exactly, but that's generally the timeline for these. Um, but the thing that you need to generate the aftermarket demand like ETH had with Bitine and like might happen with Worldcoin, you know, given the the price convexity of today's news is that you need to have two things. A meaningful premium or three things. uh a meaningful premium, lots of volume and an ATM that you can run to raise right on that premium to then go buy the under. And um so look, they've got step one. They got they got the cash, they're going to buy some soul. You know, how much is priced in and front and running

and get sold into like sell the news? We'll see. I don't know. There's probably billion bucks. You can move the market with that. But on the secondary part, right, like they're up 60% and you know, there's there's decent volume, but you need to you need to be able to start capitalizing on that. And the Bitcoin one when it launched, that thing went for like, you know, 40x nav. This other one today is like 40x nav. And, you know, you can really push it down and really hammer the ATM on all that liquidity. So you know they if they can prove they can do that right that's the next leg of what they need to accomplish for the executing and and really moving so higher uh beyond just >> could you explain that third step one more time this ATM is is this the

process of essentially locking in that higher uh price on the stock that the tickers forward and then once they're able to borrow against that they can take what they borrow and they can put that into soul and that's what kind of creates this reflexive flywheel Yeah. No, you asked a good question. So, it's not borrowing. Uh, what it is is you're selling equity. So, you know, you're selling shares of the company at a premium to the underlying asset value of the soul that they have. So, you're selling $2 of shares for >> to go buy $1 soul. So, that looping, right? So, let's see. Today, the stock has traded two million bucks, two million shares, two and a half million

so far. And let's just say we're halfway. We're about to the close. So let's just call it three million. And that's >> because they're selling shares and not the underlying Salana. They're able to do it at the inflated price. >> Yeah, that's right. And I mean, I'll be honest. I mean, they're not I mean, the stock's up a lot today, but also there's not a lot of volume. >> And that would 65 million. Yeah. >> Right. So even if you round it to three, I mean, and then you say it's, you know, 27 bucks, right? Um, right. Like that's, you know, that's not that's not a lot of volume. And if you can only do 0.05, they got to get they got to get those numbers up. Yeah.

>> To use that meme. >> Those are numbers. You got to get those numbers up. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the stock's up 64% >> um today. >> But there's not there's not enough liquidity, >> right? So once they start to do these at at the money or excuse me these ATMs, they start to sell some equity, the market's not going to be able to absorb the the sales of those shares. >> Whereas Bitmine has, you think, has kind of gotten past this problem. >> Well, you know, I wouldn't say past. It's an ongoing execution you have to you have to, you know, do. I mean, they're but their volume, right? So you know um you know they're doing you know one and$2 billion dollars of volume a

day two to four right and then you know instead of here if you're doing three million right times you know even 26 bucks I mean that's you know less than 100 million volume >> versus right so um it's just it's not impossible right you know if no and he can talk about it and they can get it up and going but I think you know The the thing you have to do is the shares are going to register for the people who participated eventually and you know all a lot there's going to be a lot of crypto natives that probably want to put in a dollar soul and get two and or you know $165 today and and get out when that happens. So, you have to raise the NAV before you register the shares.

Typically 30 days, right? And you that's why you need to really be able to run it because you want to bring it up, right? If the premium is $165, everyone's going to want to get out, right, as soon as it unlocks. So, you got before everyone unlocks, you got to be able to raise that now. >> And and just to just to be clear on on the unlock schedule, it's typically like a 60-day process with two tranches, one after a month and one after two months. Uh it depends. Usually it's um you know like Bitline did it with a with a half half in 30 days or half at the first initial registration half after. But sometimes they just do it at the initial registration. It it actually it depends on on it could depend on two things really. The SEC won, right? And um you

know there's like a registration timeline because you're you have to file a registration statement to and that has to go effective uh to be able to sell those, right? And then you know some of these deals will put like a clause in like you know the company agrees to within 30 days file a registration statement right and then it doesn't always have to get approved immediately but it can and then sometimes they'll have an additional lock structure um beyond that. So that's that's typically how >> and now that's for the direct listings right there spaxs there are different models some companies go out through through spaxs or sorry not direct listings but the reverse takeovers the mergers reverse mergers. Uh the spaxs have a different model where you have to close a transaction and share at the boat and that takes even longer.

>> So David, from your perspective, is the DAT trade still interesting or are you kind of you're in on Bit Mine? You you see it, but you're not really too interested in these other tokens or other DATs. Like where are you at personally with the fund as far as your uh demand to keep participating in any of these deals? Oh, well, you know, I think it's late, but you're going to see, you know, it depends on who's the first thing that matters is who's involved.

I think this Dan Ives thing and Tom behind it was, you know, big for this other one today. Like, you're going to get outliers like that. And then there's going to be some assets maybe you just want to own the asset. And then sometimes you might like the structure uh and those could be good to own as well. So, it's like it's very you should there's opportunities. you just have to be picky and you have to identify them. Um, and then the but but generally like there's so many every day like everyone it's it's it's late in that sense you know like they're starting to trade NAV discounts. I I do think though you know Micro Strategy wasn't was was not included in the S&P last Friday >> and but it's only the stock this is great the stock is only down like 2%

today. >> Do you know how worse that is? That's so well look the stock has traded down over the last month, right? Like 20%. So the market was not expecting it, right? So it was clearly priced that it wasn't going to get in but you know Tesla's stock now tes so this is a similar situation Tesla. They didn't get in the first go around, right? And it traded down 15% after it didn't get included and then like a week or two later it was backed up and then into December because the market said okay they didn't get September but they're going to get December. Into December it rallied. So the next catalyst right now now now Micro Strategy traded the other way right Tesla traded up into it because market expected it and traded down hard came back Tesla so but Micro

Strategy traded down into this because the market wasn't expecting it I think you could be bottoming here in MSTR >> right and they're also running the ATM again so they're growing per share but like so if they if if Micro Strategy can bottom you could raise the multiples again across the space >> right because the bell weather right you you know everyone comps to what their multiple is and u so like if you want if there's going to be new life to this trade at least for the existing ones and to open the market again all right and and don't get me wrong there's a lot of stupid ones that people are trying to do um but it would be like micro strategy having a good rally and bottoming here as people start to finally price in it's actually likely maybe in some people's

minds that they can get in December right and that that' be a big key for this trade >> it's kind of it's the Same thing in the in the broader market where Bitcoin lifts all boats, you know, rising tide lifts the ships and Micro Strategy is just like the DAT signal, right? And like their their premium has decayed slightly over the last year or so. Um, but yeah, the the the the addition into the S&P would just signal such a strong I mean, I could just see that being a very explosive kind of like, you know, BTC is at 140 in December or something, you know? I don't know, right? But let's say, you know, things go strongly into that, you know, that could be some that that could be quite an explosive kind of uh catalyst

for uh what what could be like a parabolic type of finish if we are to to get that this time. Um, David, one last thing for you. When you're when you're analyzing the the, you know, kind of general lens here of the crypto market, seeing the uh rise of Hyperlid, seeing Pump kind of have its move, seeing memes get kind of beaten down a bit the last several uh weeks to months. Uh, Athena is kind of coming back to life with their revenue. ETH, Soul, Bitcoin, a lot of the major DAT plays. There's just a lot of bifurcation that is happening that previously wouldn't really happen in the market. How are you expecting the next couple of months to play out with

regards to this bifurcation, right? Are you are are you seeing that the majors will continue to rally um and having less of an impact on the smaller tokens? Do you think some of the smaller tokens will join the party? And generally, how are you looking at uh this bifurcated market as it exists today? and uh kind of you know creating a mental model for how to structure a portfolio in this in this climate. >> Uh I think for the cycle Bitcoin topped but you know I think um as as a dominance trade yeah sorry be clear as a dominance trade. Um, now I think you can go higher in the year and I think you could get a buying opportunity in the next several months that could reset

some of this and that could be the reason you could have a bounce in Bitcoin dom and um, but generally what you're seeing is the flow out the risk curve and this happens almost every cycle but it's happening you know in unique ways right like it's not going to be as broad-based it's going to be cross asset and tradi and it's going to be fundamental and it's going to be you know asset specific and I think that that's you know that's the sign of a mature market, a maturing market and um you know macro is going to dictate a lot, right? Macro is what's got the capital window open for you know some of these trady crossover capital to flow in u and and and that's what's flowing in and creating some of these you know unique winners and then you know I think that's the stuff you have to really kind

of analyze to to think about how to position across this market. >> Appreciate your time David looking forward to having you on in a couple months again and uh or sooner and just get some more insights. would love to have you on as a more uh recurring guest as we try to navigate these markets. I I appreciate your perspective and wild wild day today. I mean, mega e stable coin, hyperlquid governance proposals, ledger compromise, salana that I mean it's a it's a Monday. All right, so thanks for joining us, man. >> I'll see you next. >> Take care. >> Wow.

>> Bitcoin dominance being topped for the cycle. I think he's spot on. I think uh I don't think Bitcoin's topped, but it does seem like I mean Hyperlick are going to alltime highs. Um you know some of these Soul now Soul getting its chance to kind of run. I mean yeah it's it's tough to see it's tough to see Soul not exploding here. Um you know we'll see what ETH does. ETH has been a bit weaker than than uh previously but it's just kind of hanging out. So look, I mean it's just good to get to hear from people who are investing at the bleeding edge in the liquid and venture uh and just get their take. Um yeah, I mean up next we got OSF um of Wreck Drinks. These guys are

smashing it. Um doing incredible work in the consumer era or consumer sector, let's say. Uh OSF has been a been a been a a prime media figure as well on FOMO Hour. uh works closely with Faro on his Myriad market product as well. I like to think of them as as being a part of the Pudgy Penguin playbook. I think these two guys are the only ones pushing the space in a big way forward on the consumer side with regards to physical products, real communities. So yeah, let's get OSF up and then we continue shortly. Welcome to the show, man.

>> Thanks for having me, guys. Pleasure to be here. >> Fantastic. >> 12 El, brother. >> Well, I've run out of space to keep all the drinks in the kitchen, so I have to keep them in my office now, basically. So, >> more money, more problems. You know what they say, Rob. >> I like the packaging, too. The yellow and the purple pops. >> That's the moon page rink. We're um launching very soon. So it's um first time the first time people will see it on the on screen >> and and and I call it wind of wind of an abstract drink.

>> Yeah. >> This one right here is the abstract one. We did that one back in um >> yeah um April I think these have caffeine in them. >> These don't at the moment. >> Okay. Okay. >> So these are just flavored sparkling water. you know, like no caffeine, no alcohol, very little sugar, just pretty run of the road. But we are working on other products that we'll be releasing later this year and next year, which will be a bit different. So >> awesome. >> Awesome. Okay. So maybe maybe for our community kind of new OSF building, maybe lay the foundation for us and then this be a fun conversation kind of like what is the whole brand?

What is your vision? How did this come about? >> Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, it came about in quite a random way. So, our original project was an NFT collection called WT Guy, which we launched. >> Yes. >> Um, like three and a half years ago. It was back in 2022. And I did the art for it. Like, I was the artist for it. And it really was just a side project. So, I just spent evenings and weekends doing it. Had zero intention for it to be anything big. We had zero road map. It was even a free mint. Like, we gave the entire thing away for free. Um then everything new like markets crashed in 2022 and everyone kind of like got wrecked. So people found it as a place to come and drown their sorrows and then I think over the next couple of years we just

built like a very very strong community and a strong following and we felt like WTC had a lot of potential as something beyond just an internet community and beyond just our Discord and whatnot. So, you know, inspired by Luca and Pachy Penguins, we decided to go down the path of making a physical product. And we decided drinks because they're cheap to manufacture. You can massproduce them. And our goal is like, how do we get wrecked the brand, the logo in as many places as possible, especially with crypto, there's quite low hanging fruit because there are events across the world throughout the year where you can have these drinks and it's basically like, you know, free marketing. Everyone wants to drink something. You know, here here's a drink, have it. And it has like a big wreck logo in front of it. like it's just basically, you know, a bit of

a Trojan horse for marketing. So, yeah, we went down that path and um, you know, fast forward to now, we've sold almost a million cans in the space of about 12 months. And it's all powered by our brand coin, which is Reccoin. And the way that it works is every time you purchase drinks, you're able to earn some of this coin. Um, not the first consume to earn product. Like, there's been tons of consume to earn products out there, and a lot of them have failed. But I think the difference for us is we built this brand and community and following for a long time for years before we even launched the token. And then when we launched it, there was like a natural home for people to to want to have it and be a part of it. So I think that's the key difference there. But um

yeah, that's kind of a quick uh a quick run through in a couple of minutes, I'd say. >> Awesome. >> Awesome. >> Um we got a word from our tech guy. If you can plug in your headphones, not sure if they're unplugged or not, >> but uh but uh >> plugged in plugged in. All right, we'll keep rocking with it. >> Echo, I think. Do you have any speakers on? >> No speakers. Wonder why >> give me a sec here. >> I sound going through event.

>> Great event. great event, super tons of great people there. >> Um, and it was one of the few I think transcended crypto lines. Like it wasn't just >> it wasn't like a crypto conference where it was just for crypto people. It was like went there u brought some friends and had a great time and then they were passing they were passing out these drinks and it was Pudgy Penguins drinks. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> I was like what? I couldn't really wrap my head around why Pudgy Penguins was, but I think Pudgy Penguins is one of the few brands in crypto that could pull such a thing off. Yeah, >> because they were also actually have a a plush pudgy penguins behind uh behind the screen here and they're passing

these things away and it was all just like it was all just the Trojan horse of the brand. And it really just kind of expanded my mind to like, okay, well, these are these brands are are predominantly selling uh software products, but there's nothing that says that these also provide hardware products as a way of building brand equity and building a greater customer head. >> Super creative. You don't see any other way of doing this. I think it is. >> Wait, I think I know what's going on. OSF, you're watching this original product.

>> I think that's what I actually did have it muted. >> So, we're going to get OSF right back up. Uh he's just uh finishing up uh finishing up his his audio stuff. But look, I mean, I think uh I I I'd like to get the WC drink sponsorship so that way like >> Let's go. So, we can when I'm sipping on the stream. >> I got regular coffee here. I'm not sponsored by Hydro Hydro Flask. That's why I asked if uh if there's any if there's any um caffeine in those things because I was like, "Look, man. I want to I want to get into this uh I want this wrecked drink sponsorship." We'll have to ask OSF when he gets back. Rob, I mean, we'll talk to OSF about this kind of community NFT equity dynamic.

>> I want to get Yeah. >> Yeah. I want to get his perspective on like what launching a chain means for a consumer brand because I think we're you know the rollup is maybe closer the brand coin. Yeah. Were coin >> which they've they've launched ticker you know hash hashtag wrecked. >> Yeah. And so I think you know the roll up as a media brand is probably closer to this consumer you know in this case a beverage brand even though there's physical products I think we're closer to it than maybe you know a blockchain. Uh and so when it comes to launching a coin, it's like what is the mechanism here? Like why why the coin? What's the value acrruel like and just kind of

getting his uh >> I've been just talking to Chain Yoda about his pump fund streamer coin and it's been a it's been a funny All right, it's been a funny kind of couple days talking about it. All right, we got OSF back. I think his audio is fixed so that folks we'll get him up. Um and he's back. >> Of you we were just talking about a couple of things actually. One is >> let's collab. I mean, I'm drinking coffee out of a hydro. We're not sponsored by >> I'm sitting here drinking a Yeti. I mean, I could just be sipping wrecked every day. >> We will uh Yeah, I'll hit you guys up afterwards. We'll definitely send you guys some drinks for sure. Definitely get them on stream.

>> We'll just be sipping. That's why I asked if there's a caffeine one, but I imagine there's like FDA requirements and more kind of headache when you start to put different things in the drink. >> Yeah, it's not as easy when you just do sparkling water. It's pretty easy to roll it out. So caffeine products, energy products take more time and you know especially these days stuff like caffeine drinks, focus drinks um that kind of stuff is like quite massive but um just takes a bit of time but yeah we will uh we will get there for sure pretty soon. >> Yeah man, let's do it. >> Well dude we're super curious about this brand coin right like this idea of a token which represents uh some sort of speculative community and brand value in a brand. I mean, look, like there aren't

very many of them. I mean, I think we've already talked about, you know, Pudgy Penguins. We're obviously big fans there, but like there is this new idea of streamer coins of and now brand coins. maybe you could uh kind of unpack the phil the philosophy of a brand coin and like how you see this democratization of I guess speculative ability of people's brands and ideas globally and how you kind of see this in Rex's case. I think you guys have a very strong community around this REC token also had an insane run this uh this last couple months. talk to us about what what this brand coin idea is and how you guys are harnessing this power with recx.

>> Yeah, look, I think it's very important for this world of meme coins and speculative coins and everything, right? Like why does someone why does a traditional finance person usually buy something because they think it's cheap? Why do they think it's cheap? Because they're using some sort of valuation model based usually on cash flows to deduce that this is cheap versus where it's trading. Right now, if you have something like a meme or a creator coin, how do you value that, right? Like it's hard, you can't really judge the cash flows. Maybe you can look at volume and you know the rewards it generates, but it's very hard to judge that, right?

It's just it's completely finger in the air, but it doesn't mean it's valueless because people have sentiment. People sometimes they want to buy something to express sentiment rather than just being like, "Oh, I want to buy it because my evaluation model says this and this is what my quant says." Right? That's not how every human thinks or react. So, you know, with every single company in the world or every single brand, you have something called your intangible brand value, right? It exists for everyone. Why do you why did I buy that $50 t-shirt instead of the other $50 t-shirt? Because I like the brand. I like how it looks or I like how it makes me feel or I like the the brand messaging or whatever it is, right? And every company has an item on their balance sheet called Goodwill, which is their intangible value of the brand,

right? Coca-Cola has an 18 billion dollar um line item from the balance sheet called goodwill, which is the result of the premium they've paid for that acquisitions over the net asset value. So, it's a real concept in traditional corporate finance, but it's something that people can't trade, right? It's like it's governed by a one-off transaction by two parties. It's impaired by an accountant over time, and it's just this value on your balance sheet, this number on your balance sheet that is intangible and fixed, and you can't do anything with it, right? But with crypto, why would someone buy Rexcoin if it doesn't own the equity, doesn't directly benefit from revenue, doesn't own the IP? Why would anyone want to buy it? Because they like the brand, they like Rex. It's like the whole Roaring Kitty meme, right? I like

the stock. Like that's the only reason why they would buy it. But that is, you know, you can you can equivalate that to this is the intangible value of our brand. Why would someone want to buy it for any other reason? Because they like the brand. That's it. That's the reason, you know, why someone buys it. That's the reason why lots of people buy it. And I think that's a really important concept that most traditional finance people can't get their head around but are now starting to really understand. And that's what's driven a lot of price action in crypto. Like something like SPX, right? People believe it's >> Yeah. Sure. It's crazy. It's at 1.5 billion or whatever, but like that's because there's enough people out there who believe in that as a movement. It's kind of like a a brand kind of. It's not

really a brand, but it's a >> to Coinbase today. >> Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, it's it's a real thing. And by the way, if you disagree with it, fine, because millions of dollars of volume go through every single day and you can go out there and short it. You can literally take the other side of it. There is a market for it. There's a market that trades every single day. So, I think it's a really powerful concept and I think, you know, for a challenger brand like us, like for us to compete with Coca-Cola or Pepsi, etc. Like, it's pretty hard to do that, right? But, you know, this unlocks a lot of value for your brand and allows you to do interesting things. And you know for us the token's gone as rewards to our early supporters um who you know have made money on it and will continue

to do so if we do well. So it really aligns your consumers with you know your vision and kind of makes them into stakeholders. So I think it's a very powerful concept. It's not I'm not saying anything new right all this stuff has existed in crypto for for many many years but I think we've just applied it to a traditional business and product that people understand. And what I found with this messaging for a brand coin is like everything in crypto when I try to explain to my normie friends, they don't get it. But this is the first thing I I just explain to them and they're like, "Oh, I I get this, right?" Like it's like loyalty points, but I can actually sell them and get real money for it.

Like it's a very simple concept, but you know, unlike loyalty points, it's not unlimited. There's a fixed supply and um you can actually trade it and and you know, get your money for it. So um I think it's a very powerful concept. You know, there are a few other examples out there. Um, and I think it's a concept that will take off in crypto because I do feel like we're at a point now where people are kind of tired of just mindlessly trenching and I think they want something a bit more >> with a bit more substance behind uh behind the coin. Yeah, I mean I think you're totally spot on and and and I think you actually get to a a broader point here which it seems like you guys have addressed just based on some of the initial research that we had done which

is that there's kind of this dichotomy right now in in crypto which was around the labs and the foundation entities of certain of certain you know coins. So there's like like the labs equity and the foundation token and so there's kind of like this equity versus token dynamic and now we're seeing it at large like unis swap was thinking about I think and they still are about going and like IPOing the unis swap company for the equity but then they have the token and same with like same with something like a punchy penguins what if they try to do an IPO how do you kind of balance this equity versus token dynamic and so from what I understand is that you guys ended up giving some either like token or equity if you will to NFT key holders and then have figured out a unique way

to kind of like merge these two so the incentives are all all aligned. Maybe talk us through like any advice or thoughts that you have for other founders or people that are trying to understand how to create this unified incentive structure when sometimes the equity and the token are two separate things. how how how have you kind of managed this situation and and what is some thoughts or you know what are some of your thoughts on on navigating this for other crypto projects? >> Yeah, it's a good question. So, we you're right, we actually gifted equity to our NFT holders last year. We took a snapshot did it through an SEC exemption in the US and it was all done with an SEC registered dealer broker and everything. So, um my view on that was

like okay let's get everyone on the same page, everyone on the same team. We have the team, investors, NFT hold, like community and collectors. Everyone owns equity in it. So, everyone's on the same team, right? Because in the past, I think you had NFT projects that would raise a lot of capital and then it's like, okay, now we have to like return um value to our investors. How do we do that? We just like consumerize our community and we'll just sell you more NFTs, dilute you, and make money off you. And then it kind of like changes the the intentions, I think. So um that was a big um a big thing for us which actually put everyone on the same level playing field and yeah it's a good point you know we had the same setup where our company the operating company that owns

the IP and all the drinks revenues go to is Delaware registered company and then there's a came and found it an offshore foundation um where the token sits. I think now in this regulatory environment you could you would just do it all out of the US because it's much more um conducive for for crypto activity in the US and unfortunately we were um you know a year 12 months too early for for that like like many people but there I think there are very clever ways you can combine the two and um I think there are so many so many very very big crypto projects out there like way bigger than us unis swap is one that you mentioned like tons of them who all had this setup up right so I'm convinced that there

will be some sort of solution to combine this setup in a way where it makes sense and makes it efficient whether it means two entities get rolled into one entity and that's what you know comes to the market um when people IPO and stuff or um there are other I think clever ways that you can combine the two or at least you know um have the value acrewing to the the final entity that people want to be at. So I think there'll be ways to do it and yeah it's tough to get your head around whether you want to want own equity in something if you want to own the token. We're moving to a world of potentially having tokenized equity. So how does that change things? And I think you know for for someone like us we have to think about ways where if we do see a

world where every equity is tokenized and private equity is tokenized there needs to be some sort of value acrruel to the token from the equity but within the confines of you know securities regulation and all that kind of stuff and whether it's something like okay you can burn the token for the equity and can you work out the the mechanics around that so it makes sense. I I'm not really sure what the answer is, but um you have to I think every project has to start thinking forward for that and find ways where you ensure that the token doesn't get left behind.

So, um and I think there'll be solutions like I said earlier. >> What do you think this looks like in a 6 months to a year? I I take you guys are probably going to try to expand out of the crypto brands and start to, you know, scale the drink beyond this industry. And then as you guys are shephering and pilgriming like into those other industries, you're going to have some sort of value acrruel back to the token in a in a regul regulated compliant way. Um where do you guys see yourselves in in six months to a year and then and then how do you think that'll link back to the token? >> Yeah, the easiest way to get value to the token is buybacks, right? Um you know, Hyperlid is is case in point for it and that's the gold standard, I think. Um, we've done a handful of

buybacks with drinks revenues already. We don't have a specific mechanic in place for it yet because, you know, like I think we're probably on course to do something like $5 million of revenue this year, right? And let's say 10% goes back towards buying the token. That's 500k and people are not going to get excited about that. But let's say do $100 million of revenue, which I think is very possible in the functional beverage space, and 10% goes to it. And, you know, just making these numbers up, that's $10 million. and people like, "Oh that's a lot of, you know, that's a lot going up into token buybacks, right?" But you want to announce it at a point where people get excited about it and it means something. And I think you have to build the story before you start doing that. And I know Luca has been

asked this question a handful of times and there was a um he did a podcast last week and he tal spoke about um his strategy for that and I completely agree with with his ideology on that too. um in the f in you know the next six months we have to break out of web 3 like I think we for us to hit $100 million of of revenue which I think is very possible in the space we're entering um we have to start appealing to normal people the product itself has to be good um what I would say is in the last 12 months you've had four different functional beverage companies Lollipop um Poppy Alani Nutrition and Ghost Energy who've all raised capital or been acquired for valuations between one and

a half and $2 billion. And these are like new companies. They're like 5 to seven years old. They're not old companies, right? And they've done it in a very short space of time. And the drivers of their success have been entering the functional space. So whether that's like energy, focus, hydration, like all that kind of stuff is is massive right now. >> And the other thing is social media. Like all these guys have been killing it on the social media front. Have big Instagram followings, have influenced all that kind of stuff. And I think you in terms of the history of brands, you've had the first iteration was like physical stores. People go into physical stores, buy stuff. Then you had the internet. I go into Amazon, buy something. Then you had social media stuff like Prime. Okay, I see Logan Paul drinking it. Like I want to drink it.

And the next iteration of it all, I think, is web 3 and crypto. How does web 3 get integrated in a way where it makes sense for people to be a part of it? And I think we're a first mover in that. We're definitely a first mover in that in the beverage space. And that's how I think we have something different that we can combine the two things to do something really special I think and that's the that's what we're pushing towards. >> Very cool. >> So OSF is or um Rect is sitting at 330 mil FTV or so right now. How do you get this thing to to to two or three bill?

What's the 10x here? >> Yeah, it's a good question. And I think um when people start seeing that revenue, topline revenue number go materially higher, that's when people get excited. Like we're going to end this year at 500% higher revenue than we were last year. So it's already Yeah, it's already like a massive massive increase, right? We're on course to sell a million drinks in our first 12 months, which I need to verify this, but I think it hasn't been done since Red Bull in the 90s or Mike Lemonade. So all this stuff is like only possible within crypto, right? So, um, within the crypto space, people want to see, oh, these guys are actually selling drinks in supermarkets, or they want like a pudgy style Walmart headline, and now Rex, yeah, now Rex has stocked across

thousands of stores in the US and and globally, and it's a product with a massive target addressable market. If we can like nail that story and those revenues, then I think people will be like, "Oh this can be really big." Right. That's the Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, go. >> Where are you guys now? Where can where can you we buy? It's just D2C from our website. We we did a 7-Eleven um store activation a few couple of months ago in LA and then we'll have some stuff coming up later this year, but right now all our sale the major vast majority of our sales have been just DTC from our website which >> some people say, "Oh, that you know, you should be in more stores and stuff." But I think the fact that we've done that amount of sales just from our

website, you you go tell that to a distributor, they're like, "Oh like we should be distributing this, you know, nationwide, right? So when we start doing that, you have to imagine that number goes up a lot, right? That number goes does another 3x, 5x, 10x, whatever it is." So that's the story for it. You have to we have to build our credibility in the traditional beverage space, right? We have to show we're not a one trick pony. We have to show we're not crypto scammers. We have to show there's a real business behind it, a real community behind it. But over time, we've been proving that, you know, it was hard after our first sale, but now after our fifth or sixth sale when all the drinks sell out in a couple of minutes repeatedly, like there's a strong story there. So, we'll have more

announcements and and some big stuff I think coming up before the end of the year and also next year. But that growth for like um you know, for like just a drinks company um can actually be pretty big. Can actually be very big. And we have something unique, I think, to that industry that no one else has. >> Man, I'm telling you, the Roll-Up TV daily live stream sponsorship is going to send sales to the absolute biggest stratosphere. So, just get those things ready, boys and girls. If you're watching this right now, I'm going to be sipping on Wrecked. Um, Of I I wanted to further zoom in a bit more on this kind of 10x here for Wreck token, right? I mean, whatever it is, kind of getting to the next level. You you did mention some of the buybacks, how you felt about

that. Luca did have a clip that I saw go pretty viral recently saying and the the text was just buybacks are stupid. I wanted to give you a chance to piggyback on that. Maybe we'll quote tweet that with with the clip here. Like do you agree firmly that there's a certain level in which buybacks should occur? Do you think that that that that it's kind of silly in the early stage to be just buying a token instead of investing into the business? kind of what is your honest brutally honest take about buybacks with regards to WECT and the RECT token on its mission to kind of you know 10x from here to to the multi-billion dollar FTV mark.

>> Yeah. So look um people are obsessed with buybacks because of Hyperlid, right? But Hyperlid is not the only project in crypto that does buybacks. It's not the first project that does it. You have had stuff like Radium, stuff like Rollbit, a lot of the casino stuff has have done it and they haven't worked out, you know, they they haven't really worked out even though you do the maths and the fees being generated are crazy and the token should be a lot higher. They haven't always worked out. The reason why it makes perfect sense for Hyperlquid is because they have that thing fully greased up and running. It's a machine. It's a machine that prints revenues and all they need to do is attract more users and it makes sense to just, you know, spend those fees and buy their token. That business model makes

perfect sense. But when you're growing a brand, whether it's pudgy, whether it's wrecked, um your growth comes is, you know, a result of how much money you spend on growing the business, right? So, if we just sat here and put all our revenues into buying back the token, number one, we'd be we'd be on tax basically because token buybacks you can't offset against your corporate tax. Number two, every dollar we'd spend on that is a dollar we could have spent on growing the business, right? Like you're not going to we're not going to make this thing go we're not going to 10x our revenues just by buying back RC coin. We're going to 10x our revenues by getting a big distribution bill being in thousands of stores like spending a bit on marketing to get um the presence of rats like much larger in the web 2 space

and the traditional space. Like these are all the same things that are probably going through Luca's mind where it's like okay we can make Penu massive like in the world if we spend money to grow the business. And then when you get to a certain point where it's like, okay, we have a massive nine figure annual recurring revenue rate. Now it's time to like start buying back the token. But guess what? By that point in time, your token's going to be higher anyway. Like your token goes up because of the success of the underlying company and the business and the brand. If we kill it and if we don't buy back any tokens from now until let's say 2027 but we 5x our revenues and we have you know a massive presence as as a drinks brand the token is going to be higher. It's

just going to be higher. I mean we're as you mentioned we're up a lot in the last three or four months and the last buyback we did in like April or May. Um and just in that time frame we've just been killing it on drink sales and we're up it's up whatever it is 2,000%. So, um I think people just get so obsessed with like I want to have this buyback mechanic, but you don't necessarily need it because um people understand that this is how businesses work and compare it to stock buybacks, right? Like people don't just sit there and buy back their stock all day long. They buy it back when they think it's cheap. Another thing that Luca was talking about and they buy it back when it makes sense.

So, um I think in the early stages of growth, it doesn't always make sense. Um, we bought back tokens this year because we thought it was extremely cheap versus what we have planned and and what we view the business as. And if those opportunities present themselves again, we we will buy buyback tokens. >> Yeah. Well, that's the thing, right? Is like Lucas is like, why am I just going to bid my token up in FOMO when I can just set actual bids lower where where we think there's fair value and try to create more of a floor rather than try to chase my own coin. So, >> yeah, I got you. What is it like working with uh uh Faro and the FOMO hour guys and the and the other team members kind like what are some of like the you know if you had to glaze some of your uh

awesome you know friends and and team members like what are the what is the one or two things that like create separation from an entrepreneur perspective for somebody like Faro or some of your other partners like what are some of key characteristics and I'll give an example is that I you know I've I've I've noticed that meticulousness in in everything across certain investors and entrepreneurs which I it is very very common that they want to do everything just right perfectly and have a meticulous desire to to to have everything be exact. Um and I found that that is a a trait of somebody you know who is who is going to you know do big things and kind of be able to scale at a

higher level. curious with some of your partners and and close friends, what are some of the things that make them great? Um, you know, that you've picked up on for yourself and your own abilities. >> Yeah, look, I've known like Faro pretty much since I joined crypto in 2021. Um, Mando I've known I mean I've known him for about 10 more than 10 years now. We used to work together before entering crypto. And I think the main thing about all these guys, anyone who's really successful in the space is they don't people stick it out through the tough times, right? They they give they don't give up during bare markets. I mean, for been cancelled like 79 times, right?

Like most people will just leave, but he's stuck it out and now he's doing very well. I mean, the guy interviewed Trump, right? Like like last year, probably the biggest possible interview you could land in and the biggest thing he could do in his profession. So, um, these guys will just stick it out through the tough times. And that's what you need to do because a big part of crypto is getting people to buy into your personal story. And, um, if you're someone who just turns up every day through a two-year bare market, whatever, keeps building, keeps trading, keeps offering advice, whatever it is that you do, but if you're just there and you're like, "Yeah, I know this is but I'm just going to stick it out just because, um, people will remember that." And then when the times are good, you have a strategic

advantage versus other people because they're like, "Oh I remember that guy. You stuck it out the entire time. Didn't just like sell the top and leave and then come back." You know, like no, everyone hates that guy, right? People like people like the people who stick around. And that allows you to build a following and you know build get people to believe in what you're doing. It doesn't really matter what it is that you're doing, people will believe in it. And that I think is the most common trait of people who I perceive to be successful in this state in this space. >> Yeah. I I appreciate that. No, I think you're right. I mean, that that has led to a lot of our brand's growth just in this last 18 months. People are like, "Oh, what is the rollup new?" Like, you know, like the last year I've seen you

guys everywhere. And I'm like, "Dude, if only you saw us five years, you know, just grinding, right? Just to get even to a point like even this whole live stream thing is like it's just a just this constant iterative process, right? And and so I think you're you're you're spot on there. wanted to kind of even zoom out even further a bit more of a broader question as as well outside of just like what you guys are doing with the uh with the partners and the team just more broadly on on uh growing your audience in the space. Um what have been some of the most impactful things that you've done either with your audience or to grow your audience um that other creators can learn from. Right. So I've got like 71k on Twitter. I've see you're

in the couple hundred thousands. Obviously, it was a big 2021 retail cycle, but you've done a lot of things right. What are some of the things that you've done right in growing your audience? And then what are some of the potential mistakes that you've made that uh other creators could learn from as well? >> I think there are two in this space. There are probably three reasons why someone would follow someone and they're probably they're probably condensed into two. One of them is you just find someone funny or entertaining or whatever. like if you if someone posts good memes, you follow them, right? The other one is like if someone's giving out good advice. If if it's good, helpful, useful information, good advice, like yeah, I'll follow that. And the third reason is if you perceive they can make you money, which

is kind of like similar to the one before because you know they're related things obviously. So for me, I think um I think I gained an early following because I just I don't know did some good trades and I kind of like I'd write out like my thought process and stuff. I was never I've never really been like a pump and dump type person, you know, like I just it's for me it's not really like that enjoyable to do something like that. And I think every time I've done trades, I've been like, "Hey, this is my thought process behind it. Here's what I've done. Here's where I think it can go." And then, you know, if I've made money on, if I've lost money on it, you own up to it, right? Like you you have um you have to be honest with your followers, I think. So, but I think, you

know, having had some early success that helped me gain quite a large following, but I think being direct and honest about what you're doing is is better. you know, is it's better to say, you know, for people, there are people out there who get paid to sh coins, right? Like that's just like a thing in crypto. So, if someone goes like, "Hey, I've been paid 10 grand to SH this coin, but I really like it and I think it's going to go higher." I'd be like, "Yeah, you know what? Fair enough." Like, "Maybe you're right. Maybe it does go higher, but at least you're honest." Whereas, someone doesn't tell you they've been paid and they're like, "Oh, this thing's going to go to a bill." And then it's just kind of like, "Okay." And you find out like, "Okay, I wouldn't trust that guy." Right? So I think it's about being

completely honest about um what you're doing in the space and being transparent. And I think the second thing is like how you know can you be creative or interesting and do things where people can make money off what you're doing. And I think for me you know Rex guy was a free mint have given out a lot of free a lot of my artwork for free. Um our holders got equity in the company for free. They got recoin for free. So there's this like perception that oh if if I keep following RSF and get involved in this wreck stuff like maybe I'll make some money for free. And there are people in our community who've been there since, you know, the first day, like almost four years ago now, who've probably made thousands, maybe tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars just from like, you know,

sticking around and figuring out like what what we're doing and what we're planning and not really having to like put much money into it, right? And I think that's, you know, if you can actually successfully make money for people, you will get a lot, you will get a large following in whatever you're doing. That's just like, you know, it's just one of those things, right? >> Yeah. It's a principle that we've talked about. We call it economic karma. It's just >> make money for people and like it'll come back around. >> Exactly. Exactly. >> Awesome. Um Oh, Seth, I don't have I don't have much else for you, Andy.

>> I got a couple more for sure. Um >> let them rip. >> Yeah. I'm curious. Do you think like most successful consumer brands will launch tokens? Like do you see this as a viable path for like um I don't know like Pokemon, maybe not Pokemon, right? like I don't know Yeti this this mug, right? Like is there going to be a a Yeti coin just because like we can or like like how do you see this path between let's call them midsize companies who probably don't have what it takes to IPO nor really want to go through that whole process like do you see the tokenization of consumer brands as a trend that like accelerates or is it kind of kind of just in the early innings like where where do you see this

uh broadly? I I don't I don't see I don't see every midsize company doing it. Um I don't see big companies doing it. Um I I see lots of people trying, but I don't see them being successful at it. And the reason is for a token to do really well, you need to have this massive community around you >> and the community needs to be crypto native. They need to understand what's going on and they need to believe in it. And it's also it's it's an underdog story, right? It's like Rex is an underdog story. It's like can we can we fight the big boys using crypto? And that's what people are trying to get behind this story. If Pepsi came and did a token, people kind of, you know, it would it would rip. It would do really well. It would be like a daily runner

and then it'll probably get sold down. It would get sold down over time because like, you know, no one's really going to no one in crypto is really going to care to own something like that. It will have some sort of flaw value, but that's it. Whereas there's no mission there, right? It's like what Murad says about SPX and other coins. You need a mission behind it. You need a mission coin. And for Rex, there's a mission. and it's like, you know, let's let's battle with the big boys and, you know, let's see if we can get up there in the traditional world using crypto. So, if Yeti does a token, like, you know, what's the mission behind it? Why would someone want to own it? It doesn't really feel like there's good messaging there. And I think for an existing non-crypto brand to have a token that does well, they

need to spend years in developing and building a crypto community and following before they even think about doing a token. And then when they do a token, it will be successful. Otherwise, it will just be an extraction event and it will actually be damaging to their reputation. And we've seen that many many times with celebrity coins and whatnot. You know, you guys know the story, right? So, I hate to tell you. >> No. Yeah, I totally I totally totally agree. And I see Koopa Troopa like he's pushing out on trying to like get different artists on chain and he's like he's some somebody was like should we hit up Peggy goo to to do a token and he was like look I think we should probably just wait until we have an actual really good use case to present to these people uh that that isn't just like let me scam

my followers. We got to kind of figure out maybe there's a new model that comes out on the consumer side but um yeah I said just want to give you kind of closing thoughts man where where can we find you? Where can we buy Rect? Uh how can how can our community get involved uh and support you guys? >> Yeah. Uh my handle on on X is OSF_RECT or if you follow Rect Drinks, we're it's Rect Drinks on all our socials, YouTube, Instagram, Tik Tok, X, etc. And um we have our our next drinks drop coming up um very soon. We'll have some some more announcements on that shortly. So keep an eye on the REC drinks handle. And um Rexcoin you can buy on Kraken now. Now you can buy on Binance US if you're in the US and you know obviously you can

always buy it on chain on unis swap. We're on ETH, we're on Salana, we're on base, we're on Binance Smart Chain, we're on Abstract. So many venues to buy it from. Just check out Reccoin on on X >> OSF man. Appreciate your time. Um great great great work and uh been a big fan. So looking forward to getting some WCK drinks. We'll buy them if we have to. We we'll >> send you some. Don't worry. We'll send you some. We we'll we'll be sipping on the stream. Rob Re. >> Love it. Cheers, guys. Thanks a lot for having me.

>> Cheers, man. We'll see you next time. Thanks for coming on. >> All righty, Rob. That's OSF. That's Wrecked. Looks like we're going to get some WCK drinks. I'm stoked on that. >> Oh, yeah. >> Um, >> man, we we got to do a recap. Let's go back to the top here. Hype alltime high back above 50. We had the stable coin issuance conversations today, three of them. If you guys didn't catch all those, we're going to post it as one big YouTube hit on the rollup. We we'll have it. It'll be an hour and a half. Every conversation we'll put them into there. Um and we'll and we'll showcase those.

But Rob, hype clearly got the attention of the market this weekend into this week. Oftent times we think that a lot of the market performances are are really linked to attention. I mean, you see it time and time again how attention impacts markets. So, we had Agora, we had then had Paxos, and we had Fra. I don't know what the best one is. They all sound great. I mean, Paxos really sounds good. Is >> Dude, if Athena comes in, that's going to be insane.

>> Yeah. >> I mean, we have to hear from Max tomorrow. >> And we have USDT zero guy, who's a huge validator coming on tomorrow. And I think we're gonna need to hear from Ryan Watkins as well. uh sometime this week, maybe even Vance from framework. But but I just think any of them are a good option and this is just going to be a massive win for Hyperlid. I don't know based on those three like Sam and Fax have obviously support us for a while. I think they would do a great job. Paxos seems like they got everything together. The 95% is just kind of annoying. Agora also has an amazing Van, huge background, huge opportunities there in with Black Rock and all the stuff that

they're doing. just hard to just hard to pick one. I mean like it's not going to be an easy vote for the community. >> Nothing against Agora, but I think Fracks and Paxos are in the lead. >> You think I think they've each uh ran stable coins to billions of dollars. Paxos even more so. But I think FRA >> Fra I think has a little bit of an advantage over Paxos because they have that cultural alignment with Hyperlid. are very cryptonative and I and I think Paxos even though they have the enterprisegrade institutional vibe I think it almost works against them in that in that regard and you know they're buttoned up their suit and tie maybe it helps them maybe it doesn't I think if

it's up to the Hyperlid core team I think that experience helps them if it's up to the validators in the community which it is I think they might go into the more cryptonative side um Athena and Guy I think probably will put something forth and I think that will shake things up. Um I also wouldn't be surprised if Circle put forth a more impressive proposal. Um, I think they would just see so much of their business evaporate as a result of uh them losing out on the hyperlquid um stable coin um uh place and uh that's where I think

we're headed. So, it's very interesting. We're going to see what happens, but obviously this is working out for Hyperlid. We're back above all-time highs. thing is in price discovery and it is a tremendous marketing campaign, probably the best since John win. Um I I think >> we have a major a major news event here. >> Uh yeah, we're gonna we hadn't talked about this, but this happened during the stream. >> Yeah. So Rob, finish your thought there. I mean, look, I think it's interesting that you think uh Paxus and Fracks are in the lead, but this is just we got to react to some of the timeline on on this. This is just getting out of hand.

Um, I saw a couple projects said that they were safe. >> Yeah, I saw Phantom just came out and said that they were safe. Curve said that they were safe. >> So, the CTO of Ledger comes out and says, um, you know, Charles Gat warns of supply chain attack in the Javis JavaScript ecosystem after an NPM account compromise. The affected packages have been downloaded over a billion times, meaning the entire JavaScript ecosystem may be at risk. The malicious payload works by silently swapping crypto addresses on the fly to steal funds. If you use a hardware wallet, pay attention to every transaction before signing in your safe.

If you don't use a hardware wallet, refrain from making any onchain transactions. This is crazy. Still unclear whether the attacker is also stealing seeds from software wallets directly at this stage. So my impression from what else I'm seeing on the timeline is that obviously this is something to uh take pause and give it proper caution. Um but I also am seeing that the uh the attack vector is a lot smaller than all websites, all wallets, all transactions.

>> Um ox not going to make it from Defi Llama had a pretty good explanation of this. uh he describes how uh in any website that uses this hacked dependency, it gives them a chance to it gives the hacker a chance to inject malicious code. For example, when you click a swap button on a website, the code might replace the transaction sent to your wallet with a transaction sending money to hacker, but in your wallet, you'd still see the bad transaction. You would still need to approve the bad transaction. So, it's not going to just instantly drain you even after you hit swap. you would still have to approve the transaction. If you use a hardware wallet, you'd still have to approve on your hardware wallet. Uh this will only impact websites that

pushed an update since the hacked npm package was published. >> Uh as other projects will have the old version. So if the uh website, you know, published any updates recently, they might include this. Most projects pin their dependencies. So even if they push an update, they'll keep using the old save code. Basically, your wallet is safe and the effective impact area is much smaller than all websites. But since you cannot really know if a project pinned dependencies or if they have some other dynamically downloaded dependency, which is very unlikely, it's just safer to avoid using crypto websites till this blows over and then clean up the bad packages. I think that sums up both what happened and what takeaways and actions to take going forward.

>> Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. All right. So, I guess we just stay off chain for today. Stay safe. Let the Salana Treasury companies do what they do. And uh >> just be careful on any uh on any interactions on chain today. >> Yeah. Be careful. Hold the line. This will blow over and then uh when you get back on chain, make sure that you do it safely. >> Yeah. All right, Rob. It's been a pretty good stream, man. Uh we got a a lot going on on the business side. Um, I saw Santi just came out with their uh announcement for the seed round.

>> Yeah, >> super stoked on that for inversion. Very, very cool. Um, Hyperlick was obviously the talk of the town, so we have a lot to cover there this week. Another awesome stream tomorrow, guys. We'll be here every day this week. Rob, pretty good Monday. Uh, it's time to sign off, >> I'd say. So, another great stream. Thanks to all the whole team behind the scenes. Andy, thanks for another great episode. We will see everyone next time. Thanks for tuning in. Smash that like button. Just kidding. We're not YouTubers, but we are streamers in the era of podcasting be gone and streaming come forth.

>> See you guys next time tomorrow. >> Signing off.